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The World Cup finals — 28 Comments

1. For Americans soccer is an acquired taste, much like scotch.

   Championship games tend to be very defensive, low scoring affairs. One goal is so huge that teams play not to lose.

   The lack of scoring in soccer actually increases the tension among the fans. At any given time you are either about to be scored on or about to score. You never know which time that will actually happen. That game had a few great saves by the goalkeepers. The game was in the balance each time.

   In a 90 minute soccer game the ball is in play and moving for 60 minutes. In an American football game, the ball is moving from 10-15 minutes.

2. Time to haul out that old and dependable expression, “So what?”

3. “”There’s a lot of pretending to be injured in order to penalize the other team””

   Who could imagine a batter hit by a pitch in baseball employing that same tactic? God i’m glad to at least live in what’s left of the grownup world.

4. Neo, your innocent eyes saw true. I had a thread on spectator sports around the world recently. The consensus was that the sports one played and followed as a child become the adult obsessions, regardless of what the sport is or whether it actually is “superior” in some way. It’s largely nostalgia and tradition.

   Those of us who grew up watching Wide World of Sports have a mild fondness for practically any sport, so long as there’s not too much of it. I watched no games but caught a lot of highlights of the World Cup online. That’s just about the right amount for me.

5. You are right about the cheating. It is designed to persuade the referee to penalise one’s opponent with a yellow or a red card.

   The game was once a man’s game but now it is a big girl’s blouse’s game.

   Having said that, the two teams play to win (at all costs) and this is better than the idea of ‘no winner’ recently promoted by liberal big girl’s blouses.

6. Assistant Village Idiot:

   re: Wide World of Sports — so true. That’s why I have such a fondness for watching people wipe out on a ski jump.

7. One goal? In overtime? That does beat the old penalty-kick tie breaker, which was a triumph of bureaucratic thought; might as well toss a coin. I read the headline, refused to watch.

   Soccer is a great game to play, but beyond boring to watch unless one’s child is playing. It’s the world’s most popular sport because only a ball and some flat space is needed, so the world’s poor can play it and do.

   I wonder how many of the Dutch players are actually Dutch; same for the Spanish. But Oh the national revelry!

8. Neo,

   Don’t sweat it, you’re not missing the finer points of the game. The only way Soccer is exiting is if you have a dog in the fight, meaning “your” team is playing.

9. I am from a big soccer region, and in university played pick-up soccer weekly with some halfway decent players, including a high school All-American. While I prefer playing soccer to watching it, watching soccer does not bore me as it apparently does most Americans. As a former soccer player, I view soccer games as an exercise in strategy and tactics, such as when to “big foot” it and when to touch pass. Is a teammate aligned for a convenient touch pass? About 30 seconds before the winning goal for Spain, seeing the setup on the field, I thought to myself, here comes the winning goal.

   For those who are bored watching soccer, my response is that they don’t know the game. Oh well.

   I concur with those who do not like flops. In the pickup soccer games of my youth, we called fouls ourselves, so flopping wasn’t a viable strategy. The soccer games I played were rougher than the international norm, perhaps because we also grew up playing football, and our POV after a foul was to pick ourselves up and keep going.

   I am probably the only commenter here who has played soccer in the Bolivian Chaco in hundred degree weather. This was on a rig site during time off. Don’t accidentally run into a tree: the thorns are 6 inches long! 🙂

10. Regarding the whole Extra Time thing; Is it an arbitrary amount, decided by the officials?

    I’m not much of a fan of soccer so I was largely clueless watching the games but it seemed like when they went into over time, it was like the players had no idea how much time was left and were waiting to see when the refs would call the game.

    Anyway, I couldn’t find any reason to like the sport. There are too many draws. What’s the point of that? Play till someone wins dammit.

11. Neo, soccer may not be very exciting, but it can lead to fun. While living in Italy I found that the most entertaining action took place during the celebration in town following a win by the home team. That part was fun. And exciting too if your definition of excitement includes dodging fast and erratic scooters.

12. And so the term “world” in “World Cup” is a great deal more apropos than it is in other similar titles such as “World Series.”

    The way I look at it, the World Series concerns all the parts of the world that matter.

13. Jim S.,

    The current version of extra time is two 15 minute halves between which the teams change ends. This negates any disadvantage of one end of the field such as mud or rabid fans. The referee adds a bit of time to each half (including during the regular halves) to compensate for injuries and substitutions or time wasting by a team in the lead.

    For awhile FIFA used a golden goal in extra time which we would call sudden death. That was dropped as not being in the spirit of the game.

