First off, I’d like to say that I am not a soccer outsider. I have played lots of soccer in my life. When I was five (in 1994), my dad purchased and brought home five soccer videos for my family, each one about the World Cup. We have watched them so many times over the years, as a family, that I can recall many of the announcements (all British) from memory. Some of them are truly incredible, such as this:
“The first hatrick of the World Cup is celebrated Spanish style, and it’s been a hatrick awesome style by Michel”.
Wow! Or how about this:
“This man can do no wrong! Fifty-seven million people celebrate as Schillaci gets his fifth goal of the 1990 World Cup. If you’ve never heard of the name before this month, you’ll remember if for a long time to come, believe me.”
I have watched some of every World Cup since. I’ve also watched recordings of English Premier League games.
Yet it seems to me, looking at the game objectively (so to speak), that scoring should be easy. First, consider these facts:
the goal is really huge. In hockey, the goalkeeper can cover at least half the goal at any given time with his body, sometimes more. But the soccer goal is enormous.
you can move the ball upfield really fast, often. If you lob the ball right, you can move forward half the field without impediment. Sometimes lobs miss, but generally speaking, it’s not hard to get into the opponent’s nearest third of the field.
the soccer ball is not incredibly hard to handle. Dribbling around a goalkeeper (if he is the last impediment) is not that hard. It’s not that hard to get it to curve. Most college-level players can chest-trap and head the ball with respectable accuracy, if not great accuracy.
Yet soccer is a very low-scoring game. It’s very hard to score in soccer, at almost any level of play.
I have an intuitive grasp and feel for why it is hard to score at soccer, but if I had to explain why soccer is the lowest-scoring of all major sports (by far, I’d say), I would be at a loss.
Can anyone here put into words why it’s hard to score at soccer?
The first two of your points are off-set by the fact that the ball doesn’t travel very fast. Especially not compared to a hockey puck. So shots on goal and long up-field passes can be intercepted by a defender with relative ease given any reasonably well-positioned defender. Whereas in hockey, a slap shot will have to be deflected almost by reflex and positioning only due to the speed of the puck.
Soccer balls move much, much slower than just about every other goal/net sport. Lacrosse, Hockey, Field Hockey, Handball etc. The foot is much, much less dexterous than the hands and most sticks used in those sports. The field is much, much larger than any of those sports. Defenders can move much faster relative to ball handlers in soccer compared to those other sports. Soccer balls move less predictably and are more effected by the weather than the balls/pucks in any of those sports.
Pretty much everything about soccer is harder on the scorer/ball handler than its analogs.
Speed is the most important factor, I’m sure. It’s also worth mentioning that the only player on the field who’s allowed to use his hands is a defender.
A soccer ball is 27 inches around with a diameter of 8.59 inches. The cross sectional area at the widest part of the ball is .40 ft^2. A soccer goal is 8’ high by 24’ wide, giving an area of 192 ft^2. In other words, the ball is 477 times smaller than the area of the goal.
In hockey, the puck is 1" high by 3" wide. This is a cross sectional area of 0.02 ft^2. The hockey goal is 6’ by 4’ which is 24 ft^2 cross sectional area. The puck is 1152 times smaller than the area of the goal.
So, two factors. First, stopping something that is 20 times smaller (puck is 20 times smaller than a ball, cross sectionally) and moving faster is going to be more difficult. Second, even though the hockey goal is smaller, the puck itself is smaller relative to the size of the soccer ball to the soccer goal so in effect it should be easier to put a puck in vs a soccer ball. Trying to get a basketball that is 0.001" smaller than the width of the rim would be far more difficult than trying to get a golf ball through the same rim.
As others have said, speed is probably the biggest issue.
Also, the field is monstrously large, and there are so many players on the pitch that it becomes much less likely that an individual’s brilliance will create much scoring. And since the ball is so light and there’s so much space to be negotiated, there’s lots of opportunity for an attempted cross, pass, or shot to go awry.
The idea that a soccer ball isn’t that hard to control is a relative thing, and so it’s hard to argue, but keep in mind that the degree of control required to score a goal is that control which allows you to get the ball upfield with your feet while being opposed by a bunch of other people who can control it just as well as you can, and who also can put their hands on you, dive at the ball, grab your shirt, hack it into touch, etc. Emphasis there on with your FEET. Sure, you can trap the ball reasonably effectively to your feet, but now do it while I’m leaning on you and jumping into your field of vision. And once you’ve done that, congratulations, you can now think about starting to get closer to the goal or making a pass.
