Ahh, now we get down to the football stereotypes. Trouble in the stands? Alright, it happens a number of times in the 80's (but not as often as it's made out to have) when football fever was used by anti-Maggie Thatcherites as a political weapon. Since then, it's happened about as many times as you would expect when you get 40,000 people with differing opinions on something they all believe in *a lot*.

If fact, it happens a lot less that you'd think from that, and no more than it happens to other sports like Rugby. Oh, and what was the riot in Los Angles about a year or two ago? It's a long time since we've seen scenes like that!

Cheers,
Quboid

War isn't about who's right, its about who's left.

i tip my hat off to the yankees they pulled off a ********************** un-believiable result against Portugal, they played out of their skins, a great result- well done
i love it when shock results happen


This comment was edited on Jun 5, 08:12.

booo... soccer.... booo....

if you play soccer your mom don't have a job

Now that the States have gotten the very first victory on foreign soil (I just finished watching the live game), maybe the Americans will pay a little more attention to soccer.

baseball aka a sport called rounders played by *girls*.
ice hockey(with ice skates) hockey played by *girls* .
basketball, netball played by *girls*....notice a trend


This comment was edited on Jun 5, 08:14.

US don't like Football (soccer) because they suck...

everyone knows, us Amercians are pretty egotistic.. if they can't win it.. it must suck.
yah the Female US team wins it.. but like I said, we are egotists.. Girls don't count...

Quboid, I agree with most of what you say. I did find it funny though that you disliked the "assumption that a sports player must not look like a big pussy" after calling hockey a "wussy girls' sport".

One thing though, NFL (Pro American Football) players don't have to try to look big, strong, and tough - they are. They simply have to be to play the game (except the kickers of course). Their disregard for pain may be over the edge but it's not pretentious or fake, it's just the way it is. Talent alone isn't enough, the game is too brutal at that level. ***CHEAP SHOT WARNING*** We just like to keep our sports violence on the field of play instead of in the stands! (Sorry, couldn't resist, you crazy hooligan!) jk Anyway, I don't expect you to understand it any more than I understand your football, it's just what you grow up with.

I probably shouldn't have used the word "pussy" though, I certainly didn't want to say anything that could be perceived as denigrating to soccer. I also get riled up every time a basketball player takes someone's arm off and then screams like a crack baby and looks like the ref just shot his dog when the foul is called. I guess it's simply bad sportsmanship and it happens in every sport.

So, have a great World Cup.


*** As usual, I could be wrong. But really, what are the odds of that happening twice? ***

anon@210.11, spot on mate.

WarPig[doh] - because football isn't about not looking like a big pussy. I hesitate to post this as it could be because of my general ignorance of north American sports, but they all seem so ego centered. Baseball, American Football, even hockey (wussy girls' sport here), they all have loads of big men trying to look big and strong to the point where it's pretentious patheticness. Few footballers need this to perform (defensive midfielders and central defenders excepted) and in my opinion football is a better sport for it.

Sadly, it means some players try to look like big pussies to get a referee decision in their favour. There are rules against it, but until recently, they only work if the ref sees the fake without the benifit of replays. Now FIFA, UEFA, the FA or whoever is governing the given competition are starting to hand out punishments based on replays, which I think Rivaldo is going to fall foul of. Of course, this begs the question "Why wasn't think done 20 years ago?!?!". Oh well.

Sorry to go on, but your post somewhat irked me by the basic assumption that a sports player must not look like a big pussy. I don't think they sure try to look wussy - I think it just shouldn't be an issue.

Cheers,
Quboid

War isn't about who's right, its about who's left.

Just a note. The Wold Cup gets a lot of attention in Antarctica, which has British, Chilean, and Agentine bases.

Just a note. The Wold Cup gets a lot of attention in Antarctica, which has British, Chilean, Agentine bases.

BubbleMage, you're my kind of guy! I'd like to hear the rules, if there are any, for "Deathball".

