Jun
World Cup
Alright, so I have attempted to be excited about the World Cup. ESPN ran ads months in advance, and I decided I would give it a try. (On a side note, four years ago I watched a decent amount of the World Cup because it was one of the few things on in HD. I had just bought by HDTV, and the colors looked incredible).
So, I tune in at 1:30 for the USA’s first game against England. Well, it turns out the game really did not start until 2:30. There was an hour of pregame. Sorry, but I cannot watch an hour of soccer pregame. The US was excited about a tie with England, which it turns out is not really a very good team anyways.
Then, in a sport that actually has more time between games than the NBA Finals, I tune it last Friday for America’s second game. I am actually in the car, so I dial it up on XM Radio. We apparently got dominated in the first half by a country that has less than two million people in the entire country. Wow. I realize soccer is not the primary sport in this country, but this is a bit ridiculous. However, right on cue the come back and tie it up with less than ten minutes of “real” time remaining. Then they score what appears to be the game winning goal. But apparently the referee decided that is not the way he wanted the game to end, so he had blown his whistle and called something. Yet, to this day – four days later – still nobody actually knows what he called. In other sports the officials screw up at times, but at least they have to say what they called. Simply unbelievable!
So here are my thoughts about the problems with the World Cup and why Americans do not watch it:
- Our team is not very good
- Too much time between games
- The fake flopping is out of control
- The referees call whatever they want arbitrarily
- Offsides is insane. Give me a fixed line like in hockey, and I would be good with it. This moving line of defenders is crazy.
So, enjoy the rest of the World Cup. I may tune in a little, but I just cannot get into it. Really, I have tried!
I agree with you on most of these points. Arbitrary calls by the officials that they don’t have to explain is never going to be popular with Americans. Sure, I understand taking away a goal because of a penalty (plenty of TD’s have been taken off the board for holding, etc), but you need to be able to tell us who did it and what. We’re Americans, when something goes wrong, we expect a 500+ page document on why.
June 25th, 2010 at 10:50 amAnd yes, flopping is completely out of control.
The only point I disagree with you on is the time between games. The World Cup takes a month to play and reduces 64 teams down to 1. The NBA playoffs take 2 months to reduce 16 teams down to 1.