Right, those are reasons why it’s not a big deal. But, to reiterate my question: Is there a good reason NOT to make the official match time known? Assume all the other rules and practices remained as they are. The only difference is that the referee’s stopwatch is hooked up to, and synchronized with, the scoreboard.
Is there any sport in which the referee’s watch is hooked up to the scoreboard clock? Seems like a technical nightmare. This also feels like a solution in search of a problem. Outside of this discussion, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of people complaining that the EXACT time isn’t known.
I propose a simple change to increase the intensity of action near the goal: eliminate the 18 yard box, the goal keeper can use his hands anywhere in his side of the field – but he cannot hold onto the ball, he can only use his hands the way other players use their feet, to hit or deflect the ball (he can scoop up and throw the ball, but his hand must be in continuous motion).
**It’s time, once again, for Americans to tell the world how to fix soccer.
**
That’s simple. Merge in elements of baseball. Give three guys on each team a bat and they can swing at the ball anywhere on the field.
I’d pay to watch that!
Regarding PKs, I agree with a frequently-expressed sentiment… it should be less binary, and there’s no reason not to involve replay technology.
So an offensive player has the ball in the box, he falls down in a situation that might plausibly be a PK. The referee can quite freely blow the whistle and signal “I think this might be a PK”. Then officials in the booth review it from all angles and come up with one of various possible outcomes:
(1) PK, if it actually met the classic definition of a PK
(2) Yellow card for diving
(3) Goal kick (drop ball?) if it was neither a foul nor a dive (maybe return the ball to whichever team had possession when the whistle blew)
(4) possibly corner kick or further-out-PK for yes-it-was-a-foul-but-it-didn’t-quite-deserve-a-nearly-certain-goal
There’s a huge slightly hidden benefit here which is that not only will justice generally prevail when the ref whistles and then it turns out not to be a PK, but you’ll also get fewer missed calls because refs won’t be afraid to whistle in the first place, since they know that they aren’t automatically deciding the entire course of the game. Fewer false positives, fewer false negatives, strong disincentive against diving. What’s not to love?
The other change I’d love to see is another one someone on the SDMB suggested, which is to have PKs before extra time, with the result of the PK being the tiebreaker if the game remains tied. So, today’s game as an example… it’s 0-0 after regulation. Then the PKs happen, and Argentina wins them. THEN we get back on the field and play another 30 minutes, but now Holland KNOW that they absolutely positively have to score to have a chance. It would be vastly more satisfying if the final whistle always blew when people were actually playing soccer, not taking PKs, and it would lead to much more exciting extra time periods when at least one of the teams would have to attack all out. Soccer is at its most exciting when a team is a goal down with time running short and attacking like crazy, and at its least fun when both teams are just kinda happy to play for PKs. This would replace the latter with the former. (A legitimate complaint I’ve heard with this plan is that from a fitness perspective it would be difficult for players to be playing, then stop and take PKs, then go back to playing, but I feel like that must be overcomable…)
I think in ice hockey, at least on the higher levels, the referee directly controls the clock through some sort of wireless device. It doesn’t seem to cause many problems. As to the complaint about knowing the EXACT time, that may be an American fixation, though one which I admit to sharing. We are so used to seeing the time counting down backwards to zero and any other way just doesn’t feel right.
Back in the 60s at my highschool soccer games, I occasionally ran the clock. When the referee blew his whistle I stopped the scoreboard clock. Certainly a technology like that could be used at all levels that had a scoreboard with a clock. I believe they essedntially do the same thing in the NFL, NBA, and the sports in colleges and high schools to this day.
Skimming the thread, I see no one has suggested what seems to me like the most obvious need (and applies to hockey too): increase the size of the goal to create more scoring. It doesn’t need to be so big that the final score looks like an NBA result. Just get it up to where a defensive struggle ends 5-4, an average game 10-9, and a run-and-gun shootout 15-14. My hunch is that this wouldn’t even require a goal that would look super noticeably bigger: the radius the goalkeeper can cover is the same, and slight increases in each of height and width add significantly to the square footage, so you can double or triple the zone beyond his/her reach without changing the dimensions that much.
This would also have the side benefit of avoiding deciding so many games on penalty kicks, which is kind of lame and is much more “not true soccer” than my change.
Why do we need more goals?
It is a serious question and gets down to the real fundamentals of why people love the sport. Going the other way, one of the reasons I just cannot get on with basketball is that there is way too much scoring, it seems like more of an event if someone doesn’t score.
I agree: there is too much scoring in basketball, which is why I’m not aiming for a 40-39 score (which would be about equivalent to a basketball score since field goals are for two or three points). But there is just too little in soccer and hockey. Football gets it about right; baseball has other things besides scoring to achieve within the game and is just kind of in a different category.
And one thing that you get in football even when no points are scored is that you are achieving field position, first downs, etc. This continues to matter even after changes of possession: even if you can achieve just one first down each time you have the ball, while making the other team go three-and-out, you will (assuming roughly equal punters, coverage and return teams) eventually grind your way to pushing them so far back that you get into field goal range while threatening the other team with the risk of a safety. This is not true in basketball after a couple changes of possession, and does not appear to be true in soccer either.
