In case you missed it — and if your silly belief in “American Exceptionalism” extends to gridron football, and you’re bored by the most-played and most-watched sport on Earth, then you did — Wayne Rooney scored on an instant-classic bicycle kick in the 78th minute of Manchester United’s 2-1 “Manchester Derby” victory Saturday over rival Manchester City. It’s already being called the sports highlight of the new decade:
[UPDATE: The video has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons. Does anyone know if there’s an approved, “official” version out there? -ed.]
As Jason Gay puts it in describing A Global Moment That Needs No Translation:
Have you watched it yet? If not, don’t delay. Even if you’re a soccer skeptic; even if you gleefully ignore the World Cup; even if you don’t have the faintest idea who this Wayne Rooney is, it’s a must see. It’s that sublime.
******
When you see it, you don’t need to be a soccer fan to appreciate what Wayne Rooney did on the second Saturday of February. Because when the ball connects with Mr. Rooney’s spiraling foot and does the spectacular and improbable, anyone can recognize the feeling in the frame, the emotion that keeps us coming back to sports despite its many excesses and aggravations:
Joy.
Amen.
(H/T: Powerline)
“and you’re bored by the most-played and most-watched sport on Earth”
More people eat at McDonald’s on a daily basis than a good steak house, does that mean McDonald’s is better food?
At least there are more than eleven minutes of actual sport involved in the rest of the world football…
A fine goal, but it will be surpassed by a World Cup or an Olympics for sure.
But I will say this…you have not experienced sports until you have stood for a whole soccer match, crammed cheek to jowl with 20,000 drunken soccer fans cheering on their local teams. And it is definitely not a passive activity. There is singing, chanting, screaming at the refs and opposing players, a weekly fight or two….
My team was Ipswich Town. The team isn’t competitive now, but we used to compete with the Liverpool’s and Man. U’s of the world.
One of the things I enjoy about English League Football is the regulation system. Every year, the bottom three teams of each division is “regulated” by being demoted to the next lowest league. The top three teams in that league are promoted to take their place.
“At least there are more than eleven minutes of actual sport involved in the rest of the world football…” Says someone whose never played football…
“One of the things I enjoy about English League Football is the regulation system. Every year, the bottom three teams of each division is “regulated” by being demoted to the next lowest league. The top three teams in that league are promoted to take their place.”
I think you mean relegated? But I completely agree – it’s very fun to follow teams as they rise and fall through the ranks.
Yes.
(I’m blaming the cough medicine…)
Remember …
Cricket is a Gentlemen’s Game for Gentlemen …
Rugby is a Ruffians’ Game for Gentlemen …
Soccer is a Ruffians’ Game for Ruffians …
And …
American Football is a Davidkians’ Game for Davidkians …
No way that’s the highlight of the DECADE. But it is a fine soccer goal! I do give it some more credence for being the decider in a meaningful Manchester Derby.
I’m glad I finally took the plunge into soccer. What a game this is! I love it.
An excellent goal by an otherwise odious individual. Not sure what Citeh’s defense was doing, though.
As chilenos go, that was certainly one of them, but give me Marcelo Balboa any day.
David, snap to whistle added up averages out to 11 minutes. Basically, you have people standing around talking about what they are going to do for 20 or 30 seconds punctuated with about 3 to 5 seconds of people actually doing something. All of this is primarily surrounded by a metric f**k ton of commercials. In terms of something to watch there isn’t a lot of there there. In terms of athleticism, the only sports that require less are Baseball and Cricket.
That’s not to say that there aren’t a few skill positions that require significant levels of fitness. But the primary feature of most football players is a) highly questionable overall fitness due to the excessive sizes prized for O line and to a lesser extend D line players and b) very specialized technique. That coupled with the high likely hood for progressive concussions makes the sport highly questionable, in terms of the long term health of those that play it. Boxing is possibly worse in this regard, but considering boxing has a history of being aware of and trying to monitor the amount of head trauma sustained by participants and football does not. Football gives you a helmet that until a couple of years ago underwent basically no testing for actual efficacy in preventing head trauma and was basically the same as it was 20 plus years ago. At best even current football helmets are of questionable efficacy. This is worse for high school teams that use these helmets long beyond their useful life to the point where you might as well not be wearing the thing at all.
Football is a very good vehicle for television advertising and that’s about it.
Football is a very good vehicle for television advertising and that’s about it
Surely this deserves the ban hammer?
LOL
I recognize a lot of people love (American) football, and that I’m being intensely cynical about it and the degree to which it is commercialized. But there is a hell of a lot of profit motive in making football popular. There is no other sport that is as conducive to the volume of regularly scheduled commercial breaks as football and I don’t think it’s that much of a coincidence that football has exploded in popularity roughly along with TV. There is a lot of money to be made and there is a lot of money to be made in hyping it.
