Credit to Ted Lasso for, at a minimum, sparking an interest and, after watching several games of the World Cup...
The spark done gone out.
My G-d it is the most boring game I have ever seen, and I can watch curling!
I will watch NCAA Division IV Girl’s Badminton before I will
watch another soccer game.
I tried. I really did.
I tried doing the flow thing... The beauty of the patterns of
the passes, the graceful arc of the ball in flight, the ebb and flow, but I
couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to be on mushrooms to really enjoy it.
And, if I did take mushrooms, there would
be a Three Stooges Marathon on ME TV that would be way more entertaining.
Speaking of Eb and Flo…
Quick pitch - The character Eb
from Green Acres moves to the big city
and gets a job in a diner!
OK, back to soccer.
I tried the mocking route. Whenever a shot was taken, so, I don’t know… every once in a while, I would yell out “Ohhhhhhhhhh! So close. So
close.” But that got boring as well.
I did the, “I know! I’ll
call the game in a British accent” doing a sort of Chon Oli-ver delivery. Meh.
I brought on special guests like in a Manningcast, dusting
off my Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions. I brought on Winston
Churchill for Christ’s Sake and still… Boring!
I did one game that I had DVDd in fast motion. Did it in 2X. Boring. Did it in 3X. Boring.
Did it in 5X while playing Yakety Sax in the
background… OK that was less boring, but
it was still a nil-nil game and there were no scantily clad women. I may try it
again using NCAA Division IV Girl’s Badminton.
I tried watching the Spanish broadcast, but they made the
game sound so exciting I started to question my sanity.
Bottom Line…
To be fair, maybe my antipathy towards soccer began in
summer camp. I was on the heavy side and slow. So... a defender. Maybe I just liked baseball, basketball, and
football more because I was much better at those games.
Or maybe it’s just really, really, boring.
I know it’s the world’s most popular sport, but the Big Mac is the world’s most popular hamburger.
Just sayin’.
That's funny, Doug K. But I gotta say...baseball is now so dull, I wonder if many people feel the same about our favorite sport.
ReplyDeleteFor me, soccer is like one of those Olympic sports that it's great to see every four years. Beyond that...
ReplyDeleteWatching baseball is a contemplative experience.
ReplyDeleteWatching Soccer is, let's be kind and call it hypnotic.
Soccer is so hypnotic that that could use it for behavior modification. Just flash chyron messages like,"Stop Smoking" throughout the game.
Soccer . . . I don even know her.
ReplyDelete(sometimes the 't just gets left off - don't know how and don't know why but I'm OK with it)
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteMy daughter's high school has a pretty good boys soccer team. They went to some district playoffs or other this Fall and she wanted to go to the games. I took her, she went off with her friends, I stood over by the fence with my dog. It was pretty exciting actually. I think it's because it was wild-ass up and down the field run-and-gun, unlike the glacier-paced professional games.
Offsides penalty should disappear. Let them go up and down the field. That'd be more fun.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteRight. And then there's American football, where the actual playing of the game takes all of about 11 minutes.
There's another 35 minutes where two old white guys mansplain what you just saw with your own eyes and what you might possibly see in the next play that will last, oh, maybe 10 seconds. Not to mention how many times they replay WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY SEEN several times. Just in case you didn't understand it the first time.
All very exciting stuff.
And then, over the course of the next two hours or more, you watch advertisements for beer and automobiles.
Yeah, all very exciting.
We've become so accustomed to short sound bites that to pay attention for a prolonged period of time overloads our tiny little brains.
Try concentrating for more than a minute at a time before you fall fast asleep.
Dick,
ReplyDeleteThe amount of time played is a false construct. That's like saying that a round of golf has under two minutes of "action" and that's if you count the flight of the ball.
You can like soccer. A lot of people do. I don't.
Not sure why you are being insulting.
ReplyDeleteYou can't drink beer at the world cup. Even cricket matches have alcohol. They break for tea, but 'tea' in Australia means alcohol, cricket or not.
