Soccer is an almost-entirely improvised affair -- another one of the things that makes it the greatest of sports. Anyone who thinks that basketball is the great improvised sport -- "like jazz," as the cliche has it -- has never watched a soccer game. [And I mean that not as some kind of moral judgment, but as a simple empirical claim]. Soccer coaches can't really do very much at all during the game; their job is more-or-less complete when the whistle sounds, their team is either ready or not. And they only get three subs the whole game. At the professional level, coaches (or 'managers,' as they're usually called) sometimes even sit up in the stands during the game -- the better to see what's happening, since there's not a whole lot they can do down on the field anyway.
But Argentina's manager, Jose Pekerman, managed to lose the match for them yesterday, pretty much single-handedly, I'd say. It was quite unbelievable. Remember Grady Little, and the Pedro Martinez affair, when everybody in America knew that Pedro had to come out of the game except his manager? Multiply by 100 or so (because this is the World Cup, and so much more is at stake for so many more people). Argentina is up 1-0 and, to my eyes, in complete control of the game. Their 'keeper has been injured and subbed out. With 20 minutes to go, Pekerman takes out Riquelme and Crespo -- Argentina's two best offensive players. Strange . . . but he does have wonderful substitutes on the bench: Pablo Aimar (one of the great creative midfielders in the world, a perfect sub for Riquelme), and Lionel Messi, who has had a sensational tournament and who will soon be, by common consensus, the best player in the world.
The problem is, he doesn't put either of them in the game -- he puts in Cambiasso, a defensive midfielder, and Julio Cruz, a 2d rate striker. AND NOW HE'S OUT OF SUBS. Neither Aimar nor Messi can see any action at all in Argentina's most important game of the last 20 years. So when Germany, predictably, scores and they go into extra time, he's got the wrong damned team out there. The rest was completely predictable.
I cannot even imagine how angry I'd be if I were Argentine. If you have Argentine friends and want to display your deep sympathy for them, just walk up to them and say "Julio Cruz? Julio Cruz??" Tears should be welling up in your eyes as you do this.
This Argentine team deserved better -- they had the talent, and showed in snatches the ability, to play at truly heavenly heights. Though at least the Germans, this time around, are playing some beautiful attacking soccer. If the Germans had won the last time it would have been a travesty -- even die-hard German fans admit that the team's presence in the Final was more the result of having an easy draw (getting the USA and S. Korea in the quarterfinals and semifinals ain't exactly tough going -- and the US outplayed them, to boot) than great soccer playing. But this year's team is, I have to admit, fun to watch.
If Grady had taken him out and Embree or Timlin had lost the game, the firing would have been even quicker. Basically, Grady was screwed if the Red Sox lost, and a genius if they won.
I didn't see the last 20 minutes of the Argentina-Germany match, but my relatively uninformed opinion is that 20 minutes is too long to be playing in a defensive shell. Maybe with 10 minutes to go it's a better idea, I don't know.
Basketball used to be like jazz, before TV-timeouts and coaches had fewer opportunities to interrupt the game. Part of the reason the U.S. is having so much trouble beating teams from around the world now.
Of course, at least Cruz made his goal during the shootout. That's more than England can say about its last minute substitute.
It's odd that football is both the most violent and the most intellectual of pro sports.
Yeah, fascinating. Like TV test patterns.
Hockey can be exciting at times, primarily because the field (ice) of play is so small there is a constant back and forth. Soccer is just, um, boring. And I was the captain of my high school soccer team my last two years. Fun game to play, gets you in great shape, but horribly boring for spectators.
Actually, this gets to another problem with soccer - random rules like limitations on substitution that make the game difficult for a team that suffers a rash of injuries. It is one thing to say a player can't return, but it seems rather pointless to make it so difficult for teams to adjust by taking their bench away from them.
So much to all of this is subjective. David thinks that improvisation is a good thing in a sport. Others think that in-game coaching is better. How can the comparison really be made, as an objective value judgment? It can't.
Soccer is like boxing. Unless you really know what's going on, it's not that exciting to watch, for most people. As it happens, you learn what's going on by playing, and the whole world plays, except us, India and Pakistan.
Sports aren't objectively worse (or better) for having more scoring, or more violence, or fewer breaks, etc. They are what they are, and they find their fan bases. The only thing I can think of that could make a sport objectively worse is lack of sporting elements - arbitrary outcomes, lack of competitiveness, etc. (Boxing comes to mind again, but soccer doesn't, nor does baseball for that matter).
There is a good reason why most Americans hate soccer: it's boring to them. I understand soccer strategy and it's still boring. Boring, boring, boring. As for the rest of the world -- well, most of the rest of the world thinks Jerry Lewis is a great comedian.
Why is soccer then the fastest growing sport in America? Why has TV viewership double since the last world cup? Whether you want to admit it or not, it is just a matter of time before soccer becomes as popular as Football and Basketball (two sports I enjoy very much). Most of those suggesting soccer is the "worst sport" have never actually played the game. And by playing I mean at a decent level.
