It’s easy to criticize a sport:
The problem with basketball is that the last five minutes are the only five minutes that matter. The rest of the game is a meaningless build up to those last ticks on the clock. The problem with basketball is that the regular season hardly matters, as half the teams make the playoffs anyway. The problem with basketball is it’s become too self-centered: there’s no passing, like the old days. The problem with basketball is LeBron James. The problem with basketball is Kobe Bryant.
The problem with football is that most plays are unsuccessful; for every beautiful run or terrific pass, you have three or four stops at the line or incomplete passes. The problem with football is the slow pace of the games: the timeouts and reviews and challenges. The problem with football is the terrible physical trauma that players have to endure.
The problem with hockey is it’s played on ice, in cold weather. The problem with hockey is the puck is hard to see. The problem with hockey is that it’s expensive to play. The problem with hockey is that it’s Canada’s sport, and who the hell cares about Canada?
The problem with baseball is that there about twenty minutes of action for every four hour game. The problem with baseball is the long delay between pitches. The problem with baseball is that umpires let batters call timeouts. The problem with baseball is that there is a gross disparity of wealth. The problem with baseball is steroids. The problem with baseball is the Yankees. The problem with baseball is the Royals. The problem with baseball are all the pitching changes.
Soccer (I’ll call it soccer because I am writing this for an American audience) has its fair share of problems. The World Cup had its share of problems. In addressing those problems, it is worthwhile, I think, to state a few of the positives about soccer, and the World Cup.
First, the World Cup is far and away the most popular sporting event in the world. Nothing compares: not even the Olympics are as closely followed as the World Cup.
As citizens of a country not particularly knowledgeable about soccer, or the World Cup, we should at least give it it’s due: a lot of people care about the sport: by so quickly dismissing it, we run the risk of missing something interesting, and possibly entertaining.
Second, the games are brief and the action is near-constant. The scores are not high, but the action is steady. There are no commercial breaks, save the breaks half-time and overtime. There are no timeouts. The clock doesn’t stop running. Having seen one too many pitching changes this year, I can’t tell you what a relief it is to see the inexorable movement forward of that digital clock.
Third, the goals, when they happen, are often quite beautiful. There are, I think, very few moments in sport that are as visually stunning as a well-executed soccer goal.
Fourth: any team can win. Or at the very least, any team can draw. North Korea (and the hilarious subplot surrounding their ‘fans’) almost drew against Brazil. New Zealand, the lowest-ranked team in the tournament, drew against France. And Paraguay. And Slovakia. They finished as the only undefeated team in this year’s World Cup.
Fifth, there are some truly amazing players. It was a revelation to watch Lionel Messi play for the first time: he didn’t score a goal, but he controlled the entire offense, setting up shots for his teammates and dismantling the opposition. Diego Forlan’s penalty shots and corner kicks were consistently astonishing: for the tournament, he seemed the only player capable of kicking the ‘new’ ball into the net. It is fun watching some of these guys: they’re the best in the world, and sometimes you see why.
Lastly, the great joy of the World Cup, from an American standpoint, is that it is a new sport for us to learn. Prior to this year’s tournament, I had no idea who any of the big players were. I just had no idea. Now I have some idea who they are. Now I can speak a little bit about the failures of Rooney and England, or the wonderful successes of Uruguay. Now I know a little about the history of soccer in the Netherlands. Obviously, I know next-to-nothing about the game. But I was at nothing…so I’m getting somewhere.
I loved the World Cup. I loved the US team’s dramatic comeback against Slovenia, and their stunning draw with Algeria. I loved plucky New Zealand holding off the defending champs Italy for 84 minutes, drawing a 1-1 tie in a game when they were outshot on goal, 44-1. I pulled hard for Uruguay, who won a stunner against Ghana. I enjoyed the run of the Dutch, and I was happy that Spain won their first Cup. I had a great time watching the games in the States, and I had a great time watching them in Fiji and New Zealand.
I loved the World Cup.
But…it could be improved.
So, with due deference to a sport that I am far from knowledgeable about, I’ll submit five changes that would improve the World Cup.
Five Changes
1. Review goals. Every World Cup, American sportswriters will try to explain why soccer hasn’t caught on in America. Here’s my stab at answering that: we don’t like soccer because it is too capricious.
It’s not a bad thing that the difference between winning and losing is typically one point…it’s that so often the one point can come down to a bad call by a referee. It’s not bad that the U.S. drew against Slovenia. It’s bad that the US actually had the winning goal, but it was erroneously called back.
It’s one thing when a lesser team wins. But we mind when a lesser team wins because of something that happens that is external from the field of play.
Soccer can be low-scoring. Actually, I like that it’s low scoring: that few goals are scored make the rare one all the more remarkable. But the goals that do happen have to be legitimate. And when a goal is legitimate, it should hold up against a ref’s bad call.
FIFA is moving towards fixing this problem: they have promised some kind of video replay, which would go a long way towards legitimatizing the outcomes of these games. And hey, props to them for being willing to change. I follow a sport that is far more change-averse than the governing body of soccer is.
2. No ties. It is completely and utterly ridiculous that most of the games during the world’s premier sports event are allowed to end it ties. There are sixty-four games of soccer during a World Cup…forty-eight of those games can finish in ties.
That’s 75%...3/4th of the games. Damned near all of ‘em.
Look, I love sportsmanship as much as anyone else. But sports should have a winner and a loser. Even in the early rounds.
Ties are lame. They make for bad play…when the score is tied in the late minutes, you could see some of the teams settling for the point. That’s terrible…you would never see this in any other sport: two teams happy to walk away with a tie.
