Quote :

"thats because i agreed with the last half of what you said. you start off by acting like soccer is the only sport that has complex undertones."

Did I really

Quote :

"American football, while plays being extremely complex, have a simple grasp."

Quote :

"Baseball, while having all its little in game strategy, is simple too"

Stop making red herrings to argue a point.

Quote :

"and you essentially called me an idiot"

Did I really? Only thing I said about you is you took a quote a little out of context, and that you like to argue for the sake of arguing. Thanks for proving my point.

Quote :

"it really sounds like you're just upset that others don't like the sport you love so much....and instead of accepting that, youre just going to babble untrue jibberish, and then result to name calling. "

Man, you didn't get your coffee this morning did you? I sound upset in my posts? I grew up playing soccer, basketball, football, and baseball. I was good at all of them, but a little better at soccer. If I were to take the average game (not world cup/series, etc) and order them how I would prefer to watch it would be

ncaa football
ncaa bball
NFL

then somewhere down the list

pro soccer game
pro bball game
hockey game
mlb

But I digress, all you are doing is arguing to pass the time wherever you are.

6/13/2006 1:40:31 PM

Quote :

"American football, while plays being extremely complex, have a simple grasp.""

American football is more complex than soccer

thats not even debatable

6/13/2006 2:10:05 PM

right, the PLAYS are complex, but easy to grasp.

it's harder for people to understand the tactics in soccer

6/13/2006 2:11:32 PM

the tactics? like dribbling and passing and setting up your teammates? like positioning for corner kicks? none of that is as complex as 10-man pull blocking schemes for running plays in football

soccer is so popular worldwide because its so cheap to play...get a ball and two things to shoot the ball between as a goal...homeless kids in third world countries can come up with a ball and a goal...its easy to go and play...not that its easy to be good but its easy to go play...its not so popular worldwide because the rest of the world is so much smarter than the US and we cant understand soccer

6/13/2006 2:14:06 PM

Quote :

"the tactics? like dribbling and passing and setting up your teammates? like positioning for corner kicks? none of that is as complex as 10-man pull blocking schemes for running plays in football"

i'm gonna have to say that's a bad comparison

6/13/2006 2:16:56 PM

well maybe so but i still think figuring out where to find the open man while protecting your quarterback, all the while deciding the best way to attack the defense, whether its man or zone or a combination is more complex than essentially making a good enough soccer play to get an open shot at the goal

6/13/2006 2:19:04 PM

Quote :

"the tactics? like dribbling and passing and setting up your teammates? like positioning for corner kicks?"

see, most people dont understand it so the way you just described it is how people see it. you can dumb down any sport. i mean, football is just hiking the ball, passing the ball, catching passed ball and running straight, right?

6/13/2006 2:19:12 PM

its a lot easier to dumb down soccer because its not as complex a sport

i've got friends who love soccer more than any other sport and they will agree

6/13/2006 2:21:13 PM

"its not complex" but you don't seem to know the first thing about it

6/13/2006 2:25:57 PM

The problem is that they're two different thinking processes.

An offensive play in football is ridiculously complex, yes, but once it's over, the thinking stops and the process begins again. There's not as much opportunity for dynamic thinking amongst the players themselves.

Watch the front four (Adriano, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka') in the Brazil game coming up. I guarantee you they'll hit a wall at some point and invent a way around it on the fly that would've never seemed possible ten seconds earlier.

6/13/2006 2:27:12 PM

^^i said "its not as complex" if you could read

^so its kinda like allen iverson crossing over a couple defenders

Quote :

"There's not as much opportunity for dynamic thinking amongst the players themselves."

i'll definitely give you that...but does that mean american football is more of a team sport and soccer is more of an individual sport?

btw Ernie, notice where I put the words "more" so you dont accuse me of saying soccer is not a team sport

6/13/2006 2:27:18 PM

Quote :

"so its kinda like allen iverson crossing over a couple defenders"

no



[Edited on June 13, 2006 at 2:30 PM. Reason : .]

6/13/2006 2:29:43 PM

I'm not talking about an amazing individual play. All sports have such performances.

I'm saying watch the way the front four move amongst each other, swirling and looking, opening holes in the defense that no one else would ever discover. There's no opportunity for something like that in football because the play stops and resets all the time.

