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Americanizing Soccer for the U.S. Sports Fan pt. 4

Started by The Gaffer · 8 months ago

The recent match between the U.S. and Cuba battling for a spot to the 2010 World Cup was a prime example of why soccer must revise its rule involving red-cards.Â Expulsion from the game for a heinous foul is not the problem.Â Â If the foul warrants expulsion, the referee should mak ... Continue reading »

6 comments

Lee
8 months ago

The call in the Cuba v USA game yesterday was neither "debatable" nor "controversial". If you are going to make terrible arguments for your cause, at least get the facts straight.

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undrafted
8 months ago

FIFA won't approve of a league that makes such changes. American fans will really enjoy when FIFA bans all players who play in the unapproved league.

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Franco
8 months ago

Ok. Let's think about it. Champions League Final. I'm the coach and I ask to my worst player to kick very hard the other club's top player, who gets injured. My player is red carded and banned for 6 games. But, who cares? I won the final!

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stickfigure
8 months ago

I hope this blog post was a joke - ridiculous argument

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Cavan
8 months ago

The reason for having to play a man down after a red card is meant to be a deterrent to getting a red card. If you are allowed to remain eleven on eleven after a red card, couldn't you just start a weaker hack whose job it is to injure the other team's star player? Then, after the star is taken to the hospital with a broken leg or whatever, and the thug player goes off, just replace him(her) with your real star player. Now you have your star in the game, fresher than everyone else, and the other team's star is in the hospital.

Yes, there are times when a referee makes a mistake and the TV entertainment value of a game suffers. However, 99% of the time, the referee gets it right (at least within an acceptable shade of grey). Fans crow about the "bad calls" but first off, they are usually in an awful position to see what happened, plus they usually don't know all the rules of the game. Combine that with partisanship (that's what makes fans fans, right?) and fans are the last people who should be making any decision/judgement about rules infractions. If you want to see a mockery of an athletic competition based on skill and teamwork and athleticism and you want to see thuggery, go ahead and remove that rule. All it takes is one unethical coach and one hatchetman player (out of the vast majority who prefer to respect the game) and you'll see why the rule is the way it is.

Bending the rules of the game is not going to magically make soccer hating old men like the game. The key for the MLS is to long term attract the many soccer fans who just haven't gotten into their product yet. Changing the rules will make the Eurosnobs that much more snobby.

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ls7
8 months ago

Why stop at making rule changes to accommodate the fans? Perhaps we could go all the way and make it 'sports entertainment' and script the finishes as well?

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