Whereas everyone who plays basketball, baseball or football plays it of life, or becomes a life long fan, and no one who didn’t play a sport as a kid becomes a spectator, or … What’s your point?
Well, I was hoping that the thread was more exciting than soccer. But alas, it turned out not to be.
Also, it was pretty much a joke 
Or, he made a funny little joke. I laughed.
I do think it is growing, however it is different than most imagined though.
I don’t think families/groups transitioned from not-soccer-watching families to soccer-watching families. I think we imported a lot of soccer fans over the last 30 years.
Why don’t they simply move the PK line for OT back to where the goalie is not forced to guess before the shot? About 70% of PK’s are successful. (That’s lower than I would have guessed)
Back up the line to make the conversion rate 50% and give the goalies a chance. Wouldn’t that be an improvement?
Penalty kicks during play are meant to punish the offending team and deter illegal tactics by defenders. Decreasing the odds of scoring on PKs would decrease the deterrent and changing the setup just for tournament shootouts would mean teams would have to practice separately for an even more minor part of the game.
I’m sure you meant it as such and that some read it as such. It does look indistinguishable from standard thread-shitting though. 
That’s the beauty of it!
If it helps, I find soccer as exciting as I do any other sport
Oi! What the hell?
This is my pitting not another chance to rehash the same old boring arguments.
Now either have a go at me and take your fancy “points” elsewhere or I’ll be forced to be “incredibly insulting” to all of you as well.
Agreed, that’s why they should have two different lines. One for PK’s as a result of penalties, and one for settling ties.
The current situation is like if the NBA replaced second OT with a free throw shooting competition.
Ooh, ooh! I want to see a tied NBA game being decided by LeBron James and Steph Curry playing a game of HORSE.
If LeBron and Curry were forced to play the entire game with no subs or timeouts…also basketball is played in air conditioned splendor indoors.
Regular penalty kicks are a skill useful in any game. Extra special tie-breaker kicks would be useful only for extra special tie-breaker kicks. Why on Earth do you think it makes sense to introduce a random extra skill test to replace one that’s already well established?
Unfortunately for you the pitting was weak as hell and your original reply was sorely lacking in depth and analysis. This is now another multi-topic soccer thread. And I’m sure it will sure have some posts about cricket as well.
If you people like it, then it’s not a problem. I think it is for the casual viewer, though. You already have an extremely low-scoring sport wherein scores like 1-1 are routine. Penalty kicks just seem too consequential, especially given the inevitability of their success. It’s like an exciting, hard-fought game comes down to a round of Russian roulette. I know you need to put a check on bad behavior and I really don’t have a solution, but I watched that England vs. Colombia match and I was completely underwhelmed by the ending. The only truly boring part, really.
First: it’s **FOOTBALL **!!!
And of course it’s boring if you just wait for scoring and stare at the guy who has the ball.
However, if you look at the big picture it’s actually pretty interesting; what the other players are doing in the meantime, how the formations move, how somebody sneaks into a position, will the opponents notice what’s happening and so on… And obviously you must know the rules to appreciate the tactics.
But yes, it needs less diving and arguing with the referee - that’s why I prefer women’s football as they almost never do either.
Those “extra special” tiebreakers sure seem to come up a lot in the most important games at the highest level of competition. And is the skill really so different than a PK? I’m not talking about a 30 yard bomb here, just pushing the line back by 6-8 feet or so, whatever it takes to give the goalie a tiny bit of reaction time.
You are really overreacting. You are not wrong about soccer, but that was a very mild insult.
Also get over yourself, you’ve been here longer than me and I don’t recognize you at all never mind remembering your “clever” posts as mentioned above.
I responded with the amount of effort that it deserved.
OK, well as long as you promise, there can’t be too many cricket threads for me.
How is it surprising that when you filter down the top teams in the world through continental play and then group play you get several even match ups in the round of 16?
The “extra special” wasn’t referring to penalty shootouts in general, but to your suggestion that the tie-breakers shouldn’t use ordinary penalty kicks.
And yes, moving the line back several feet would be a significant change. There’s a reason all free-kick goal attempts are delegated to just a couple of the players on a team.