I enjoyed watching a few games in the FIFA World Cup this year, but it was the final game between Spain and the Netherlands that reminded me of why soccer is not my favorite game to watch.\u00a0 I personally see the game as a microcosm of a communist system, and here is why.<\/p>\n
It’s like working for peanuts. Soccer games sometimes seem endless before someone scores.\u00a0 This year’s finale between Spain and the Netherlands was a case in point.<\/p>\n The core problem is that the field is so HUGE !\u00a0\u00a0 Frankly, when I watch a sport, I want to see accomplishment, not activity.\u00a0 A bunch of guys running up and down the field passing the ball among themselves 5 or 6 times, then losing it to the other team who repeats the same thing, and the whole cycle repeating endlessly with no score change, … that’s a sleeping aid.<\/p>\n And while the shots may be exciting, there are far too many misses.\u00a0 Only hockey rivals this sport in the large time gap between actual scoring.\u00a0 It just creates frustration.\u00a0 And when enough frustration builds up, it’s no wonder that a single goal appeases the crowd with so much excitement.\u00a0 It’s more of an expression of relief.\u00a0 “Only one point? Who cares… we’ll take it!”<\/p>\n There is only one way to score: no matter how you shoot, or where you shoot from. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Compare that to basketball, where getting the ball through the hoop can get you one point (free throw), two points, or three points for a long-distance field goal.\u00a0 In football, you get six points for a touchdown, one point or three points for a field goal, or even two points for a safety or a end-zone completion after a touchdown.\u00a0 The various ways of scoring (reward) are associated with the degree of risk taken, and add an extra dimension of strategy to the game.<\/p>\n Why is it that a player who scores a goal by kicking the ball from the middle of the soccer field, or even from outside the goalie’s box, doesn’t earn two or three points for the achievement, compared to the player who scores from only 5 foot in front of the goal.<\/p>\n You see, in communism or any collective system in its most ideological form, all work is seen as having equal value to the whole.\u00a0 So if you produce more than someone else, there is no extra reward.<\/p>\n So with this equal value system, it would actually make sense to always take the ball to within several feet of the goal and shoot from there.\u00a0 The chances of getting past the defenders are better, making an accurate shot is easier, and ultimately … the reward is the same. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The referee always gets an earful when any little hardship is encountered.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I have never seen a sport where the referee so often gets the “what, are you crazy!?!?\u00a0 what, are you stupid!?!?” look from a player for almost every penalty called, or not called.\u00a0 I especially love this, when the player is blatantly faking a foul\u00a0 (like rolling on the ground and grabbing a shin).<\/p>\n It’s part of a problem with the game.\u00a0 The players spend so much time, working so hard for so little reward, they turn to the referee (i.e.government) to help them out in any way they can get it.<\/p>\n Oh, and I especially love the approach a referee uses for serious penalties: documenting the “incident” on a yellow card and slipping it back into his pocket, as if he is going to file that away in some secret government record against you.\u00a0 In every other sport, the referee makes the call and an official on the sidelines documents the call.<\/p>\n Also, when do you ever see a soccer coach come out and argue with a referee for his players?\u00a0 I’ve never seen it.\u00a0 Football, baseball and basketball coaches will always back up their players and give the referees an earful when the penalty calls start getting out of line.\u00a0 I guess in soccer, when the authority dishes it out, you have to just “take it” as if it’s from God.\u00a0 Soccer always adds a few extra minutes to the game to compensate for stoppage, but some of that has to be for the time the ref spends writing stuff down while he is on the field.<\/p>\n Sometimes I think the referee should just hand the player the yellow card and tell the player to see the principal after the game.\u00a0 The last time I saw this system of enforcement was in kindergarten, so it would seem to fit.<\/p>\n Time remaining is always a mystery, and other stats are not displayed to the crowd. Other than the score for each team, there isn’t a lot of openness in the process.\u00a0 In every timed game except soccer, the clock is part of the scoreboard, and it is the official game clock.\u00a0 Everyone can see it, validate it and teams can adjust strategy to it.\u00a0 If the operator starts the clock too early or stops too late, the referee openly requests that the clock be corrected for the error.\u00a0 But both the occurrence of an error, and its correction, is seen by the public.\u00a0 There is no mystery.<\/p>\n Now in soccer, in addition to the referee being the enforcer, he is also the official time keeper.\u00a0 And no one but the referee gets to see the clock.\u00a0 During the last several minutes of the finale between Spain and the Netherlands, it was clear that the Netherlands players (like any team in their situation would do) were repeatedly shooting frantically at the goal to score, because the whistle to end the game could sound at any second.<\/p>\n Imagine how this would have changed, if the final minutes and seconds were displayed on clocks that the players, coaches and fans all could see.\u00a0 The shots would not be so desperate, until the final seconds… not the final minutes.<\/p>\n So even though I make these “tongue in cheek” comparisons\u00a0 to communism, I hope FIFA some day embraces some of these observations: even if it is only to add some new dimensions to the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I enjoyed watching a few games in the FIFA World Cup this year, but it was the final game between Spain and the Netherlands that reminded me of why soccer is not my favorite game to watch.\u00a0 I personally see the game as a microcosm of a communist system, and here is why. It’s like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-on-my-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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