Soccer

I don’t play soccer.

I played for one season in the under 8’s before moving to rugby. Other than that, I played it in house sports in 3^rd and 4^th grade at primary school.

I played up front and it was fun scoring goals, but I just couldn’t prefer a game where you can’t knock someone over if they were poncing about with the ball. It’s a soft game: the kind of sport you expect to be played by slippery continentals.

I like to watch the top English Premier League or Italian Serie A sides sometimes; that’s mainly because I just like watching sport when I want to relax mentally.

I always watch the World Cup because I like seeing all the different teams and watching the competition unfold.

Given that I’ve never seriously played soccer and therefore don’t understand the intricacies of the game play and tactics, any criticisms I have of the game are from an outsider’s perspective. Those who play the game may find them worthless. The only opinion I have on soccer which I’m absolutely confident is true is that it’s a game for, in Johnny Warren’s words: “sheilas, wogs and poofters”.

Making It Too Hard To Score Creates Perverse Results

The most obvious problem an outsider sees with the game is that it’s too hard to score. The primary evidence for this is statistical: the unreasonably high proportion of games where the result does not reflect the overall story of the game.

In any sport, I believe a fundamental principle should be that the results are “correct” representations of the games played, at least the overwhelming majority of times. Of course, there will be the odd win against the run of play. That’s OK: people can accept that as long as the proportion of such games doesn’t extend beyond interesting accidents.

But that’s not what happens in soccer. It is often the case where one side has been dominant for the majority of the game, but ends up with a 1-1 draw, or even losing 1-0.

Friends of mine who play and support soccer say “Yes, but that’s part of the game. It’s partly physical, partly chess match. A team who doesn’t have the attacking flair can choose to sit back and defend, blunting the opponent’s attack and waiting for overcommitment and an opportunity for a long ball counter attack. It’s the attacker’s job to unlock the defence and score.”

That actually sounds quite reasonable: a battle between two opposing strategies. I have often used this defensive tactic against a strong chess opponent. My initial response is to think: ”OK, fair enough, if that’s how the game is structured and people who play it are happy, who am I to question it? I wouldn’t want to play it, but I’m not forced to.”

But those same friends agree that the type of results we’re talking about aren’t reflective of the flow of the game from their perspective either. Having played the game, the majority of them believe that many of these results are travesties. They put them down to a combination of bad refereeing, bad luck through near misses and an inability to crack the last line of defence. They seem to be saying it’s too easy for a less skilled side to defend and too hard for an obviously more skilled side who clearly controls the majority of the time and space to register points. Doesn’t that tell you something? Players and fans don’t think many of the results are “correct” representations of the game they have just watched.

There’s also the issue about who is interpreting the “story” of the game. If it’s me, well maybe the chess match part just doesn’t appeal to me. I play chess and appreciate a good defensive strategy, but soccer is meant to be a physical game.

Are the “stories” of the games in question really ones of a skilled defence successfully luring an attacker into a mistake and then capitalizing with quick counterplay?

Or is the true story one of a side more skilled in most facets of the game being stymied by a defensive underdog because it’s too easy to defend?

Examples

Let’s look at a few examples from recent World Cups. Here I’m only considering travesties where the result was “wrong”. There are many more examples where the “right” team ended up winning, but only 1-0, when a proper reflection would have been 3-0 or 4-0.

1.      2010: Spain losing 1-0 to Switzerland is the most egregious example. What a fucking joke that was!

I watched this match. Spain controlled the vast majority of the game. They didn’t just keep getting down to the Swiss 18 yard box only to be dispossessed. There were many legitimate attempts to score which the Swiss were unable to prevent. Even the TV commentators said Spain were clearly all over Switzerland for most of the game. They didn’t seem to have interpreted the game as a more or less equal battle between attack and defence.

For all their touted quality, the Spanish forwards had a few pretty bad misses, so it’s partly their fault they lost. But in pretty much any other sport, such genuine dominance would have been converted into enough points to ensure at least a tight win.

2.      2010: Italy draws 1-1 with New Zealand.