For me, an American football fanatic, soccer (or hockey) was never even an option when I was young and except for a couple times in P.E. class, I've never played the game. All the sports I grew up with had a couple things in common, either controlling the ball with your hands (throwing and catching) or hitting it with a bat or racquet. I guess soccer and hockey are too "fluid" for me in terms of ball (or puck) control. Also having never played the game, I just can't appreciate how good the players are.

That being said, here's a question: how the hell can you actually tell if someone really gets hurt in soccer? Even in baseball the players will do everything in their power not to even rub the spot where the 95mph fastball just drilled them. Don't some of these players know that there's a such thing as instant replay and that writhing in pain after obviously not being touched just makes them look like a big pussy? Soccer needs a rule where if you're so badly injured that you need a stretcher to get off the field, you must go to a hospital to be checked out - no running back onto the field three minutes later.

*** As usual, I could be wrong. But really, what are the odds of that happening twice? ***

It seems strange to equate how good a sport is to the number of goals scored. If you did that, I could make up the best sport in the world right now.

Its not like all the guys on a Soccer team stand around for 32 minutes, then walk up to the goal and put in the ball, they aren't scoring every 30 seconds because they aren't trying, they aren't scoring every 30 seconds because it is HARD to put that bloodie ball in the net, and that makes it infinitly more satisfying when you do score. Its like a computer game, you don't play a computer game for 30 hours just so you can see the end video (if anyone has played Drakan they know what I mean) you play the game for the journey, for the hours of fun you get. With soccer you don't watch for the goals, you watch for 90 odd minutes of drama, as your team struggles, jumps, and pulls of some moves you could have sworn were impossible, to defeat a worthy oponent.

Number of goals indeed. If you don't like soccer who cares, but like anything as arbituary as this, if you don't like it, you don't need to justify it with strange excuses, you just need to say, "doesn't float my boat" Looked at objectively all sports are equal and its down to the individual. Some people like sprouts some don't, and they don't make up reasons, they just say "yuk" or "yum".

I can understand that in the USA people doesnt like this sport. They call themselves Americans, i thought America was the whole continent ... I can understand that they like American Football (as they call it) because is all about tackling and contact, the strange thing its that they dont leave to use bazookas and such

Football is the best sport in the world. Why? It moves masses everywhere except Canada and USA. Its pure magic, its the sport of the poor. If you go to Brasil or here in Spain with a single ball you can make a football game using the obstacles of the streets. Most of the best players in the world started to learning at the streets such as Raul , Zidane, Figo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos, Batistuta or Valeron.

Thats why they dont understand it

hey ho Di Stefano, Pele and Maradona

I can understand that in the USA people doesnt like this sport. They call themselves Americans, i thought America was the whole continent ... I can understand that they like American Football (as they call it) because is all about tackling and contact, the strange thing its that they dont leave to use bazookas and such

Football is the best sport in the world. Why? It moves masses everywhere except Canada and USA. Its pure magic, its the sport of the poor. If you go to Brasil or here in Spain with a single ball you can make a football game using the obstacles of the streets. Most of the best players in the world started to learning at the streets such as Raul , Zidane, Figo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos, Batistuta or Valeron.

Thats why they dont understand it

hey ho Di Stefano, Pele and Maradona

One of the things I like about football is that it's not all contact. No other large team sports are so open to small, weak, etc as football that I know of. Rugby, American Football, Ozzie rules* etc. In all of those, you need to be big, strong to succeed. Could you see Maradona playing American Football? He'd get slaughtered! Yet in Football, he's made so many headlines it's ridiculous (although most of them aren't much to do with football ) And I'm not saying that because I'm small or weak - I'm no giant but I'm big enough...

That said, there is contact. Watch Roy Keane play and you'll see contact a-plenty. It's a very simple, complicated game. To see it as a game where 22 people kick a ball works, you know what's happening, but the true beauty is lost on you. Only when you go outside after a match to try to recreate a Roberto Carlos circling free kick and break your shed window at the age of 10 do you appreciate football.

