Here’s another one who don’t understand the argument that soccer is boring because of the low scoring. As someone else said, since the scoring is low, chances, even half chances, can be extremely exciting, and if one goal makes all the difference, you’re afraid to leave the TV if only to get another beer.
Turn it around: If you want us European to get excited by NFL, you should widen the football field and make the goals larger. That’d make one hell of difference, right?
If you don’t “get” the game, what difference does it make to you if there’s two or six goals during those 90+ minutes? Would football be more exciting if teams usually did twenty TDs per game, instead of a mere few?
(I watch more football than soccer, by the way, I enjoy both sports very much.)
I think the point that many are missing about soccer is not necessarily that it is “BORING.” I find that it can be very exciting, even though I am an American, American football loving, non-soccer fan. The problem with soccer is that the winning team quite often didn’t really outplay the losing team. There is such great difficulty in scoring, even when you completely dominate the opposition. So teams wind up winning the World Cup on PENALTY KICKS. What a phenominal waste of FOUR YEARS! Sure, flukes can happen in American football, and even more so in baseball, which result in the “better” team not actually winning the game, but in soccer that percentage is so high because of the fact that goals are so hard to come by.
You just described, at least in part, the difference between American football and Canadian football. (Canadian football also has an extra player per side, only three downs to make 10 yards, and more liberal rules on offensive motion before the play.) It’s clearly a different kind of game, with generally higher scoring, and not as many 300+ pound players.
You’re assuming they’d still aim at the edges. Widen the goals by 30 feet and will they still be missing the edges? No, they’ll be comfortably placing the ball in the gaping hole to either side of the keeper. And aiming at the edges isn’t really accurate since you don’t aim at a post, you aim at side netting or the back corner. Widening the goal would give a greater margin of error. All that being said I think it’s a bad idea. Scoring rates are fine and all that.
I hadn’t heard about leagues using larger goals. Link?
Others have got there before me, but I’ll say it again: defensive tactics. Teams that defend strongly with a highly organised defensive back line prevent scoring against them. This also has an effect at the other end of the pitch – if you’ve thrown all your attention and manpower on defense, then you’ve often taken some of your firepower away up front. Hence, low scoring games.
Back in the 80s/90s (bit hazy on timings) the English Premier League side Arsenal earned the nickname ‘Boring Boring Arsenal’ as they defended so fiercely that they became notorious for smothering games and winning 1-0. Conversely Newcastle United under the coaching of (former striker) Kevin Keagan, threw everything into attack and scored highly… but leaked goals at the back as a result. Keagan’s view was that if his opponents score 4, Newcastle would score 5. Exciting, but dangerous, tactics.
You generally get higher scoring games in lower rent leagues - watch a game with a bunch of kids, who defend badly and all chase the same ball rather than marking their man, and you see much higher scores.
18 World Cups. 2 decided on penalties. And in neither case would I say the clearly better team lost. Penalty shootouts are a lousy way to determine the winner I would agree, but to attack it in the same breath as defending (pro) football, with the single worst method of breaking ties in existance, smacks a little of pot-kettle coloring competition.
I hate these kinds of threads. If people don’t like soccer, fine. I hate Nascar, but have no interest in changing the rules of that sport to try to make it what I think it should be. Don’t like it, don’t watch it. Soccer is a massively popular sport, and the fans don’t seem to think it needs more scoring.
Then of course we get the other side chiming in, attacking US sports, including the utter ridiculous comments abotu football being a sport for wimps. Jesus - the same thing applies. Don’t like it? Don’t watch. There are enough sporting hours on TV for everyone. As for the idea that rugby players are in some way ‘tougher’? Well, I’ve known a couple of people to play both sports at a serious level, and they’d disagree. But the sort of childish pissing match of my country’s sports are better than yours is ridiculous.
The off-sides rules seem like they’re designed to stop offense.
Whether or not you are off sides depends on the position of the defensemen, rather than where you are on the field. I think that makes it easy for the defense to force an attacking player into being off sides, ruining a possible break away.
It depends on both where you are on the pitch and the position of the defender. And the position of the ball. And whether you are interfering with play.
Believing that soccer’s method of resolving ties should be changed is a separate position from the position of believing that some way should be found to increase scoring.
