How to make soccer watchable
- Thread starter NCPitt
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Arrange in your next life to be born in Africa, South America, Europe or Mexico. They seem to enjoy it. I watch if I have a rooting interest.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I knew you were coming in with this. LOLhave you seen BASEBALL? Now that is GARBAGEIt actually IS THE WORST sport on Earth. But it helps to watch if you can't sleep.
I have to bash baseball every chance I get! Because I feel about baseball, the way many of you feel about soccer.
Calling soccer boring and unwatchable is fine but you also cannot be a fan of baseball, golf, or Nascar and say that.
I grew up with baseball, devoted Buccos fan, but with the Buccos becoming permanent garbage around 1992, I realized I love the Pirates, not the sport. and not only that, all the stuff that did give it a little excitement, analytics took away, base stealing, squeeze bunts, hit and run, going for the extra base then they added shifting, purposely playing for walks, constant pitching changes, anything a little risky and moderately fun, they took it away. It was boring already and all the Moneyball concepts promoted more boredom.
I don’t think any soccer executives around the world are losing any sleep worried about making the sport more watchable…like some other sports that shall go nameless.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I'm not a fan of any of those. I'll watch soccer before I'll watch cars drive in circles. Golf is only entertaining when they play on really difficult courses and the players start to look average. Baseball, in its current state, is awful.
I'm actually pretty ambivalent about soccer. Some of the European stuff is decent.
Tomorrow on CBS is the super bowl of soccer. Liverpool vs Real Madrid in the Champions League Final. Both teams will be attacking and will be on the front foot. It should be back and fourth non stop action. If someone who doesn’t like the sport, watches it with an open mind as a sports fan, and comes away saying it was boring, then fair enough. My hats off to him.
What Real Madrid did the previous 3 rounds to get to this point was some of the most exhilarating stuff anyone would ever see in any sport. And one of those rounds was against my team sadly. But if tomorrow is like their previous matches, we are in for a real treat.
I love golf. But we need new stars IMO.
Right, all are boring. I'll have baseball and golf on TV on occasion but I'm not watching. I'll just look up every once in a while.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I don't have any rooting interest in soccer and know next to nothing about strategy but I did offer to help coach a U12 AYSO team so that the HC could go see his son play in some tournaments. I watched some of the Premier League games and found those to be entertaining.
I think what happens is that most people don't see soccer until it's some game where the teams play very conservatively and that is boring. Like watching someone play a neutral zone trap in hockey. The sport would benefit from opening things up a little but I'm not qualified to say how.
It’s like anything else. It depends on the match. Or the team. Or the Manager. But Tomorrow won’t be the 90’s version of the New Jersey Devils vs Kevin Constantine’s Pittsburgh Penguins. Or the NBA of the same era with the Detroit Pistons. Heck it won’t even be Jamie Dixon’s Panthers. It should be like NBA showtime Lakers vs Celtics. Neither team needs to sit 10 men behind the ball defensively and try to clog things up for the other team. It should be attack minded entertaining soccer with all the talent on both sides.
i don’t expect it, but there might be an initial period of the two teams feeling each other out. but then it will open up. Or it could be wide open from the start.
I’ll party at your tailgate , anytime
I don’t necessarily know what I’m watching but I’ve gotten into it in the last year and I now like it. I doubt I’ll ever adopt a team or give much of a crap who wins, but knowing how much people are into it and how massive it can be I’ve enjoyed watching this year. Will definitely be watching tomorrow.
@Fk_Pitt just curious. How low do you go? And what I mean is what’s your cutoff in what you watch. I guess maybe in other words do you watch MLS? Or are you just into elite level games? Even though I don’t know what I’m watching at most times it doesn’t take much to see levels of play. From what I’ve read MLS isn’t considered terrible, but it’s certainly not top Euro futbol and not even close.
I try occasionally to watch MLS but I can’t get into it. I’ll watch a match if it’s on, but I don’t have the bandwidth to follow another league. The EPL I follow closely and then the other top Euro leagues I follow very loosely because of the Champions League tie in. But you’re right, the top MLS teams would be mid to lower table teams in Englands 2nd division which isn’t horrible. But there’s a huge difference between England’s top 6 teams and England's 2nd division.
MLS is a cool niche sport in this country, with lots of new state of the art stadiums that draw pretty good attendance numbers. I just haven’t been able to get personally invested in it.
Golf has not just one, but many great young golfers, but none with ever be stars if network coverage of golf tournaments only shows Tiger Woods. As they went to break during the PGA, they said they'd be back with more coverage of "Tiger Woods...and other golfers." Those other golfers included the tournament leaders, who were about 15 strokes ahead of Tiger.
It’s a shame for me that I only like Tiger now that he’s not worth watching. I would love to see him make one last run at a major.
I used to watch Tennis and followed Andre Agassi. When he retired, I never watched again. US tennis has never replaced him and here it is 25 years later.
I followed Jack Nicklaus as a kid, and then Phil replaced him for me as an adult. Now that Phil is history, I’m hoping someone will fill the void. Ricky Fowler could have been a good one. He’s a charismatic and likable guy. But he will never win a major. Lol.
That kid who finished 2nd in the PGA looks like he might be relevant for a while. But he has no charisma.
Real Madrid broke my heart as well. Should be a great game this afternoon.
Eff slurping Tiger. The media is why I dislike him so much. He’s been mostly garbage since 2007 and he’s still treated like royalty.
I love squeeze bunts, even before the analytics stuff. Used to do it in video game baseball all the time.
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