Well played, sir! 
If that were so, the Barcelona Dragons would still sell jerseys.
As someone who takes refuge behind Osasuna when people try to talk footie to me (amazing how well that works to get them to leave me be), I can point out that Atlético does the rest of Spain the service of being that team whose fans can always be told “I feel your pain” when they admit to it.
No. They’re fairly exciting if you understand the sport, and I’m not talking about the basics. A lot of it looks boring to those who don’t bother learning. Likewise I think baseball is boring as hell but people find it more interesting than paintings or people who go gaga over chess games.
If someone likes basketball but not soccer, because soccer is harder to score, I propose this. Imagine if in Basketball that they added a 6th player on the court for each team. That player sat on a chair mounted next to the basket and his job was to bat away or catch the ball to prevent a score.
The game would pretty much be soccer. Two teams going back and forth on the court/field, passing often, trying to steal, changing positions, throwing the ball back in when it goes out of bounds, etc. The biggest difference (aside from dribbling with hands or feet) is the lack of a goalie in basketball. Soccer without a goalie, where goals were only defended by guys who couldn’t use their hands to block scoring attempts, that sport would be higher-scoring.
I think basketball fans could be won over to be soccer fans if they gave it s chance and understood the relatively few differences.
BINGO! My last spot was “someone that dislikes soccer explaining how to ‘fix’ soccer.”
Awesome!
For the record, I played soccer in high school and enjoy watching it, and have no desire to “fix” it. My intent was to translate it a bit for a basketball fan.
I found from experience that people who thought soccer to be mind-numbingly boring became converts the first time their son/daughter (ESPECIALLY the daughters) was playing in some under-16 level game, with the score 0-0 or 1-1, fifteen minutes to go. The parents, who previously spent their time socializing on the sidelines during games, became insane, rabid fans. The poor referee, of course, at that point could do nothing right, and they would make sure I knew it!
Like most things in life, people are interested in things that they understand, and for which they have an emotional attachment. I grew up rooting for the Chicago Cubs (my father having been raised in Chicagoland) from the time I was a wee thing. To me, baseball, especially Cubs baseball, always was interesting, despite the fact I’ve never actually played the sport (only its bastardized version, slow-pitch softball). But I find NBA basketball boring as hell, and rarely ever watch the sport, despite the fact that I played youth basketball for a few years. College basketball I find more entertaining, but that grew out of my time in college, rooting for my beloved Yellowjackets.
For me, the thing that makes soccer so enjoyable is precisely the thing many Americans dislike about it: the low scoring nature of the game. That makes EVERYTHING going on on the field much more crucial, because you never know when something will come out of nothing. A single goal can be the difference between greatness and also-ran status. This doesn’t mean EVERY soccer game is exciting; I’ve seen plenty of boring matches in my time (for my money, the Brazil-Germany game in 2014 was boring once it became clear that Brazil were going home hapless losers). But I love a good, tight game with low scoring, played well, on a knife’s edge. That’s why I prefer NHL playoff hockey to the regular season.
I used to play intramural soccer in high school. There were four teams of about 15 players each. At the end of the season, the teams in 1st and fourth place played against the teams in 2nd and 3rd place in what we called The Great Circle Game.
It was played on one of our usual soccer fields that was in the middle of a huge circular drive. All of the grassy area including behind the goals was in play (like ice hockey). There were about 30 payers on each team with two goalies each. We played with 5 balls simultaneously. It wasn’t soccer, but it was a huge amount of fun.
I liked playing goalie; catch a ball then throw it at a ball that another player was dribbling.
The appeal of cricket is similar, but even more pronounced. Sometimes the entire situation can change in moment.
Cricket is the only game I know where one side can seem to be very far in the lead and winning comfortably, and then - in five minutes - the whole situation can be reversed. The other side is winning, and the side that seemed to have an unassailable lead is struggling desperately.
There can be long slow periods where nothing much seems to be happening. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, everything changes and the game is going the other way and is very tense.
Back to football. The second half of the game yesterday between Switzerland and Serbia was the most thrilling and intense I’ve seen so far in the world cup, with entertaining running play. Most of that was because of the passionate political feelings involved.
The Russian crowd was strongly supporting the Serbians, and two Kosovo-Albanians on the Swiss team scored the two goals that turned the match around and won it for the Swiss, controversially making the Albanian double-headed eagle sign with their hands after scoring.
Xhaka and Shaqiri goal celebrations bring Balkan politics to World Cup
… just so long as no Archdukes get assassinated…
Not forgetting the timeless Test which took about ten days and only finished as the English Team had to catch the boat home.
