For someone who's easily bored by the game, I sure do seem to post a lot of videos of it; I guess if there's one part I dig it's the highlight goals, but this is certainly something I've never witnessed before:
Sunday, June 29, 2008
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My first club team's coach was Italian. He spoke 7 languages and 4 dialects. The dude was fascinating. We had Americans, Mexicans and 2 Brazilians all on the same team and he bounced between all 3 languages at once to coach us.
Anyway, you'd have appreciated his style of penalty kick. The ball would be sitting there on the spot and he'd walk over, bending over as if to reposition the ball and then haul off and nail it right in the corner.
Also saw the guy score from a kickoff once.
It's interesting that you brought up the fact that you're easily bored by soccer. I watched the UEFA EURO2008 championship game Sunday in it's entirety just to try and keep an open mind about the sport. Needless to say, I have slammed my mind back shut again on the sport. It simply isn't complex enough. It doesn't have as many situational and strategic options as baseball or football or even basketball. There's only one way to score in soccer. In baseball, there's something like 23 different ways to get to first base, and in football there's almost an infinite number of ways to move the football up the field. And if you do move the ball up the field, if you don't get a touchdown, you can still settle for a field goal. It's all or nothing in soccer.
I can appreciate the enjoyment one gets from watching if one plays the sport; I know plenty of people who can't stand watching golf but I dig it because I play. Watching soccer for me is like eating boiled crawfish: it takes a long time and it's a lot of work for not much payoff; I'd rather have the seven points at a time meaty juiciness of a Maine lobster football game. But hey, that's just me.
"there's almost an infinite number of ways to move the football up the field"
Soccer doesn't? Every argument I've heard you make this week breaks down in so many different ways. Then I hear this argument about "there's not enough scoring in soccer" ... well what's so different about a 2-1 soccer game or a 14-7 football game?
I understand, "I just don't get it because I've never played it, I don't understand the rules, I can't 'see' the game and it basically looks the same as badminton to me." James, this is more or less what I hear from you. Matt, you need to check yo' self before you wreck yo' self.
Last night at the FC Dallas game we saw Miami FC (a team from an inferior league, frankly) punch in a goal in the 7th minute and keep Dallas against the ropes for the majority of the game. Dallas ended up winning 2-1, but BOTH goals came from a guy who I'd consider to be an average forward in MLS. Both goals also came in the waning seconds of stoppage time for each half. In between we saw 3 yellow cards, 1 red, 30 shots and 10 corner kicks. Those are only the stats I can communicate. It's hard to quantify impressive footwork. I don't know, maybe it was a boring game. I'm not an outsider.
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