Rant: Soccer

[jim]

I thought England called soccer football. But I do agree with you with the English being ignorant dicks. We have apparently found common ground in this thread.

[thrill]

I thought England called soccer football.

They do. They act like we invented the term soccer and soccer is what dumb, ignorant folk call football. Not true. They invented the word they hate. We (USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) just left their dumbass, drab little island before they reverted to calling it football again and didn't get the memo about going back to calling it football. When we got the memo about going back to calling it football, we already had our own sports called football.

Back in the day, everything (rugby & soccer) were called football. Then they started calling them rugby and soccer to differentiate. They continued calling rugby by the new name but once that caught on, they started calling soccer, football, again.

[jim]

I hate the British. They are so stupid.

[jim]

Explain this ... why is it on penalty kicks the goalie will dive to his left when the ball is kicked to his right? I think if they kick it to your right (or left) you have a better chance of blocking it if you dive to your right (or left).

But again I'm sure there are nuances of soccer than I don't quite get. Top 5 of all time:

[/youtube]

Doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Look at the last one - the best kick of all time - he had a completely empty net basically.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Hey trill or whoever, what was that game last week maybe where it was 2-1, the team down 2-1 had a penalty kick with hardly anytime left, the goalie blocked it, then blocked the rebound and cleared it. The team up 2-1, that almost lost the lead then went down and scored a goal to go up 3-1? Insane.

[TimeForGuinness]

Goalies don't have time to react, they have to guess...and hope they guess correctly. Usually their guesses are based on video of previous kicks.

[thrill]

Jim, penalty kicks aren't that nuanced. The goalie is trying to guess which way the shooter is kicking and the shooter is trying to fake the goalie into picking the wrong play. The only chance a goalie has of saving a PK is to guess right or for the kicker to screw up and take a bad kick. I don't know who's ranking the top penalty kicks of all time, that's a dumb thing to do because the degree of difficulty has more to do with the moment the kick is taken (a world cup final vs a friendly etc) than anything else.

Hey trill or whoever, what was that game last week maybe where it was 2-1, the team down 2-1 had a penalty kick with hardly anytime left, the goalie blocked it, then blocked the rebound and cleared it. The team up 2-1, that almost lost the lead then went down and scored a goal to go up 3-1? Insane.

Not sure which game you're talking about. MLS? EPL? International?

[jim]

Well they sure do look silly.

[jim]

And by the way, I must say that I definitely landed two big fish this afternoon.