This has a fairly easy fix. If the game has to be stopped for you, you should have to be subbed off. Cuts and the like, the player can leave under his own power. If you’re rolling on the ground and then continue to play the game afterwards, you were faking.
There are a number of footballers who discredit the game and themselves by their reaction to tackles, but anyone who thinks football is a game for wimps should try and imagine being on the end of a Roy Keane tackle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuyw7zWgKOQ
p.s. And notice how quick the guy gets up? Not all footballers roll around as if their leg has been ripped off.
That’s one way to look at it. Another would be that I’m debunking the individual points you presented. That’s a legitimate debate tactic, you know.
You do realise just how many times players will sustain a real injury, which prevents them standing up and walking off in the way you describe, yet after treatment will continue to play? And that under the present rules, any time a player requires any assistance from medical staff, they are required to leave the field at least until the next stop in play?
Yes, it never happens. It’s called walking it off. And I’m not talking about having to leave the field, I’m talking about being subbed. As in, you’re gone.
You’ve debunked no points. My observations are all factually correct:
- North American soccer is not the top tier league. That’s a fact.
- There isn’t a seasonal niche for it. 100% true.
- No soccer league has lasted very long in North America. That is also 100% true.
- It’s got no cultural roots as a spectator sport in North America. Absolutely true.
Which of those facts have you debunked, exactly? Do you even know what you’re debating against? It’s not like I’m saying soccer will be popular next year. Or ever.
Your opinions are not facts. Your post clearly isn’t just listing facts no matter how much you huff and puff to the contrary.
You outlined what you think the reasons are why soccer is unpopular in North America. #1 on your list is because it’s a second-rate league. I have debunked this as a reason by citing that one of the most popular sports in America – NCAA football – is a second-rate league.
#3 on your list is of why soccer isn’t popular is because it doesn’t have a history in the US. I have cited other leagues that have become popular in the US despite having less history than soccer.
If you really weren’t offering reasons why soccer is unpopular in the US, but instead were offering cites that soccer is unpopular in the US, what was the point? Nobody disputes that soccer is unpopular in the US. The thread title accepts that fact as given.
According to Sal Palantonio, the actual reason why soccer isn’t popular is apparently because it doesn’t reflect American society or values. This is why east coast colleges got together and made a conscious decision to abandon soccer and replace it with a new sport they invented specifically to reflect American society and ideals.
They started by introducing the first down because they wanted the aspect of gaining, holding and defending territory, which was a reflection of the migration westward. (Manifest destiny.)
The second major innovation was creating the quarterback position. They didn’t like the way that in soccer, everyone on the field is basically equal. They wanted a lone player to reflect the pioneer spirit and outlaw mystique of late 19th century America, and the QB position does just that. No doubt we’ve all heard Brett Favre et al labeled as a “gunslinger.”
If this were true, the Indy 500 would be popular. It is not. This was also part of that post you claimed was “factually correct.” When did the Stanley Cup start drawing viewers?
Saying something is the way it is “just because” is not particularly constructive.
Has anyone mentioned how awful most American commentators are for soccer matches? It sounds like they’ve tried to transplant the commentary style of American football, which might work fine with the constant stoppages and scrimages and set-piece nature of football, but it just doesn’t work as well with the free-flowing pace of soccer. They’ll babble on about tangential trivia and statistics instead of discussing what’s actually transpiring on the pitch. It’s incredibly annoying and distracting.
Plus, they say things like “PK” instead of “penalty kick,” and that just sounds stupid.
I think this is more of a reason why than anything else (and let’s not forget that the only reason we made it to the 94 World Cup was because we hosted it 
). Yes, I see the argument that not making the World Cup was a consequence of the lack of popularity and the subsequent lack of a pool of good players to draw from to be competive, but I tend to think that the two things reinforced each other, creating a vicious circle: We never made the World Cup so we didn’t put much effort into putting together good teams, so soccer was never really popular, so the pool of players was restricted and as a result we never made a World Cup.
Up until a few years ago I agreed with the “soccer will always be 10-20 years away” sentiment. What changed my mind?
Brandy Chastain took off her shirt 
Seriously - The American women’s soccer team has done more for the sport in the last decade than anything else. This has been a sport where we’ve traditionally been lousy on on the world stage (at least on the men’s side), and we’re not just competive, we’re dominant - like we always want to be.
As long as the women’s team keeps winning Cups/Gold medals, making the covers of SI and the like, it can do nothing but help soccer in the US. Especially when the team being so successful is perceived as a challenge to men (ie, “we can play this physical sport better than men can”). I have the strong feeling that if the men’s team can have one good deep run (not just barely making it out of group play helped in part by an own goal from the Columbian team) in World Cup play - and I mean like third-place match or better - then we’ll see soccer rise in importance.
It still won’t supplant any of the major sports, but it will start being taken a lot more seriously.
