Can any of the people here who have played soccer/football enlighten us as to the effectiveness of shin guards?
I played plenty of football in my youth, and know how much a kick to the shin can hurt, but I never wore shin guards. It surprises me how any knock on the shin has the player in agony - don’t shin guards actually work?
I haven’t played in a long time and it was as a youth, but even then shin guards only made it less painful and that was with our puny kid kicks. Heck one of my teammates even had her leg broken through her guard once (if the guy who kicked her was twelve then elephants are really hamsters). I’m sure modern guards are better and the pros have the best there are, but they also kick really hard so I bet it still hurts.
My - admitedly hazy - memmories of playing with shin guards is that they do a fair job in protecting the shins (surprising) no so much the ankles, knees, achilleses etc.
This was all at junior level though, I guass when a full grown man kicks you in the shins it would hurt quite a bit, even with shin guards.
While I mostly agree with the rest of your post, I’ll answer this sarcastic question with an earnest yes. It was one of the more impressive tactical victories during this Cup: Brazil was clever enough to not tire its offence with wave after wave of advances into the Korean half; instead they wore down their hard-running opponents by moving the ball among them over the full width of the field, forcing the Koreans to move players continuously to deny a Brazilian player a one-on-one situation.
In contrast to Spain, that had a similar approach but a less sophisticated deploy of their offensive players, they also kept disciplined a defensive shape that neutralized the few Korean advances well.
If you expect Dunga to opt for hooray-football, you have missed their development in the past months. The clinical way they dismantled Korea is pretty much the coaches idea of successful football. It might not look pretty, it certainly does not look Brazilian but it’s a very sophisticated approach to counter the advances in athletics and defensive tactics that have made even mediocre teams competitive on an international level against brilliant but wild offences.
Brazil isn’t wild anymore, but it could be successful again.
I don’t agree with you here. I think we have seen a whole bunch of games that fit in the mould you describe. Holland-Denmark, Holland-Japan, Spain-Switzerland, Brazil-North Korea, England-Algeria, Italy-New Zealand and I’m sure there were a few I forgot.
The difference between some teams was very clear, both Italy and England just failed completely to even put pressure on their opponenets - they were just very bad. What Holland, Spain and Holland is concerned, they all controlled the game and were patient enough to create chances. The biggest difference was that teh dutch (twice) and the brazilians were somewhate lucky to get their goals, while Spain - who probably created the most chances - failed to do so. I’m not complaining about any of the results, that is football, but to say Brazil were tactically brilliant and Spain not is just not true.
I’ve never said and meant it so absolutely. However, in their first matches, the differences in tactical awareness were significant: while the Brazilian fullbacks utilized the space they had to their team’s advantage, the Spanish ones did little well in favour of the offence and the whole defence fell to pieces twice. And although Spain played their 4-2-3-1 as they so often do, they didn’t manage to use the width of the field till Navas entered it. Compare their effort versus Switzerland with their second half against Russia two years ago. Then Fabregas helped the team to overcome the stalemate of the first half by adding to the offence the extra player they needed to utilize the open spaces created by their passing, Russia was outplayed and overrun.
Of course, Switzerland was lucky a dozen times and more – but in contrast to prior appearances, Spain rarely used the spaces that Switzerland had to concede with force and positionally perfectly placed superior numbers.
Another difference in quality was the fluidity of the tactical shape: Brazil switched among them at will, while Spain and most other teams are more rigorous in their deployment of players (though not Chile).
The match against Côte d’Ivoire made me wonder if they will look as versatile against more able and active teams, but they won with efficiency against a pretty good team and stayed focused after their first win, so too much criticism seems inappropriate.
I think, Spain just didn’t have a good day and they were still the far superior team with plenty of chances to win the game, so no reason for them to worry; even if they won’t play stellar (wich I don’t believe), they won’t have so much bad luck a second time against an inferior opponent.
Apparently you’ve never watched a single NBA game.
How many refs are on the field for a World Cup match? Just one?
One referee on-field. Two assistant referees (previously called linesmen) on either side of the pitch. An off-field referee, often called the fourth official, helps out with a few minor things like substitutions and showing how much injury time to add on to the end of a half.
Just saw a baseball highlight where a dude got drilled by a pitch right in the elbow. I winced just watching it. The guy jogged a few yards away and cradled his elbow for a bit, then went back to the plate and kept swinging.
Soccer player hystrionics are orders of magnitude more demonstrative than baseball players getting beaned by pitches, and there is no way in the world I’ll ever believe a soccer kick hurts worse than being plunked by a major league pitcher.
And baseball players aren’t really viewed as particularly tough in terms of American athletes. Very tough to be sure, but a bit candy-assed compared to hockey or American football players. My gut reaction to soccer player theatrics is to go all Godfather*: “YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN!”
