I am definitely not football crazy but I do enjoy the sport. Sometimes it is akin to watching a battle unfold. Take note when a good team executes their plan on the pitch. It's a beautiful thing to see.

I agree with the idea that 112-103 scores are boring and a yawnfest, hence the reason I don't at all watch basketball.

But 1-0? Or 1-1?

That seems the opposite end of the extreme... I listened to the first game of "The Subway Series" an annual matchup of a few games in the middle of the year between the New York Yankees and New York Mets in baseball (called "Subway Series" because of the subway-NY connection, and because in days of old and even today, it's a famous idea that this series, being all-NY, is easy to attend, just hop a subway and you can head to the game, as the subway has stations at both Yankee Stadium and the Mets' home, Citi Field.)

4-0 shutout by the Mets.

But at LEAST there was scoring, more that 1-0.

That's one of the things I LOVE about baseball- when the teams are good, you'll generally get just the right amount of scoring. 3 runs is at the low end, typically, of a good game; 8 at the high, most are in between. As players are out 2/3 of the time, it's a HUGE accomplishment to even get a hit, let alone score a run.

But to leave American sports out of this (although really baseball's an international game, wonderfully... Mexico, Latin America, South America, Japan, the Koreas, Cuba- all are baseball mad and have tons of teams and players, that's why there's now a World Baseball Classic played every 3 years or so, and it's WONDERFUL... I love it, I must assume as much as you love the World Cup... why Europe won't play baseball I'll never know, I mean, cricket and rounders are bat-and-ball games too, why not play baseball, if the US plays futbol, why not play baseball... the Netherlands did the last Classic, and upset a couple good teams- but I digress) what about hockey?

Hockey's got low scoring, and same thing, get puck in the goal, hard to do at an international level...

But there are no TIES!

They finally did away with them, overtime, and then a shootout- why not the same system for football, THEN maybe I'd be more interested... ties are just not as interesting...

Ah, well... and WHY does the clock go UP! lol... why, every other sport the clock counts down, why... lol...



I must say, I DO agree with you that football players are the product of more skill or headiness, perhaps, and that IS something I like- same thing with baseball... it doesn't matter there if you're tall or short, fat or thin... speed matters, but not so much the slower players can't compete, Babe Ruth was a tub, after all... and it's a thinking person's game, played in a pastoral setting, beautiful summer days, and no game clock, it ends when every team has had it's fair shot, each team gets 27 outs, 9 innings, a fair shot for each man, and the sport has such a rich history, and it's become intertwined with American and World history, Americans playing ball with Japanese just before WWII, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier as one of the first big actions in the Civil Rights movement, the current distrust (now waning some) in players due to steroids mirroring America's distrust in it's government...

Do you get I LOVE baseball (and my NEW YORK METS! THEY BEAT THE CROSSTOWN RIVAL YANKEES TONIGHT! 8 STRAIGHT WINS!) with all my heart?

:)

It seems football is the world's baseball in that way... still, doesn't quite click with me, and I wish Europe would take up the bat and ball... how fun would it be if the UK played the US in football, boxing (The Sweet Science!) and baseball each year, a friendly competition, best two of three events?

The clock going up (I think) is more of an international thing. Even in European hockey, the time counts up instead of down. I actually think it makes more sense to count up. Even in the NHL, when a goal is scored, they mark how many minutes and seconds INTO the period the goal occurred, not according to the game clock (or how much time is left in the period). I would hope that most people are smart enough to be able to deduce how many minutes are remaining by noting how many minutes have passed.

But I agree obiwanobiwan, baseball is a great sport too. Sometimes I hop across the border to Detroit to check out the Tigers. The atmosphere is always electric when you're there. The same with the Jays up in Toronto. I've never had a bad time at an MLB game; whether the team was doing well or not.

@cujo8400:

Most people (I would hope) are intelligent enough to figure out how much time is left with it going up, but still- it just seems more logical for it to count down, so as to show much time is left, as that's more relevent than how much time has passed... kinda...