Many people might say this is a churlish example and NZ deserved the draw. There were charges that Shane Smelz who scored the NZ goal was offside. This really comes down to whether or not you think the NZ player got a touch on the ball with his head as it was coming through to Smelz. I reckon NZ should get the benefit of the doubt. Certainly more so than Italy deserve for the dive that got them the penalty for the equalizer.

But for most of the match, Italy dominated. They hit the post with a shot and should have been able to manufacture a couple more goals with all the dominance they had in midfield.

Their strikers played for the most part poorly, so they didn’t deserve anything more than scraping a win. But seriously, any team in that much control of a rugby league, union, tennis or cricket game would almost certainly have won.

3.      2002: Italy loses 2-1 in extra time to S Korea in the round of 16.

I watched this game too. There is no way 1-1 after 90 min was a reflection of the game. Italy should have had at least 2 more goals. Admittedly, it was largely their own fault through bad misses in front of the goal. Christian Vieri’s was a shocker. Even so, S Korea did not deserve to win this.

4.      2002: Spain loses on penalties to S Korea in the quarter final after finishing 0-0.

If there was any justice, Spain would have been playing Italy, then the winner going on to play Germany. S Korea were clearly an inferior side to Spain. Not just in general ability; they were also mostly outplayed on the day. A just game would have Spain with sufficient opportunity to score and win. S Korea were not a side deserving of playing in a world cup semi final.

I’ve seen similar outcomes happen to Man U in the premier league quite a few times as well.

Are these results reasonable? Is this what soccer fans are happy to see? Apparently not if the reactions of soccer fans I know mean anything.

Penalty Shootouts

I reckon these are just fucking stupid. A lot of soccer fans I know agree to some extent. Even some professionals: commentators, players and coaches have all been quoted as asking for debate on alternative methods of obtaining a result after a draw.

Penalty shootouts aren’t exactly a coin toss, because a better team should have better goal shooters and a better goal keeper, but there is still a lot of luck in it. More like a 60-40 lottery than 50-50, but still bullshit after playing 120 minutes of actual soccer.

The most common alternative suggestion seems to be that each team takes off one player after each 5 or 10 minutes of extra time. I’d like to see this: it would open up the game and create a different kind of tension to penalties. I reckon Spain would have beaten S Korea in 2002 if this system had been in place. Maybe they would have then beaten Germany. Brazil vs Spain probably would have been a better final.

Can A Game Loved By So Many People Still Be Shit?

Of course it can! Enormous numbers of people bought the single Achy Breaky Heart, so many that it sold over 1,000,000 copies in the US alone. But it is an execrable song. Just absolutely, fucking appallingly bad.

The simple fact is that most people are idiots. They like shit things because they are too dumb and lazy to expend the intellectual effort on something more sophisticated.

Cricket

Some people might bring up the example of cricket, where a weaker side can grind out a draw on a flat wicket or be lucky enough to bowl first on a damp wicket which then flattens out and allows them to put on a big total.

Now cricket is without doubt one of the greatest games ever invented. So how come such situations are acceptable in cricket but not in soccer?

Well, in the case of a draw on a flat wicket, that’s not acceptable: that’s bad preparation by the groundsman. It’s not how the game is meant to be. Any cricket player will agree. Any pitch should be prepared so you are able to get a result out of it if you bowl well.

In the case of a wet pitch, that’s one downside of the game, because the result between two reasonably evenly matched teams is heavily influenced by the toss. This is just bad luck with the weather. It’s different to playing footy in a downpour, where the rain is a leveler for attacking sides, but still uncontrollable.

The point is, such situations in cricket and rugby are caused by bad weather. Our soccer examples can happen in any weather.

How Could It Be Made Easier To Score?

Bigger Goals

Well, make the goals bigger for a start. The current soccer goal is 8 feet high and 24 feet wide.

Suppose you made them 12 or 18 inches higher and wider on each side. How many shots have hit the post or crossbar that would have been goals?

