t's not my usual practice to discuss sports, other than as a "what I watched today" short update intro.  I do think and know a lot about professional sports, but it's not something I'm especially interested in writing about, and I don't think many of my readers are either.  I do, however, occasionally go off on a longer discussion, usually about some aspect of the game other than the actual game.  Officiating or announcers or poor television coverage or the like.

Newer additions to this page are inserted on top.

January 14, 2003

I find soccer hooliganism pretty entertaining.  For people to get so worked up about any sport is absurd.  And then it's soccer, I mean there's about a goal a game, and it's not an especially violent or physical game.  It's supposed to be about finesse and spacing and speed.  I played it for about 8 years as a kid before getting sick of it when I was about 13 and ready to become a skateboarding trouble-maker.  I wanted to play again in high school, but my knees were just shot from that and skateboarding; after a week I couldn't even walk home after school without stopping to rest with my legs extended out straight, so that was that.

But back to the point, why are people so fanatical about soccer?  Yes, they call it football where they are fanatical, but it seems an unlikely sport to incite such passion.  There's an article about a 56 year old man who attacked a police horse in London and got five years in the gaol for it.  Yes, a police horse.  With a kung fu kick.  Really. Read this quote from the article, and the description of what was going on.  It sounds like some sort of organized warfare, FFS.

Hundreds of fans rioted outside the New Den Stadium after Millwall lost 2-1 in the division one semifinal playoffs. In all, 157 police officers and 26 police horses were hurt.

Prosecutor Tom Wilkins told a jury at Woolwich Crown Court that Everest took part in the rampage, running at police lines and encouraging other thugs to build a barricade to stop charging police horses.

Wilkins said the horse was retreating when Everest launched a kung-fu-style kick from behind, causing the animal to lurch forward in pain.

I mean, Jesus Christ.  They're building barricades in battles with the police, where 157 cops are injured? The English cops must be damn mild-mannered, since in the US, motherfuckers (as they say) would die long before it came to that.

December 30, 2002

Article about fat, drunken, heckling, English cricket fans, and a star Australian player taking offense at their harassment.  The article is delicious for the flurry of cricket slang and commenting.  Cricket is popular in much of the world, most of the ex-English colonies anyway, but unknown in the US.  That wouldn't be worthy of comment, but there are a bunch of obscure terms and practices in the game, most of which have even more obscure slang terms.  It's always comedy gold to drop in several lines of Cricketese.  As I shall now attempt to demonstrate.

Not content with pummeling the beleaguered England cricket team with a personal best innings of 250, to virtually single-handedly condemn Nasser Hussain's side to another Test match defeat, Langer walked into a press conference at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and fired off a volley of abuse at England's fans equal in power to any of the cover drives he had dispatched to the boundary earlier in the day.

"I thought they were a disgrace," was Langer's response to the Barmy Army's shouts of "no ball" every time Lee reached the crease, a reference to accusations that he generates his astounding pace by throwing - or in cricketing parlance "chucking" - the ball down the wicket.

"I'll bowl you a fucking piano, ya Pommie pooftah. Let's see if you can play that," is one of the more polite asides attributed to Merv Hughes, the former Australian fast bowler.

Those aren't actually that good, on closer inspection. Ones that are actually just play by play of the game are usually the most amusing, with their odd terminology.  I shall find one!  Ahh, that wasn't hard:

Star Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan sparked a Zimbabwean collapse with a seven-wicket haul in the second cricket Test here on Friday. Muralitharan grabbed 7-26 off 22 overs to send Zimbabwe into the tea break struggling at 159-7 on the opening day, with Grant Flower alone defying the spin wizard with an unbeaten 48.

Muralitharan took just seven overs in the morning session to expose Zimbabwe's batting weaknesses against spin, striking with his second delivery after the tourists had elected to bat. Sri Lankan skipper Sanath Jayasuriya pressed his ace spinner into the attack in the ninth over itself after a 39-run stand between openers Hamilton Masakadza and Trevor Gripper.

