I can’t believe it has come to this.  I am actually writing a post about Soccer.

It’s not that I don’t like soccer.  I kind of view it as I see the game of rugby.  It’s an interesting game and as a sports fan, I can see why people like it.  But I am an American.  And as an American, my attention span is already filled to capacity with the likes of professional baseball, pro football, pro basketball, college basketball, pro hockey, MMA, the major golf tournaments, and women’s mud wrestling.  There just isn’t enough room for anything else, save for the occasional Olympic event or the local minor league sports franchises.

Many people, like Jeffrey Kayer from BleacherReport.com, think that this is going to be the turning point toward a significant rise in the popularity of soccer in this country.  I disagree.

Here’s the problem with soccer:  It’s colossally boring!! There are several reasons for this.

The biggest problem with soccer is the lack of scoring.  The average game produces less than 2.5 goals per game.  And that’s in 90 minutes of action!!  Compare that to hockey, where the lack of goals scored is the biggest complaint by people who can’t get into it.  In hockey, the average game produces approximately six goals in a sixty minute contest.

That’s not the only thing that makes it boring.  An issue that’s almost worst than no scoring is the lack of opportunities to score a goal.   Much of a soccer game consists of strategic jockeying for positional advantages.  The method of acquiring a lead and playing ‘keepaway’ is a major deterrent to the action.  Imagine an NHL game where it were legal to shoot the puck all the way down the ice without any penalties.  A two goal lead would be almost insurmountable.

Another thing about soccer that will never fly is the inherent discouragement of physical contact between players.  Americans are bloodthirsty creatures.  Any sport that severely penalizes aggression as much as soccer does is guaranteed to be labeled a pussy sport, and will only be suitable for Ivy League schools and Duke.

The biggest difference between hockey and soccer is the size of the field and the number of players on it.  Hockey is conducive to instant scoring chances.  A forward who intercepts a pass at center ice and has a breakaway toward the opponent’s net can happen in three seconds – changing the momentum and flow of the game in the process.  If the hockey rink were six miles long like a soccer field is, this would be much less likely to occur.

Soccer will never catch on like the other sports because there’s little action.  I can enjoy a defensive battle in hockey where both goalies make 40 saves, or a 2-1 pitcher’s duel in baseball.  Defensive struggles are always interesting because it comes down to a battle of wits in terms of coaching, and the team who makes the fewest mistakes in execution usually wins.  Games six and seven of this year’s Stanley Cup Finals were a perfect example of this.  Pittsburgh won both games by a score of two to one because they out-coached and committed less errors than Detroit did.

That said, I wouldn’t be so enthusiastic about it if it were the norm.  Soccer games aren’t low-scoring affairs because of defensive efforts, they’re so because of the fact that scoring is difficult by design.

Most Americans won’t get into a sport where a score of 2-0 is a blowout and 3-2 is a slugfest.  America’s attention span is way too short for a game where the most you can possibly hope for is one goal every 20 minutes or so.

But, a few modifications here and there and you might be able to turn some heads here in the U S of A.  All of the major sports have made drastic changes to the rules, the equipment and in the case of baseball, the actual field of play in order to achieve one thing:  increase scoring.  A few years ago, the NHL instituted several changes to it’s rules to create more power plays, it called for smaller pads for goaltenders, removed the ‘two line pass’ rule, etc. and goals per game rose 18% as a result.  Basketball revolutionized it’s sport with the three-point line and the shot-clock.  Many baseball teams have replaced their aging stadiums with more hitter friendly ballparks and the league drastically modified the height of the pitcher’s mount to reduce the pitcher’s advantage.  They also fed their players steroids so they’d hit more home runs and conveniently lacked a rule prohibiting the use of performance enhancing drugs.  All of this was done in the name of improving offensive output.

If soccer is going to achieve anything even remotely close to resembling popularity, they’ll have to make similar modifications.  Here are my recommendations:

Make the field 25% smaller.  The width is fine.

Encourage physical play, and create penalties requiring a team to play shorthanded for a time as a result of an infraction – ala hockey.  Also, let them fight.  They can’t all be pussies.

Reduce the number of players on the field, or limit their mobility.  Having 71 people from each team huddled around the net when the ball is down there makes scoring almost fluky.

Create multiple ways to score.  Maybe install uprights over top of the goal posts for field goals (ala football – I mean real football), or stack a pyramid of cheerleaders on each side of the goal and award points for each one of them you’re able to knock down (ala bowling).

Because as it stands, there’s no way this country is going to embrace the game of soccer, no matter how important it is overseas, any more than we’ve taken to curling or lacrosse.

Random Posts

• Detroit Fans – Classless or Misunderstood?
• Very Good Article on Chauncey Billups
• Doesn’t Rick Reilly Have Anything Better to do?
• Shaq to the Cav’s Doesn’t Change a Thing
• Good Luck, Bryce
• I Hereby Submit My Resignation as a Detroit Lions Fan
• Evgeni Malkin is Lucky he Didn’t Lose More than Just the Game
• On Hiatus Indefinitely
• Why the Lions Don’t Need to Win, and Never Will
• Obscure Baseball Stats: Enough is Enough

Tags: popularity, soccer, sports, usa, zidane

This entry was posted by TSDMike on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 11:43 am and is filed under Other/General Commentary, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.