Interestingly, the 2010 World Cup round of 16 game between Uruguay and S Korea would have finished 2-2 instead of 2-1 Uruguay because S Korea hit the post with a free kick in the first half. We could then have gone to the reducing players extra time method for an exciting finish.

Two Goal Types

Put another goal above the crossbar, say 3 or 4 feet high and the same width, or maybe 12, 16 or 18 feet wide. You score 1 point if you kick it through there and 3 (or even 4 or 6) if you kick it through the normal goal, a bit like Gaelic football.

Now this could very easily lead to more long shots, say from 30 or 40 metres out, but is that so bad? It probably is if people start doing it all the time and don’t try to get in close and score the 3 points. Calibrating the height of the 1 point net would help control this. Maybe make it 2 feet high and 12 feet wide so players need to get close enough to have a reasonable chance of a successful 1 point shot.

Such a scheme would of course radically alter the entire concept of the game, but it’s a shit game anyway, so why not make it better by having higher scoring results? What’s wrong with a score of Brazil 2-7-13 b Portugal 1-8-11? At least the crowd would have plenty of scoring shots to cheer about, which might stop them throwing flares onto the field.

Change The Offside Rule

Maybe. Although apparently this would lead to one or more attackers standing next to the opposition goalkeeper and waiting for a long ball to be kicked in. This could get very boring very quickly, like in rugby league where almost every 6^th tackle play close to the opposition tryline is a grubber kick or bomb. Boring crap.

What Else Could Be Done?

Get Rid Of Penalty Shootouts

As discussed above, these are a moronic and wholly unsatisfying end to a game which has usually been tense and interesting because it has just ended in a draw after extra time (so presumably at least one team was trying to win).

Each team takes one player off after every 5 min of extra time.

Stop Paying Dives

Italy will never get beyond the quarter finals of another World Cup, but this habit of absurdly theatrical diving needs to be stamped out.

How typical of soccer that they use the euphemism “simulation”. Call it diving – it’s such a slippery form of cheating. Roughing someone up is cheating too, but diving is the sort of gutless, slimy cheating that makes people look down on the game.

I can’t believe the referees fall for it so often … and the feigned hysterics bunged on by the perpetrators, especially if the penalty is not awarded! You only have to look at the cultures where soccer is popular and the way most of them behave in life to predict which countries will be the divers.

I remember seeing Australia knocked out of the 1998 World Cup qualifiers in the final match in Melbourne. It finished 2-2, but Iran went through on away goals. Australia were all over Iran for most of the match and should have won, but that’s not my point here.

In the 2^nd half, Harry Kewell came running through and tried to head a ball before it got to the keeper. He jumped in the air, failed to make contact and landed about a foot in front of the Iranian keeper, who caught it and promptly fell onto the ground, rolling about in fake agony. Being deliberately offside or handling the ball is one type of cheating, but lying to get an innocent person into trouble – that’s a type of sliminess you see a lot in many parts of the world and not a whole lot in places like Australia … and they wonder why so many of us look down on them.

When Harry Kewell said what I guess were words to the effect of “you slimy bloody cheating wog” to the keeper, he started waving his finger as if to say “don’t you call me a cheat”. You are a cheat mate ... a greasy, slimy, gutless cheat.

The stupid referee gave Kewell a yellow card(?), with theatrical indignation at his apparent “bad sportsmanship”.

You dumb fuck – did it not occur to you that the Iranian might be lying? It’s just so rare in that part of the world isn’t it?

Rivaldo’s dive in the 2002 World Cup against Turkey(?) is another of the more dodgy examples I can think of. Rivaldo was waiting to be given the ball for a throw in. The Turkish player was pissed off at him and kicked the ball at him, which hit him in the knee. Rivaldo immediately fell over, holding his head in feigned pain.

These are two of the slimiest examples I can remember; there are a whole lot more “trips” or “pushes” in the 18 yard box. The countries who do it as a regular tactic are somewhat surprisingly countries where lying, cheating and false accusations are commonplace in social interaction. Since quite a few of these countries are powerful members of FIFA, I wonder if the attempts to stamp out “simulation” will be any more than tokenistic.