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.

No, Seriously

I do not take soccer seriously. If you like it, fine. I'll even admit to things I like about it. Only the referee controls the clock, for one. And you have to be in outstanding physical shape to play it. It's also a cheap, easy sport for youngsters and their parents. It even deserves the name football more than the American brand. But I can't take it seriously so long as championships, such as the World Cup currently happening, are decided by what they call penalty kicks.

Basically, they place the ball in front of the goalie and one guy kicks it towards the net. If the goalie guesses right, he stops it. If not, easy goal. This is repeated until one team, after an equal number of tries, scores more than the other.

That's absurd, sports fans. I realize that in a tournament you need a winner. But widen the net. Remove the goalie. Take players off the field every few minutes of overtime to create more room to run, make plays, and score. Get rid of the offsides penalty in extra time. Something. Do something so that the game is decided on the field and not somewhat randomly as it is now.

Until some kind of adjustment is made, I can't take events such as the World Cup seriously. It would be like the World Series decided with a home run hitting contest, or a Super Bowl with a punt, pass, and kick display. Figure out ways to win during the ebb and flow of actual play or forget it. 

Soccer's Boring. There, We Said it.

OK, we're going to say it. We're going to be 'that' guy, we're going to be the American dinosaur about the game. Despite all the gushing over the 2014 World Cup, we're going to say the thing which most Americans are thinking, and they're thinking it because they're right.

Soccer's boring.

Sorry, world sports community, but 0-0 and 1-1 games simply lack real excitement. A lead of two goals with twenty, heck, thirty minutes left is generally insurmountable, and even soccer fans know that. The game is dull: they need to widen the net or take a few players off the field or something.

There's a reason so many Yanks haven't taken to the game. We like to see sports where teams are actually in the game for the whole length of it. A 4-0 baseball contest can still be overcome in the late innings, and American football and basketball stop the clock so often that it almost guarantees no one is out until the fat lady sings (an issue of sportsmanship and fair play in itself, but one which provides at least manufactured excitement). You know why Portugal lost 4-0 the other day? Because even they knew, after the second German goal, that they were toast.

And then, when they finally decide to actually allow a team to win a close game, and when that winner isn't produced in a hundred and twenty minutes, two whole (real) hours of play, they end it with a shootout, where either the lucky shooter or lucky goalie secures the win. That's like winning a World Series on a home run contest or a Super Bowl on a field goal (oh, they do that, don't they?). At the least NHL lets hockey players win a Stanley Cup on the ice and not after a series of one on ones.

We're not saying that the game is unathletic or the players without skill and stamina. It's just dull. That tells us more about the rest of the world than it does about the US, quite frankly.