Macthes scored on goals not points. Points are given for wins and draws to make up the table of all teams in a league.
Pointless as in “what’s the point of playing”? It’s all luck.
In general, the popularity of sports often has to do with stuff happening around the sport, like history, records, streaks, rivalries, stars, atmosphere in the stadium, identification with your home/favorite team, etc. If you take all that away, any sport gets boring rather quickly. In European football, when teams have to play in front of empty seats because of prior fan misbehavior, for example, the games are much less fun to watch. I’d rather watch a full-stadium cricket match between Sri Lanka and India with some trophy on the line, even though I find cricket excruciating boring to begin with.
Mind you occasionally America gets it right. Here’s a sport I could get right behind
What sport is this?
My cousin played in the below game, he was one of the players who stayed doing the promotion stuff. I can’t remember the full details but it was something like he and another player stayed for a few weeks and played a couple of “football games” then they returned with a couple of American footballers, to promote American football in the uk.
There was a few stories about the exchange on both sides of the Atlantic, some of them even true (anyway back to my point).
The Pro American footballers where surprised at the pace of the UK game, the fact that it was 40 mins none stop per side. Most of the tactics and planning had to be done on the fly, constantly evaluating your own team and opposition to create opportunities, all why trying to keep your own personal shit together.
I mean that’s league not union, so considerably less complicated. It uses the same five tackles system as grid iron and doesn’t have the set pieces (scrum, lineout) of union. But yeah, on the other hand it flows much more.
It’s because you don’t understand the tactics in football. Go and see a real game at the stands, not through television, keep your eyes on how the players act with and without the ball, the movement and positioning… exploit the weakness and counter the strengths of the other team… It’s a mind game balanced with individual skills. The beautiful game.
Only ugly thing with football are the stupid referees that falls for all the swan dives and rolling on the ground 511 turns when the wind looks sideways at some players… the referees needs to toughen up by given more power by FIFA/UEFA/EPL/LaLiga……
There is too much money on the line in professional football to rely on luck. Might be true for the lowest of divisions, but not for professional football.
I think the difference to American Football is that there are not hundreds of set plays the teams have to know. It’s more fluid, because teams are not lining up behind a line every 15 seconds. There are some set plays for free kicks, though.
From a spectator perspective, I enjoy watching both games, less so rugby (cuz there is too much grind), and even less baseball, and cricket.
Essentially a pass, except it’s generally in the air, from out wide on one of the flanks, aimed at an area where an attacker will meet it with their head in the penalty area (the larger box in front of the goal), ideally done at pace.
A cross in soccer? I thought he meant some obscure sport from medieval times, when they had to distinguish between equestrian and non-equestrian sports…
Under what rock must one live to not know what a cross in football is? What is a strike in baseball, what is a fumble in American football? Easy to find out, very easy.
Always thought Merican footy was a bit crap, all that stopping and starting. Then changing the players every few minutes. Then having dancing girls… All seems fairly pointless to me.
Mind you comparing football now to football 30 years ago and all that stopping for diving, then the fact that most goals come from set-pieces rather than open-play etc etc I now prefer to watch grass grow.
My town was split between rugby League / Union and my school played both.
Normally people would play one for fun and the other for the school as the seasons used to be at the same time, when league moved to summer things changed.
Football always seamed to be on the back burner, the more unsavoury towns folk tended to follow that.
No it’s not like that. There are things like discrete plays, game pace, game clocks, play clocks that we are comparable across sports.
The soccer team at my Alma mater reached the championship in 2021 and the final four in 2023. The coach sits on a lawn chair the whole game. The only calls she makes is subbing players.
I was thinking something along the lines of “American Advertising marathon interspersed with brief outbreaks of counting whilst wearing unnecessary body armour - 14, 22, 75 hut hut - with the occasional nanosecond sprinklings of hand-egg”
You’re doing football wrong.
FFS folks, we r talking about frigging GAMES! IT’S A FUCKING GAME!
So much energy talking about angels’ sex tbh