World Cup starts today

[Darin.K]

Offsides in soccer is a very important rule. Scoring goals leads to fighting, hooliganism, rioting and sometimes war between countries. By preventing the scoring of goals, the rule cuts down on all of these. Besides that Andres Cantor would have obliterated his vocal chords years ago without the rule.

Soccer is good exercise and I used to play a lot but if I need a sport to watch on TV every four years I'll stick to Curling. At least with TiVo I can catch a game in about five minutes. Sometimes I'll watch the final in only double speed. Nothing like watching two hours of flopping followed by penalty kicks after a nil-nil game.

The exception of course is playing the nutmeg drinking game, then I am into the action....

[GregFreeman]

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Darin.K wrote: 
hooliganism

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speaking of that, if anyone has not seen the movie green street hooligans, it is a great one and is worth seeing.

[DianeS]

Never seen the movie.  A good one, eh?

Germany looked very impressive, against a rather weak opponent I'll grant you, but still...I happened to be awake at 4:30 this (Tuesday) morning, (unlucky me) so I figured I might as well watch the New Zealand / Slovakia game.  What a goal for NZ...in the 93rd minute!  Slovakia dominated up until then, but, as it happens, their goal did come from a player in an offsides position and it wasn't called properly by the line judge. 

As long as I was awake anyway, I watched the Ivory Coast / Portugal game.  I expected a better showing from Portugal.

I missed Brazil / North Korea, since I was actually out playing soccer at that time.

I expected Italy to dominate and they didn't.  I won't say they were lucky to escape with a tie, but really...

Looking forward to watching Spain tomorrow...and, of course, awaiting the next USA game with bated breath!

Ray.R, that was an excellent explanation of the infield fly rule.  I didn't want to confuse Shane too much by going into it, but I seem to have confused a lot of other folks by the baseball reference in a football thread.  Sorry 'bout that...

I'm glad to see others chiming in on this thread!

Time to escort the kittens off the desk...

d

[GregFreeman]

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Ravens Fan wrote:

I have never understood why the offside rule is needed in outdoor soccer.  How is the offense getting an unfair advantage by getting behind the defense?  The defense should be getting a defender back there to guard the guy to prevent him from cherry picking a goal.

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Forces the game to be better. Otherwise, one team would just stick multiple people by the goal and the defense for the opposing team would be forced to sit back. The offside rule actually helps promote attacking because your defense can push forward to get into the attack, without having to worry about the opposing teams having players behind them. In fact, so far this world cup (as of yesterday) defenders had more goals than strikers!!

The offside rule isn't there for a defensive advantage, per say, but it is to force the game to have more of an attacking aspect.

Although, I have to say, this world cup that hasn't been very true, as the games have been relatively boring.

[elset191]

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@DianeS wrote:

I didn't want to confuse Shane too much by going into it, but I seem to have confused a lot of other folks by the baseball reference in a football thread.

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You're confusing even more people by calling soccer football.

[Intaris]

it's those who insist on calling handegg football who are confused....

[Ben]

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for(imstuck) wrote:

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The offside rule isn't there for a defensive advantage, per say, but it is to force the game to have more of an attacking aspect.

...

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I don't know the rules of soccer but for both American Footbal and Hockey, I understand the Off-side rules as being a way to keep the nature of the the game itself. Imagine how both of those games would change if in the case of hockey the center spent the entire game hanging in front of the oppenents net. The game would turn from a "skate and stick handling game" into a "wing it down the ice". It would start to look like ping-pong and skaing and stick handling would be less of a focus.

So in soccer it sounds like the Off-sides rule accomplishes about the same end, keeping soccer a game of running and ball dribling rather than "Kick the h#!$ out of it and run?" game.

Ben

[Intaris]

Spain 0: Switzerland 1.

The locals are going crazy here.  Great result. 

[DianeS]

WOW!  Switzerland won?  Awesome!  I didn't wind up  watching the game this morning because I was working.  😛  I'll have to tune in and catch the highlights.

No surprise that Honduras lost, although they're a better team than most of the people outside CONCACAF would give them credit for.  I don't know much about Chile's team at all.

SA - Uruguay on in an hour...

Tim...the World Cup IS football.  Real football.  (and I say that as a lifelong follower of the NFL, and the sad-sack Seahawks)  It's played with the feet.  What we Americans call "football" has little or nothing to do with using the feet.  But I can call it futbol henceforth, if that makes you happy. 

d

[Ben]

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DianeS wrote:

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Tim...the World Cup IS football.  Real football.  (and I say that as a lifelong follower of the NFL, and the sad-sack Seahawks)  It's played with the feet.  What we Americans call "football" has little or nothing to do with using the feet.  But I can call it futbol henceforth, if that makes you happy. 

d

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Jack Lambert (aka The Sherrif) used to patrol the back field of the Steeler Defence and won four Super Bowl trophies was taken out of the game sundenly with "turf toe". Aside from the coin toss, what other event in American Football is accomplished without feet?

Ben