Fair enough. I’ll quit making the mistake that popular = good when you, and others, quit making the mistake that “I don’t like it” = bad.
I’m with if you support having a backboard as well.
You noticed that the ball eventually always does go into the hole, right? Otherwise, tell us how many times does a goal arise from the first kick at the opening whistle? Maybe the goal should be big enough that the first player to kick the ball has a chance to put it in.
How many games are played where no ball goes into any net at all?
Golf is a far better game comparatively to Soccer.
And maybe golf would be better if there was a guy standing next to the hole trying to keep the ball out.
Seriously, what the fuck?
I can understand if a fan of the game has some genuine suggestions for improving it, but i really don’t understand why so many people, mainly (but not exclusively) Americans, seem to have an attitude to soccer along the lines of, “I hate your shitty game. Here’s how you need to change it in order to win me over.”
If you don’t like it, fine. No problem at all. Hell, even many American soccer “fans” only watch the damn sport once every four years anyway. I’m just not sure why you think that the most popular game in the world would fundamentally change its rules and gameplay in order to conform to the wishes of a few million self-righteous douchebags who wouldn’t watch it even if those changes were made anyway.
“I like A better than B, so A is far better than B.”
This sort of observation is either so obvious as to be completely pointless (if you prefer A to B, you’re likely to believe that A is better than B), or it’s so stupid as to be completely useless, because it assumes the very things that it purports to demonstrate: that preferring something makes that thing better, by definition.
In fact, if you adopt the position that “prefer” and “better” are somehow synonymous in this debate, you’re actually playing into the populist argument that Hal Briston recently rejected. Because far more people in the world prefer soccer than prefer just about any other sport. So soccer must be better.
Lots of folks around the world don’t like football, but it’s the bizarre reasons and reasoning given in this thread I find so amusing. What’s next? A comparison with ten pin bowling? Darts?
Darts players…now they are what you call athletes - or they could be if they threw spears instead of tiny pointy things, and the board was on the back of a man on a skateboard.
Why not put quicksand in the sand traps? Just to make things more interesting…
I never said I liked Golf better than soccer. I was responding to idiot boy’s (tagos) stupid analogy. At least you get a ‘happy ending’ in golf while soccer routinely leaves you with blue balls. Hence golf is a better game than soccer.
Now both are boring beyond belief to watch rather than play is not something up for debate.
lol
This reminds me of one of my favorite things on a United message board I look at. There used to be match prediction threads each week, and there was a Spurs fan who posted all the time on the boards. In the prediction threads, every week, his prediction was Manchester United 0-1 [Manchester United’s opponent that week], (Brown OG 89’).
Now we’re talkin’ sports!
Well, we tried giving them a 3 goal start once and they still couldn’t win, so a Brown og in the dying seconds probably seems like the only way we can be beat to the average Spurs fan! 
Huh? you always end up with champion in football, you always end up with winner in golf. I don’t see the point you are making.
I saw an American Football game once. It sucked. There’s no skill. None of the players did anything I couldn’t have done. Adverts every five minutes. Stopping to line up all the time. If you get ten seconds of play without a huddle or a line-up or a great big all male pat-down session then that’s a result. It’s the most boring game ever! No wonder it’s only played in one country.
I am able to make such astute observations because I, in my capacity as a complete NFL ignoramus who has never played American Football in his life and isn’t even 100% sure of all the rules, am in a privileged position. Knowing next to nothing about the game, I am unburdened by all the unnecessary “knowledge” or “experience” which might make lesser mortals wary of delivering these and other penetrating insights for fear of being thought “a cunt”. Don’t worry. I don’t expect any thanks (although I’m sure I must deserve some). I’m just glad I was able to blast the scales from your eyes, so that you thundering, lunkheaded apes can enjoy some real sports, like the ones I enjoy.
You’re welcome.
Ah, golf. The perfect way to spoil a nice walk.
At least nobody has claimed fishing is a sport…yet.
Serious non-snarky question for soccer aficionados: in what ways would you want to change the game, be it a minor tweak or a major alteration? I can think of about half-a-dozen things I’d change about baseball.
I like the American Football appeal system and think that should be incorporated into Rest-of-the-World football.
Use of video replays.
Simplify the offside rule, taking away all this “activation” rubbish.
Stop the ridiculous defence of the keeper (it has got to the point where you can no longer jump against one).
Diving being a red card offence no matter where on the field.