[Edited on June 13, 2006 at 2:31 PM. Reason : ddd]

6/13/2006 2:29:55 PM

not really? so you dont agree that open field soccer is similar to open court fast break basketball?

6/13/2006 2:30:21 PM

Quote :

"I'm not talking about an amazing individual play."

vinylbandit's got this

[Edited on June 13, 2006 at 2:31 PM. Reason : /]

6/13/2006 2:31:06 PM

6/13/2006 2:31:18 PM

i'm not even trying to nitpick soccer as much as i am trying to let you know that football is more complex than it has been made out to be in this thread

i dont think soccer will catch on because americans want higher scores...i also think the field is a little too big...also why cant you let everyone know how much time is left...agree or disagree with these reasons but its pretty much how it is amongst the majority of american sports fans

6/13/2006 2:32:42 PM

Quote :

"^^i said "its not as complex" if you could read"

This is becoming a semantics argument, but you clearly aren't in the position to judge when you don't understand both in sufficient detail.

Quote :

"not really? so you dont agree that open field soccer is similar to open court fast break basketball?"

1-3 guys versus 1-3 guys for 50 ft using your hands is nowhere near as complex as 3-6 guys versus 3-6 guys (+ offsides + goalie) spread out over an area 5 times as large.

[Edited on June 13, 2006 at 2:34 PM. Reason : a]

6/13/2006 2:32:53 PM

exactly

you can't compare two sports on any level when you don't know shit about one

6/13/2006 2:34:07 PM

i understand football sufficiently enough to know how complex it is

and my friends who eat, sleep and breathe soccer and tell me its a simpler sport than football are reason enough for me to believe them

but you guys are just trying to justify soccer for whatever reason...god forbid you acknowledge that its not as complex a sport...just because it requires more endurance than probably any other sport doesnt mean that all the rest of the world is smarter than the US about sports

6/13/2006 2:34:36 PM

Quote :

"i dont think soccer will catch on because americans want higher scores...i also think the field is a little too big...also why cant you let everyone know how much time is left...agree or disagree with these reasons but its pretty much how it is amongst the majority of american sports fans"

1. A soccer field is not a standard size.
2. You can't let everyone know because the only one who knows is the referee.

6/13/2006 2:35:44 PM

Quote :

"Any game that can feasibly end in a 0-0 tie unequivocally sucks. "

i havent searched through the thread to see if it has already been said, but NFL games can end in a 0-0 tie

6/13/2006 2:35:58 PM

^^why cant you let everyone know

^true but that pretty much assumes neither team ever crosses the 50 yard line

6/13/2006 2:36:14 PM

Amazing, so you know football and not soccer, they know soccer and not football, and somehow you both have decided that football is more complex.

Again, how are we defining complex in the first place, this is silly?

The fact that each football play can be boiled down to each individual doing their on predertermined movements, versus soccer that (sans set peices) ebbs and flows on both sides of the ball at all times, almost kills your theory. Complexity is not 11 people doing predescribed things my friend.

6/13/2006 2:37:53 PM

Quote :

"they know soccer and not football"

make up whatever you want to pull out of thin air to try and make your point

6/13/2006 2:38:35 PM

If you can explain a way for a referee to let an entire crowd know how much time is left in a game when he's not sure what's going to happen right before he was thinking about blowing the whistle (a deliberate handball in the box, a free breakaway in an away goals battle, time-wasting), I'd like to hear it.

6/13/2006 2:38:46 PM

the refs have a stopwatch that they stop when a ball goes out of bounds, stoppage of play, etc, correct?

why cant they relay that to a scoreboard

6/13/2006 2:39:20 PM

No.

They have a watch, but most just estimate. A ball out of bounds is not grounds for adding time.

Either way, that doesn't solve the problem of situations right before the final whistle. The best thing they can do is relay the approximate amount of stoppage time to the fourth official at the end of regulation, which is what they do.

[Edited on June 13, 2006 at 2:42 PM. Reason : ddd]

6/13/2006 2:40:17 PM

this thread is gay

all i know is i'm a converted soccer fan

who cares if twista thinks it sucks

6/13/2006 2:40:31 PM

i dont think it sucks you guys are so defensive, i'm trying to explain to you why its not gonna ever be the #1 sport in america like it is in the rest of the world

i played soccer when i was little too...any kid can run around and kick a ball...its a good sport but why dont lots of kids continue it? could it be baseball, basketball and football are more interesting to a lot of them?

