I follow many sports. I think basketball can claim to be beutiful with it's running, passing, and shots made. American football can be beautiful for it's complex schemes, long passes, and creative runs. I don't like golf but the courses are easily the most beautiful sports venues. Baseball and cricket have nice settings but are quite slow with moments of excitement. Ice hockey is one of my favorites but with it's many broken plays and low scores I wouldn't call it beautiful. Then one sport claims to be beautiful. It's the sport my grandfather played professionally in Scotland. It's the sport my daughter plays in America's strongest club league. It's the digital channel (Fox Soccer Channel) I probably frequent the most on my TV. I do like the game but there are some drawbacks to it that make not beautiful: A game with as many as 100 attacking opportunity but typically only 7 or less successes. Basketball gives you a couple hundred opportunities and about 100 baskets made per game. Getting ahead of a defender is offsides, scoring is much more beautiful than some bloke throwing up a flag on the side. Hockey has a much better concept of offsides. Men falling down, holding their shins crying until either a yellow card comes out or it is clear that it won't. Grabbing ones leg should be an automatic 10 minute rest for that player on the sidelines with no substitute. You don't see it with the ladies or the girls. The greatest footballers in the world getting an open shot and sending the ball 5 meters above the goal. It happens so often and that's not beautiful!! I do want to be convinced that it is beautiful but I see it as a great but not beautiful game and the "beautiful" as the sport's marketing propoganda. Convince me!
Heres a video of Arsenals Henry, some nice goals there and some great skill much better then running up and down a small court bouncing a ball..lol http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1049960781591077787&q=thierry+henry
Impressive stuff. The one play where Henry receives a pass (looking at first to be very offside) and does a spin move right in front of the keeper was my favorite. I see a lot of Premier League on the Soccer Channel here. It almost always has Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U, or Liverpool involved, so I am familiar with Henry, I'd like to see a few moves like the one in your video in each game. The beautiful plays are much too infrequent. I've heard basketball players called the greatest athletes in the world, I didn't agree at the time but over time I've come to agree with that statement. They do less with their feet but much more with their hands and manage to get a ball into a goal that is less than 1% the size of a soccer goal on a high frequency and often from a great distance.
Thats part of the beauty, when watching a game you're never sure if you're going to get a boring 0-0 or a cracking 4-4. As a footbally fan you're love of the game takes you through the 0-0 and makes you appreciate the 4-4 games all the more. I love the rush that you get when your team scores and you lose yourself in the excitement, jumping up with a roar of joy, hugging the guys around you even if you don't know them. If that happened 100 times in a game you'd get bores, scoring wouldn't be as exciting and you'd like like a prat in the pub. Offside is vital, trust me. Without it teams would stick a beanpole striker up front, he wouldn't move more than 10 yards from the goal and people would bang long hit and hope balls up to him all day. Plus you'd lose those explosive attacking runs from midfield that players like Gerrard and Kaka make that are just as exciting as goals themselves. Yes, girls the lot of them, I 100% agree. If I was the ref I'd give them a kick until they got up. Refs should wave play on a lot more and physios should be alowed on to the pitch during play to trat 'injured' players. If there was a chance of them scoring or their team conceding a goal they'd get up faster. It doesn't hapen very often, truse me Check out Stevie Gerrards goals in the FA Cup final and agains Olympiakos in the 2004 Champions league for great goals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J9qhFeMH5Y&search=FA Cup final
Excellent post, MattUK. I'll think about your 0-0 game with score(s) at the end. I stepped away from my work this morning when I saw the England score at 79 minutes. I got next door in time to see Beckam's crossing pass to Crouch. I enjoyed Gerrard's nice work too. But still it's my nature to like to see a flow to the scoring. I guess I don't like the offsides that are called when they are really close to being onside. In baseball they say tie goes to the runner, in soccer they should side with who is playing the game aggressively versus who is playing the rules in the close calls. Thanks for agreeing on the crying man thing. I must disagree with you on the high shots. The average occurance most be over two per game. To me that's like a basketball player shotting the ball over the backboard on a foul shot. Great game for England today!
Can't be à rsed reading any of that. But this post caught my eye... BEST.PLAYER.EVER Henry's a legend. Loving your avatar, btw!
Hah, Innit. Coz he hates France as much as the rest of the world. As long as he carries on being a goal scoring machine for arsenal it's all gravy babyyyyy.
You're right, he just doesn't reproduce his Arsenal form for the national team, which is such a waste, when we all know what he can do. I'm no expert, but shouldn't the manager re-consider his formation or tactics or something. Perhaps he would argue the team is bigger than just 1 man, but in the case of Henry, (and possibly Rooney having watched last nights game) there could be an exception.
That's supposed to be the case that the attacking side gets the benefit of the doubt. It's not often the case though as the referee doesn't have the courage to give it.
I like all soccer games. Especially the 2 teams of 6 year olds with their tiny little legs running wobbily towards wherever the ball is, even if the ball goes over the sideline, they still run after the ball kicking it, both teams! Funniest thing I ever seen in sport.
I just saw what should have been Argentina's 3rd goal called offsides, replay shows it wasn't. The worst thing was that the ref gave a yellow to the Argentine player because he took two strides and put the ball in the goal. Blow the whistle louder (or before the pass even occurs) if you don't want scores! Ooops, Argentina just got the third goal again, sorry Mr. Whistle.
Yeah, that's a pet hate of mine. It almost always gets called in the defending teams favour when it should be the other way around.
I'm Scottish and male, and one of the few Scottish males to not care about football at all. I think it is only a beautiful game in very slick adverts when there are quick edits, great music and a horde of Robotic Kendo warriors... but that's just me.