Also, it's not just about goals. It's a question of how much you understand it - and I don't just mean understand the rules. I sat glued to the TV and on the edge of my seat (which makes for uncomfortable view I can tell you (picture what I said )) watching Liverpool's UEFA cup run where there was 2 goals in 6 hours of football**, and one of those was a penalty. Boring? Not a second. Not to me.

I can watch baseball or American Football and find it mindnumbingly boring. That's because I don't understand the game. I have no doubt that if I knew the game and liked it enough to play it in my back garden, I wouldn't find it at all boring. Foot-Football is a higher plain to me. A rotten match where I can't kick the ball to save my life is better than pretty much any other activity in a way that I can't quite descibe.

* I don't know a whole lot about Ozzie rules and I could be talking crap here. If so, sorry.

** This is a special example of how few goals there can be. It's not a typical 6 hours of football so don't use it as such. The typical match has a goal scored roughly every 32 minutes, use that figure instead.

Cheers,
Quboid

War isn't about who's right, its about who's left.

I demand one of these at once!

But it lacks the one big draw of American football (other than strategy): full contact. Ain't nothin' like charging around the outside lineman and trying to hammer the QB into a greasy spot to get your adrenaline pumping. Yeah, I'm a neanderthal; so sue me. I like blood mixed in with my recreational activities.

Well you get enough broken bones and blood playing soccer (god it hurts to call it that its football damnit) to disprove that assertion. No body armour being used either. Soccer is a contact sport.

as for the strategy thing I can't see the strategy in American Football either. What is *strategic* about american football and not about soccer and why the hell does it matter anyway.

And of course more than one nation gets invited to the world cup.



Anvil

Yeah, he's a real "lateral thinker" all right: He lifted the core concept of the late, great Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker" series and called it "science." *snort*

Un this is wrong on so many levels.

Partly because the research isn't saying that the universe is a computer - despite the articles spin - but is placing limits on the power of quantum computers.

but mostly because the idea of the universe itself as a computer doesn't actually feature in any of Douglas Adam's Novels which would kinda make it hard to be the core concept.

Greg Bear is a much better source of scientific ideas than Iain (M) Banks as well, but I still need more from both of them.




Anvil

TESTIFY BubbleMage, thou speakest the truth!

I must agree with 24.51:

Watch soccer, watch grass grow, watch paint dry... same-same. Like hockey, it lacks any really cohesive strategic elements. But at least in hockey you can watch them beat the snot outta each other, and that makes up for a lot. Soccer is, at its core, a tactical game, not a strategic one-- which is why children can grasp and play it so readily. (Calm down, fanboyz; I ain't finished yet...).

Cardivascular gauntlet? You bet. It's a very tough game to stay on the field playing, and pro players are great athletes from that perspective. But it lacks the one big draw of American football (other than strategy): full contact. Ain't nothin' like charging around the outside lineman and trying to hammer the QB into a greasy spot to get your adrenaline pumping. Yeah, I'm a neanderthal; so sue me. I like blood mixed in with my recreational activities.

There was, however, one version of soccer that I loved to both play and watch: Combat Soccer. This is the version we played when I was in the Marine Corps as an infantry mortarman. For those not familiar: you take a net laundry bag, fill it up with two sets of cammies, tie the end into a handle, and use it to pummel the living shit out of anyone who either has the ball or tries to take it away from you. Great fun. We resorted to that sport when "Deathball" was outlawed by the brigade commander in Kaneohe Bay, right after we sent three Marines from the same platoon to the aid station with broken bones-- in one morning, no less. He was somewhat less than amused at having his infantry battlions' combat efficiency degraded because of a sociopathic sport, for some reason. I can't imagine why... Damn air-winger pogue.

Yes, there are many more people worldwide who love soccer than American football. I'm aware of that. And I'm glad they enjoy it. Any form of athletic competition is good; it keeps us from mass-murdering each other, (or at least cuts down on the frequency of same). I, however, would rather scrub the bathtub than watch soccer, World Cup or otherwise-- and most Americans agree with me, else it wouldn't be just below women's college softball in broadcast popularity.

Alright, I've said my piece: flame on.