"scoring [in soccer] is about as likely as Ted Kennedy becoming a Republican[.]" It is true that in general soccer is not high scoring. Some games will have low scoring while others might not, take for example the first game of the world cup: Germany 4 Costa Rica 2, or Argentina 6 Serbia Montenegro 0. And by the way, what is it with Americans and high scoring. A 1-0 soccer game with many chances to score is more intersting to me than a 80 to 93 basketball game. And there isn't much difference between a 3-1 soccer game and a 21-7 football game.
If you don't like just don't watch it.
Argentina had this attitude that Lionel Messi is a young guy who hasn't paid his dues yet, and therefore he was not entitled to a place in the starting lineup and that he would be given a few minutes at the end for the sake of "experience". The fact that he was coming on with ten minutes to go and play utterly brilliantly didn't seem to affect this inflexible thinking.
This wouldn't have mattered if Messi was there on the field when he was needed, but he wasn't. The plan of giving Messi "experience" didn't seem to come into the plan of winning games. Pekerman simply needed to keep one substitute available, and he could have then sent Messi on to win the game after Germany equalised. But he didn't. It was bizarre.
And France were glorious against Brazil. At least the people in charge there know how good Zidane is.
I tend to think the unfavorable (as opposed to merely neutral) soccer rating is coming primarily from the same people who are opposed to immigrants and to Europe generally for their non-help in Iraq, but I haven't seen any opinion polls conducted to verify this. The reality is that soccer is destined to move up in the rankings of sports in America in the same way that Hispanics are increasingly becoming a majority-minority in this country. There are simply a growing number of people here who grew up watching (not just playing) the game, whether in this country with MLS or in their country of origin. That probably hacks the above-described anti-immigration, anti-Europe people off, but networks have already taken note. That's why ABC paid triple for the next two World Cups than it did for the last two.
Let's take these stupid, stupid arguments about the longest, awfulest game one at a time:
(1) Soccer is great because it's improvised and the coaches don't have much control after it begins. These are the same clowns who tell you that soccer has more strategy than chess, poker, and World War II combined. It can't be both rich in strategy and almost completely ad hoc. The soccer prophets counter with this gem: Soccer has a lot of strategy but much of it has to be determined before a game and is rather abstract. This doesn't even pass the laugh test. Soccer's vaunted strategy is "abstract"? Then it's not really "strategy" at all; it's more like central planning, which is why so many technocrats, EU bureaucrats, and third-worlders love soccer so much. There aren't any specific plays in soccer strategy, it's just a general, abstract approach. You know, stuff like "get a good night's sleep before the game" and "eat a nutritious breakfast."
(2) Preferring one sport over another is highly subjective. True enough. Some people prefer Coke to Pepsi, and I'm not going to tell them they're wrong. But the only time you hear this argument is after someone has pointed out what an objectively awful game soccer is. At that point, we're treated to a lecture on subjective taste. An example: this thread started with a post about how soccer is the greatest game in part because of its substitution rules. I don't deny that there's some strategy involved in making these substitutions. I suppose that after you take an insurmountable (1-0) lead, it makes sense to put in players who are more skilled defensively and play ball control, and I can see why you might want to hold back a sub in case a player gets hurt. But are soccer's substitution rules so different from and superior to those of other games? Do the rules have more of an impact on the game than the rules of other sports? Anything that can be said about the substition rules of soccer can be said about the rules in baseball. Even in sports that have free (football) or semi-free (basketball) substition, there is a lot of strategy that goes in to deciding who should play when. Soccer isn't special because of its substitution rules, and it certainly isn't superior because of them.
(3) Not yet mentioned here, but don't worry, it will come up: Soccer players are great athletes; those who play x are fat. Yes, soccer players have well-developed legs and lean frames. They also don't have any upper-body strength, and it wouldn't matter if they did. They can run (or at least lope) around for hours, but so can marathoners. So what? At least in other sports there's room for a diversity of body types. Soccer players come out of a cookie cutter, and they can't bench their own weight.
I am sorry, I meant to say:
Pllllllleeeeeaasssee! Don't insult a great game -- baseball, or any of the other great sports including basketball, American football, Australian-rules football, ice hockey, softball, golf, hurling, skiing, tennis, lacrosse, squash, ping-pong, swimming, diving, gymnastics, wrestling, bob-sledding, speed skating, volleyball, ..., ..., ..., weightlifting, beach volleyball, archery, badminton, fencing, figure skating, ice dancing, water polo, snowboarding, biathlon, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, kick-ball, skeet shooting, curling, dodge-ball, ballroom dancing, cheer-leading, rock-climbing, shuffle board, ultimate frisbee, jarts, darts, race-walking, jump-rope, spelling bees, tiddly winks, marbles, jacks, dominoes, mumbly peg, etc., etc., -- by comparing it in ANY way with soccer, even -- Whoop-De-Doo -- World Cup soccer.
Still, I'd rather watch soccer than baseball. Baseball is 2 minutes of action crammed into 3 hours. On a good day.
Yet another stupid comment from someone who has obviously never played the game at a competitive level. I played soccer in college, and I can tell you that upper body strength is an essential component of soccer training at a competitive level.