Baseball, you can get an overpriced warm beer and pizza with special rat feces sprinkles. At least the dogs can be kosher if you go to the right vendor, or at least were when they went on the truck to the stadium.
I wonder if they have kosher hot dogs in Qatar?
When I was working in Dubai, I'd eat at the Hilton 2 or 3 times a week, at their sports bar (hint, they serve alcohol). Your couldn't hear yourself think if the British premier league or the Saudi league were on TV. In addition, the smoke was thick when the Brits were there, and solid when the Saudis were there.
You're certainly right about the circumstances of this World Cup, Rufus. It's a travesty—and first and foremost because of the thousands of foreign workers who reportedly died building those spectacular stadiums.
ReplyDelete(Incidentally, I'll eat a soccer ball if the new, NYCFC stadium in Flushing ends up looking anything like its supposed simulations. Things like that just don't get built in America anymore.)
Mildred, I used to like soccer in high school. My school was too small to field a football team, so we played soccer instead. We didn't really know much about the sport, but because most of the best athletes at other schools went out for football, we won a lot of games. And it's a sport where a lot of different body types can play.
ReplyDeleteBut it was also exciting, as you say. I would be all for eliminating offsides. I think soccer would instantly become about the most watchable game in the world.
Never gonna happen, though.
I think they should make the goal bigger. Say, the length of the field.
ReplyDeleteThen, because it would be so large they would need to have more than one goalie. I'm thinking 11 is a good number.
With that many goalies it would be hard to kick a ball to get a goal so maybe they should be able to pick it up and run it in.
Or throw it to a teammate who is already past the "goal" line. I'd watch that.
Hoss,
ReplyDeleteEVERYTHING in the middle east is built by foreign workers. Think India, Pakistan and Nepal. And the rulers do. not. care. if the help is maimed or killed. If they have a shot of whiskey, THEN they're pissed, and not in the British sense.
I had a guy in Dubai crack up when a guy almost got stuck in the back of a shipping container by a LARGE forklift moving a piece of equipment. I asked him what was so funny about a guy almost being crushed?
"He just swore in five languages, and three of them he doesn't even understand!"
Arab oil sheiks *do not work*. They get other people to do that.
Dick,
ReplyDeleteI can agree with you that the more knowledgeable a person is about a game (or anything for that matter) does make it more interesting, as does context.
Perhaps there will be a day when American's love the game but you were framing my dislike as an intellectual shortcoming. An issue of attention span or our (Americans)having tiny little brains. I'm sorry but that's just not going to fly.
To me, and I can only speak for myself here... watching two teams play for ninety plus minutes and fail to accomplish a single goal (The scoring of a goal being the goal of the game)is just not that interesting.
Is it skillful? Sure. Does it have its moments? Fine. But as far as entertainment goes... Not so much. To me.
There are too many other sports available.
For the record... I used to like indoor soccer. The NY Arrows.
Steve Zungal and Branko Segoda were amazing soccer players. They were also scoring machines.
Last, everybody gets to watch what works for them. I like watching boxing but can't watch the UFC. I'm not sure why but it's the case.
If I never saw another soccer game that would be just fine.
The best thing bout soccer.....the music it begins and ends there
ReplyDeleteI understand Soccer.
ReplyDeleteI just choose not to watch IT.
Or rather, I chose years ago not to watch IT.
So now I really don’t think much about IT.
That is unless I am immersed into a deep dive about IT because something or someone I interact with is doing the deep diving.
So I shift my consciousness cruiser into NBR (neutral but respectful) and wait IT out.
And sometimes I think about Manchurian Candidate.
Or how scary Josh Donaldson will be to other parents when he takes his daughter to Parent Teacher conferences In about seven or eight years.
BLOCK THAT KICK
BLOCK THAT KICK
(start fade)
BLOCK THAT KICK
BLOCK THAT KICK
BLOCK THAT KICK
BLOCK THAT KICK
BLOCK THAT KICK
Doug, what would you say to the great many people who claim that baseball, the game we love, is boring?
