Myth: Soccer is low scoring thus boring

I didn't see this thread until now.

I love soccer, if other people do not like it, fine by me. I do not care what other people think about it.

One of the things with every sport is that you have to understand it to apreciate it. if you do not understand soccer, you will never find it interesting, same goes for cycling.

For example I really dislike fieldhockey, i find it boring. I also do not understand everything about it.

If you do not understand soccer you will never like it(and that is ok). However there are also people who do understand it, but stil find it boring, that is ok too.

IMHO no sport IS boring. Only some people FIND some sports boring, it is an opinion.

 

I am one of those "soccer folks" you pointed and could care less that people in the states hate soccer and don't want to watch it. I do have a problem with "trolls" coming into every soccer thread and bash it for no reason at all. You don't like it that's fine. It's your loss. You know why we call them ignorant and stupid? Look through this and all the other soccer threads the last couple of months and you'll see those dumbasses say: "Soccer is boring", "soccer sux", "Succor is too slow." They say this in every thread ever started about soccer on here. Am I being defensive? HELL YEAH! Sorry for defending something that I LOVE. Those that don't want us 'soccer folk' to get defensive, then don't come into threads and spew ignorance when others are seriously discussing what's going on in different leagues or the World CUp qualifiers.

I think the MLS (although not the highest quality of soccer) has done alot to change the course of alot of the youth who used to stop playing soccer once they get to high school and college. Now that they see a professional league they be a part of, it encourages them to continue. It may not be at the same amount as those playing other sports, but it is growing.

hahaha...those idiots who come into threads and bash the sport are the ones who try to make themselves "feel better." They come in here talking tough, and bashing it because they are in an online forum with no reprocussions.

Soccer is not for everyone. It is the most popular sport worldwide but even in other countries you have a minority who don't follow it passionately. You either get it and like it or you don't. I have plenty of friends who play soccer all the time and compete in leagues but don't necessarily watch the game and follow leagues around the world. THey watch the world cup but that's about it.

I don't care that people don't like soccer, I do care and get pissed when they come into every thread about soccer and hate for the sake of hate.

 

You forgot one more cliche bash that always comes in a soccer thread: Mexico is better than US!!!

 

Yes, but while the other stuff is debatable opinions, that is a simple fact.

 

Soccer is not necessarily all about the score, it is about the CHANCES to score......

The setting up of teamates, the opportunities to bang it home....it is a beautiful game.

DD

 

Who care whether the final score of the game is 0-0 or 29-27?

 

I think a better analogy would be like in Am. football if they didn't allow the WR to run past the secondary until the QB threw the ball. Why punish the offensive player just because a defender is out of position or slow? I don't get it.

My problem with the highest levels of soccer is the matches usually turn on bonehead defensive plays or bonehead fouls (Beckam versus Argentina). It is way too stacked to reqrding conservative defense (I remember Italy giving up trying to score and packing it in versus Brazil in a world cup final to play for a shootout where in good karma they lost anyway). "Great" offensive play after great offense play can be stimied by just "solid" defense, again, leading to the bonehead defensive play or referree's calling fouls deciding the game. In fact I think I have seen a stat where soccer has more underdogs win than other sports. Again I think it allows the (mostly random) bonehead defensive play and referees to matter far more than the great offensive players in deciding outcomes, and that to me is not what sport is about.

I do watch World Cup because it is high, high drama. But an everyday game is very boring to me. Not as boring as NASCAR or a non-major Golf turney, but boring.

In major men's soccer they should liberalize, if not get rid of, the offside rule and make the goal wider and taller (the goal seems much more appropriate for women's soccer as they are shorter and can just barely reach a perfectly placed high shot). That would restore more balance to the importance of offense.

 

maybe it's not the lack of scoring, but a scoring opportunity.

 

My two cents:

Never liked, nor could get into, football or soccer..
I tried giving both a shot over my years and never became a fan.. Just didn't like either..

But, for some reason, I seem to enjoy the WorldCup alright, I even root for some teams. While being completely disinterested in the playoffs
and SuperBowl run.

For some reason, soccer suddenly becomes more intriguing
in the WorldCup, while football remains the same in it's
high competitive equivilant, to me.

 

Getting rid of offsides could actually make the game lower scoring. It would spread the offense out too much and keep defenders from becoming part of the offense. The best teams play a game of "total football" (shout out to arno_ed and the Dutch). Defenders are a part of the offense. If there were no offsides, a teams fowards might just camp out in the goal box. Someone has to cover them because you aren't going to leave them there. Therefore, that is one less player that you have going foward or at least being in a position to help maintain possession.

Also, FIFA is not going to drastically change the basic rules of the game just to satisfy Americans. They couldn't care less about what the casual American fan thinks. A large majority of the world's population loves the game as is.

 

No need to get rid of offsides, just make the net a bit bigger and scoring would go way up.

DD

 

Heh! Believe me, the net is hard enough to cover as is, just ask a former goalie.

 

How about a smaller net, but no goalie.