14. Americans often don’t realise that for many Europeans (and others?) soccer has become a replacement religion, with all the absurd and crazy things that go with surrogate religions. Peter Hitchens has called today’s soccer ‘a pagan cult’, another tragic result of Europes excessive secularisation. And I think he is right about that.
    Soccer stadiums are called ‘Temples’, people have their ashes thrown out at the playingfield of their soccerclub after they die, soccerplayers are called worshipping names in a most offputing way (‘Sons of God’, ‘Redeemer’ etc), the amount of money that is thrown at these young guys is crazy, given the povery of much of the public. Important soccergames are called ‘High Masses’ etc.
    Hitchens points out correctly, I think, that this is the reason that the atmosphere among soccergames in Europe is far more grim than among sportsgames in the US.
    Leftist liberals often find this okay; it SHOULD take the place of religions and become the universal religion of mankind. This is the reason, I think, that American liberals allways lecture the American people to also go on the soccertrain: drop religion, go worshipping in the SoccerTemple…
    I am Dutch, but I became so irritated by all this madness, that I was actually glad that the Dutch lost. Apart from the fact of course that the Spaniards were simply better…
    I loved playing the sport as a boy, and it is true, I guess, that makes you like to watch it later on. Had I been growing up in the US, I think I would have preferred watching baseball, football and basketball.
    And yes, the enormous amount of nonWestern foreigners in European teams confuses some of the public and the players. Soccer , as all sports, basicly thrives on primitive tribal instincts. It is a way of living out the old European tribal rivalries. It is funny to see how both the left and the right are taken in by this game.
    The German Left for instance abhors nationalist feelings in a crazy way, and so they organized people to rob German flags from cars and buildings during the soccermadness. They even did this with a huge German flag that hang from a Turkish community center in Berlin, that supported the German team. Even the Turks were not allowed to show the German flag!
    The Right of course hates the Left for this, but is ambiguous on the presence of foreigners with double passports who refuse to sing the national anthem, but help the German team win…

    And no, I don’t want the Americans to go on the soccer-train, as I don’t want a bizarre OneWorldReligion as a vehicle to a bizarre OneWorldGovernment…

15. Ok, here’s one American who has learned to love the game. I grew up in the Western US during a time when soccer was something those Easterners played. For us it was football and baseball.

    My daughters started playing at 5 (now 16 and 14) and are now both premier players (meaning they play on a level a step up from the local town/club team).

    Yes, it took me awhile to appreciate the game… about 6 years. If one is not involved directly in the sport, then I can understand how it appears to the “outsider”.

    4 years ago I got my USSF referee license, and last fall I also expanded into reffing high school soccer also. The family signed up for Directv sports package so that we can get the soccer channels. We watch a lot of the European games during the winter. In fact, in our house, Barcelona is THE team, so watching Spain in the World Cup was fun as we are very familiar with all the players. We did miss Lionel Messi (Argentina) playing with his Spanish teamates.

    Quite frankly, I can’t stand baseball any longer; it’s like watching paint dry.. talk about a SLOOOW game! I still care about my Denver Broncos, but that’s about it.

    My daughter has a shirt that says “I play REAL Football” It then goes on:

    We actually play with ball and use our feet.
    WE don’t stop play every 10 senonds.
    We aren’t covered head to toe in pads.
    We don’t suck oxygen on the sidelines.
    We actually have a World Championship.

    So here’s one person who did not play as a kid, but truly believes it deserves the title of the beautiful game.

16. I just love it when they announce a final result as nil-nil.

    I have to watch my mouth as my grand daughter is soccer mad, and would certainly wear an “in your face tee shirt” like Physics guy describes. There has to be a little psychological bit in that bit of aggressiveness. She also plays at the Premier level. Now her twin brother who was never enthusiastic has taken up the game fairly enthusiastically as a keeper. Even their mother has played for years in 30+ or 40+ women’s leagues.

    I am sure it is a great game to play, and that is all I will say.

    I do wonder sometimes if the passion is more about passion than about the game. I remember in Brazil after the local team beat a team from Paraguay, they partied in the streets all night long. In England there was a good deal of drunkeness and a lot of singing of club songs. Can’t say how many were actually concentrating on the game..

    For those who denigrate football or baseball, I would suggest that the breaks in the action are part of the charm. There is a defined set of parameters in which certain goals must be reached. If not, then the other team has a turn. I like that. Of course the pace of baseball is also part of the attraction for spectators; it is most definitely a social experience.

17. American football is strategically complex and requires physical endurance and specific mental and physical strengths. The same is true with baseball. This makes them exciting to watch and follow.
    Both of my daughters played on community soccer teams and I went to every game. That was fun, but you’ve got it Neo: soccer is boring, boring, boring, and boring to me. I’d rather mow the yard than watch it.

18. If you think the game is boring, try to imagine the constant news coverage of tactics, players, team managers etc–and not just during the world cup. Paul the Octopus was the only fun thing about the whole spectacle.

19. “For those who are bored watching soccer, my response is that they don’t know the game. Oh well.”

    I think the “nostalgia” things plays a bigger part – I can certainly understand what you wrote yet still find soccer VERY boring. Those are all quite simple to see what needs to be done whilst watching.

    Now, Judo and Archery – *there* is some riveting sports!

    In Judo I can watch them try and maneuver their opponent whilst keeping track of the foul line, the clever step meant to mislead, and cringe as I see the choke coming a mile away (and see the face of the defeated opponent as he knows it too yet can do nothing about it).

    Archery, at leas the Olympic variety, is riveting. Knowing that each and every arrow is a potential loss and there is *nothing* you can do about it – it is a high stakes shoot off on *every shot*. You can watch the sheer concentration in their faces, the play of emotions after a shot followed by sheer self control is just riveting.