Tigers and Jays... yeah, Detroit's a great baseball city... Toronto too... NYC, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago are all amazingly passionate and ingelligent about baseball and their teams... Los Angelinos are not, on the whole, as loyal to the teams so much as the city, they just like them for being LA and only watch when the Dodgers or Angels of LA are good, but when they watch they're great fans, too, and Vin Scully is BRILLIANT.

Europe, I'll make a boast about baseball, and say that in Vin Scully it has the best sports announcer in the WORLD... really, if you've enver heard him, listen to one of his many famous calls, or just his easy-going and cordial, genial demeanor, every summer day... the same greeting, in a classy East Coast voice...

"Hello again, everybody, and a pleasant good evening to you, wehrever you may be..."

Again- we should have a baseball/football competion, with boxing as the individual sport... hockey's good in the winter time... I hope someday the world learns to love American football as we all do (49ER EMPIRE FOREVER!) and basketball is just a shallow game most of the time... when you score 100 , how much do any of them REALLY count?

Seriously, American football's GREAT, strategy and hard hits and speed down the field and long passes, it's like a war, and with all the history of strategies adn deep-seated rivalries, it takes on a whole new dimension of epic stories... and from watching that and rugby, I'll take AF ten times over, rugby just seems a brutish-but-fun scrum game, like something folks would play in a pickup game, get the ball and run like hell as others try to kill you getting it, AF just seems so much deeper...

Germany has a league and loved it when it was introduced, really the only European nation it ever caught on when the NFL tried to introduce a European League...

Hmmm... Germany loving a game with helmets and crushing blows and long bombs and "field generals" and strategies to mix a ground assault with an aerial attack, long bombs...

Who would've guessed the Germans would go for THAT sort of game? ;)

The point about goal scoring cannot really be appreciated until you also look at goal preventing. A ball flying into the net is exciting - a keeper performing a remarkable save is equally exciting. In football, there can be a whole series of marvelous goal attempts matched by fabulous saves.

The way to look at this is that in football, it is not just about the numbers, it is about the way the numbers are achieved. I have certainly had more entertainment from games drawn than many games won.

I find it difficult to really get into hockey because of the more limited influence a keeper has on a game. I am not belittling the guys who play this position but the keeping of goal in football is a major major factor in a game and the players who do this are game winners just as often as the goal scorers.

The size of the goal has a lot to do with this... A keeper has to fling himself around in arguably the most acrobatic role of any team sport.

flashman, the puck's a tiny black rubber disc shot at you at sometimes over 100mph-

How is that any less spectacular a save than a big white ball blasted towards you from a foot, as opposed to a wooden )or sometimes another compound) stick?

The movement of the keeper - simple. In hockey it is a matter of inches to make a great save; in football you see someone travel across the whole face of the goal, high off the ground to reach the ball - body stretched and arched. The ball and the keeper coming together at just the right moment. It has a marvelous action quality about it which can be followed and anticipated.

@flashman: I'm not sure I agree with your comparison between hockey and football goalies. Ask any true hockey fan and they will tell you that your team isn't going far without a good goaltender. I do agree with you about the acrobatic talents of keepers in football though. They certainly have to cover a hell of a lot of space.

You know the way a crowd goes nuts in NFL when they can see a long pass and watch a runner jump high to catch it? Well, the goalkeeping aspect of football (soccer) is like that but with more gymnastics involved - and as for the ball? It moves faster than perhaps you think.

I saw a game a couple of years back where a player had his leg broken in two places just from the ball being kicked at him. That takes a lot of velocity. (Liverpool game too, with John Arne Rise the executioner).

@obiwan: many games are ties, then the way it works is you only watch the games of your team (they never are boring, may be exasperating, but not boring), or the good games, and if a game's dissapointing you, you just stop watching it. but some times there are really good games and you enjoy them

cujo:

I tried to make clear that I was not belittling the hockey keeper, nor his value - the point I was making is that ,in football at a high level, the battle between the outfield players and the keeper is sometimes quite spectacular and the keepers are gymnasts first.