So just to piss off gahrie even more:
But in case you are scoring at home, you have 12 timeouts that can be called each game. Each of those equates to a commercial break (unless the station airing the game has run out of commercial packages to run.) you have 2 two minute warnings, these are extra long commercial breaks. You have before and after half time (also extra long) and part way through half time. You have after every point scored, (before and after the extra point try if it is a touchdown). you have immediately after every kickoff. For those scoring at home that means you have TD followed by commercials followed by one play followed by commercials followed by one play followed by commercials for every touchdown. Thats 9 minutes of commercials for literally 10 seconds or less of actual programing. And god help us if they run that thing back for a TD. And you have after every punt (IE every change of possession there is a commercial break. Even a turnover, we’ll go to commercial while the refs sort out who has the ball.) Someone gets hurt, we’ll go to commercial, sometimes twice if they are really hurt. All and all you are talking 30 plus breaks… Half of a football game’s broadcast time is going to commercials no wonder the networks are willing to pay through the nose for the licensing rights, airing football is a license to print money. And back to that 11 minutes, they spend 19 minutes showing replays. they show more replays of football than live football during any given game. You could watch every play of every NFL game in the time it takes to watch one live football broadcast (32 teams, 2 with the week off, is 15 games each week. 15 times 11 minutes is 165 minutes of actual football each week across the entire NFL which is 2 hours and 45 minutes. Generally at least 15 minutes less than the scheduled broadcast time of a single game.) Talk about commercialization.
Baseball is boring as dirt to watch on TV, but you have 18 side changes for 18 commercial breaks (one is extra long in the 7th inning) and you have pitching changes, lets say 2 a game per team for 22 breaks that you can count on. That’s pretty good, but it’s over at least 4 hours not three like football… Its pretty clear what makes the most money to broadcast on tv.
Oh I know how many commercial breaks there are in football. Everyyear i live blog the Superbowl and Superbowl commercials on my blog. I timestamp every commercial break and every return to action.
To be honest, I really enjoy college football, and only watch pro ball to get the updates of my fantasy players.
fair enough… College football is all right. It’s not quite as horrendously scripted feeling as NFL football.
I don’t really get fantasy football, but that’s a different rant…
I didn’t get FF at first either, but I love it now. For one thing, it maintains my interest in the NFL as long as there is no end in sight to the Redskins’ suckitude. And more importantly, a live in-person draft is a great reason for a guys’ weekend somewhere, especially when most of your peeps are married and the bachelor parties have all dried up.
I hate FF. The only thing fun about it is the draft (actually that’s true for pretty much all fantasy sports, but I digress). Yet despite your drafting acumen, you can have Peyton Manning at QB, Chris Johnson and Steven Jackson for RB, Andre Johnson, Reggie Wayne, and Steve Smith (Panthers or Giants version), Jason Witten at TE, and the Pittsburgh defense, and lose to someone starting Matt Hasselbeck, Frank Gore, Austin Collie, and a bunch of other low-round or waiver-wire pickups AND STILL LOSE. Eff that sh*t, man. Give me a fantasy baseball 5×5 roto league any day over that crap.
*I meant to say, “…and play someone starting Hasselbeck, etc.”
So what your saying DCL is that in only 11 minutes of action football manages to be far more exciting and entertaining than 90 minutes of soccer? Got it. You can have as much quantity as you’d like, I’ll take quality.
Without wading too far into the football vs. futbol debate, which I think is generally pointless, David has a good point on quality vs. quantity. If one thinks soccer is better than, or at least equal to, football, well, as the distinguished junior senator from Minnesota would say, that’s… okay. But one’s reasoning surely isn’t, “there’s nine times as much action!” If so, I’ll invent a sport where the goals are five miles apart, so it takes at least a half-hour just to dribble across the extensive midfield unimpeded. Games could last for days!
The question is whether, during the 85+ minutes out of 90 when both sides are jockeying for position, moving the ball up and down the field, etc., the action is entertaining. That’s a subjective question. But I’ll say this: the best things about sports is often the anticipation, the suspense, when something is about to happen, maybe, or maybe not. Like when there’s 1.1 seconds left and you’re waiting for the inbounds play to start. Or when it’s 4th-and-goal and the team is lining up or the snap. Or when it’s a 3-2 count, runners on 2nd and 3rd, and the pitcher is getting set to start his windup. Or when a crucial corner kick is about to happen late in a one-goal game. In soccer, the clock is running when that’s happening. In basketball and football, it’s not. In baseball, there’s no clock at all. But in all four cases, those “in between” moments are hardly worthless. On the field, folks are jockeying, strategizing, getting ready for the big moment. At home or in the stands, fans’ hearts are in their throats, their fingers are crossed and they’re getting ready to either exult joyously or curse bitterly. Those moments are what makes sports great!