Muralitharan did not let his captain down as he dismissed Gripper, who edged on to his boot before being caught by wicket-keeper Kumar Sangakkara for 20. He then deceived Masakadza with a straighter one, the batsman missing the line while trying to work it on the leg-side.

Now that's funny, and it's a rather dry report.  Not all full of a slang and odd comments, like "bowl you a piano, you pooftah".  I do realize that something like this, from an NFL game summary, probably sounds just as odd to anyone not from the US.

Hasselbeck scored the tying touchdown on a 1-yard sneak with 1 second left in regulation, and Rian Lindell kicked a 24-yard field goal with 5:02 left in overtime.

With leading rusher Shaun Alexander going out with a leg injury on the third play of the drive, Hasselbeck accounted for all the yards by completing 7 of 12 passes for 73 yards and scrambling four times for 19 yards. He was also sacked for a 10-yard loss, and San Diego rookie Quentin Jammer was whistled for pass interference in the end zone two plays before the touchdown.

And US football is the field game with the most rules ever, for any sport.  But the terms aren't comical, tragically.  Dumb and obscure and arcane, yes.  But simply not funny.

September 7, 2002

Long article about what the US needs to do to return to winning ways in international basketball competition. He makes a lot of good points and suggestions, but it's all operating from a somewhat flawed perspective, IMHO.  My first reaction would be, "Who really cares?"  No one in the US went to these games, they aren't on TV anywhere since no one wants to watch them, and the title game of the World Basketball Championship, even if the US were in it, would probably be less important to 99% of US basketball fans than any given regular season NBA game.

The best US players come out for the Olympics since that's viewed as the prestige event, and the US has dominated there, even with the typically sloppy All-Star type (no defense) play, simply by having the best 12 players in the entire tournament.  That's enough for me, really.  I don't pay any attention to the World Basketball Championships, and wouldn't have even known they were going on if not for the US losing (which made it newsworthy, and created articles that I read).  Let the other countries that desperately want to win it fight super hard and do so, if it's that important to them.  I don't want to see top NBA players getting injured or tired out in some meaningless international scrimmage, and then being unable to go when the real season (NBA) begins. 

This sort of thing is somewhat like the World Cup.  The US doesn't win, and isn't expected to, since hardly anyone in the US gives a shit about soccer.  If we won people would watch (as the women's team did a few years ago) and then forget about it a week later.  The rest of the world really cares about it, and they work really hard, so let them win.  Good for France or Germany or Brazil or Argentina or whoever.

The difference is that the US is the home of basketball, and has the best players, so it's sort of silly that we should lose in the tournament.  But since no one here knows or cares about the tournament, just hold it in Peru or Japan or something and let a bunch of college kids go.   If they win we'll be happy, if they lose we'll be indifferent, and at least it won't have much impact on the NBA games, which most basketball fans are going to watch.

Perhaps I lack a certain nationalism here, which should compel me to demand victory in any game with the US against any other country, in any sport.  Oh well.  I'm waiting for the Lakers' first game in late October.  Anything until then is irrelevant in B-ball.  Let Argentina and Yugoslavia celebrate, if it'll brighten their lives.

One potential benefit of this is the spotlight it's shining on the total lack of fundamentals in US basketball players.  Kids today want to run fast breaks, dunk, shoot 3's, and dribble fancy.  No one wants to learn to play position defense, use both hands around the rim, develop solid bank shots from 15", etc.  Players around the world are less athletically skilled than the US players, but they drill the fundamentals from their pee wee leagues.  I didn't see any of the games, but the word is other teams just sliced and diced the US team, getting constant good open shots and drawing fouls.  This article on CNNSI basically sums this up.

The benefit is that perhaps US coaches will return somewhat to the fundamentals, and we'll see a generally-improved level of play.  Of course it would take like 10 years to appear, since you'd have to start it with 13 y/o's now, but it's a long term goal.  Almost all the 18-20 y/o's who enter the NBA now are virtually one-dimensional, if they even have that many dimensions. They can dunk, or shoot, or run fast, but virtually no one has a complete game.  The draft tends to go for potential; hoping that the player will learn to shoot from outside of 8 feet, or learn to play defense, rather than taking a player who has spent 4 years in college and learned a good all around game.  It would be interesting to see an NBA team go for a lot of the less-talented but fundamentally sounder European players.  Play with a system and role players and be tenacious, rather than the highlight reel half-assed play we see now from most teams.  They wouldn't win the title, but they'd certainly make the playoffs in the East, and humiliate a lot of the showboating one-star NBA teams.