The leg-breaker...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=__94_NleNes

"They finally did away with them, overtime, and then a shootout- why not the same system for football, THEN maybe I'd be more interested... ties are just not as interesting..."
Why are ties not interesting? Surely from an impartial point of view the inclusion of a third possible result increases the interest rather than decreases it.
I'm not, myself, a big fan of association football but when I do watch it what gets me is the tension of the game - it's all so tight, there's rarely more than one goal in it and so one flash of brilliance or carelessness can change the match. If you care about the result this makes the whole thing incredibly nailbiting (a comparison from the world of American Football is when a team is going through a 2-minute drill to try to score to save or win a match: every second counts and there's no space for failure). If you don't care about the result then I think it's just some guys kicking a ball around (although I'll happily watch rugby matches (either code) or AF that I don't care about).

the basic reason any typical European loves soccer is not big scores.
Even in a goaless draw what people that know about soccer see with interest (and Americans usually don't grasp) is tactics and the way 22 players ineract in a field.
I see soccer as a live sociology experiment on complex networks. Each move each pass each action causes interaction and counteraction, while each player plays a certain role (for example difference between attacking and defensive midfielder, although they may appear to play at the same area)

@flashman:

Still, a tiny object moving at 100+mph from a wooden/compound stick which itself is hard and travelling fast, that's a small object traveling very fast.

A ball travelling fast, but a bigger target, and more room for the keeper to move.

That's another reason why I think hockey goaltending (no slight intended to football goalies) is harder, a smaller object AND you can't really take the time to move that much or make a grand save, you have to take speed over range, and at the speed it's going, with such a small size, you only have a second or so to make the save, it's skill and then on top of that very much instinctual, the same way hitting the fastest fastballs, which ate tiny and 100mph+, is somewhat instinct, as in both cases you need to guess right where the baseball/puck is going, and move accordingly, guess wrong and all the skill in the world might not save you, it's about instinct and being knowledgeable enough to be able to make such great educated guesses and be right- in a second.

As for ties... I fail to see how the posibility of another end, a tie, makes the other two more or less definitive, win and loss are definitve and interesting enough as it is, and what's more, they stand as a marker, which team won the day... a tie just feels incomplete in that way...

In fact, that's exactly what makes a 2-minute march in AF so breathtakingly exciting.

If you never HAVE seen AF, or are skeptical about why it's so pulse-poundingly tense and beloved here in the States, watch a 2-minute drill/the last drive (last chance for a team to score.)

Every play matters, every person of the 11 a side matters, every second matters...

Because it all contributes to the end result- either the offense pulls out a miraculous victory by marching down the field and usually just barely scoring, with a running play that just barely gets the ball across the goal or a pass play where the quarterback throws under pressure and the receiver has to leap and just barely get the ball, jsut barely get his feet in, controlling the ball all the while while the defender covering him tries to knock it way...

Or else it's the defense that pulls it out, giving ground grudgingly, as they're by this point weak and tired after hours of battering, and bearing down for a final stand and just lasting it out, like defenders of a fort just lasting through the assault.

THAT is what makes the game so dramatic- because it MATTERS.

Imagine if games, as they used to in older days, ended in ties (they still can and very occaisionally do, but not usually often, maybe one match out more than a hundred each year will be a tie) regularly. Then there's no grand victory march into Paris after the successful offensive that shattered the enemy against all odds to win the game, so to speak, and there's no great defense that turned away that great assault and held onto victory and gains under intense pressure...

In a tie, both armies, both teams seem to be at a standstill...

I think it's the frequency of these ties that's most bothering- again, in American Football, maybe there'll be a tie, but only once or twice a year out of a 16-week schedule, 32 teams playing, and then playoffs besides whre there are no ties allowed, you play until someone wins in the playoffs...

So one or a couple ties a year isn't bad, it just shows the players on both sides really dug in, and neither team could budge the other in their quest for victory.