Only two World Cup finals have been resolved on penalties, but they were both in recent years (1994 and 2006). I agree that in neither case was the losing team obviously superior, but the losing team was not obviously inferior either.
Penalties have also decided important World Cup matches outside of the final. In the 1990 World Cup, Argentina got past Yugoslavia and Italy through penalties. While an argument could be made that they were better than Yugoslavia, they may not have been better - after all, Argentina lost to Cameroon and only tied Romania in the starting rounds. And it’s really hard to see how Argentina was even on the same level as Italy that World Cup, which had won every game outright up until their semifinal with Argentina and had let in exactly zero goals up until then. Other significant non-final games have been settled on penalties in in the World Cup, such as the shootout between West Germany and France in 1982.
Defenders of the penalty shootout often respond with the dumbest defense ever: “if you don’t like soccer as it is, you don’t have to watch it. Don’t try to change it.” Employers of this argument act as though those who oppose the penalty shootout are trying to change some fundamental element of the game.
We’re not. We like soccer, except for the fact that it has a ridiculous way of resolving ties. Resolving ties through a less crap-shoot-ish method would not destroy the fabric of the game. Soccer would still be soccer if important games were not won on the basis of which goalkeeper is better at guessing left or right.
The way to solve ties without using the cruel penalty shoot-out, is to remove a player after every 5 minutes of extra time(or 2 every 10). That could turn out mildly hilarious on occasion, which would be a bonus, as it would remind us all it is only a game.
villa, I was just ranting against you specifically as a substitute for all the annoying people in the world who are less reasonable on this issue. I’m glad that the actual villa gets it.
That’s one method, but in my opinion there are many methods which remain less ridiculous than penalties. I don’t think either of the following make as little sense as penalty shootouts:
Offense vs. Defense set-ups with, say, 2 attackers versus 2 defenders and the goalkeeper. Add or subtract defenders or attackers to balance it out so the odds of scoring are not super-high or super-low.
Longer range shots or free kicks, which require more accuracy and give the goalkeeper more time to really save the shot instead of just guess randomly
Empirical testing could be used to determine the best range for the free kicks or the right ratio of defenders to attackers for the set-ups. Once some reasonable distance or system had been found, it could be implemented.
I do get prickly about it when people who know nothing about the game use it as their reason to attack soccer. Kind of luck your drunk uncle - you can talk about what a lush he is, but if anyone outside the family comments on it, you get riled.
On a physical level, compare soccer and basketball. In basketball, the players are trying to put a nine and a half inch inch ball into a seventeen and a half inch net. In soccer, the players are trying to put a nine inch ball into a twenty four foot wide net. But a basketball game would be considered low scoring if the ball only went in a net a hundred times while a soccer game would be considered high scoring if the ball went into a net ten times.
Except that no one says that. You are, again, making something up in order to knock it down. Stop doing that, please.
The response to the criticism of the penalty shootout is to note quite cogently that there is no good alternative solution. Unlike other sports, the idea of playing on until you resolve the game through a naturally scored goal runs a serious risk of making a mockery of the sport. Because soccer doesn’t allow for unlimited substitutions, players on the field end up doing a considerable amount of running during a game. After an added 30 min., the amount of movement on the field begins to approximate what would happen if you put everyone’s feet in molasses to begin with. Part of the drama of a penalty kick shootout is that the takers aren’t just facing the pressure of scoring one-on-one; they are doing so while mosly totally physically wiped out.
The usual suggestion is to allow more substitutions during extra time. But there are a limited number of players available at any given time for substitution, and thus, even if you added a certain number of available subs during the play of extra time, you could not rest the whole team. That then reduces the result during extra time to who manages to get lucky through some absurd defensive lapse on the part of the opponents, or who managed to substitute in the lucky person at some point in the game. So far, soccer authorities have not wanted to experiment with this sort of situation.
In addition, the one nice thing about soccer is that you can plan how long a game will take at the outside limit. 120 min. of play (with 15 min. halftime and a brief interval between game and extra time), plus shootout. Makes the TV johnnies happy.
ETA: And looking at your suggested substitutes, they are not inherently better than penalty kicks, which are, at least, part of the game itself.
It’s also an improvement on the previous method of separating the two teams when replays were deemed to be impractical, i.e. tossing a coin to decide the winner.
