I Swear, This is Not About Basketball

I hate futbol so much. Hated it as a kid. Still do. To try and explain it would be explaining my relationship with my dad. I hate hate hate that sport. But I agree, when I try to explain hockey to people, I use futbol as an example.

But even in my hatred of it, I’ll be following the World Cup. Have already sent a txt msg to an english friend of mine saying “USA USA USA”. And his response was “FU FU FU”. Gotta appreciate the love there. :)

i only get to watch the first hour of this it pisses me off….fuuuck…well were probally gonna lose anyways..but shit..

donavon is a pussy but hes good…dont hate on my man u bitch

Bocanegra

now thats a name

GO USA….fuck you earl finland is not in this one!!!

It’s too hard to score; combine this with how relatively easy it is to score a penalty kick, and the ref has too much say in the outcome; offsides rule is stupid and so often called wrongly (who cares where they are anyways?); underdog teams don’t even attack- they hope to win on penalty-kicks; they celebrate like spoiled look-at-me brats (which goes against one of the greatest things about hockey: the post-goal group-hug); soccer shorts are gay; “pitch”, “nil”, and “boot” are flaming elitist words (“nutmeg”, on the otherhand, is cool, but still elitist since you have to know where nutmeg comes from, and how it relates to mace, to appreciate the brilliance of the term); string head-bands !?; and it’s not just the diving, it’s the incessant writhing, followed by a stretcher ride, only to come right back in the game. In short…

I hate the diving as much as you do. Its hard to get my mind around the fact that the single most important tactic in soccer is faking or embellishing a foul.

And yet I will be up at 7AM tomorrow and 4:30AM Saturday watching. And taking long lunches at work. I don’t try to understand.

Maurice Edu (Fontana)

Fontana? really?

lot of speed freaked out ho’s out there….where the fuck do u play soccer out ther?

Soccer sucks. Seriously, its just fucking awful to watch. I can’t stand it. Maybe I’m a small minded American, but whatever. I genuinely can’t watch it.

Now, if you want something similar to hockey… go watch lacrosse. Lacrosse is pretty good. That’s how the Indians used to roll – lacrosse in the summer, hockey in the winter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMASg4mK8XQ

Yeah, I can’t watch this shit.

1. Eliminate the diving. If caught, automatic red card and ejected from the world cup. Period. Hey, end of diving.

2. Unlimited substitutions and larger teams. The field is too fucking big, the games last too fucking long for the same 5 dip shits to run and flop around the whole damn time. That’s why there is jogging. Introduce the hockey concept of forward and defensive lines and suddenly there will be people on the field that don’t look like they just finished a fucking marathon when trying to move around.

3. (Optional) Decrease the size of the field. Much like the NHL did with it’s ice size, if you shrink the field is gets rid of all that open green for people to pass the ball lazily around, tightens it up and makes the game faster. Would work really well with the line change proposition.

Yes, I’m trying to make it hockey on grass.

And the transition to hockey from soccer is much easier than the other way around, so I understand everyone’s general grief with the game. I actually blogged about the diving problem over a year ago, and these were my suggestions:

   1. Reduce the total number of fouls called by allowing tackles which contain incidental and/or minor contact to go uncalled.
   2. Force any player who remains on the ground for more than 15 seconds after a foul to be substituted out.
   3. Require that any player taken off the field after a foul be kept off the field for at least 15 minutes, or even as much as the remainder of the half.
   4. If a stretcher is involved, that player is done for the game.
   5. Implement a policy by which FIFA reviews fouls and levies fines/cards on players who flop regularly.

Adding more subs would make the problem worse, in my mind, because it actually reduces the pace of the game. Defensive breakdowns are less likely (the defense gets tired before the strikers) when the players are fresh, and more players leads to more “fouls” as new subs tend to disrupt the rhythm in a game. Much like hockey, the best* soccer happens when the game has flow and the action goes end to end.

It kinda sucks that hockey has semi ruined soccer for me, but I tend to get over it at least once every four years. I do wish there were a little more scoring, but the answer to that requires fundamentally changing the game, which I rarely support.

*When I say best, I mean “most exciting to watch.”

Yeah, I think the offsides rule in soccer is weird and probably gay, as are most of the players. It’s definitely slow, but I can handle it once every 4 years. Most tournaments are exciting – the World Cup easily is among them.

He’s doing that because it’s socially acceptable for him to act like that but in reality it doesn’t hurt that bad.

Yeah it’s rarely a perfect, direct enough hit to do that to you. It seems like guys embellish it even more if there’s a girl present, I don’t know what’s up with that. If he isn’t physically crying, or is on his feet in less than 10 minutes, he’s mostly just being a dumbass.

I have a modest suggestion for soccer, and its the same one as the astute commenter Carl Johnson made:

If a player lays on the ground for X amount of time after falling/getting penalized/whatever, then the play MUST be subbed out for X amount of time.

For the sake of preventing players faking injury, for the sake of the flow of the game, hell even for the sake of the player’s own safety, he should be taken out.

I’d say if you’re on the ground for 20 seconds you should be subbed out for 5 minutes. People will think twice about acting hurt in order to get a backdoor timeout.

Shit, a soccer post? Okay, okay, you win – you can talk about basketball again.

From The Onion:

Nation’s Soccer Fan Becoming Insufferable

WILMINGTON, DE—As the 2010 World Cup approaches, friends, family, and coworkers of 32-year-old Brad Janovich are growing less tolerant of the exuberant behavior of the United States’ lone soccer fan.

“Who’s got World Cup fever?” Janovich asked his officemates at Credit Solutions Friday, failing to notice their silent stares as he reported for work clad in the sole Team USA jersey sold this year. “I do! I’ve got World Cup fever!”

“Check out this World Cup wall chart I just bought,” added Janovich, who is the only American citizen currently aware that the World Cup begins June 11.

okay this is slow as shit … ugh! … dont’ know that I can actually make myself follow the World Cup … and what is that constant whining sound on the tv?

fuck Cristiano Ronaldo

i think there’s a whole bunch of wags wannabes wanting to do that….

they’re not diving, they’re just pacticing for their upcoming acting careers! no…?

I’m really looking forward to your article about Wimbledon coming up in a couple weeks!

This is funny – an elephant is causing our players issues.

I hope there’s going to be a soccer fight.

Having watched hockey in Vancouver, and soccer in Italy, I just realized there are parallels…I’d say they do it because they love playing to the crowd, and the crowd makes it work.

If they’d just channelled all that energy into improv or something…

They’re not doing penalty kicks yet? When does that start? Goddamn 0-0 ties.

Of course the one game I watch ends up being a 0-0 tie.

Haha I love this.
Love soccer, love the WC.
I seriously didn’t expect a post about the WC at all on BoC? Guess I forgot that Rudy loves soccer, haha.

Did you see the latest on the hawks’ cap melodrama? It’s so hideous. It’s so beautiful. Oh God. I have to go lie down.

I had carlos bocanegra’s parents as teachers in 5th and 8th grade. Cool people.