(I live in a city (Wellington) that had a parade because the New Zealand team didn’t lose during the World Cup. I’m happy for New Zealand, and I don’t want to take anything away from the team because they played brilliantly during the World Cup. But…they didn’t win anything. They just managed not to lose.)
From a fan’s standpoint, it’s ridiculous to allow ties. If I pay $1500 dollars to fly to South Africa, and another $200 for a ticket to watch the US and England reenact the Tea Party on a soccer pitch, I damn well want to see a winner. It isn’t ‘sport’ if there isn’t a winner.
3. End penalty stages. This goes hand-in-hand with ‘no-ties.’
Again, this is one of those aspects of soccer that everyone else in the world is perfectly okay with, that drives Americans nuts. As one reader pointed out in the “Ask Bill” section, having penalty kicks it like have basketball games end with free throws. It’s terrible
(I will say that the penalty kick stages are oddly exhilarating. It’s just sooo much scoring, after hours of so little scoring. All those goals are a lot to take in).
This, again, doesn’t require rocket science to fix. Have the extra time round (fifteen minutes each half). Then go to sudden death.
Why isn’t this the case? I mean, isn’t this self-evident? And: wouldn’t that make for great entertainment? Wouldn’t that be fun?
4. Review floppers and penalize them. I hate the theatrics during the World Cup. I hate the flopping. I hate that every time a player feels contact within forty yards of the goal, they go down like Bambi’s mother. I hate that, without fail, when a team is ahead in late minutes, a player will go down with a sudden hamstring injury that requires magic spray or a stretcher, only to jump up on the sidelines and come back on the field of play.
I hate them. They make me hate soccer players, and soccer teams, and soccer fans. Things start to get exciting and then a goddamn Greek Tragedy has to unfold on the middle of the field.
What is most frustrating about the flopping is that it is SO easy to fix: it’s like the batters in baseball who step out of the batter’s box between pitches: someone should just not allow them to do that. The umpire should not grant a time-out.
Flopping is the same: a few easy rules would fix it:
First Rule: if a player is on the ground for more than thirty seconds, the stretcher should be automatically brought out. And if the player removed wants to return to the field (that is to say: if the player isn’t actually injured and requires a substitute but is just wasting time on the clock) then that player should have to wait three minutes before he can return to the field of play.
That would stop the clock-eaters at the end of the game: those guys who slow down the most exciting point of the game by writhing around and demanding a stretcher and then popping up like a happy rabbit when the stretcher reaches the sideline. If a player pulls that stunt, he should be kept off the field for a chunk of time.
Second Rule: if a player flops: if a player goes down without any contact, and it is obvious upon review that there was no contact, then that player should be banned from the next match.
Look: we have a billion cameras all over the field: it is fairly easy to see when there is contact, and when a player feigns contact. If a player feigns contact, that player should be suspended from the next match.
We’re talking about egregious events. For me, the worst moment of the World Cup was the incident between Kader Keita of the Ivory Coast and Kaka of Brazil. Late in a chippy game, Keita ran into Kaka’s right arm and then threw his hands up to his face, pretending that Kaka had elbowed him in the nose. The referee, observing the brilliant feint, issued a stunned Kaka his second yellow card, which left Brazil down a man, and deprived soccer fans the chance to see Kaka, one of the world’s best players, play against Portugal.
The stupidity is that no review happened to overturn the call. Kaka obviously didn’t elbow the other player: the other player committed an act of appalling bad sportsmanship. The ref, who could only judge the contact by the reaction, had no choice. But someone else should: when a player’s flop unfairly penalizes another team, that penalty should be lifted.
A tough penalty would stop the worst offenders. We’d still have players going down like wounded deer when there is contact, but we wouldn’t have the ugly dives for penalty shots that make an otherwise beautiful game so ugly.
And if a player’s flop leads to a team playing minutes down a man (as Brazil did with Kaka out), the opposing team should have to play an equal number of minutes down a man…to start their next match. We can call it the Rule of Keita.
5. No Goalie, No Off-Sides.
A good defense can stave off a sustained offensive attack almost at-will…it is tough to win when you are behind. Scoring is too difficult when one team is playing full defense.
The most obvious way to change this is to eliminate the off-sides rule: let the strikers hang out by the goal and wait for the long pass. I used to like this idea a lot.
The problem is this: eliminating the offside rule would almost certainly swing the balance too far in the direction of offense: we’d go from 1-0 and 2-1 games to games where teams would spend the majority of the game playing exaggerated offenses or defenses. That is to say that the score was even, we’d see real soccer, but when one team went up, the other would shift to having three or four guys hanging in the opposing goal box. It’d be roller-coaster soccer, which doesn’t sound too bad, but we don’t need to go crazy here.
A better rule is this: no off-sides if the goalie is pulled.
You want to dump all your guys downfield and try for the equalizing goal? Fine. You want ten guys in the opposing goal box? Fine. But you have to lose the goalie. For the rest of the game.
This evens things up: it allows for more strategy: a team that is behind can roll the dice: they are no longer bound by the restriction of staying behind a defender. But…they don’t have a goalie.
And think of how entertaining this would be: it would be a free-for-all: the team that is down would be doing anything to get away from the defenders, and the team ahead would be trying for a fast break to the open net. It would be madness. It would be chaos.
That’s what soccer needs: the chance for a little chaos to break out. The one critique about soccer is it doesn’t leave a lot of room for random moments of drama. With all the set pieces and rules, it’d be nice to have a little loophole that would allow the losing teams a puncher’s chance in the last seconds. The order of soccer is a beautiful thing, but it might be nice to loosen up on that order a little bit.
Dave Fleming is an American writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He is currently trying to learn the rules of rugby. He appreciates questions, comments, and corrections from soccer fans, and he wants to assure everyone that he’ll go back to baseball with his next article.