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What Is It About Soccer? by Dale Brown, ![]()
ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT
DaleBrown.Info, 06/25/2014
Maybe I should have stuck with the geopolitical question. I thought
"soccer" would have been a softball topic: I guess I was big-time wrong.
Even though you need a timer to start and stop a soccer match, soccer is
the perfect game. If the match starts at 1100, it WILL end at or before
1300. A baseball or football game that starts at 1100 might end at 1500 or
later--it's unknown. Soccer has ONE referee, who runs the entire pitch and
plays the entire match. He has two assistants (3 in national-class matches)
but the center ref is the one and only authority and timekeeper in a match.
Dissent against a referee in soccer is cause for an infraction at best and
dismissal at worst.
Soccer is 45 minutes of non-stop action per half, and I think that's where
the American
deficiency come in: where can you put the commercials and advertisements?
Unless you put ads and logos on the players and the pitch, there is no room
for ads in soccer. The World Cup has 5 minutes of commentary and 25 minutes
of ads before each match on ESPN--they have to do that, because happily
there are no ads during the match.
I don't know if soccer will ever catch on in the U.S. like baseball and
football. Most soccer matches end in very low scores, and that's
disappointing for American spectators. Few Americans know the laws of the
game of soccer, although the Laws of the Game are a mere 39 pages and are
pretty simple to understand.
Soccer is the world's biggest sporting event--just not in the U.S. I hope
that changes, and we will begin to build soccer stadiums as much as we
build baseball and football stadiums, or at least don't try to combine
soccer and football fields as we do now (I'd hate to officiate a soccer
match on a football field).
Sorry, Mrs. California. I tried to be cute, but I may have thrown you a
curve-ball--or, I should say, a bender--instead.
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