The following post has been brought to you by the Everton Football Club, and the idiots that make comments on YouTube.
Well...looks like I did it. Even though I've seen tons of soccer matches before yesterday (even of club soccer last year), yesterday morning officially marked the first time I've watched a club soccer match...as a fan of one of the teams. Before now, I've only cared about the sport during World Cup soccer. But starting last year, watching soccer had me the slightest bit interested. And I'd have to say that I was genuinely surprised at how into it I was.
I actually woke up early enough to catch the second half of the first match of the season between Arsenal and West Bromwich Albion (whom I had never heard of before this year since they were newly promoted), and I was fading in and out of sleep since it was still early that morning. I didn't miss anything, though.
But after washing up, I was able to stay awake for the entire match between my newly adopted Everton going against Blackburn Rovers. The only time my heart beats as strongly as it did during that game would be during Packers games, or meaningful Braves games (which haven't occurred in a good while :( ), or Penn State sports/UNC basketball. But for some reason, it felt like I had been a fan of this team for a long time (from an emotional standpoint, not from a knowledgeable one, as I'm not at a rush to look up the team's entire history, though I may do that soon enough).
But back to the game. After seeing David Dunn score the first goal against us, my heart kinda sank (as did my Internet feed of that game). Thankfully, I was able to find another feed soon enough. So I did catch the first goal that we scored. A perfectly placed free kick from Mikel Arteta knotted the score at 1-1 in added time before the half. I was exuberant after that goal.
Yakubu, who had started to become one of my favorite players from last year, notched his first goal of the season from a back-post cross, giving us a 2-1 lead that dissipated in a matter of minutes when our defense was caught off guard when Roque Santa Cruz netted one shortly after.
Then a few moments passed where I was hoping that the defense could just hold on and take the point. That is, until Yakubu fouled someone from behind during stoppage time, drawing a yellow card, and the free kick from that led to an attempt that was first stopped by our keeper Tim Howard, but later Andre Ooijer put the final dagger into the hearts of thousands kicking a two-foot uncontested goal hitting the top of the inside of the net, basically ending the game, a 3-2 loss.
Here are some of my reactions.
First and foremost, the team did not look good at all defensively. Jason Roberts of the Rovers gave us headaches on some of his runs, and almost scored on a few occasions. Maybe this can be attributed to the many youngsters we have out there, along with the fact that we have a lot of key players out with injuries.
Another thing...offensively, we had some shots, and I was somewhat satisfied by the effort, but to be honest, I would have thought that Blackburn controlled the tempo of the match, and that I would have been satisfied with a draw, especially during that point in stoppage time.
And lastly, that loss stung. It didn't feel as bad as a Packers loss, but it was a little heavier than a Braves loss (especially at this point in the Braves' season). It had permeated my mind for a while during the day when I was in Hagerstown. I didn't know I'd be that into it...but KG, looks like you're in for a ride.
So that concludes my part about the actual athletic competition. Now, let's shift to soccer fans in general.
...Oops, I'm sorry, I should have said "football" fans. I know, you're gonna wind up calling all of us Americans "silly gay yanks that slobber over our 'throwball' rather than 'real football'".
Now this is not really a response to any of Jim Rome's final burns on soccer and how he thinks it's the worst thing to have permeated the world since the Bubonic Plague. But mainly in response to a video entitled "Real Football (soccer) vs. Handball (American football)" (which has since been removed) by some fanboy by the name of ManUtdDrunk (whose account has since been suspended for violations not related to what I'm talking about) who apparently has been to both soccer and football games.
Edit: It turns out that I have found the video in question. It resurfaced after the axing of that account under the username "Milanaire," and under the title "Football (soccer) v Handball (American throwball) Atmosphere." After further review, it appears that I had a few facts wrong. Check out the video below here to find out the details.
What was his main point of comparison? The fan atmosphere. I will admit that soccer has quite possibly the best fan atmosphere of any sport in the world. The constant chanting, the fans cheering at full throat, and sometimes flares going off in the stands, as well as flags flying...that makes it look like a pretty cool place to watch a sporting event. I also wasn't surprised to see the fans at Everton's home stadium boo their team (rightfully so) when the final whistle blew. I don't remember the team he used for the soccer side, but I'm sure it's an historically significant one throughout the soccer-watching world.
But then the NFL team...wait. When you're comparing the fan atmosphere between certain leagues, and you see those three letters together like that, you know you won't get a good comparison, especially with the existence of college football, knowing how much better the atmosphere is in major college football than the NFL, especially in the SEC or the major Big Ten or Big 12 schools. But he could have used a Packers home game for that. Or a Patriots game. Or Steelers. Or Eagles. Or Redskins. Or pre-2008 Chiefs. Or Seahawks. Or Vikings (when they were good). Or Bears. Or Browns.
But as I was going to say, the NFL team that he had to use...was...
the Cincinnati Bengals, as well as the Atlanta Falcons and the Arizona Cardinals. And it did turn out that he used a college team, but it was the Indiana University football team, which isn't as rich in tradition as some of the other Big Ten schools.
Yes. How sad. The Cincinnati Bengals. Apparently he must have thought that that was sufficient to prove his point. Not that his point needed proving anyway, as any rational American sports fan would have just accepted that. But no. He just wanted to rub it in. Yeah, I know that the soccer experience overseas is bigger and means more to the world than American football, but could you at least make as valid comparison as you can using a legitimate fanbase, and not one that's gotten so used to failing that its very logo is synonymous to failure in its own professional sports league? Please. That's just like saying European women are hotter than American women, while making your point using a split screen of Catherine Zeta-Jones on one side and Rosie O'Donnell on the other.
Yeah. Not a fair comparison.
But that's not even the crux of this rant.