And finally, the one that really, really gets me. Stopping the “shepherding out” of the ball by making no attempt to play it, instead just blocking the opposition from getting at it. Seems like the very definition of “obstruction” to me …
Oh, and retroactive punishment for diving etc.
And slim-fit uniforms to prevent people from pulling them.
Thank you, John DiFool, for asking that. You’ve just put things together nicely for me.
See, I read things like Cort’s latest, and I think “Ok, you’re a dipshit, but you have a point. This is all a subjective matter of taste, and to try and say one sport is better than another is useless”.
But now…ok, I’ll get to the point in a second. In my life, I’ve seen plenty of sports. I grew up the youngest of four brothers in a house with one TV. That meant I had four males in the house all significantly older than I, and all of them rabid sports fans. I grew up watching a ton of sports, and hating all of it. Hell, I’m a huge football fan now, but I didn’t begin watching it for myself until I was in my 30’s.
So I’ve seen plenty of football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer and just about every other team sport that you can name – I’m not approaching this from a position of ignorance. And for each of these sports, I can think of some tweaks I’d put into place if it were up to me. A few things that might level the field, maybe take a random factor out here or there, but still keep the game itself largely untouched. For the most part, these games work fine the way they are.
Except for soccer – it’s the only one that I would massively overhaul if it were left solely up to me. From the field size to the timekeeping to replay to stoppages to number of players to goal size to etc etc etc…
I won’t speak for anyone else here, and I certainly won’t try and decry anyone else’s enjoyment of the game. But for me, that speaks volumes. Yes, I know, you don’t give a shit what I think and the game isn’t for me and yadda yadda. I just found it a little enlightening that of all sports (whether I like them or not), soccer was unique to me in that manner.
I’m an American, and I find soccer to be incredibly boring to watch. But you know what, I find plenty of other sports incredibly boring too, like baseball, no big deal. However, like others have said, it is entertaining when watching highlights.
I’m also not going to make any silly assertions that it requires no skill or whatever. I have a hard time recognizing what is or isn’t difficult, but I can imagine that with our best athletes going into sports like football and basketball that the level of athleticism is comparable in soccer. However, I think there are some things that could be done to improve the game.
For instance, someone mentioned the scoring and how few goals is exciting; I agree. However, it suffers from a problem that, with very low scoring games, chance ends up playing a much larger role in the outcome of the game where. It also means that you have a lot of 0-0 or 1-0 matches which makes me feel like I’ve pretty much wasted that time watching the match. It can be fun to see a low scoring game of any sport if it’s because of excellent defensive play, but when it happens so often, it’s not interesting. OTOH, too many goals and each one loses meaning; for instance, I think basketball suffers from this to a large degree. Thus, I think there’s a sweet spot between those two extremes and I think more American sports are closer to that level.
The average NFL score is around 20.5 points per team which, when normalized to “goals”, works out to roughly 6 per game. The average hockey game averages 5 goals. The average baseball score is around 9.5 runs per game. Soccer is around 2.5. IOW, making some minor changes to boost scoring slightly would help reduce ties and pure chance influencing games, give a few more points of interest in a game, minimize 0-0 results, and not have any huge impact on the importance of an individual score.
If you look at American sports, they actually keep a close eye on these sorts of numbers and make small adjustments periodically to help them. For instance, baseball has made adjustments to the height of the mound, the NFL regularly makes adjustments to keep the offense and defense well balanced. Would it hurt soccer to adjust the size of the goal slightly or a few other factors to boost scoring slightly?
I also find the timing absolutely mind-boggling. The extra time removes a lot of excitement of the end of the game. Why not have clock stoppages instead to eliminate the need for those?
On a similar note, technology need to be included. I agree that replay can be abused like it was years ago in the NFL, but in a game that is so low scoring where a bad call can easily swing the game, it just strikes me as obnoxious to depend upon a potentially bad perspective with all the modern technology we have. The game stoppage would be minimal, and generally only when it’s stopped in most cases anyway. Don’t even send the refs on the field off, just have a booth reviewer watch a few replays when a penalty is called or a goal is scored and he can probably get an answer back in less than a minute the majority of the time.
And the flopping. It’s just inexcusable, especially at the degree to which it occurs, not to mention in such a low scoring game being played on the world’s stage. I’m not sure what the best way is to address it, perhaps some stiff suspension penalties or something.
Oh, and one more thing, ban that damned vuvuzela!