Please. If you are the type of soccer “fan” that crawls out from under your bridge every 4 years or so to complain that soccer is “broken,” do all us real fans a favor and stop watching soccer.

Do you know who I really want to hear weigh in on whether or not we should decide a soccer game by using penalty kicks?

A player.

Someone who just ran within an inch of their life for 120+ minutes. A player who didn’t have the luxury of timeouts, clock stoppages, or TV breaks. Reality check; there are only 3 substitutions. Three. No switching lines or “sitting this play out” or enjoying the top of the innings to sit around and cheer on an overweight middle reliever. Soccer has none of this fluff. As a (professional) soccer player, you start and you  f*ckin’ run. If you are fit, effective, and can avoid injury, you play the entire match.

That means you run for 90+ minutes. Or 120+ minutes. No more, no less.

Therefore, what is so wrong about ending a game before it becomes a farce? Do you like to suffer through a 5 overtime all-nighter where players are just gliding on the ice until someone in a daze does something to finally the debacle? Is it any more enjoyable to watch a baseball game that goes past 11 or so inning? End the game with dignity. Respect the effort that the players gave; do not ask them to put in more. If you play “Golden Goal”, the game will become ugly and someone will get hurt. Who wants to see Abby Wambach tear a ACL due to a sloppy and rash challenge at the 183 minute mark of a game? Not me. That would be a travesty.

If you aren’t or haven’t been a soccer player who has had to ever play a full professional 90+, please stop your incendiary whining and go back to watching your safe, advertising-driven, snoozefest of a sport and leave those of us who respect the beautiful game alone. Leave The Beautiful Game alone.

Puh-lease? Thank you.

americanmccarver:

Paul Kafasis fixes soccer. I agree with him on all points, but this is the big one:

Point #4: Play Until Somebody Wins

Baseball doesn’t switch to a home run derby after the 12th inning. Basketball doesn’t switch to a game of H-O-R-S-E after the second OT. So from now on, we’re not deciding which team is the best in the world through what are effectively coin flips. I never again want to hear an announcer tell me a goalie “guessed the wrong way”. If the score’s still tied, you keep playing. You’re tired? Suck. it. up. You play to win, so shouldn’t you keep playing until somebody actually does?

This isn’t just because the U.S. women lost on penalty kicks to Japan in the World Cup finale over the weekend. Twelve years ago the U.S. women won the World Cup in a penalty shootout. And penalty shootouts sure are exciting. But they’re a completely different game, and they involve huge amounts of luck. It’s a terrible way to lose and an unsatisfying way to win.

(Source: americanmccarver)