Soccer has fewer “in-between” moments than, say, football or basketball… although not as drastically fewer as you might think, if you count all the time when the players are jockeying for position at midfield, trying to set up the next play, which isn’t all that different conceptually, just because the clock is running, from teams lining up on the line of scrimmage and looking at each other’s lines and figuring out what to do next, or the pitcher trying to hold the runner at first base, etc. There’s stuff going on during those moments. But anyway, again, soccer has fewer of them than other sports. Granted. But that’s not the question. The question is how entertained you are, both by the “action” parts AND the “in-between” parts. And the answer to that question is… totally subjective.
That’s is why hockey’s great. The clock only runs during the action, but the on the fly line changes mean the players can go full out while they’re on the ice.
Brendan, my point is that for most of the time the clock is running in football play is stopped. The only thing particularly exciting is that is suspenseful… Something that doesn’t always happen… But put another way, it is waiting around for something to happen. Which is exactly David’s complaint against Futbol… Except football is much worse in this regard. A goal scored at any time during a Futbol match can be decisive. On the other hand, the only time in a football game that is actually exciting / suspenseful is the last 2 or so clock minutes of the game if and only if the game is remotely close.
I agree, hockey is a great sport.
Dcl, your comments on football reveal you to be a treasonous, communist, socialist, America-hating Nazi-loving al-Qaeda sympathizing vegetarian.
Why don’t you go put on a beekeeper suit and sieg hiel a picture of Joseph Stalin while eating some Halal tofu on a flambeeing American flag and stop badmouthing football.
Because bashing football is far simpler, more fun, and less expensive that your suggestion. I lack a beekeeper suit, and a picture of Stalin, which is rather a lot of money to start, I’m one sure where one would locate Halal tofu, and since it is rather hard to find American flags that are actually made in America anymore I’d really rather not burn it.
not to mention it seems rather dangerous to stand on something that is actively burning, and an open flame like that presumably indoors is quite unsafe as well and probably violates most of the fire code.
“But put another way, it is waiting around for something to happen. Which is exactly David’s complaint against Futbol… Except football is much worse in this regard. ”
This basically belies an understanding of the mechanics of football and why its interesting and appealing. I’m fine if you just don’t like it, or if its not your thing. But there is a REASON why football can’t be a non-stop always going sport. If it was, it would cease being football. Football is a game of immense strategy, and intense athleticism. You can’t run like Reggie Bush did non-stop. The ability to perform at peak speed for short bursts of time is what makes the plays in football even possible. Yes, in between plays nothing is happening on the field, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Strategies are being devised, coaches are planning next moves, its like a chess match out there, except when your bishop takes your pawn, he does so be knocking him off his feet.
Meanwhile in soccer a whole lot of nothing happens even while the players are on the field. Goals are scored so seldom that teams can win a game 1-0 on a regular basis. it comes down to a crapshoot. Who got lucky and managed to get the shot off at just the right moment that day. Thats why the average score in the world cup was 2 points combined.
I realize that soccer takes skill, I played when I was younger and I had a brother who played up through high school. I’m very familiar with the rules, so I’m not speaking out of ignorance here. Soccer is broadly popular because more people can play it, it requires almost no equipment, just a ball really. But from the standpoint of “does interesting stuff happen” I’d say thats far less true of soccer than it is of football from having watched both.
Well from having watched both soccer and football I think David couldn’t be more wrong. Maybe you understand the rules of soccer, but to say that “a whole lot of nothing happens even while the players are on the field” simply because of low scores, or that “it comes down to a crapshoot” or “who got lucky and managed to get the shot off at just the right moment that day” certainly belies an understanding of the mechanics of soccer and why it is appealing. As I’ve said before: “it’s a game of nuance, of ebb and flow. There’s a method to what looks like players just wandering around on the pitch. Once you understand the complexities of the offensive buildup, counterattack, overlapping runs, the game is as enjoyable as any other team sport.”
Nuance? What nuance? I recognize that players jockey for position and try and set themselves up to take advantage of the other team, but the results of all that is seldom succesful. I find basketball boring because its a game of constant scoring, such that any single score matters very little. I find soccer boring for the opposite reason, a single score in soccer is usually the deciding point of the game, and often one of only a couple of scores at all. I’d have to run the numbers again, but I’d wager that the team that scores first in soccer wins a significantly large amount of the time, because they are very likely the ONLY team to score. Its 99% setup and 1% actual resolution. All that jockeying, all that back and forth USUALLY amounts to nothing.