Really, the explanation is just that soccer is nothing like other sports.
My theory. Oh, before the Defenders of the One True Faith jump me bones, I’ll say out front that, no, I am not suggesting that I favor completely bowdlerizing your sport into something completely different (already done that debate here before, not interested in a rerun), but to me it’s clear that the scoring is low because there are too many players clogging the defensive zone, and in soccer with the big ball it’s all too easy to deny possession to the offense (either by a turnover or by simply poking it back out of danger). In other words, if one defender royally screws up, someone else can probably easily cover for him. If you like the kind of play that this large number of defenders engenders, that’s fine and dandy, but just once somewhere I’d like to see a league try 8/9 a side.
Well, that’s not that different from indoor soccer. And it does work to create more goals. Another improvement (IMHO) would be restricting the ability of forwards to fall into the defensive zone. Essentially you could still have 11 to a side but only allow 8 into each side of the field respectively.
Of course none of that is likely to happen because the current system in entrenched and the MLS is committed to competing with and sharing players with the big European and Latin leagues.
I like the relatively low-scoring nature of soccer. When (OK, if :p) someone scores a goal it’s a real event justifying celebration and cheers. I don’t get the same feeling when watching a goal scored in a game like say, basketball. Although I do get the same feeling when watching someone make a touchdown, or complete a long pass in American football.
If matches tended to be 4-3 or 5-4 affairs as opposed to 1-0 or 1-1 I can’t imagine the excitement would be much different. No one is trying to make soccer into basketball. Hockey goals are quite the event afterall.
If high scores made for exciting sports then test cricket with scores of 400+ would be the most exciting thing in the world,
its not.
If goals are easier to get, then a lot of the tension goes out of the last half of the game. A single goal can secure a win so every attempt at goal is exciting because it could be the game winner.
You should really look at where the defensive football style is ccomming from. In the fifties teams used to play with 5 atackers (striker, left wide, left inside, right wide, right inside) and the scores were a lot higher. It is just the evolution of football that made teams adopt more defensive approaches, the main example is probably the extremely defensive Italian cattanacio that could stifle attacking teams and win by scoring just one or two goals.
I think were are actually seeing a reversal of this trend now. I’ve the feeling that nowadays the scores are a lot higher than in the nineties; this may be because 4-4-2 has now largly been replaced bu 4-5-1 fromations that are actually more like 4-2-3-1. So there are now 4 purely attacking players in some of the teams (note this isn’t the case for all teams, but I’m seeing it at Arsenal, Barca, Real, ManU, Chelsea, Liverpool, Dutch national side, etc.)
I notice that the OP didn’t start out doing anything but asking why it’s hard to score in soccer, but it’s already degenerated into the usual stupidity about how the game needs more scoring. Most popular sport on the planet as it is, but it needs more scoring, so us Americans can actually find it interesting. :rolleyes:
A couple points:
Widening the goal by 4 feet would do almost nothing. Players don’t aim for the middle of the goal, the aim for the edges. Widen the goal by a small amount like that and all that would happen is they would miss at the edges still. You might see an increase in penalty kick success, which isn’t really desirable, truth be told. And I believe some minor leagues have experimented with wider goals and haven’t see appreciably higher scoring rates.
Reducing the number of players on the field can help, but if you played 9 on 9 instead of 11 on 11, for 90 min., you’d have to increase substitutions, or face some definite conditioning issues. As it is, a pro midfielder runs in excess of 6 miles during a game, and is usually pretty wrung out by the end. And, of course, extrapolating success outdoors with increased scoring using smaller sides from the indoor experience is not valid, since the indoor game has numerous other aspects that make it more of a scoring fest. So, if there were 8 field players, you could still play 8 behind the ball on defense, and there would be relatively fewer attacking players, thus scoring going up not such a guarantee.
A bit before my time, but take a look at these scores from the 1954 World Cup, especially in the first round Group 2. Also of interest is the quarter final between Austria and Switzerland. The Swiss side was 3 goals up inside 19 minutes, yet by the 27th minute the Austrians had levelled the score, and by the 34th minute they led 5-3. The final result was Austria 7 Switzerland 5.
Speaking for the Rest of The World here (we had an election and everything). We really don’t care if Americans don’t like football. Just to hear you talk about ’ defensive zones’ make us smile.
You just don’t get it and probably never will. and that’s okay.
We see nothing remotely interesting in your glorified rounders, hooligans on ice, or rugby for sissies either.
