I don’t have a massive aversion to the use of the word “soccer”, even though I know it’s not the right word (yeah Yanks, you heard me). In Ireland, football offically refers to Gaelic football, the official term for “soccer” is “association football”, which is really lame. But most people still call “soccer” football, as it’s still the most popular (and best) sport. From a non-American viewpoint Cleese puts it perfectly… it’s not really football. But again, I don’t really care, once I get to play it when I want/need to you can call it “glorified bladder kicking” for all I care.
You’d think Cleese could find a guy to hold the camera steady for him.
ya know. i played “soccer” for 8 years in middle school - high school. I was decent and had fun with it. then i discovered sex, drugs and rock and roll. so i lost touch with it.
also, i am a fan of a sport that has low-educational fans and pretty much all of the fans to it make the typical fans/people look like fools, so i am used to a general stereo-type on sports fans.
now, with that said…
maybe i put too much thought into this disgust. but i swear to god i would love to throttle some of these panzies and their fake falls. they really seem to take it so far i don’t get why no one else seems to hate it.
can any football/soccer fans care to share their perspective?
I agree with how unfortunate the dives are and sadly there has been a little of this that has fallen into hockey. It a shame all of that but it is also a shame that soccer/football players are called weak or whatever. They aren’t. I don’t think you’ll see many notable players making those dives either. This World Cup you don’t see many either. I’ve watched almost every game and haven’t seen any. A lot of it is due to frustration, not that I defend this action.
For any athlete to be out there for 45 minutes running back and forth and actually working together like a team, deserves merit. The coach doesn’t tell them what to do; what play to do next or take a time out so that their players can rest. Cleese is absolutely right in his observations.
Hockey has become like that here in the US as compared to European style hockey and it’s sad.
Fernando Torres likes his beer cold, his tv loud, and homosexuals FLAMING. (note the dramatic flick of his head)
Ah no in general Torres is a decent player with no dramatics. There is a general rule for strikers that if they feel contact from a defender in or near the box, fall down and you’ll get peno/free kick. Granted some are worse than others but the truly great players like Messi or Zidane never do/did it. Prima donnas like Ronaldo try it all the time, Ronaldo did it a bit in one of the matches a few weeks ago. The Italians are generally the worst for it; they fluked past Australia four years ago because of a dive and they got a penalty against the All Whites this year because of a dive too (and still only drew).
The changes that are necessary to improve the game will eliminate cheating behaviour, such as diving, but it is difficult to achieve these changes with retards running FIFA. If they utilise camera footage to decision making in the game they can stamp it out and discipline players for diving and off the ball incidents that were not picked up by the ref, then players will not try it as much in future.
The game as it stands is flawed. But with such high profile incidents of terrible refereeing this World Cup
the tide is coming in on the eggheads in charge.
As a matter of interest is there anyone who enjoys both American football and “soccer”. From what I gather it’s either one or the other (or maybe one seriously and the other as a novelty).
Other forms of football are nowhere near as skillful as real football. They’re either about banging into each other or throwing a pointy ball for someone else to catch. They also feature fat people, which is bizarre. They are much more restricted in their play and stop - start - stop - start the whole time. I enjoy the odd international rugby match, especially the big competitions. It beats the American equivalent as it doesn’t have all the advertising laced throughout the game.
Football is the only football as the other footballs don’t put emphasis on football.
Only real thing I don’t like, and I agree that it has carried over to hockey. Is people trying so hard to sell injuries that are non-existent. I want to say it was the Brazil/Ivory Coast game, where that happened ALOT. I’m not that so content that Kaka actually elbowed that guy, rather than that guy running into him and falling down like a pussy. Way too much of that, and I think after that, the refs got a little strict about that. Haven’t seen it since.
There should be severe punishments for those who fake aggressions or penalties.
Ronaldo is much better now, but he’s paying the price of being a diver. Against spain two faults against him that were not sanctioned because the referee was thinking he was diving when he actually wasn’t.
But it really pisses me off to see a player with a nice chance to scor4e and instead of kicking the ball to the net the asshole just throws himself to the ground. ahhhhhh!!! it just messes with my nerves. I usually scream a lot while watching a football game and one of my hobbies is to swear and shout at the players of my team, specially when they do bad acting!!!
I’m an American who can’t stand to watch American professional football.
In the roughly 3.5 hours it takes to watch an American football game there is 10-15 minutes of actual football action. That’s somewhere between 4%-6%.
The rest of the time is spent watching commercials, watching players huddle-up to the get the play and getting into formation.
I used to love playing the sport in my younger days…but I think that watching it is a complete waste of time.
Also, if football was non stop you wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom without missing a ton of action.
Even when drinking I can’t see how you’d need to take a piss more than twice over the duration of a game, unless you’re shcuttered. Any time I’ve watched American football games (granted, few and far between) they have usually been crushingly boring up until the end. And if you’re watching a game and not drinking, you either have to sit there like a sap with all the ads or else keep going and coming back to the tv.
With football/soccer you get your 45 mins - 15 min break - and another 45 mins. But even then there have been plenty of times when I went to take whizz during a football/soccer match and I missed something dramatic, most recently the U.S. - Slovenia game when U.S. scored their 3rd goal that was then daftly disallowed. Nearly pulled the bubble in the fly trick trying to get back to see what happened after I heard people cheering then cursing.
College American football is a lot more enjoyable than the professional version, I presume.
I pee A LOT while drinking.
It’s one of the reasons I don’t drink much. It’s annoying.
I usually miss alot when I take breaks.
That clip was hilarious.
I am a Yank that can’t stand either form of football and am baffled by their popularity, but then again I love baseball and many people find that mind numbingly boring. I can’t for the life of me understand why hockey is not more popular than it is.
One thing I’m sick of though is the rest of the world, and even some of our own citizens (mostly smug latte liberal types) that accuse Americans of being somehow less sophisticated because of our lack of interest in soccer/football. Perhaps it’s an area we are MORE sophisticated in! So screw you rest of the world, you can keep your “povertyball” we don’t want it. [;)]