Posession is another distinguishing factor between the two sports. In soccer possession changes on an almost constant basis. Combined with the low scoring nature of the game it means that having posession of the ball holds less meaning. In football, posession is very meaningful, so much so that involuntary changes of pessision (interceptions and fumbles) are exciting and cause signficant shifts in the games flow.
There are a lot of sports that are strategically massively more complex than football. And a lot of sports that require massively more athleticism than football. And a fair few that need both. Football is easy to understand and doesn’t require one to look for much nuance. Football is intensly predictable, and fairly dull because of it.
Don’t get me wrong I use to really like football I just got tired of it once I started to realize how little there was there in it. The entire excitement of the game is predicated on suspense. It’s why the USC ND game a few years back was so exciting, until the NCAA told us it never happened. But things began feeling more like stress watching a football game than suspense. If I care about the outcome the game is more stressful than exciting because so little really happens. And if I don’t care about the outcome there is no suspense because I just don’t care. Highlight reels are fun for some pretty spectacular athletic moves, or just plain crazy stuff that falls outside the standard predictability of it all, but you can watch that in a few minutes and not really have missed anything.
Okay, I’ve got to know: What sport do you think comes to football’s level of strategic complexity?
” Football is easy to understand and doesn’t require one to look for much nuance. Football is intensly predictable, and fairly dull because of it.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Whats an out route? Whats a chop block? Whats a pinch? Whats a blast play? When do you play a 3-4 vs a 4-3? Predictable? Simple? Dream on.
Let’s see here… Run down the filed cut towards the sideline hard at a pre-determined distance from scrimmage, chop block is a fowl for cut blocking someone already being blocked similar to but different than the fowl for blocking below the waist, Blast play is a running play where you attempt to open a running lane in the opposing teams defensive line, with one RB lead blocking for the second that takes the handoff. 3-4 4-3: A set with 3 linemen and 4 linebackers or vica versa… When to use which is, however actually a decent strategic question as opposed to your previous questions which are all basically technical information questions. Though one might as well ask when do you shift lines in Hockey. There a bunch more defensive schemes you can run, things like Nickel, Dime, Prevent (also known a stupid), etc. At the basic level it comes down to do you think the other team is going to throw the ball or run the ball. 3-4 and 4-3 both present a decent hedge against either, so most teams pick one or the other as a primary formation… And that comes down to understanding what personnel you have on your team. It may also depend on the proclivities of the team you are playing, but most coaches understand the value of not needlessly complicating the defense. As it is a coordinated effort, like your aforementioned blast play, practice is required, and oft times you are better off doing a slightly less optimal thing really well than you are doing one of two optimized actions but both of them are a little sloppy. Of course that’s opinion that the defensive coordinators of a least a few teams don’t share and a few will switch schemes to try and optimize during a game.
Is that what you wanted to know or are you just being defensive? Given you mostly asked technical instead not overall strategic questions, my guess is you are just being defensive.
Matt, are you asking about sports where the athlete is asked to make the strategic decision or the coach and therefore comparing athlete to athlete strategic decision making or are we comparing coach to coach decision making? Anyway, a few that come to mind in no particular order would be: boxing, hockey, soccer, rugby, fencing, cycling, curling, rock climbing (is done competitively, and requires two separate and distinct strategies), (speaking of “sports” requiring two completely separate strategies theres also) golf, basketball (despite my dislike for the game), some but not all types of motor car or motorcycle racing, I’m sure there are a number of people that would argue for wrestling (olympic, perhaps I really should have just said martial sports from the get go) and tennis. If we are talking about strategic combinations of technical complexity then gymnastics probably fits the bill also. I’m sure there are a vast number of progressively more esoteric sports that would also qualify.
been thinking about it some more, and I think you could probably make the argument for baseball and cricket. Cricket especially is a mighty complex game…
dcl #35 – only to you ex-colonials ! (grin)
“If we are talking about strategic combinations of technical complexity”, then most forms of competitive Sailing/Yachting should be up there on the list … not *quite* in the esoteric bunch, yet still inter-team competitive while being non-contact (at least theoretically, that is) …
Strangely enough, Speed Skating seemed to have a fair amount of that, too, the last time I watched it …
Hmm, hadn’t even thought of those two, but sailing especially is a very good one that I overlooked. Actually operationally it is probably the most complex of those listed except perhaps the strategy required for a cycling grand tour–that’s of course arguable and primarily due to the multi day nature of a grand tour.
And speed skating possesses many of the tactical issues present in other multi team racing sports mentioned. And is certainly a case where physics can play just as much a role in outcome as physical ability which certainly adds to both the importance and complexity of strategy.
I dunno, I found the wikipedia page for cricket… esoteric. Perhaps if I played it it would become less opaque.