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USA Soccer Innocents
Need A-B-C Assistance
of TheColumnists.com
Soccer people don’t like to hear criticism of the sport. Offer a suggestion to put some zing into their so-called “beautiful game” and suffer the label, “Ugly American.”
They don’t understand we bring the same would-be-helpful attitude toward our own sports. We would speed up baseball games; we would cut down on fouls in basketball; we would slice the delays caused by replay judging in pro football.
I therefore generously offer some free advice to help jazz up soccer that would make the game more palatable to Americans:
First off, ESPN ought to do more explaining of the basics for we know-nothings. For example a friend who gave me too much credit for knowing the rules of soccer asked this basic question: what is the difference between a free kick and a penalty kick? I think I provided an answer, though I was probably tongue-tied in getting the reply out.
That probably is the soccer equivalent of somebody asking a baseball expert to explain the difference between a ball and a strike. Basic stuff, but we are dumkopfs about the sport, and ESPN has not been providing us with the basic soccer information we need. ESPN employs British announcers who too often indulge in-group talk that is off-putting. For example, I don’t give a diddley poo about players’ English League affiliations.
We do need constant pre-game and half-time explanations of the dreaded offside rules. We need graphics to indicate when a player is and is not offside. Perhaps this is as complicated as explaining a pitcher’s earned run average in baseball, but that is precisely why we need the help.
And now to the game itself. I offer rule change suggestions.
First off, liberalize the off-side restrictions. Less offsides, more goals, yes!
Next, when a game is tied after regulation time, there is no need to go another tedious half hour of overtime in which there is no sudden-death goal. There should be one 15-minute overtime that would end with a sudden death goal. Two overtime periods with no sudden-death goal is boring, boring boring.
If the game is tied after the overtimes elapse, that brings on the shootouts, five players alternately taking shots at the goalie. Hooray, I say. I have been getting the feeling that the supercilious announcers look down on shootout as somehow being un-soccer. Phooey on them. The shootouts are high drama; the late developments with shootouts in the Ghana-Uruguay match uplifted the whole shebang.
To review, Ghana almost scored a winning goal in the last few seconds of overtime play. In a melee in front of the Uruguay goal, what might have been a goal was stopped by an illegal move by a Uruguay player. In a reflex action Louis Suarez used his hands to block the ball. That’s verboten. (He called the block “The hand of Suarez”-- a takeoff on Diego Maradona’s famed winning shot of yore that was called “The hand of God.”)
No goal, but the illegal action got the culprit thrown out of the game and, more important, gave Ghana a penalty shot. These are made, I would guess, something like four out of five times. In this case, the shooter, Gyan (some soccer players have only one name) missed; he kicked the ball over the crossbar. This set up a shootout session.
I don’t think enough was made of the fact that the Ghana coach then chose to have Gyan, who missed the penalty shot, then take the first of the five shootout shots. Talk about pressure. He made the shot--I was happy for him. But two of his mates missed and Uruguay won the shootout, 4-2 and the game to advance to a semi-final against Holland.
My other suggestion--no charge--is the need to eliminate all the dead time and frequent stalling by teams in the lead. I would install a basketball-like clock that would not run when the ball is kicked out of play or when there are delays for injury. Instead of a 90-minute unevenly timed game, this would be an honestly-timed 60 or 70-minute game as needed.
And finally, the several officiating gaffes during this World Cup cry out for the panjandrums of soccer to install replays to determine goals. Just as baseball needs to put in replays on significant plays like throws to first base.
We Americans are ready to suggest changes anytime, anywhere.
©2010 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is an artist's interpretation of a wire service photo. This column first posted July 6, 2010.
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