Has Soccer Ever Reformed Itself to Become Higher Scoring?
Well, actually ...
I’ve read countless tweets about why only ignorant Americans don’t realize that nil-nil draws in soccer are human sport at its ultimate best, for reasons ...
But soccer fans around the world sure seem a lot more entertained by 3-2 games, like mighty Argentina holding off tiny Cape Verde.
Cape Verde tied the game at 2-2 on this fine shot, which the Argentine defender could have blocked with his face, but instead prudently turned away and ducked like John Kruk facing 6’10” Randy Johnson in the All Star Game:
Baseball players differ greatly in bravery at the plate: Kruk only got hit by hardball pitches 2 times in his career, while Craig Biggio got himself hit by 285 pitches. Apparently, soccer players never block shots with their faces.
But few seemed to mind the Argentine defender’s flinch too much. After all, watching scoring is more fun that watching not scoring.
Maybe they should try to have more 3-2 soccer games, kind of like how American football got more entertaining for spectators when they started having fewer 10-10 ties (#1 ND vs. #2 MSU in 1966) and more 35-31 wins (#1 Nebraska vs. #2 Oklahoma in 1971)?
Most sports fans are too young to remember just how much American football improved as a TV spectator sport from, say, 1960 to 1985.
Soccer has also improved somewhat since, say, the 1980s, but soccer fans today tend to be outraged by American assumptions that more improvement is possible.
Of course, most American brainstorms about how, precisely, to improve soccer are terrible.
But the American assumption, with its roots in the huge improvements in American football as a spectator sport in the 1960s-1980s, that soccer could improve itself is not derisible.
Actually, the World Cup is already a lot more entertaining than I recall it being in the late 20th Century, due to various rule changes, plus improvements in skills and tactics.
One reason is because FIFA worries about what Americans will think.
For example, …
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