Keeping Time

Yesterday I railed against penalty kicks in soccer, and I suppose against the game in general. Yes, I'm that typical American who thinks it's boring, and not the least because it is. But there are things about soccer I like.

You do have to be in excellent shape to play. It can, too, be athletic. Bicycle kick passes and goals are impressive. Soccer is easy and inexpensive, which is great for kids and weekend athletes. 

But what I like most about it is that the referee and the referee only controls the clock. Teams can't simply call time out when game management gets away from them, or merely to make the other squad wait (I'm looking at you, American football). No one with a direct interest in the outcome of a game should control something as integral to fair play as the time. Too many games are, I will argue, won artificially by simply stopping play because it benefits one side to do it. That's aimed at you again, American football.

So yes, soccer has its good points. Particularly that last one. 

A Kick in the Net

I actually watched the bulk of the Germany-Paraguay World Cup match yesterday. All right, I didn't exactly watch. I flipped between the game and a Yogi Bear cartoon. Yogi might be predictable, but at least he and Boo Boo did more than kick a ball back and forth for two hours. That's about the extent of what I saw Germany and Paraguay do.

Then, those two squads had to resort to what are called penalty kicks to determine a winner. That's truly worse than the ghost runner on second in baseball extra innings. 

Individual kickers go against a goalie one on one. If the goalie guesses right, no goal. If not, goal. The team with the most, ugh, goals wins.

Really, soccer? I get that you need a winner. But penalty kicks? Remove the goalies in extra time. Take 3 or 4 players from each side off the field. Eliminate offsides. Widen and heighten the net. Something. Almost anything would be better than what you have. Shootouts are simply an insult to the integrity of the game. It's why I can't take you too seriously.

Soccer Penalty

I've said this before, possibly until you're sick of it. But I'll say it again, because soccer (football, which is a more proper term, to you non Yanks) needs to hear it. You need a better way to break ties.

The latest example is the US women's national team losing to Sweden in the Women's World Cup. By all measures I've read they dominated the game, yet lost on penalty kicks. Without getting into all the details, the process involves too much dumb luck. Single players line up against a goalie and try to 'score' by slipping the ball past the netminder. Kicker guesses right? Goal. Kicker guesses wrong? No goal. Goalie guesses wrong?  Goal. Guesses right? You go home. It's stupid.

There's things I like about soccer. The teams have no say about the clock, which is how it should be in timed games. That clock keeps going, which I also like. But guessing games to determine championships? Oh, come on. 

Take an equal number of players off the field in extra time. Remove the goalie in extra time. Make the goal wider and higher to increase scoring during normal play to make ties less likely. Take turns with corner kicks even, until one team scores. Base tiebreakers on game stats such has shots on goal. Something, soccer. I'm ready to say anything, because anything has to be better than the current nonsense.

Win the game on the entire field, not the last 12 yards where they set up the penalty kicks. That's just a travesty against sportsmanship and integrity.

Flags are too Nationalistic?

Germany plays Argentina this afternoon in a World Cup Soccer quarterfinal. The whole of Deutschland is plagued with Soccer fever in anticipation of the match. But if you fly your German flag in support of the national team, you may be an ubernationalist attempting to force your xenophobic feelings on the unwilling around you.

There are bars in Germany where they promise not to even display the nation's colors less someone find themselves in the midst of "patriotism, chauvinism, and colonialism", reports National Public Radio. One business owner has had his large German flag ripped down twice by leftist rather than right wingers. They have done so to protest that such displays are too much of a reminder of the country's past.

If we were talking about the World War II era swastika flags there could of course be no argument about impropriety. Yet how can the mere flying of a national flag, an act almost universally accepted as a show of love for and pride in your country, be offensive? Especially as the current one was not officially adopted until after World War I, and out of use during Hitler's reign, what type of extreme nationalism can it possibly imply?

Indeed, it appears at least vaguely schizophrenic, and arguably hypocritical, to shown up at a soccer event to root for your national team yet essentially pretend that the squad is not German. One non-flag bearing soccer fan opined that nationalism leads to racism, and that nationalism is 'easily sparked by many people being patriotic in one place'.

So if you unashamedly root for the German soccer team as the German soccer team you risk becoming a racist? Absurd. It is understandable that modern Germans may be skittish about their history, but it is just plain stupid to assume that the black-red-gold tricolor in some way symbolizes evil. Even merely potential evil.

Go Deutschland! It would be sweet now for Germany to win the World Cup simply so that the anti-flag crowd would be forced to endure the almost certain and incessant waving of the flag by the revelers who would celebrate such a victory. After all, even imperialist, xenophobic racists need to let loose occasionally. Still, if that happens, Poland had better watch out.