What you say is partly true. However, the thing that has changed the most in the last 50 years is speed. If you watch the 1970 world cup it’s like they’re senior citizens. Great ability, passing, scoring, but defenders let you walk 40 metres before tackling you and you had plenty time to set up your plays. modern defenders are quick and in-your-face.
Just get the sissies who dive out of the game!!!
No, it reduces cherry picking. It allows defenses to push up the field and get stretched. It probably increases scoring.
A quarter of New Zealand stayed up or woke up to watch their team play!
The fact is it’s fucking hard to get a goal in. We like that.
I have no idea what this means in context. I’m just not at all familiar with the way you’re using “cherry picking.”
Well, presumably, defenses are free right now to either push up the field or not. Take away the offsides rule and… they’re still free to either push up the field or not. How on earth does the rule, therefore, have an impact on scoring by this logic? Because from where I’m sitting, the rule does nothing more than take away a wicked bonus for the offensive side. It’s like saying basketball players have to shoot with their eyes closed if they’re inside the three-point arc. Just needlessly making their job harder.
So by your logic, 40 people on a side would be even MORE AWESOMER.
Here’s a deal for you: I will officially admit, on behalf of all Americans, that one of the reasons we don’t like soccer is because we’re not very good at it IF, in return, you admit that you like the low scoring primarily because it pisses off us Yanks.
Thing is , I watched the end of the NBA final - one of the teams won by a few points although the scores were high like 76 - 80 or some such. I learned that this was the **seventh **game of this final, in the end there were just a couple of points in it. Lots of points were scored, but in the end after 7 games, it came down to just a few points, so what’s the difference? With football, we’re used to the low scores, if there’s a high score it means the teams were not evenly matched, so not a good game, with one team hammering goals in. I can understand where you’re used to higher scoring games, but in the end it comes down to a few points - just like football. Am I wrong? Sure the rules could be reconstructed so one team beat another by 52 - 54, but it might as well be 2 - 0.
Football isn’t about pissing off you guys, sorry. It’s not your primary sport nor that of Ireland or Australia for example but the US performed well - no shame, as did Ireland and the Aussies. England … well … there are other sports not to do well at.
Yes, they would technically be free to push up all their defenders. Just as teams are now technically free to play their keeper as a striker. Both would be suicide though.
You don’t see that leaving a completely unmarked forward one on one with the keeper the entire game is a recipe for disaster?!
I have never quite understood this attitude - defending is an art form that can be as beautiful to watch as scoring from a free flowing, one touch passing move. Many draws are dull but many are as exciting as high scoring matches, the goalkeeper making that fingertip save, a perfectly timed tackle from the left back in the box a split second before the striker shoots and so on. All moments of excitement and drama and what else do you want from your sport?
Re the OP - no skill?? You sir never had the good fortune of watching Matthew Le Tissier in his prime. I pity you, I really do……
Yup. If there were loads of them every game, goals would lose their magic. There’s nothing like watching your team play a tense goalless 89 minutes against top opponents, and then getting an own goal off your most hated defender in the last corner of the game.
Or Frank Worthington, I’ll bet.
Attention, Americans Who Hate Soccer: The rest of the world does not want you to start liking soccer. As humbling as it may sound, the rest of the world doesn’t much care if you like soccer or not. What annoys a lot of sports fans in the rest of the world, however, is when people who do not like soccer either a) assert that those people who do like soccer - and there are more of them than fans of any other sport - only like it because they are stupid or otherwise somehow inferior to you; or b) insist that the game would be So Much Better! if only changes were made that would fundamentally alter the game.
I mean, I hate golf and I don’t understand how anybody can watch it, but I don’t go around asserting that it would be much more entertaining if they were allowed to throw the ball from the tee instead of having to hit it with those club thingies.
Now, that was impressive. Thanks for the link.
It involves opening up a boutique.
He was a former soccer player, obviously.
George Best the cheeky sod.
And one that wasn’t disallowed:
Excellent wintertime what a laugh.
And have you noticed that there are practically no holes-in-one? How about if the holes were made the size of large buckets? Who’s with me?
Soccer is the world’s most-watched sport.
CSI Miami is the world’s most-watched television show.
Shit is shit. Please stop making the mistake that popular = good.