I played soccer as a junior sport and enjoyed it but I find it rather difficult to watch. I am not suggesting that these players aren’t incredibly gifted - and paid accordingly- but the following is out of this world.
For me, the problem isn’t the lack of scoring opportunities. Far from it; every game has tons of them. The problem is that defense has it so easy, and there are so many things that can go wrong, and the windows are so tiny, that there’s absolutely no way of telling if Great Opportunity #1, #5, #9, #14, or #55 is going to hit the jackpot. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of soccer in my life, and barring penalty shots and complete defensive meltdowns like that infamous Brazil-Germany semifinal, at least 75% of the goals I’ve seen were flat-out flukes.
Consider football. You know when a team is making progress. You know when it’s in good position to score a field goal or touchdown. You can tell, just by the numbers, if the offense is clicking. If it’s a low-scoring game, it’s because the defenses are dominant and shutting down scoring chances. Likewise, in baseball, the bases dictate whether there’s a good chance to put a run on the board (it even has a term for this, “scoring position”). A low-scoring game is a classic pitcher’s duel where both sides’ batters struggle to put men on base and move them. And of course, in both sports it’s possible for a score to happen suddenly from a spot not normally considered a good opportunity; a 60-yard touchdown pass, a home run with a runner on first, and these are fairly frequent occurrences that add more excitement to the game. Even hockey, probably the sport most analogous to soccer, has multiple lines, a relatively small playing surface, and an extremely fast-moving puck. There are plenty of ace shooters and more than a few suspect defenses. Furthermore, hockey has power plays, which are specifically designed to give one team a better chance at scoring (as opposed to soccer’s utterly impotent free kick). Bottom line is that the excellent opportunities tend to pay off, and even the weakest offenses can usually find the net at least once.
I think the biggest problem is the rock-and-a-hard-place the situation the game put itself into by refusing to make any kind of reasonable compromise on the poaching issue. All right, all right, I concede that allowing the feeding of passes to an attacker parked in front of the net would be a bad thing. There absolutely should be a limit on how far he’s allowed to roam. So why not do the sensible thing and draw a line? Y’know, like hockey? That way there would be an definite, easily-understandable limit. Instead we have allow the position of the freaking defender to determine whether the opponent is “off his side”, leading to the utter garbage of the “offside trap” and strangling the best attacks in the crib.
Yes, there is excitement in soccer, and yes, there is a lot of scoring (there seem to be a lot more blowouts this year, I don’t know why). But never having the faintest idea when it’s going to happen kinda spoils it for me. It’s like a televised Congressional hearing. Sure, there could be an earthshaking revelation, but I’m not sitting through the whole two hours to find out.
My father refused to come with my sister and me to see the Chicago Sting back in the day. Pointing to the low scores and the amount of time the ball spent nearer midfield than near the goals, he called soccer “the futile game.” [My sister and I didn’t go very often, but enjoyed ourselves when we did.]
I would say that low-scoring games can be exactly as exciting as you describe…but they can also be boring as hell. You mention the Cubs. Back in the day (again) I went to two Cubs games which went into extra innings, one tied 0-0 and the other tied 1-1. The 0-0 game was much the way you put it–it felt like the pitching was tremendous and the defense sharp, and at SOME point the offense for one of the teams would break through (as it did for the Cubs in the eleventh, if memory serves). Exciting game, fun game. The 1-1 game felt like the offenses were stuck in neutral. The pitching wasn’t great, but the hitters just weren;t able to take advantage. I did not feel the excitement, but rather the futility. Eventually the visitors scored. A walk, a cheapo single, a sac fly I think. Yawn. Not baseball at its best.
I think the same is true, in outline, of soccer. It’s the “played well, on a knife’s edge” part–sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not.
I did enjoy watching my daughter play soccer, which she did for a number of years. I did NOT enjoy the tournament when her team played five 30-minute games, each of which ended in a 0-0 tie. There’s low scoring and then there’s ridiculous. This was over the line. Oh well, it was a beautiful crisp fall day!
Well put, DKW — you described something I’ve always felt but couldn’t articulate. As you say, there isn’t much buildup of tension in soccer — no rising anticipation, no sense of dramatic movement over the course of more than a couple minutes, about whether this particular effort (for lack of a better term) will bear fruit.
