July 11, 2018
DEVALUING THE RUN OF PLAY:
Soccer Is a Fundamentally Flawed Game (RICH LOWRY, July 10, 2018, National Review)
The problem from my amateur's point of view is that the regular action in soccer can't be relied on to create scoring. So a lot of it happens as a result of interruptions in play and referee calls -- on corner kicks, free kicks, and penalty kicks.I watched some of the Russia-Croatia game last weekend (which did have a thrilling finale), and the announcer kept saying after a goal something like: AND ANOTHER BIG SET PIECE IN THIS WORLD CUP! Well, yeah. When else does something happen? This creates the incentive for players to flop and pretend they've just gotten shot in the leg. If a referee falls for it, the tactic might change soccer history.And then there are the penalty kicks. They have much too much of an element of randomness since the goaltender has to guess which way to jump. This is absurd and makes ending a tied game on penalty kicks a travesty.
The World Cup of Set Pieces: How Teams Are Living Off Dead-Ball Plays (GRANT WAHL, July 10, 2018, Sports Illustrated)
Set pieces fueled deep World Cup runs for England and Uruguay, to say nothing of Russia 2018 itself. Through the quarters, 30% of the tournament's goals had come on free kicks and corners, outpacing the previous high of 23% (in '02 and '06) among the five most recent men's World Cups.
Even in the unwatchable NBA, free throws only account for about 16% of scoring. The problem is not just that the scoring comes from stoppages in play but that it makes officiating such an integral part of the game.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 11, 2018 1:07 PM