How to make soccer more exciting?

[mimic]

The primary thing that bothers me about soccer is the red card. When a team gets a red card early the game stops being competitive. Why not just make them play a man down for five minutes or until the other team scores and have it cost them a substitution to replace the guy?

 

[Iasius]

I may be a bit biased, but I just love "Tanzt den Andre Wiedener":

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-OXzi5SG2M[/yt]

(starting around 0:50m)

 

[Starbreaker]

Yeah, nobody is really saying that they should change the rules for Americans, but they could at least modify them again for the MLS.... and get decent TV coverage. It would be worth a shot

 

[Shaytan]

It's also part of the folklore.
http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-3861745402106076394#

(I swear, I SWEAR I didn't chose this video purposely )

I don't mind, that's that other, unmentionable club from Vienna.
My club has never played against OM as far as I know.

Oh, the "other unmentionable club from Vienna", against "the other unmentionable team from the other side of the country"
(too bad the stadium didn't blew up)

 

[Skywalker]

When Major League Soccer first came about in 1996, they changed some of the standard soccer rules. They used a clock that counted down from forty-five minutes, and stopped during dead ball situations. Each half ended when the clock reached zero.

So, how long did games last on the average?

I don't remember, to be honest. I didn't start to get really interested in soccer until the 1998 World Cup.

 

[RoJoHen]

They just need to try and score more often. Passing the ball back and forth in the middle of the field instead of driving towards the place you need to be to score just seems like a waste of time to me.

Football is not all about the score, it's about the beauty of the gesture.

Then maybe we should stop calling it a sport and start calling it dance.

 

[ThankQ]

Want 'Mericans to like it? Make each goal worth six. So you get a 12-6 game.

See? That's better than 2-1.

 

[Davros]

They just need to try and score more often. Passing the ball back and forth in the middle of the field instead of driving towards the place you need to be to score just seems like a waste of time to me.

Football is not all about the score, it's about the beauty of the gesture.

It is about the score over here because that is what determines the winner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXvaRUP4l4
Now that's some football excitement.

They just need to try and score more often. Passing the ball back and forth in the middle of the field instead of driving towards the place you need to be to score just seems like a waste of time to me.

I suggest (if you have the time and will to learn) that you watch football much more often, then you'll realize that this "pointless" passing back and forth is often a tactic to draw the opposing team out of position so that a good pass can create an opportunity. It is at times a tactic to play down the clock, but more often it's the former.

Blame my childhood soccer coach who only let me play for about 5 minutes in the entire season. Since then I have not been able to sit through a whole game. It was fun to play, not so much to watch from the sidelines.

Also, to expand slightly () on my earlier point. I disagree that more goals would make football more exciting. Part of the game is that even if your team has been better for 80 minutes, but couldn't get more than a one goal lead, this means that you always worry about that one devastating attacking play/fluke goal that'll change the result completely. The relatively low scoring nature of football is an essential part of the game (maybe not in its infancy, but it is today).

I cannot see how more attempts to score would not make the game more exciting.

 

[ThankQ]

The primary thing that bothers me about soccer is the red card. When a team gets a red card early the game stops being competitive. Why not just make them play a man down for five minutes or until the other team scores and have it cost them a substitution to replace the guy?

PLAYERS would hate that. A red card is supposed to be a hardassed punishment. That's its point.

Some states' high school rules have "hard reds" and "soft reds". All that does is create confusion among HS players, coaches, spectators and referees.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I think that American Football might reflect our cultural differences in the US more than Soccer (or maybe it's just what we know...). Now this is George Carlin's great routine of Baseball vs Football but I think the same sort of ideas might apply.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om_yq4L3M_I[/yt]

 

[clint g]

There is no reason to change soccer to make it more appealing to Americans. It's getting plenty popular as it is in it's current form

For the ESPN empire and Univision, any questions about the return on their investment in the World Cup are being answered by viewers. On Saturday, the United States’ loss to Ghana was seen by 14.9 million on ABC — an American record for the tournament — and an additional 4.5 million on Univision.

That’s 19.4 million viewers for a Round of 16 game on a Saturday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. Eastern — the same number that Fox averaged over six prime-time games for last year’s World Series.

...

Through 52 games, ESPN’s average viewership is up 58 percent to 2.86 million; Univision’s is 2.1 million, up nearly 9 percent. Figure, then, that about five million are watching the games, comparable to the N.B.A. playoffs, excluding the finals, and the Stanley Cup finals. And, as Master said, the games have all been shown in daytime in the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/sports/soccer/29sandomir.html

The only change I think the sport needs is a fifth official viewing replays, but that is for the sake of the sport as a whole, not to appeal to Americans.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

^^ Wow, that's not bad. You gotta figure with all the kids playing it these days that eventually that'd trickle up.

 

[Skywalker]

I'm very happy to see those ratings. I'm sure they'll be even higher in 2014, too, especially since Brazil is only one or two hours ahead of the Eastern Seaboard, allowing for games to be seen a little later in the day. And if the US get the 2022 World Cup like I'm hoping (I think England should have it in 2018), I think by then soccer would have become popular enough here that viewership and attendance would dwarf what it was in 1994.

As for making changes to the officials, I like the idea of adding a second referee, one to cover each half of the pitch and to back up the other referee when play moves to the opposite half, and adding two more linesmen so they can better keep up with the players and make more accurate offside calls.

 

[Davros]

I don't feel a rules change is needed so much as a tactics change.

 

[Chaos Descending]

They just need to try and score more often. Passing the ball back and forth in the middle of the field instead of driving towards the place you need to be to score just seems like a waste of time to me.

Football is not all about the score, it's about the beauty of the gesture.

That sounds like an immense load of bullshit to me.

 

[Count Zero]

Well, the quality of the game certainly is a part of it. I've often heard commentators and even players and coaches talk about a victory which lacked technical and tactical finesse as a bit disappointing.
People also want to see a good game. Players from countries like Brazil are often admired for their artful handling of the ball. It's not just about scoring.

 

[iguana_tonante]

That sounds like an immense load of bullshit to me.

Thanks for sharing. Any other word of wisdom you feel the need to communicate?

 

[Chaos Descending]

That sounds like an immense load of bullshit to me.

Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome.

Feel free to let me know when I'm supposed to take her comment seriously.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Feel free to let me know when I'm supposed to take her comment seriously.

When you are willing to think outside of your narrow point of view, instead of just taking the piss trying to be "badass".

 

[Chaos Descending]

Feel free to let me know when I'm supposed to take her comment seriously.

When you develop the mental capacity to understand them outside of your narrow point of view.

Hmmmm. Nope. Still sounds like bullshit to me. Even worse, pretentious bullshit.

So do we keep this up or will you just accept that it sounds like a line of bullshit to me?