6/13/2006 2:41:01 PM

well who cares if its not the #1 sport in america

its the #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 sport in my heart

6/13/2006 2:42:53 PM

Because they don't have any high level soccer to watch in this country, they move on to sports in which they can see the best players in the world on a regular basis.

6/13/2006 2:43:05 PM

^i agree with that too...not as great a product out there...mls is crap relative to some of the european pro leagues

6/13/2006 2:43:52 PM

tree, i think you should tune into the brazil/croatia game at 3.

croatia is an eastern european team. they'll be pretty disciplined and probably play some solid defense.

and well, you at least know what brazil is all about. you may actually pick somethings up from watching the game

6/13/2006 2:44:04 PM

i cant watch cause im working

and i can appreciate some of the amazing plays in soccer when i watch it in hd and the cameramen are competent and i can actually see some of the jukes and great passes and kicks...it just doesnt do it for me like football

6/13/2006 2:45:32 PM

BTW Tree, you never told me how you relay to the crowd the time remaining in endgame situations.

The crowd knows how much stoppage there is, they know how much has passed, and they can see what's going on in the game. Anyone who knows what's going on has a pretty good idea of how much time is left.

I might find football more entertaining if you actually had to get the ball on the ground instead of just breaking the plane. I love the plays in rugby where the guy is trying to score and the defender rolls under him so he can't put the ball on the ground.

[Edited on June 13, 2006 at 2:48 PM. Reason : ddd]

6/13/2006 2:46:28 PM

its one thing to know within a couple minutes how much time is left

but its another thing for football and basketball fans, who have seen buzzer beating hail mary's and 3-pointers, to be content with knowing how much time is left "approximately"

6/13/2006 2:48:01 PM

It's easily discernable within 10-20 seconds how much time is left. Usually, it doesn't even matter, so it's not a big deal.

It's a testament to the spirit of the game that nothing is set in stone in soccer. The field can be a square, or a 200 x 100 yard rectangle. The time of the game is never the same. The goalkeeper can leave his post and score, and when he leaves his area he's just another no-hands player. A central defender can stream up the wing and deliver the winning strike.

In football, a lineman downfield is a penalty for an ineligible receiver.

[Edited on June 13, 2006 at 2:54 PM. Reason : ddd]

6/13/2006 2:49:34 PM

I absolutely love international soccer. I have my countries, but I have a hard time finding an MLS or Premiership team to get behind. Maybe once I go to school here for awhile, and eventually go over to a grad school in Scotland or England, I'll jump behind the local crew. It's just too hard to follow a team in the US because its hard to find fellow fans of MLS teams.

6/14/2006 4:14:38 PM

yeah, no nit picking in soccer, generally,
everything can change to benfit the game, exept the size of the goal and the penaly shot place

6/14/2006 4:20:33 PM

DC United & Arsenal ftw!

6/14/2006 6:37:34 PM

i like soccer and am a casual Arsenal fan. I am not an expert about any sport but as far as the complexity thing goes I know from personal experience football is hard as hell to explain. Explaining what is going on in a game to my Japanese friends is impossible. They couldn't figure out what was going on and these people have phds. It was pretty funny. I am not saying soccer is not complicated I am sure it is, but trying to explain football is pretty hard.

6/14/2006 7:14:09 PM

^Yeah I know what you mean. I have lived in America on and off since 1993 and I still don't understand how the game works.

6/14/2006 7:33:55 PM

Huge soccer fan here... been playing since I was little... follow almost every league (as many as I can), watch any game on tv no matter what level it is, yes even MLS sometimes

aaand

I think football is harder to coach/explain and soccer is more complex to play.

In football, each position is designated a few certain tasks and that's it. In soccer, every position has to make different decisions on the fly relating to offense and defense

To figure out which is more "complex" in terms of this argument, I think the best test is to ask a girl who doesn't follow sports or watch a game, and see which one is easier for them to understand. I bet in most cases, football would be alot harder for them to understand.

6/14/2006 7:35:18 PM

^i think thats fair

6/14/2006 8:20:12 PM