Yeah, but there’s nothing to be gained from writhing around in agony in that case. You see the same thing in soccer, on the occasions when two players of the same side collide in some painful manner. They don’t roll around or make anything of it. Well, unless they don’t realise that it was one of their own guys, in which case the embellishment instinct might kick in.
The theatrics are a disgrace to the game, and should be treated like drug doping or any other form of cheating, i.e. a lifetime ban. There is simply no excuse. Unfortunately, football has become less and less physical over time, and the game has favoured smaller and smaller men (the two are linked: midgets like Messi would get kicked all over the field if more physical contact was allowed). The diving isn’t going to go away, as teams like Italy and other southern European sides profit from it enormously.
It doesn’t hurt that much. At worst you have to sit down for a bit with a grimmace, and that’s only if somebody toepokes you straight in the shin. There’s no excuse for rolling around screaming like you’ve been hit by a sniper. It just doesn’t hurt that much.
That. Plus, the players adapt their style to the referee on the field; if he is whistle-happy and/or easily fooled, they will collapse to the ground as if they all were Italians in disguise.
Nevertheless, I’d like to remind the participants here who haven’t played football that in all experience painful encounters of the close kind happen a dozen times and more in every game and more or less serious injuries are quite common.
Well, no.
speaking from experience, I’ve played adult soccer since I was 14 (mumble mumble 26 years) and have had some lovely injuries over the years and there really isn’t any correlation between how severe something is and how much it hurts.
Now I’m not one of life’s whingers and play actor but neither do I have an astonishing pain threshold. Nor am I atypical. I know lots of my team mates have the same experiences.
I was kicked full across the face by a team mate, broken nose, blood everywhere, and I merely staunched the flow and drove to hospital.
I had a ball kicked full into the heel of my hand at the start of one game. I felt faint and sick but carried on playing and only when my arm blew up purple the day after did I realise that I’d broken both radius and ulna.
I forward rolled on hard ground and dislocated my collar bone (it still is, it has re-seated now in the wrong place) no pain until the next day
However…all this chest beating bravado is a lead up to saying that BY FAR the most painful thing that happened to me was the most innocuous.
Falling on my elbow and it digging into soggy ground. It was nothing to look at, you’d barely notice it happened, but it was wrenched in and out of it’s joint and it felt like I’d been shot. I puked on the sideline from the pain and nearly passed out. Two minutes later I was back on and felt no other ill effects from it ever again.
A close second to that pain was…as has been mentioned…a stud to bare shin. incapacitating agony for a few minutes but aside from bruising, no lasting damage.
Right, understood. That’s the whole point, what many Americans (and quite of few Europeans judging by the posts here and elsewhere) find distasteful.
I was more addressing that to the chorus of posters in this thread who keep insisting that soccer is indeed painful. Painful, sure, but more painful than a major league pitcher plonking your elbow? I’m dubious at best.
As another fan of soccer who nonetheless absolutely cannot stand the diving, simulation, and embellishment of the slightest contact, what are your thoughts on the following rule/procedure changes?
(Think I got these from Larry Borgia in another soccer thread)
Video review of all major professional matches with the power to hand out cards for diving or conversely, retract cards after reassessing the foul. De novo or Clearly Erroneous standard of review, no preference. Add fines too, if you like.
Play continues in the event of a player going down. If the player has to have a trainer/stretcher come onto the field with the magical spray can, fine, play stops. But the player has to then leave the pitch for a full 5 (or 10, or whatever) minutes—your team plays 11-10 for that period of time. A team can cancel the man advantage by substituting for the “injured” player via using one of the three regular substitutions.
Adding those two changes would, IMHO, take care of a lot of the hassle and improve the game. Training refs to realize that giving a red card 30 minutes in pretty much hands the game to the other team would help too.
Oh, and credit to Ellis Dee for succinctly linking to how I feel, watching teams like Italy, Chile, and Portugal.
Next, my quixotic quest to change offsides to something akin to the version used in hockey…
It isn’t going to happen. They’ll come out with some bullshit explanation that the game’s rules need to be kept consistent at all skill levels. The governing bodies are dominated by southern European and Latin American representatives that profit from the diving.
The explanation would be more convincing if the overwhelming majority of players stayed down in apparent agony for less than ten seconds, until the referee has shown a card or given a freekick. If you can get up and run around thirty seconds later, you weren’t injured in the first place.
Did anyone see the red card in Switzerland-Chile, where a Swiss player was sent off? It looked to me like the Chilean player ignored an elbow to the head when he was still fighting for the ball, but when he was losing the ball and the Swiss player’s hand went into his face, he went down. Legitimate red card or shameless dive? I’m a complete amateur, so I can’t tell.
Shameless dive. Referees shit themselves when anybody goes down holding their face. The rule was brought in to stop players purposefully hammering each other in the face with their elbows when jumping for the ball or when marking each other. Now it’s used to send off anybody who even appears to touch another players face. It’s a fucking joke. The Swiss player was clearly just trying to fend off a player wrestling him from behind.