It happens to often... and you have to wonder if maybe the players are good enough to break the lines, or if the game is set against them doing so... to use a war analogy again, take the First World War- stuck in trench warfare forever will just wear everyone down, eventually you're going to want SOMETHING to happen so a line can be broken, otherwise the whole thing bogs down, and everyone's wondering how long they can stand it going on like this...

"That's another reason why I think hockey goaltending (no slight intended to football goalies) is harder"
The reason people watch sport is not because it's hard or there would be a considerably greater market for televised complex integration.

I said nothing about 'harder' with regard to keeping in hockey vs football.

I am merely responding to the idea that keeping in soccer is a particularly spectacular aspect of the game. I have no argument with the difficulty of even seeing, let alone stopping the puck. But which is the visually more exciting?

Personally, I can't even see the puck once it is lifted in front of a player, I can only see it against the white of the ice.

Obi...

The frequency of the ties has a lot to do with the format of the competition. These teams play only three games in the first round of the World Cup. One point for a draw, three for a win. Everyone wants to win, no-one can afford to lose. Just one or two bad moments and the whole hopes and dreams of a nation are down the drain. We don't have a whole season of games here where an adventurous team can try to qualify with nine go-all-out-for-goals wins and seven losses.

We certainly can't have a team losing the first three games in the World Cup and then coming back to win the next four.

Well, I'll agree to disagree (devilish though that saying is, as much as I hate it) on the "what's more exciting" visually deal between football and hockey goalies, I actually think their saves ARE a lot more visually exciting, they're either saving this bullet coming at them with the glove and and catching it with one hand, which is such an amazing feet, or else batting it or kicking it way, and they'll go spralling for it, down on the ground, and have to make two or three great saves of that fast puck in about three seconds sometimes, from three different angles and different shooters... the diving football catch is a great catch, but I've not seen as many three-in-three-seconds save ordeals, and not with them on ICE... they have firm footing on a field, the hockey goalie's already crouching on ice and trying to balance, and now he has to do all this lightning quick?

AGain, as much as I hate doing it, I'll agree to disagree- but I think hockey goaltending is visually amazing, and more exciting than the football counterpart.

Also flashman, I don't know if anyone ever told you... they never tell anyone this, part of the reason so many people say they can't see the puck, but from a relatively strong hockey fan-

You don't even TRY most of the time to watch the puck (unless, of course, it's out in the open or one plater or two are out alone with it at a part of the ice) you watch teh PLAYERS, and where they love (especially leg and stick movements) will tell you where the puck is, and where it's goiung on; I do that, as do a lot of hockey fans who watch on TV (at least ones I know, and I've heard announcers on TV mention this, too) and I hardly ever lose track of the puck... to be honest, I have a harder time keeping track of a football ball...

Well, what the hell, I'll try a game maybe tomorrow (I live in California, so does anyone know a GOOD game to watch, since if I'm going to try this I should try to get in with a good game... so Pacific time, anyone know a good game that's NOT on 10:00am-1:00pm, that time is sacred, as The Subway Series continues, Game 2 of a 3-game set between the New York Mets and Yankees, the Mets send their breakout pitcher this year, Mike Pelfrey, to the hill, Pelf's 9-1 with an ERA (Earned Run Averae, so basically that's roughtly the amount of runs he allows that ar earned runs, ie, hits he gives up and not, say, someone scoring because a player dropped the ball, that's an unearned run as that's not the pitcher's fault, and so the ERA tracks the average earned runs allowed per 9 innings, 2.50 is considered amazing and anything better is legendary, upt to around 3.5 or 4.00 is acceptable, above that and you're asking for trouble) of about 2.66, so cannot miss baseball and the Mets, especially a game against the hated crosstown Yankees, especially with the Mets on an 8-game winning streak, and especially with Pelfrey pitching the way he was... did I mention I loved baseball?)

OK, there's a game on now, Japan and the Netherlands... let's try that...

It's 4:30am and I can't sleep, insomnia, so either this'll be intersting- or boring and I get to sleep.

