This one?

Also:

So I have a thought on what isn't very exciting to me about soccer. I'm curious if other Americans agree with me, or if the guys who normally lovingly follow the sport think I'm just crazy.

First off, I've been watching a lot of matches this week while on vacation. I love hockey, so 80-90 minutes of play with a 1-0 score isn't a big deal. I fully recognize guys are running out in full sprint to get to the ball. There's obviously great strategy, skill, and and style.

I enjoy a game, where a team making the rush to score clearly has a chance to score. Baseball being the batter, football, a team on the 20 yard line, even hockey over the blue line. I say to myself, wow, someone might score here, what will happen, this is close and exciting.

In soccer, I have often seen a team pressing for the goal only to have a player boot the ball half way across the pitch. All that excitement is gone and quickly. I also found it annoying to see a defender clear the ball, only to send it right to the opposing team only to send it back to the same side the ball just left. Most other sports, a teammate would probably say, "hey asshole, you just passed it to them."

So yeah, basically, I don't really like watching the play deflate so quickly, which makes it hard to wait for a goal. Ivory Coast v. North Korea was fun to watch. Ivory Coast just was just dominating so I got to see better passing and plays developed. Portugal and Brazil, though clearly better teams demonstrated excellent defense and just had a slow game to watch.

Verbs. So what you're really saying is that you want it to be Sega Soccer Slam. I agree and support this.

Obviously Italy would have done better if they had Dante doing spot light super kicks.



Weird, he kind of looks like Gannondorf here.

Are you blind?

Retarded?

No worries, FIFA has a job for you as soon as Germany has a playoiffs match

Verbs, the kind of back and forth play you're talking about is actually what makes football what it is: you're right that it's "bad" when a run gets wasted by some moron just lobbing it forward, or when a defender gives the ball away, but that's exactly what a good team tries to minimise. When a team has possession for a long stretch, with lots of short passes, they build up momentum and gradually move their team up the pitch so that, when someone does get in the box, they have enough support to make a cross and set up a goal.

But the game is not designed around making that easy, which is the point. There's no mechanism in place to support that kind of fluid, passing game: a team has to work to make it happen. The opposing team will try to upset their rhythm and start a passing sequence of their own. There is no division into defensive and offensive sides as there is in a game with innings: both teams are trying to do the same thing simultaneously.

Sometimes it works and you get a great back and forth game where both sides have stretches of possession and play some great, fluid football (Germany vs. Argentina the other day) and sometimes it's just a relentless slog with no one showing any signs of doing anything (Spain vs. Paraguay later that same day).

And sometimes (every England game in history) you get a bunch of glorfied Sunday league pub team players who just boot it as hard as they can and hope someone does something with it near the goal.