It's the massive amounts of ignorance displayed by both sides about the football vs. soccer thing.
OK, world. We get it. We know the rest of the world calls it football. We don't. Get over it. The only nations that don't call it football...*gasp* created their own version of football! That includes the United States of course, Canada, and Australia (and I don't know if I'm missing anyone else but I'll leave it at that). Don't like it? Fine, but don't ask us to change it, nor deride us for our choice!
Another thing, a lot of people across the pond say that football is nothing but a bunch of fat sweaty men with spandex on falling on each other, wearing all sorts of pads, and how they take long breaks every so often, and tell us to play a "real sport" like rugby. And these are the same people who call American sports fans "ignorant yanks" for us not liking their "footbowl."
A couple of thoughts.
Football and rugby are completely different games. I've seen both kinds. In the early days of American football, there were so many cases of people being seriously injured and even killed from it (and some people still do, but that has minimized to the standard rate of any kind of death in sports) that some series, like the Harvard-Yale rivalry or Army-Navy were suspended because of the massive amounts of injury. Also, the way the game is played also makes for more violent hits. Retired NFL players are already being neglected by the head of the Players Union from their on-field injuries that continue to cripple them during their retirement. Just imagine how the game would be if nobody wore pads. There would be at least a few people dying from on-field injuries every year.
And not all American football players are fat. The only people who would be anywhere near close to fat are the offensive and defensive lines. In fact, some of the fastest athletes in the world play football. These are the speed wide receivers and defensive backs (and some running backs). The fastest of the runners in the NFL post 40-yard-dash times in the 4.2-4.3-4.4 second range, which roughly translates to about 11 m/s, not very impressive. Imagine if these players only trained to sprint, and didn't have to train in other areas such as backpedaling, awareness of the ball, changing direction, taking hits from dummies and protecting the football, and other stuff. They'd be world-class sprinters as well.
Also, a whole heck of a lot more strategy is involved in football than (now let's get back to the comparison with) soccer. Now this is not saying that soccer has no strategy (like some Americans erroneously believe), since that's the only way you can have a chance at scoring through a tough defense. Don't believe me? Ask Everton's defense. *rimshot*
In soccer, there's a lot of passing to find a good look to the goal. A lot of attempted crosses (which cause a lot of goals), medium-range kicks that need to bend a certain way to have a chance to get past the defense into the net, other intricate passing schemes to get past the defense, corner kicks, free kicks, etc., and then there's trying to stop these attacks. It's not like basketball, where a dominant player can will himself to the net and score multiple times per game.
But in football, there's the option to run, pass, and do trick plays, and then there's knowing when one is coming, and knowing how to stop them. There's also knowing your kicker's range so he can kick a field goal from a certain distance without having to punt the football to the other team. There's knowing how to cover punts and kickoffs without the other team running it back on you. There are intricate blocking schemes that help your running back towards the end zone or first down. Other blocking schemes are made to pick up blitzes from the other team. There are intricate styles of pass offense (including arguably the hardest one to master in all of football, the "West Coast offense", where a lot of receivers slash through the middle of defenses and these quarterbacks have to put the ball in the exact spot where nobody can deflect or intercept a pass. The quarterback also has to know whether the defense is in man-to-man coverage or zone coverage, so they'll know what to expect from the defense, all while their five-man protection "pocket" is collapsing around him as he looks for the open man when defenders are bearing down on him looking to sack him. The language of these things varies from team to team, so you can't just get signed onto another team mid-season and continue dominating. Playbooks in the NFL have gotten so complex that some people who currently play in the league have trouble memorizing everything, so they stick to those that they believe work best, but that would make it simpler for the defense to stop.
Yeah, to that point. The defense. There's the 4-3, the 3-4 (where you don't know which linebacker(s) will be blitzing), the Cover 2, goal-line (for obvious reasons), nickel packages, dime packages, trying to match up with a tight end (a larger player on offense) who has exceptional speed for his size and jumping ability to make himself a prime target for his quarterback; trying to match up with that kind of tight end; do you use a linebacker who may be a little slower? Or do you use a speedier defensive back who may be compromised in the size compartment?
Okay, I think I made my point clear. While there is strategy in soccer, football's strategy can be matched up with anything. It's almost like chess in action.
What else is there? The break component. OK, you win this time. I also hate the amount of commercial breaks in football compared to the nonstop action of soccer. But to play devil's advocate, the breaks are needed since, once again, they're wearing pads, and that tires people out that much more than not wearing pads. And then there's the "keeping your best players fresh" thing, since football players are playing in the most dangerous sport in America, and once again, retirees in some positions (offensive line, defensive line are a few examples) are sometimes crippled for the rest of their lives. Have that continue nonstop, and the game would be literally unplayable without a mortality or exhaustion rate.
As you can see, I could go on and on about this, but here's the point: The idiot Europeans (I'm not saying everybody) that say football is a pansy sport, and bash it for whatever reasons you come up with, and then calling us Americans ignorant for not liking soccer, ARE THE ONES BEING IGNORANT THEMSELVES. I've given your sport a fair chance and want to stay, how about you do ours the same way, and you'd only realize that FOOTBALL AND SOCCER ARE DIFFERENT SPORTS THAT WERE NOT MEANT TO BE COMPARED. THEIR ONLY SIMILARITY IS THE USE OF THE WORD "FOOTBALL." AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE GETTING INTO THAT. Call it whatever you want.
You don't have to like football. If you don't, that's OK. There are some sports that I just don't like, like NASCAR. Because it doesn't appeal to me. If football doesn't appeal to you, fine. But don't come up with cockamamie reasons to bash it when chances are, your sport has the same or even worse faults. That's what causes us to get defensive about our sports. Same goes to American football fan who hates soccer because of the lack of scoring.
Case closed.
~KG~
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