Win win! ;)

I think you picked a lousy game.

Why don't you try to get a repeat?

Here, you can download Argentina - Nigeria, and you'll see that a game with very little goals can be very exciting, and you'll also see the role of the goalkeeper.

I'm afraid it's in spanish though.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=778QAHS5(700Mb)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4S5XMHSH(472Mb)

As an American (apologies to South Americans), born and bred, I'd rather watch Aussie Rules than American Football. The popularity (and earning potential) of which is largely driven by its gambling value. This is probably because I don't understand the intricacies of the line battles. I did however, spend 5 of my formative years in South America, so for me, I'd rather watch Soccer (Sorry rest of the world, its easier this way) at the world cup level than just about any other sport, but that's probably because I played it from the early ages (And in the US too) Fandom is, and probably always will be a product of those early years. The thing I like watching most of all, though, is a Yankees-Red Sox game in Fenway park (I'd probably also like to see one in Yankee stadium, just haven't had the opportunity) Of course, as the saying goes, I will yell "Yankee's Suck" even while watching a Phillies-Mets game.

But back to Soccer... Now vs Hockey... Throw a snowball at any American kid, and reflexes will kick in, and while they may not catch it, chances are they will knock it down at least in self defense. Yes, a Hockey Puck is an extreme case, traveling at scary speeds, so it takes a great deal of courage as well as quickness. Those are indeed skills, but you have to guard a 4' x 6' area. The average human body, in pads, is what, 3' by nearly 6'? Now try using that same size body (Smaller really because no pads) to guard a 24' by 8' goal. The skills required are different. Anticipation, positioning are useful to a Hockey goalie, but much more so because of the size goal. Quickness is also important, though in a different way, and of course Athleticism. Ever see a goalie, in position, have to dive his body length? Add in, that as I said, if a hockey goalie blocks a shot with a flop, he's still protecting a large portion of the net. If a soccer goalie (I can't get into Keeper. lol) doesn't stop the shot with his Hands, or knock the ball out of bounds, he is dead meat. Less room for error.

Last comment, the biggest problem for Americans with soccer on the world stage is 'we suck'. We don't really, we have come around a lot. The real problem is we don't dominate it. Its hard on our collective ego as a country. And I suspect a lot of the popularity of Soccer in the rest of the world (After the fact that they grow up with it, which I still think is the prevailing issue) is that the US doesn't dominate it. is that ego-centric? yep, but then, I'm an American. That's how we are taught to think. heh.

American football is about strategy. Real football is about pure talent.

Both are great games, but they are very dissimilar. With this World cup, I decided I wanted to get into Football, and I'm glad I did. (I'm an American.) American Football is enjoyable (for me) because I like to think of what strategy I would do in a given circumstance. International Football (for me) is about admiring the pure talent players have.

There's really very little strategy in football. Bring it up the wings, cross it, and aim for the goal. What makes it interesting is watching Lionel Messi dribble his way past four defenders simultaneously. That's just awesome.

I wonder what The Special One would make of a comment like, "There's really very little strategy in football"?

Fine. Compared to American football, there's really very little strategy.

@rlumley
You're so dead wrong. In football, the strategy and plays are determined by the players on the fly. American football depends on voluminous playbooks dictated by the coaches with only some improvisation on the parts of players. The flow of the game is also constantly stopped by each down. Baseball also progresses in spurts of action separated by long periods of inactivity.

Hockey, basketball, and football are much more free-flowing. These sports depend more on the players' playmaking abilities than the coach's. There's a reason that an American football coach is called a "coach" while the football equivalent is "manager". Personally, I think Americans don't like football as much because they didn't invent it (unlike American football, baseball, basketball, etc.) and are thus not as steeped in it. Think about it: the LA Lakers are calling themselves the "World Champions" now with their NBA title. MLB calls it the World Series. Yet, in the one true global sports tournament, the U.S. is only a modest contender.

No offense but as long as there are unbelievers or ignorati like you, the U.S. will never take its rightful place in the world's game.