    Soccer? It is a bunch of people kicking a ball around. It is mainly trying to conserve energy but not standing still. The “strategy” tends to be more what Neo talks about – how do I pretend to be hurt enough to either get a “time out” (without actually having one) or get a penalty on the other team. Never really seen the whole “chess” game thing – MUCH more of one in designing plays in Football (which is a sport I do not care much for either – but I can clearly see the individual play strategy).

    But then I played Judo and currently shoot archery so I put myself in their place. I objectively know it is boring, yet find them subjectively highly entertaining (now, watching non-Olympic archery usually not so much, everything but the shootoff is boring as snot). I was *SO* happy that the last summer Olympics was online, I could finally watch those two sports in their full glory.

    The biggest disappointment was the heavy weight Judo Gold Match – the guy was so afraid of the Japanese competitor he simply stiff armed him the whole time – the match went on 1/4 point penalties. Archery was Grand – the Ukranian make was truly unorthodox and was amusing to watch shoot (few truly unorthodox shooters make it, let alone win gold). And one of the Park’s from Korea had a grouping that as not only a world record but shattered the old one for the females. We are *still* looking at videos of her performance on FITA/Olympic archery sites.

    Do not discount your own involvement in making the sport fun – I could write another 8-10 times the amount easily on Archery alone and be excited by the whole process. Everyone else see them doing the same thing over and over and over (and with Judo they walk around a fall down, occasionally they keep fighting on the ground, sometimes not, and for reasons unknown the referee calls the match and declares a winner). The big draw of almost any sport is drawing the fans into the game and that requires some intimate knowledge of the game – or at least the illusion of it.

20. Thanks Mr. Frank.

    “For awhile FIFA used a golden goal in extra time which we would call sudden death. That was dropped as not being in the spirit of the game.”

    That right there, is enough for me. I won’t watch it again.

21. Soccer and baseball share the trait of being high with tension that the uninitiated cannot appreciate. I’ve played both, and I like watching both; but while I played soccer far more than baseball (way back in the 70s) I can rarely stand to watch more than about fifteen minutes. There is tension, but not a lot of intensity.

22. I don’t know why anyone gets all worked up about any sporting event. It’s all just a game.

    The thing is, adult citizens are allowed to have different tastes and preferences than others. If you like Football (American), then there are lots of venues that give you the opportunity to enjoy the game. If you like Football (Soccer), the same applies. And it’s okay to like one over the other, or to like both at the same time – or neither. (The same is true for Baseball, Basketball, and Archery too.)

    My only objection is when taxpayer funding is used to finance the stadiums for all of it.

23. But, Jim Sullivan, isn’t the NFL doing away with sudden death overtime and changing to the college rule of equal time OT? Seems that they agree with FIFA.

24. OK, I’ll put in a word for curling. Almost every shot in curling is a move to counter the prior move of the other team. It’s very confrontational, without being physical. Contrast that with attending, say, the 5000 m skating competition. Watch two guys/girls skate in circles for several minutes. Then watch two more skate in circles for several minutes.

25. At least the game was decided by an actual goal, not a shootout.

    The shootout rule is as if the entire world played baseball (worse for it that it doesn’t), there was a two year tournament to decide who got to the World Series, the seventh game of the Series was tied, and so they played Home Run Derby to decide the winner.

26. (3) There’s a lot of pretending to be injured in order to penalize the other team, complete with writhing around on the ground in seeming agony while grabbing the knee, and then bounding up pretty quickly after the umpire makes the call.

    Football is the only sport I know of where acting can actually help win a game. Of course, if you are too ham-fisted, you can get thrown out (a red card for diving). It’s a fine line and worthy of a class at the Lee Strasberg School of Method Acting.

    Humor aside, it’s obvious to anyone who has ever put on shin pads and laced up the boots that getting kicked on the front of the lower leg, where there is not much muscular protection, while running at full blast hurts. Make no mistake about that. Think of all those times you’ve bumped your shin into something hard, and how it hurt like the dickens for a brief while.

27. LondonTrader, you assume I actually enjoy NFL Football. I’d rather watch paint dry.

28. First of all, I do not watch soccer on a regular basis, just World or Europe championships, the ones that matter 🙂

    However, I think it is grossly unfair to judge a whole sport from just a game – you also do not judge literature by just one book, do you?

    Agreed: The final game was not that good, and the best team won. That’s about it. But lets face it: Soccer is one of the few sports where it is only talent and training that counts. You need to be fit, physically, but you also need to know about tactics, you need to know the “enemy” team, no time for ego-trips, cause in today’s soccer only good teams win.
    As I see it, it is one of the few sports where kids of immigrants or poor kids can achieve a certain state (at least that happens in the German society). And see the very young German team, hungry for success, playing very good soccer AND fair, and we scored third, outplaying star teams like England with its Wayne Rooney or Argentina with its Messi.

    And: It is thrilling – up to the end of the game you never know if the enemy can turn the game. Keeps you just moving. And it is clearly no family-picknick sport like boreball, sorry, baseball…

    So, please be fair 🙂

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