So when it’s 0-0 an hour into the game, the back-and-forth you have been watching really didn’t have any impact. I guess you can say the defense did–but in a game where it is clearly much easier to play defense than offense (and some teams seem hardly to even bother with offense at all), well…big whoop, your defense was successful.
I feel pretty sure as well that the more low scoring a game, the more random chance, blind luck, enters into the outcome. And that may be exciting for some, but it’s not how I prefer my sporting events to play out.
I am also pretty confident that if there were more scoring, the game would be more popular with Americans. Would it lose popularity with the rest of the world? If so, why? What’s wrong with a little scoring? Even in basketball, while I agreed it has too much scoring, OTOH the defense has about a fifty percent chance of making a stop each time. There is some appeal in that symmetry, of a duel between offense and defense in which each has a roughly equal chance of prevailing.
In a nutshell, because there are other more exciting things than scoring which probably happen less often if there were bigger goals. Near misses, hitting the woodwork, fantastic saves pushing the ball past the post.
I normally say that I don’t think knockout tournaments show football at its best, which is why I feel for those that are being introduced to it via such events. Teams do tend to play more defensively in knockout tournaments, leagues where losing 4-0 one week isn’t an utter disaster, tend to be far more interesting. Well, for me at least.
I agree that more goals are needed, but not as many as SlackerInc is suggesting. Soccer at the World Cup level is one of the most physically demanding games on the planet. Having to play nearly constantly for up to 120 minutes, with very little break in play is incredibly hard. Who wants a game like that decided by a fluke goal (Such as the US draw with England in the last World Cup). You play as hard as you can, and lose or draw because the ball bounced funny? Or worse, you lose because of a horrible ref call. More goals means a greater spread, which means that the better team has less of chance of losing by a fluke. Basically, instead of a 1-0 or 2-1 game, I would rather see a 4-2 game.
You have to be careful with changing the goal size, because it doesn’t just mean that teams will play the same way and more of their shots will go in. It increases the chances of scoring from all shots, but long shots get a larger increase - close shots were already very good chances, and longer shots go from prayers to reasonable. You can end up with more offense in the sense that more goals are scored, but less offense in the sense of nice passing and team play, since it becomes tactically correct to just shoot from anywhere within 30 yards.
The equivalent of the boring “dump and chase” in hockey. Well, it’s possible these types of games aren’t salvageable in some sense.
The “increase the goal count” is an old chestnut and it is bollocks.
There is no way of doubling the average number of goals scored without fundamentally changing the nature of the game. The fact that the best team does not always win a match is a feature of knockout competitions, not a defect.
You want a guarantee of the best team winning? Well, it always evens out in the end when playing a league structure but this is not always the case in a knockout tournament. That is what makes it compelling.
The world cup averaged around 3 goals per game. It was plenty. Certainly the best tournament I’ve seen. As it happens, the best team in the world eventually won but it was no done deal and with heroic upsets all along the way.
The final had but a single goal and that was all it needed. Football excites merely by threatening a goal due to their relative scarcity, change the value of that “currency” at your peril.
The reason why soccer needs more scoring is that defenses which result in no scoring is pointless. I suspect that the group stage play came up with the whole points system and ties to acknowledge that instead of fixing it. I don’t if there is the equivalent of a group stage and ties in non-World cup tournaments, but to me, a 0-0 game is equal to watching nothing. Nothing was accomplished at all and you could have skipped the whole game and went directly to a shootout and it would have made a difference
When things don’t even make it into the stats, then there’s something wrong with it. Defense in basketball is expressed through rebounds, blocks, steals, turnovers, etc. In football, you have turnovers, interceptions, yards gains vs. lost. With baseball, there’s errors and there’s the pitcher’s stats.
What do you have in soccer that tracks how great the defense is? How can you even tell if the teams just suck at offense vs. being great at defense? If nothing can be said about the game other than its low scoring, then its meaningless whether its great defense or bad offense because the result is the same. Tell me a story about the defense that’s not simply a 0 score. Express it in numbers and stats I can understand. Show why this guy was great vs. simply having a lot of energy and running around the field getting into everyone’s way
I dont understand it therefore it’s bad. Gotcha.
Tell me, have you tried watching cricket? 
The opposite is more true than that.
No, preventing scoring is what defense is all about.
Defense and offense in all sports are expressed via the scoreboard. Nothing else matters except as it relates to the score.
Tackles, interceptions, aerial duels won. Those are three stats off the top of my head.
Here is one source for such stats for the last match: http://www.fourfourtwo.com/statszone/4-2013/matches/731830/team-stats/632/3_DEFENCE_01#tabs-wrapper-anchor
For example, Germany was 31 of 41 in tackles. Argentina were 21 of 27. In addition, Argentina seems to have had far more interceptions, particularly in the middle of the pitch. You can very clearly see the areas Germany was probing as well.