ReplyDeleteDick -
ReplyDeleteIt depends.
If the person were genuinely interested then I would start with talking about the game's mano a mano nature (pitcher v. batter).
How the tension builds and changes with the count. How the pauses in- between the pitches provide the fan with the time to think about and escalate that tension. It's why shots of the crowd is as much a part of the game as the game itself.
Each at bat can be excruciating. A well timed hit or walk off as joyous as anything you will ever experience.
I would say that the long season breeds a familiarity with the players that creates very specific expectations of success or failure.
And that the individuation of each act that goes into a "play" reinforces that intimacy.
How each player stands alone to execute that act. There is no "if only the offensive line gave him more time" or "if the pass was better."
Everything a baseball player does, good and bad, offense or defense, he does with the full attention of the crowd.
Each player is his own story. His own legacy. Each pitch an opportunity to reinforce or change that narrative.
And yet with all of that, it is very much a team sport and the team becomes a story of its own.
Yes it's a slow game but good stories take time. And baseball is nothing if not a game of stories.
Baseball is the ultimate challenge; you against the pitcher or you against the batted ball, within a sport that you can't win by yourself. And failure is often the result in which you must take the walk of shame back to the dugout.
ReplyDeleteSoccer is great cardio, but so is a marathon which I find equally dull to watch.
And my daughter played right through college. She played defense so there was always the drama of whether she would contribute to a goal[for the other team.}
If she blundered and mucked up it would be like that alpine ski jumper in The Wide World of Sports.
Speaking of which, the World Cup would be so much more fun to watch if they incorporated the demolition derby into each match.
Be and Flo---, Eb goes to the big city and becomes a star in Progressive commercials.
ReplyDeleteLet's face it: the reasons people give for hating futbol are the same reasons they give for hating baseball.
In baseball, NOTHING happens. Nine fielders on a side and they're all just standing around waiting. The only people who seem to be "playing" are the pitcher and catcher who spend the entire game just tossing the ball back and forth.
Meanwhile, the guys with the bat in their hands mostly walk back to the dugout disgusted because they haven't made any contact at all. I once saw a game where 27 guys did that and that was HALF the outs allowed.
Oh, and a guy hit one over the fence once. Everybody screamed and cheered, then settled back down for another beer (a thing they do in futbol as well).
Oh, and one more thing: the fans at baseball games get so bored, they do something called the wave just to amuse themselves; in Southern California, they amuse themselves while the game is being "played" by keeping a beach ball aloft, as unsuccessfully as the "entertainment" on the field (two reprehensible activities that would NEVER be condoned at a futbol game).
Baseball and soccer - hated by the uninitiated for many of the same reasons.
Curling can be fun as well, providing you possess an attention span longer than the average hummingbird.
ReplyDeleteAnd Doug, please forgive me for the insults - I become deranged when people criticize futbol and baseball as being boring. They both can be but it takes a completely different mindset to sit through either.
Though I'd rather watch 90 minutes of futbol than 3-4 hours of baseball, any day of the week, especially if the Yankees are losing.
Baseball, as it's played by the Yankees, is often excruciating to watch.
ReplyDeleteSoccer also has stretches where nothing happens. People go nuts when something ALMOST happens.
But at least with soccer, I don't have to sit through repetitive, obnoxious, aggressive commercials.
So, one point for football (which is English for the game, as opposed to "American football").
The benefit of both sports is that you can have them on and do a crossword or read a book until something really does happen, which you can catch on instant replay from six different camera angles.
Curling, on the other hand, is something I have to actually watch in order to see how things happen. And they do happen, with regularity. I'm also fond of women's Alpine skiing. So sue me.
You can't eliminate the offside rule in soccer. Without it attackers will go as close to the goal as possible and defenders will join them there. Everyone will congregate right by the goalie and there will be less open space to play the ball into. As contradictory as it may sound, limiting the areas one can go whenever they please, actually OPENS up more space for the game to be played.