And be boring as hell to watch.

June 22, 2002

This was part of a longer soccer discussion written after the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup. See that day's update for more specific discussion of the US team's demise.

I enjoy watching soccer when it's the World Cup, but not enough to sit through any normal games.  There aren't a lot of scores, but when someone does manage to put the ball into the net, it's usually a thing of beauty, and quite exciting. The scarcity of scores makes the ones that do occur more fun, assuming the rest of the game doesn't have a slow pace and endless flopping and so much stalling for time that it's ruined.

Probably the biggest problem with soccer is the officiating, which is generally woeful. An Italian TV company is considering suing the World Cup, after Italy was robbed by some bad calls, lost out of the cup, and of course cost the TV company tons of money, since they'd get massive ratings for Italy games, and much lower for other teams.  That's probably a frivolous lawsuit, but the complaint has merit.

The US lost to Germany on a blown call, and there are constant iffy decisions throughout the game where two guys are fighting for position, fighting for the ball, and when the ref blows his whistle, who he gives the penalty on is really a coin toss.  When you watch the replay you usually can't tell who was guilty, or it's both guys grabbing and dragging equally.

The most annoying thing about soccer to me is the amount of flopping and faking that goes on.  I find it cheesy and boring and maddening to watch, and yet the refs always fall for the biggest theatrical dives.  Don't the officials ever watch a soccer game on TV, and see that almost all of the flops are fake?  I'd think they would apply that to what they see on the field their next game.

The Latin teams seem to be the worst about flopping, and nearly every time someone loses the ball they go sprawling and crying for a penalty.  And often get it. It's hard to watch a lot of the games, since almost every tackle ends in someone writing in apparent agony.  And then on the replay, you see him get tapped on the shin, or ankle, or not touched at all. The strategy of lots of guys seems to be that if you get beat to the ball, crash melodramatically to the ground and flop around, and hope the refs bail you out.  And they usually do.

I enjoyed both games yesterday since there was very little flopping, with the US, Germany, Brazil, and England all having pride and skilled players, rather than whining babies, like a lot of the other teams seem to.  There was one ridiculous flop by a German defender after he pulled down a US guy before a penalty kick, and while they were tangled up the German guy suddenly starts flopping like a carp, when as the reply showed he wasn't even touched.  The ref only saw the end of it, and gave them both yellow cards.  The red card to the Brazilian guy was a terrible call also, but at full speed live action it's hard to blame the ref for it, since it looked bad.

More than just the gullible refs, the whole system of officiating in soccer is insufficient. There is an official, and two linesmen in World Cup play.  That's it.  No video replay, no goal judges, no back judges, etc.  The linesmen are out of bounds, always to the side of the field, while the ref has to run around and try to keep the action in sight, on a field that's much larger than a US football field.  The linesmen are often 40 or 50 yards from the action; they can't hope to see a trip or pull down clearly, and the ref only has two eyes, so he can't see everything.

They really need another ref out there, and probably TV replay, I think.  Not of everything, but plays by the goal, major penalties, red cards, that sort of thing. The sport is so unforgiving, where one or two goals is all you see most games, that any mistake is hugely-magnified, and it's sort of dumb to have just one ref on the field, when he clearly can't possibly see everything, and so often penalties are shown to be in error on the TV replay.

Soccer is meant to have very minimal officiating.  They are fast and loose with side throw ins, the spot of the ball on penalty kicks, lots of penalties are not called if they didn't result in a change of possession, etc.  That's all fine on friendlies and other such games, but for the World Cup, with a billion people watching on TV, they should really do something to increase the scientific nature of the officiating.  It's 2002, not 1960.  We have the technology.

Given my soccer watching habits, the next time I give this thought will be in about 2006, I suspect.  See you then.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.