Out of Sheer Curiosity: The "Other" Football
by Hooper on Jun 28, 2009 12:40 PM EDT
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We've all heard the story: the US Men's Soccer team beat top-ranked Spain 2-0 in one of the larger upsets in World play. (Spain was undefeated for 476 years going into it. Give or take.) Today, US plays Brazil in a game that, as far as I understand, could mean a lot toward the World Cup seedings. (Or I could be totally wrong on that.) So, just to know where everybody stands on the sport,
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Never again
I can’t remember which one it was, but I stayed up until 3 am to watch the US play a World Cup game and it ended in a tie. 0-0. Ridiculous.
But, I know how to fix soccer and hockey (sorry, hockey fans!)
Make the soccer net the same size as the hockey net and take away goalies from both sports.
Now tell me that wouldn’t be popular in this country. Games that end like 56-52?
Tennessee WILL beat Georgia on the way to 9+ wins in '09!!!
by VolBrian on Jun 28, 2009 12:56 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I can absolutely appreciate the sport.
It requires a ton of endurance, speed and agility, but from a spectator standpoint, not for me.
"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it."
by Getoffmyvols on Jun 28, 2009 1:14 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I'll watch today's game...
but that will be the first minutes of this Confederations Cup that I’ll be watching. It’s good to see the country beat a world power – who were playing their studs, according to my soccer-knowing friends – in a sport we as a country view as second-rate (ie, not football or hoops or baseball).
that said, the I watched the ’06 World Cup pretty extensively, and not just the U.S. team, and enjoyed that.
by Home Sweet Home on Jun 28, 2009 1:45 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
If you want to 'live thread' the US-Brazil game, feel free.
I’ll be busy doing housework today, but if enough of you (i.e. more than 1) wish to comment, this thread is open for you.
by Hooper on Jun 28, 2009 1:57 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I hated soccer for a long time
But now I’ve grown to at least appreciate it…I’ll be switching back and forth today between the Braves and US/Brazil, the same way I’d be watching anything Olympic and cheering simply because the US is in it.
Will - Rocky Top Talk
by Will on Jun 28, 2009 2:13 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Personally, I'd like to know
who the dumb@ss was the that named our beloved sport “football.” The players who touch the ball with their foot are hardly even players.
Anyway, I’ve really gotten into soccer/football the past few years, something I never thought I’d do. I appreciate the “beauty” of the game and don’t get overwrought with the lack of scoring.
One change I’d like to see made is get rid of deciding a game by penalty kicks, which is less fair than flipping a quarter to decide it, I think one player should be removed from the field every 5 minutes of extra time with the goal keeper being removed first, so it would be 6 on 6 for the last 5 minutes of the 30 minutes of ET.
by wvvol on Jun 28, 2009 3:23 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Starting with soccer, it took 40-50 years of game evolution to end up with what we’d consider American football. The problem is that there’s no good point to say that one ended and the other began. The best we can do is point to when Harvard dropped the Boston Game for Rugby; the problem is that back then, Rugby was considered a variant on soccer and was still a “football” game, albeit with a different ball.
But if you really want somebody to blame, the person to point a finger at is probably Pop Warner. He was so instrumental in formalizing the rules that make it American football that he probably could have changed the name of the sport at that time.
/football history geek
by Hooper on Jun 28, 2009 4:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Put Pop Warner in the same category as Jim Thorpe!
First last year’s “Grand Theft Eric Berry” and now this. They’re both dead to me!
Back to the subject at hand, at least in rugby they do put foot to ball every now and then. And the guys doing the kicking still look like they could kick your @ss, unlike most of our kickers. Er, my @ss, I don’t know, you might be a black belt in Tai Chi or something.
I’m beginning to think that Harvard is the single greatest threat to our sovereignty.
by wvvol on Jun 28, 2009 10:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Heh. No black belt for me.
I worry about Harvard sometimes. With so much old money and such insanely huge endowments, it’s easy to see how they can get disconnected from the rest of the planet and take the high dive into the philosophical deep end. Lotsa brains up there – perhaps too much for their own good.
by Hooper on Jun 28, 2009 10:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
you have no idea
The Dual Threat, Official Enforcer/Stat Geek of MCM.
by hal41605 on Jun 29, 2009 11:59 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
To my understanding....
….back in merry ’ol England, there was a distinction made between commoner sports and aristocratic sports. The commoner sports were games played “on foot” and hence the term football, whereas the aristrocratic sports like polo were played on horseback. That seems plausible enough given that the term “football” applies variously to soccer, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby, etc. depending on where you are.
by Nico2.0 on Jun 29, 2009 6:46 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I'll never understand the English.
Such a big chip on a tiny shoulder…
by wvvol on Jun 29, 2009 10:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
One thing I can't stand..
is how the clock works, how the ref can just add a few minutes at the end of the game to make up substitutions at his discretion. It just makes the flow so confusing at the end of a game. Imagine if at the end of a football game the 4th quarter hits 0:00 and the ref is like ehhh lets play like 6 more plays.
"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it."
by Getoffmyvols on Jun 28, 2009 3:39 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Actually, this won’t mean jack towards World Cup seedings this year. Unless Portugal, France, and Argentina all fall flat on their faces, we’re just too far behind to get a seed (only 8 teams are seeded. The rest are assigned to pots by region and drawn lottery style). However, a victory over Spain and a silver medal could mean something towards seedings for 2014, as the seeding formula takes account of the last 8 years of matches (with extra weighting towards the more recent). I’m a big US soccer fan, and the last three games were something to be proud of (and extremely entertaining to watch), even though our guys ran out of gas towards the end. A couple suspensions really hurt (our starting CM, Michael Bradley, who averages 7.5 miles run per game, was out for today).
The US managed three awards out of this tournament though, in addition to a win over the #1 team:
Team silver medal
Individual bronze ball (3rd best player in the tournament): Clint Dempsey
Individual golden glove (best goalkeeper): Tim Howard.
by Incipient_Senescence on Jun 28, 2009 5:59 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
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