The Strategery of Our Sport

             In a country where popular sports don’t end in ties (recall the controversy over the baseball game that did so several years back), soccer has never quite caught on.  Could it be because Americans thrive on the orgasmic aspect of sports?
            Think about football. The season leads to the be-all and the end-all: The Super Bowl.  After that, it’s the off season.  Sure there’s the Arena Football League, but it’s almost an entirely different sport.

            Soccer, by contrast goes on forever.  There’s a season in the fall, the spring, and the penultimate summer. Then it starts up again in the fall.  It never really seems to end.       
            Also, it’s very common for games to end in draws (ties).  In the upper echelon of soccer, a score of 4-2 is a high scoring game.  Scores of 1-0 or 2-1 are far more common.  Maybe this is why Americans loose fascination with soccer and turn to other sports where somebody always wins.

            As a spectator at a high school soccer game asked me the other night: Who won?  My reply: It was a 2-2 tie. The rebuttal: Yeah, but for what team?  Maybe this is why soccer hasn’t caught on.

Hey Pal! Break a leg.

            Injuries are part of sports.  If athletes sat on the couch all day, they wouldn’t get hurt. But, then they wouldn’t be athletes either. 

            Soccer in this country is often seen as a tame sport.  Compared to football, that assessment may be somewhat accurate.

            Although, many injuries still occur in soccer and the shadow of doubt is often cast upon the referee for not controlling the game tightly enough to prevent them.

            Case in point: a few seasons ago during an adult game, two players came sliding in for the ball rather sloppily and one ended up breaking a leg.  This didn’t necessarily mean he had been fouled, though.

            Consider the chicken-and-egg conundrum. Which came first?  Was the action of the player with the now-broken leg responsible for causing the injury or was the opponent’s action the one at fault?

            As the referee, I had to make a split-second decision.  I determined that the first player, by recklessly challenging for the ball, had placed himself in a position where it was feasible his leg might be broken.

            Most of the players weren’t too riled by this decision until the first-responders arrived from the Emergency Medical Services.  As they were carting the player off the field on a gurney, one remarked something along the lines of, the guy who did this deserves a red card.

            I’m sure one can imagine the response from the players that came next.