Huh? How does ‘walking it off’ put stitches in somebody’s forehead so they can rejoin the match?
The idea of obligatory substitutions, however, is a bit like crass American suggestions we encounter from time to time that the offside rule prevents open play. It’s called a complete failure to understand the flow of play.
I think what Ellis Dee above says about Americans choosing a sport that matches their temperament, makes a lot of sense. The US seems to appreciate games with power, precision, and lots of points, preferably. Whereas, as has already been mentioned, some of the best football games, don’t even need to have had a goal scored. Also, the idea of going backward to move forward, doesn’t seem to sit well. 
No, they are not. they are waved back onto the field almost immediately. If they were forced to stay off the field for a significant amount of time, then the stupidity would end quite quickly.
The other thing they need to do is stretcher off right away, rather than waiting for an “assessment” by the trainers of the extent of the injury (which is usually something along the lines of an ankle knock or a foot-cleating, painful to be sure, but hardly the sort of thing further hurt by being immediately stretchered off the field of play). The long delay before the stretcher is used, which it rarely is anyway, the player then getting to his feet and hobbling off, allows the team time to rest and recover. This makes the late in the half injury a to be desired thing for teams under the cosh.
Take the bloke off right away, make him stay off five minutes before getting back onto the field, and you will see them start to get up and hobble around as they should after a knock of that sort, rather than acting to try and get a card pulled from the officials pocket.
Have you played top-level soccer? Have you ever had your foot stepped on by inch-and-a-half cleats? Have you ever taken a direct knock to your ankle by another player’s attempt to boot the ball?
It is entirely understandable that a player could be suffering from initial excruciating pain without having suffered much in the way of permanent injury. Which is not to say that they shouldn’t be up and hobbling fairly soon after, just that it isn’t always all about “flopping” or “whining”.
Which is complete nonsense (not surprising if it came from Sal Palantonio’s mouth).
American football became the dominant form of football mostly because the Ivy League schools wanted to emulate their brethren top-flight universities in England, Oxford and Cambridge, where association football was not played. The quarterback didn’t become an over-arching position of importance until the introduction of the forward pass in 1906, by which time gridiron football had firmly rooted itself in the American college environment.
As for the concept of a limited series of downs in which to accomplish the gaining of yards, that was the idea of Walter Camp, and it was introduced to combat the effort of the Princeton teams in 1880 and 1881 to slow the game down with incremental gains of yardage from scrimmage. Camp’s rules were almost uniformly designed to open up the game and allow for more scoring. He suggested the reduction of players from 15 to 11, and the snap from center (replacing the scrum).
When the game was threatened by the incredible bloodiness of the flying wedge, and there were calls for it to be banished from the land, the introduction of the forward pass (along with the elimination of the wedge formation) opened the game up still further. This open style of play was certainly favored by the college crowd; we’ve rarely changed the rules to reduce scoring options in our football. To the extent that American football says anything about us, it certainly says that we like games with open play and scoring chances.
As for Sal Palantonio, well, he’s an idiot. :smack:
Following this, subsequent to legal action from the first team to have a valuable player’s injury exacerbated by being moved under these rules before being properly assessed…then what?
If your face is cut, you can walk yourself off the field, you don’t need to be carried off on a stretcher. I’ve seen Brian McBride’s face cut open like 200 times, he’s always able to remove himself from the field.
It’s quite easy to state that without backing it up. How would my suggestion ruin the flow of the game? It would stop the faking of injuries overnight. Name one injury where the game would have to be stopped by the referee and where the player would be able to continue.
Ok, getting hit in the groin I suppose.
What’s top level? I used to play for one of the most highly respected youth clubs in the states. I played against several people that are now professionals. Yes I’ve taken hits that hurt quite a bit. I’ve witnessed people have their legs broken, never was there the rolling around on the ground, screaming, and then up and hopping around 3 minutes later. If it’s a serious injury there isn’t the theatrics, and if it isn’t serious you can play with the pain for a bit until it fades.
Sorry, but your glib assertions are simply not correct. Having your foot stepped on my full length metal cleats is excruciating. You don’t just pop up and get yourself going right away. Still, you don’t neccesarily have to have a broken foot, either.
Some “rolling around” is obvious theatrics. Some rolling around is the result of someone having true pain.
And I note that you don’t say what your reaction was when you were hurting. 
Really, that’s quite unlikely to occur. As a referee, you have a good idea quickly when something is serious enough to warrant care before moving. Stop trying to defend really stupid behavior by soccer players. One of the better aspects to the Premier League is that the players there tend to “man up” a bit better.
Really? To the level of a medical professional? And how do you make this assessment while officiating at the other end of the pitch?
Anyway, this really is an argument brought about by games watched through highlights, and World Cup histrionics. The idea that every match is riddled with guys rolling about like they’ve been handcuffed to their ankles doesn’t match what I see from the stands.