Penalty Shots

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Well, yeah. We don't really care about soccer in general, and we certainly don't care about a soccer match that's being played on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, by a bunch of guys that 99% of the US population has never heard of. No matter how big the match is, it's not news here. Now... If 12 people get trampled to death, before the fight spills out on to the street where cars are overturned and building are lit on fire, now that's some entertaining news!

Guilty as charged on all counts.

 

Well, that's not quite true, because Americans don't really watch any sports that anybody else plays. Think about American Football, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Indy Cars, NASCAR etc. These are not really sports that have any sort of international competition so Americans do not really support America as a country being good and beating other people. So they can be as **** as they want at them because nobody else cares enough to bother playing against them. A bit like Aussies and their Australian Rules Football.

The basic story is that takes an awful lot of momentum to get people to change the sports they like watching, especially in a country so saturated with sport as USA.

I still bet that cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world. In India, they have about 400 channels that just show cricket games, old games, new games, club games, international games, any game of cricket at all. Madness!

 

I don't know about that. I don't know many countries that live football the way, say, Brazilians do. Sure, they love baseball, handball, volleyball, what have you. But the way they think of football literally scares me at times. I get the feeling it's a national tragedy if they end anything but first, and IIRC coaches or players get death threats - or have their property vandalized.

 

As a huge soccer fan, I think I have to disagree with this. Soccer will probably always be a second rate sport in the U.S. I can think of two major reasons for it.

1. Soccer is considered a kid's game. The majority (if not all) of our serious male athletes give up soccer at around ten years old. That is when they start taking what is considered the more "manly" sports of football, basketball, and baseball more seriously. Football and baseball are the primary culprits as their seasons coincide with fall and spring soccer and most kids only have the time to focus on one sport at a time. This is why our women's soccer teams are always good as the girls don't have as many sports options. I for one would love to see some of our better football and basketball players give up their sport and train for a couple of years at soccer. I think it would be stunning to see.

2. Soccer is a very unsatisying game to the non-fan. Americans like everything to have a clear cut winner and a loser. Many soccer games end in ties. I've been to MLS games in which they play for 90 minutes and it ends in a scoreless tie and everyone goes home. To the casual fan that is ridiculous. The only thing more crazy is to have the World Cup, or the Champion's league come down to penalty kicks. Why play the game at all if at the end it is going to come down to something as random as penalty kicks?

My suggestions to change the game are as follows.

1. Due away with the offsides rule. Nobody is ever happy with how the officials call it. Make the defenders play defense instead of trapping the forwards offside.

2. Get rid of the penalty kicks. After the first couple of overtime periods, make them play overtimes, but without a goalie. I have always thought that this would work.

 

Ive always thought penalties would be much more exciting 3 to 5 yards farther back

 

Both ridiculous and neither would work. Only an American could suggest those 2 rule changes. The sport doesn't need changing.

 

Sheesh, and I thought I was supposed to be the pig-headed conservative who is resistant to change

Don't get me wrong, I love the game the way it is. However, my suggestions would make the game more exciting, promote more scoring, and more games would be decided on the field, instead of in penalties. I also firmly believe the sport will never be more than a second rate sport in the U.S. without some changes.

 

Nobody will ever care if the sport doesn't get big in America. They've always been very insular, the rest of the world tends to just leave them to it. We don't need more scoring in football. The intensity of the game comes from the fact that goals are massive deals. The crowd go wild when a goal goes in because they're hard things to come by and 1 can settle a game. I've never understood why Americans dig into football because there's not lots of scoring. You don't need lots of scoring for a game to be exciting, in fact I'd say exactly the opposite. Besides very, very few games are decided by penalties. You can't change the rules of the game too much because then it wouldn't be the game we love anymore. In my opinion, the current off-side rule could do with a little tweaking (personally I didn't see anything wrong with how it was before), but certainly not removing altogether. It would ruin the game. There'd be no structure to how teams play and formations would go out of the window. Forwards would just stand up near the keeper and players at the back would just hoof it up at the aerliest opportunity. No, no, no, it wouldn't work at all! The offside rule is there for a reason. The sport doesn't need big changes, it's good enough as it is.

 

sorry barmy gotta go with the others on this, watching soccer is more boring than watching grass grow.

 

Watching grass grow has it's plus's though to be fair. You never know when which way the grass is going to lean, it's very tense. It's got so much over watching paint dry. Neither can match watching the kettle boil though. That really gets my pumps going.

 

I'm with Barmy on this one. The offside and penalty rules are fine as they are now.

Snook, your suggestions are silly, imo. If they would play without goalies, the game would soon turn into maniacal running left and right and people wouldn't even bother attacking. They could shoot at goal from the centre of the field.

Some football games can get boring (Italian league for example) but that tends to happen when players (midfielders) choke the ball too much.
Still, the game is, most of the time, glorious.

Goals are supposed to be rare and valuable. You are supposed to scream your throat off when your team scores, and to fill your heart sink when the opposing one does. You are supposed to fret and worry over every last one of the attacks, over every counter attack, every cross. You are supposed to fill relief (or despair) when the referee signals the end.
You don't get that with 10+ goals.

