Soccer Rules Question (and, why are the Americans so bad? - dmc)

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OK, I see your point, but weren't the early immigrants also interested in soccer? I don't know if this is true, but earlier in this thread it said that modern soccer as we know it started growing in popularity throughout Europe in the 1800s. At the end of the Revolutionary War in the U.S., there were 3 million people living in the U.S. At the time of the Civil War, there were 31 million people in the U.S. Now unless the original population was reproducing like rabbits, a good chunk of the 31 million in 1860 were European immigrants who knew about soccer. They were clearly the majority - so why didn't soccer catch on?

There is something to your statement about the U.S. isolationist culture. Modern travel and ease of movement across continents is really a rather recent development. Before the development of the car, and definitely prior to the railroad, people didn't really travel that far in their own country - never mind across oceans. Except for occassional wars, the people of Europe and the U.S. pretty much did develop in isolation from one another until as recently as the last 60 or 70 years - basically when we started seeing commercial air travel.

 

I don't see as it matters where people are from. Did the native Americans play American football, basketball and baseball? I'm thinking not. It didn't come from them, just like football didn't seep into America from these immigrants. It's a culture thing.

Put footy on TV. Cover the match results more on the national news and local news. Promote the MLS and sort its bizarre rules out. Cover the glamorous European games alot. Football will get more popular from that. All this 'wages' crap is rubbish. All good footballers move to Europe because that's where the money is at. If you cover the European game there, you'll get more interest.

 

Actually part of it was overtly anti-British. While legend has it that Geo Washington played cricket with his troops during the revolutionary war, I think there was a serious attempt in america to distance itself from Brit pasttimes. One reason that baseball developed in the place of cricket, and that other homegrown sports have been preferred here...

 

Maybe it is an anti-British thing....

 

I can see how people can be anti-Scottish, Irish and Welsh, but surely the English are totally likeable chaps loved by all?

 

Might have been something to do with all the shooting that happened around then between Englishmen and Americans.

 

The "anti-Brit" sentiment was also in part US cultural insecurity in comparing itself to Europe, very much like the insecurity felt by any colony or former colony; i.e., the local culture is seen as somewhat backward next to the older and more established culture of the colonizers. After breaking with the British Empire, the US went back and forth between pushing its own home-grown culture as a way of proclaiming its own identity, and defering to European culture as more sophisticated (for example it used to be the case that the cultural elite sent their kids to Europe to study)...

 

Maybe USA aren't actually that bad, after that Italy result. If they knock off Ghana they could go through.

 

I said they weren't a bad side .
Blood, guts, determination and heart - that's what you expect to see from the USA 'soccer' team. What they lack in talent they make up for in damned hard work. Sam's Army were fantastic in that game as well it's worth noting. Over 70,000 US fans were in or around the ground yesterday.

 

If two teams are tied in points and differential, is the tie breaker more goals scored or fewer goals allowed?

 

Tiebreakers for advancement into the knockout round are, in order: goal differential (goals scored minus goals allowed), total goals, head-to-head results and drawing straws. You just have to love that last one.

 

Drawing straws? Where've you plucked that from? To the best of my knowledge, no game of football has ever been decided by drawing straws!!

 

The FIFA website has a pdf file with the rules for the tournament. On the bottom of page 40 and the top of page 41 you can find the rules for determining who advances to the knockout round.

To be exact the final criteria reads "g) drawing of lots by the Organising Committee for the FIFA World
Cup™."

Oh and it isn't the game that is deciding by drawing lots - it is deciding who makes it into the next round - which is quite a lot more important than just deciding a single game.

 

@Barmy - it may come as a surprise to you that it is theoretically possible to have two teams finish with the exact same record, same number of goals for, and same number of goals against. This is especially true in the case of a 4 team round-robin tournament, in which you only play 3 games. If both teams played to a draw in their head-to-head match, and all the other items listed were the same, how other than drawing straws, lots, or a coin toss would you expect them to determine a winner? To cite an extreme example, what if all 6 matches in given group ended in nil-nil draws?

In American football the same thing happens. They have a series of tie-breakers to determine who makes the playoffs, and while it has never been required to be done in the history of the NFL, if all six or seven tie breakers don't determine a winner, the final deciding factor is a coin flip. Gratned the possibility of being unable to break a tie with that many tie breakers over a 16 game schedule is much less than the same occuring over just a three game schedule.

EDIT: I also must say that I find the system of 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss unusual as well. In the few American sports that allow draws (like hockey until this past year), a draw was considered half a win and half a loss. Therefore a loss was 0 points, a win was 2 points, and a draw was 1 point - i.e., half as much as what a win is worth. It seem odd to me that team with 3 draws loses against a team that has one win, one draw and one loss, even though they both have a .500 winning percentage.

[ June 21, 2006, 20:01: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

It's never happened and I doubt it ever will.

They would probably arrange a play-off game before they drew straws anyway...

 

I said it was an extreme example. For a little more realism how about this one:

Team A: 3-0-0
Team B: 1-1-1
Team C: 1-1-1
Team D: 0-3-0

Team A obviously advances, and Team D is eliminated. To further complicate matters, lets say that the draw happened when Team B and C played each other and that the one win and loss was by the same score? What do you do?

 

The rules are the rules so if it actually came to that the straws would come out and the loser would probably whine for the next four years that there should have been a play-off game of some sort.

As far as the 3-1-0 point split goes - it makes sense given the tendency that the sport has had for ties caused by teams playing conservatively. Without the greater incentive for winning you would probably see even more scoreless ties than you do now.

 

Trust me, FIFA would not draw straws to decide a countries advancement in the worlds greatest sports tournament. They wouldn't be allowed to, everyone would kick off. It would be a play-off match if that very, VERY unlikely event that 2 teams drew and scored exactly the same number of goals.

 

Barmy, you are really showing your ignorance of the rules of the game you claim to be a guru of. The rules are, and have always been, that drawing of lots are the final deadlock breaker.

 

Yes, the rule was introduced to stop the Italian style of play, i.e. shoot one goal and then shut the game of the oppenent down, while crowding the room in front of the own goal and delay the game whenever possible.