ReplyDeleteGetting into soccer as an adult is hard to do by watching one or two games every four years. But that is no different than getting into football or baseball. It took me YEARS of considerable watching time to get into both. And I must give props to American sports commentators for this. While soccer commentators tend to assume everyone knows the ins and outs of the game, their American counterparts seem to acknowledge that those watching are a mix of new, casual and veteran fans. They mix their commenting to accommodate all of them.
You have a great point, Platoni. And great arguments all around.
ReplyDeleteI love baseball for many of the reasons Doug cites. It is unique, in being an individual game within a team game. Much like great opera, while it can seem dull or just plain weird at times, it builds to stunning, unforgettable crescendos. It is also, as Roger Angels called it, the Summer Game, adapting the rhythms and nostalgia of that season.
And I think most of what Dick says about soccer is also true...
...And yet, with man's infinite capacity to wreck even his most beautiful creations, I think that both baseball and soccer have been hurt in recent decades by too much fiddling with their essences.
ReplyDeleteWe've discussed most of contemporary baseball's failings here before: reducing the game to little more than walks and strikeouts, losing the fine arts of pitching to contact or hitting to the opposite field, diminishing the role of the pitcher and the importance of the long season, etc.
In soccer, I think deciding major games with penalty kicks is an atrocity. And too often in World Cup over the years, it has encouraged teams to play for ties in knockout games and then go to penalties. I was very glad to see that Italy did not make this year's tournament. The Azzurri loved nothing better than playing lockdown, defensive matches, then winning on PKs. Awful.
Oh, and Rufus: horrible story! And no, I have no illusions about how foreign workers fare in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why the World Cup should never have been held in a place like Qatar. Ideally, neither the World Cup nor the Olympics should ever be held in a non-democracy. But both FIFA and the IOC are such corrupt organizations that this will never happen.
As much as I love European football, I'm glad the World Cup only happens once in four years. I look forward to the beginning of the Premier League every season and I'm never disappointed.
ReplyDeleteWhat I've noticed this time around is that these national teams are basically all-star teams. Some of the lesser countries might play together all year, but their talent is marginal - like Canada. The United States is just above that level.
As a result, defense is so much easier to play than offense which requires a coordination these national teams don't have. So I'm seeing a lot of frustration on the part of very talented forwards who don't have their usual running mates with them. Harry Kane of England is a case in point. He's a gifted striker who has looked completely lost because his usual left winger with Spurs (Son) is playing for South Korea. I can't even tell you who England's left wing is because he's been completely ineffective so far.
What I see happening this past week is a lot of "schoolyard soccer" which is pretty ugly. Lots of midfield action and many goals conceded on rebounds. Doesn't make for a particularly enthralling entertainment.
With any luck, once they get to the knockout stages, things will get more interesting. Hopefully. Then once this mess is over we can get back to some serious club football.
And...video replay rapidly ruining soccer just as it does every sport. Brazil goal disallowed today about ten minutes after it was scored, on a replay look on an offside that happened about 30 seconds before the goal, near midfield.
ReplyDeleteRidiculous.
I'm now completely for play on, and let human fallibility take its course.
Sounds like the issue is the lateness of the replay. That's why play is stopped pending outcome. I see video replay as the only way to generate correct correct calls and outcome. In baseball, I long for the day when the umpires have a reduced role, and especially back the idea of a fully automated SZ. The umpires union will fight it, and the players will probably offer a degree of lukewarm support, but the umps sun is setting...
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe beauty of the patterns of the passes, the graceful arc of the ball in flight, the ebb and flow...
Doug K., you forgot the tear-jerking, nudging and winking, Oscar-winning performances known as "dives". The ridiculous dive histrionics make WWE wrestling look like high art.
I hear ya, 999, particularly on balls-and-strikes. But as it is, the replays take way too much time. That's particularly ruinous to a nonstop game like soccer. But even in baseball and football, it gets tedious.
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