American football has its offensive drives, which typically last ten minutes or so. Baseball has its (half)-innings; or, better, its offensive sequences (a couple hits, men on base…) that also typically last about ten minutes. Anything remotely analogous in soccer usually only lasts a minute or two — no time for buildup, and payoff is so rare, hardly any way to tell if THIS time is more likely to hear fruit than THAT time. In this, soccer is more like basketball, where each offensive drive is also short (a “shot clock” makes sure of that!), and similarly suffers from lack of ten-minute-or-so buildups of tension (though at least in basketball, each effort is more likely to bear fruit).
And yet, the most exciting plays in baseball and American football can be the something out of nothing variety: the solo home run that breaks up the tie game in the 7th, or the punt return for touchdown that opens up a close game in the 3rd Quarter. And both baseball and football can (and often do) have periods you mention (drives, half-innings) that are boring as all get-out, even though there are things going on. Neither of these makes the games that different from soccer.
In the recent Germany v. Sweden game, the game was tied at 1 all for almost the entire second half. Yet anyone who thought that was boring because of a lack of build-up wasn’t watching the same game I saw. Germany increased the pressure on Sweden throughout that last 40 min. plus “added time” (all 5 min. of it!). Sweden were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, until with almost the last kick of the game, Germany finally scored to win. I guaranTEE you that no Swedish or German fan was anything but completely absorbed in that game. People who watch, appreciate, and understand soccer were filled with anticipation, too.
People who simply don’t get it, probably complained about not being able to watch F1.
(And don’t get me started that here in America, we’ve made racing in circles enormously popular. Obviously, we’re not really in need of all that scoring action that we claim… 
)
Good points. You could say that, in soccer, the buildups of tension are more complex and varied, in how long they last as well as how they are actuated. It takes a practiced eye to notice the longer-duration efforts (e.g., adopting a particular defensive or offensive strategy for part of a game) interweaving the more obvious short-duration ones (a typical one- or two-minute “possession/offensive drive”).
This has analogues in all sports — noticing that a basketball team is playing man-to-man rather than zone defense during a particular stretch, e.g. — but in soccer, I think, getting to that level of observation makes a bigger difference in appreciating/enjoying the game.
I used to hate soccer. Absolutely hate it. I could go into the reasons, but that’s basically another thread entirely (think American exceptionalism and growing up around conservatives, combined with a generally bad attitude).
That changed in 1994. I figured, if the USA was going to host, I might as well watch. From that point on, I was hooked. Although it would be a while (as in, 20 years) before US networks started paying attention to soccer outside of once every four years, so my opportunities to watch the game were limited.
These days I’m still somewhat limited in my viewing options. I may yet decide to start shelling out $5.99 for the ESPN app, after the Cup is over. And of course, there’s the odd EPL game on FS1 or whatever.
Just about every reasonably important EPL game is available on NBC networks and similar for the Bundesliga on Fox. A subscription to Bein gets you La Liga, Serie A, French Ligue 1 and some Turkish Super League. Gol TV gets you the Portuguese and Brazilian leagues. I pay for the latter 2 as part of my sports package for $15 bucks a month. Plus you get just about all major cricket matches with Willow. It’s a great time to be a global sports fan.
Thanks for the advice, but truthfully EPL and MLS are the only leagues I care about, and between FS1, Univision, and NBC networks (which I have via Sling), I don’t miss much in the way of EPL games. It looks as if the ESPN app offers every MLS game excluding regional blackouts, although I may not be reading their promotional materials correctly. After the Cup I’ll look into ESPN more closely. #VamosOrlando
Yeah for me the tension in basketball and soccer are similar.
In basketball it’s frequently down one side, score, down the other, score. Back and forth. Soccer is the same without the scoring. Both feel static and “futile” as was put earlier.
But that’s not really true. In basketball you have missed shots, steals, three-pointers, rebounds. You have momentum where one side starts dominating and they have a substantial lead, that grows, and grows…
Soccer is like that but instead you see one side moving the action more to the opponents’ half of the field, making them play sloppy, going out of bounds more, struggling to defend, etc. You do have fluke goals but others come from that building of pressure from a team really working together and wearing the other team down until you make that opportunity happen. It can be exciting to watch it happen.
I’ve learned to appreciate in soccer not just the scoring but everything around it. The footwork, making people stumble through a fake, watching players effortlessly move the ball around while the other team chases it. Seeing incredible diving saves by a goalie. Baseball and football go for long stretches without scoring but they stay exciting. Soccer is just about recognizing the build-up and the action around the goals.
Hello there, I’m from the country which established ‘soccer’ in the 19th century. The same country which invented rugby, cricket, tennis, badminton, golf, table tennis and squash, just off the top of my head. Oh, and some say baseball (Jane Austin mentions it in one of her books). We don’t have a lack of sporting options in our history, yet football reigns supreme.