 

As for the title and original intent of the thread...if you take away field goals, extra point attempts, safeties, etc...that's just it, you can't take them away because they count and make a difference in the final score.

For me, it's not so much the lack of scoring as much as the back and forth, back and forth. A trip here and back the other way. A pass too high and back the other way, etc. I understand they're supremely conditioned, tremendous athletes with super sick skills and what they're trying to do is extremely difficult. I marvel at some of the things they do with their bodies. But it's still too flat out boring for me to watch. And I've tried to learn and appreciate it, but it just ain't happening at all. I find myself wishing something would happen more often.

I understand the rest of the world thinks we're nuts because we're the only ones not nuts over the sport and I'm OK with that. Shoot I don't even mind the movements to "teach" us ignorant Americans the great game of soccer. Hey, if it ever really catches on in America, then so be it.

The only thing I wish would stop is the attempts at force feeding us the sport. And I don't mean stuff like MLS. If that survives financially(on its own), then super. What I mean is stuff like they tried to do with the women's league. First, they overhyped their World Cup title(SI's sportsmen of the year...over Lance's beating cancer and the world ). Comments like, "this is great for American women. Someday the first woman President will credit this victory as her inspiration"...please. Then their league was a colossal failure and they want to try it again because we were somehow wrong in choosing not to see them play, but next time we will. The whole time ESPN keeps pushing it and pushing it, kinda like my mom used to force feed that okra down my throat. And just when you think they're finally going to mercifully let it die, here comes HBO with another spoonful of okra...let's re-live that tremendous, forever life-changing(on par with Jesus, even)world champion women's team. Come on America...we're gonna make you love soccer whether you want to or not!

It's not an anti-soccer thing. The same thing happens with the NBA throwing away millions yearly and ESPN shoving the WNBA down our throats. And it's not an anti-woman thing, either. I'm just saying if a sport can stand on its own, great! But if it proves itself to be non-marketable in America, then stop bombarding the rest of us like there's something wrong with us for not liking it enough to support it.

If you want to watch or play, fine. If you don't, that's fine, too. Neither group should force their view of the game on the other. Let the game of soccer itself decide what it will, or won't, become in America. End of rant.

 

Was anyone here alive during the 70's and remember the NASL (U.S. Soccer league where greats like Pele, George Best, Usabio...and other greats played in)? Supposedly America was "in love" with soccer and planted the roots for soccer in this country. I read a really good article about it in Four Four Two magazine the other day and it made it sound like Americans truly embraced the sport. I was wondering if there was anyone who was in their teens or maybe older that remembers (i am only 24 so I wasn't even alive ).

 

I'm not old enough to remember seeing any games. I do recall hearing reports of 70,000+ in Giants staduim to see the Cosmos. Games were selling out all over. However, the league was poorly run. They put so much cash into bringing the Pele's and Beckenbauer's over that they simply couldn't afford to keep it going. Also, once those guys retired for good, people quit going to games. There simply was no American star or stars to keep it going.

 

Alive and a teen in the 70's, I remember Pele coming to America and a HUGE deal was made of it. We'd never heard of him before, but they did a good job of getting the word out about how he was the greatest player in history at a sport that we knew nothing about and was rarely played on any level. The only consistent youth league sport around was baseball. Anything else was pretty much played on a "let's round up the guys and play" level. I remember there being some soccer league and/or teams for awhile, but never anything you could really follow on TV. I wouldn't say America fell in love with it by any stretch, though. I'm guessing four four two is some kind of soccer magazine and perhaps that's why they painted a rosier picture than what it really was. The Pele part is correct, though. That dude was on every talk show, variety show, sports program, everywhere you looked he was pimping soccer. He was extremely popular and likable.

But back then, the only sports you could regularly follow on TV were NFL on Sundays and Monday night, a college game on Saturday, Notre Dame condensed replay game on Sunday morning, MLB on Saturday Game of the Week, and whatever ABC's Wide World of Sports had on a particular Saturday. The NBA was nowhere to be found on the dial and even in the 80's their playoff games were routinely tape delayed, even after the 10 pm news if the game was on the west coast.

While it's probably accurate to say that's when America received enough soccer awareness to at least begin to participate in it recreationally, it wasn't anything remotely close to the level you see today. Whatever enthusiasm you see for the sport today is by far the highest it's ever been.

It's been 26 years since the "Miracle on Ice" made America proud and hockey is still pretty much barely a blip on our nielsen ratings. It stays on only because of ESPN's dogged insistence that we must have hockey on TV and that someday more than 100 people will want to watch it. The soccer women's world title wasn't as big a deal to us as the hockey victory, so I don't know what kind of TV future I'd forecast for soccer. I would guess the next best chance would come when the millions of youngsters playing today grow up and still love the game enough to sit down and watch it on TV in large enough numbers to make the networks keep it on the air. (or perhaps if we ever annex Mexico )

Don't know if this old geezer will live long enough to see America ever love soccer, but hopefully you soccer diehards can get your fix watching the rest of the world's teams thanks to our ever increasing viewing technology.