The popularity of football in USA really makes no difference to me. The game is what it is. It would be absurd to change it so that it would appeal to a wider audience, what ever that audience might be. So, to all Americans, if you don't like it now, stick to baseball, NFL or some other game. Or try to fit in. Planet Earth is a huge place, you know, and a great part of it is loving the ninety minutes, the offsides, the corners, the penalties.
In a word, football as it is.

 

Oh my god! Double post!

For once I, well not agree, but do not think Snook is completely out in the blue. I have been peeved at the offside rule for years now and they have changed to satisfy me, the problem is that the refs havent accepted the newer directives. When in doubt the refs are supposed to not blow their whistles, instead they generally always blow for offide if there is any doubt whatsoever whether the player was on or offside as the pass was kicked. Save the offside whistles for when players are clearly an openly offside, not when they possible were two centimetres offside.

As for penalties I don't know, the games have to end somehow but I agree that penalty kicks are generally a lotto. Any team can beat any team on penalties. They have tried different versions though but the fact is that a game is already 90 minutes plus injury time and then the 30 + injury time extra time in case of a tie that I do not know what else to do. The players are generally absolutely exhausted already after 90 minutes not to mention after 120 to add more time I dont know. They use penalties in hockey still don't they?

 

@Loreseeker

I'm only proposing doing away with the goalies after regulation, and after the first set of overtimes. This way the game comes to an end with a goal being scored. The game would still stay the same and I would be very surprised by 10+ goals being scored in a game, nevermind in the goalie free overtime.

@Joacqin

Yes, they still use penalties in hockey, but at least in hockey the goalie has a fair chance. It wouldn't surprise me if only 50% of hockey penalties are scored and it may even be less. In soccer, missing a penalty is far more common then the goalie making the save.

 

The game has changed through time, but never too much, the core is still the same, and I think it’s a good thing. The points Snook complains are certainly the most discussed rules of the game.

The offside rule is in my opinion a necessary evil, the problem is not the rule itself, it’s the difficult to get it right every time. I believe the solution lies in technology, Fifa should invest in electronic ways to determine if a player is or isn’t offside. Put on some microchips on players shirts and in the ball so you could map their position through out the field or something.

The problem is that Fifa is not prone to add technology into the game, which IMO is just plain stupid. Everybody can watch the game on TV and they can see replays from every angle possible, so we all know when the referee has made a mistake, and now it seems that every time a team loose it’s because the referee sucks, never the team.


Those are minor problems though, all in all it’s a beautiful game and we love it!

 

I don't want too much technology in the game. The 'human' aspect of it is a good thing, and gives people stuff to talk about and debate.

 

I believe the human aspect will always be there in things like fouls or penalties, but with offside it has just became annoying because now there is no doubt anymore, the computer tells you exactly if the guy was offside and by how much, so now people don’t debate if it was or wasn’t an offside, it has became a tool of complain. And I’m sick of listening to coaches whining about how much their teams were penalized and how much it has hurt their chances on the field.

 

I don't like sports much except for combative ones and (ahem) indoor ones, but this thread piqued my interest and I wanted to see what was going on in here. Here's my two cents:

IMHO any changes to the game of soccer need to be SERIOUSLY considered. Otherwise you'll have what is happening in the NHL right now, which seems to me that they are tweaking the rules like crazy in order to appeal to more fans. Every year (at least it feels that way to me) they come up with a new twist on the rules to negate the dullness that comes when the defense plays "the trap". Now we have shootouts to determine the winner in any contest that goes beyond a single 5 minute overtime. I've heard tell that other rule changes are in the offing. While this may be making the game more palatable to the American consumer, it is royally torquing off some diehard fans of the game.

As for the penalty shots in soccer, as long as both teams shoot from the same distance to the goal, it's fair, if seemingly slanted horribly in favor of the shooters to the untrained eye (like mine!)

 

Penalties are supposed to be heavily slanted towards the taker. They're usually awarded during general play if you commit a foul near the goal, i.e. were almost certainly in a dangerous position. I suppose if you're only watching the major tournaments you'll see shootouts more regularly but they're actually extremely rare outside these as it doesn't matter if a league game ends in a tie.

Gaelic football in Ireland features penalties as well but the balls are heavier and travel slower, which would have roughly the same effect as moving the ball further back. The result is that defenders are only too willing to rugby tackle players who are about to score as they know the keeper has a 50/50 chance of saving the penalty. In soccer there's much less of an incentive as you know the forward is probably going to score anyway if you give away a penalty.

I don't see the problem with using them for shootouts. As LKD pointed out, both teams are at the same advantage/disadvantage.

I'm not too bothered about introducing more technology. FIFA's main objection is that, at present, the exact same rules are being applied from the highest level right down to a local schoolboys match. I think technology would only slow things down too much anyway. Soccer is a very fluid game and most techologies would take a few seconds to stop and analyse the data. You'd either have to stop the game to make the decision or else be continually hauling the players back for a foul/goal/etc. that happened about ten seconds ago.

 

Or shout at each other.

I'm getting tired of the "it's the ref's fault" argument being used in all possible occasions, and would like to see some way to eliminate that.

As for technology... I don't really have a formed opinion on it. It could work, but the system used would have to be bulletproof. Is it?

 

Pretty much. |You usually give a penalty when the defense uses a foul in a situation where there is a very high chance there'd be a goal anyway. It makes perfect sense for the penalty to put them in a situation with a similar, if bigger, risk.