World Cup 2010

[Sjofn]

Injuries break the flow, sure, but you aren't going to get a lot of those in a game REALLY. Blown calls are part of the game, soccer is a game where a blown call on one end of the field can turn into a complete game changer on the other side. It's too hard to draw a line where "yes, this is what we'll review because it could change the whole game." Does it suck? Yes. But I don't think it would fix nearly as much as you hope, and I don't know if the trade off would be a good one. I don't think "breaking the flow" is, in fact, better than "breaking hearts." Part of the reason the game is so loved IS because of the way its paced and shit! And I know it sucks as a player to have a badly called game go against you. I've certainly played in my share of those.

I could see reviewing goals and fouls in the box, but what happens when it's just outside the box? Then people will shriek that needs reviewing too. What if someone draws their second yellow in midfield, which puts their team a man down and oh god ref what were you thinking he barely touched the guuuuuy. And so on. The whole field affects the game.

Part of my "oh god the floooooooow" is from watching refs in American football take TWENTY FUCKIN' YEARS to review a play. It would KILL soccer if that happened, especially in America. It's slow paced enough. :P

[Falconeer]

1985, one of the most ridiculous and significant referee mistake ever, especially considering it costed Liverpool a European Champions' Cup, arguably the most important trophy for club teams.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I9bkMpNexI

Now, that tragic night is famous for something else, but this call is an insult to the sport, and pure robbery.

FAKE EDIT: This is robbery too (skip forward to 1:25), and decided a World Cup, but I can concede on them not having instant replays in 1966. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE-wKAooU20

[Falconeer]

Sjofn, nothing can kill football, it's immortal and very healthy (outside of North America, of course). Having only goal situations reviewed, which by the way would happen eventually once or twice in a game, is better than nothing at all. And it could be just for the second half of the game.
Fuck flow if anything I do, any effort, any talent can be crushed by a blind referee in a matter of seconds. Sometimes things are just that obvious.

[Sjofn]

Bad calls are part of every sport. You can't replay every single bad call. Even American football realised that. Instant replay isn't the infallible problem solver you seem to think it is. Even if you have it, sometimes the camera angles don't help at all.

Only "goal situations?" That's totally fuzzy, especially in soccer! It's easy to pick through games and find calls you don't like, that you think cost a team a game. It's not so easy to find places to draw the line as to which ones should honestly be reviewed. You've already found one that shows "within the 18/goals" wouldn't have helped, even. 

[Teleku]

The addition of Instant replay to several major American sports has been a life saver, and I'm glad they've done it (and wish they would extend it).  The extra time taken doesn't seem to ever break the flow of the game to me, as everybody is more excited over the outcome of the call.  Soccer would be much improved with a system similar to the way football does it.  Especially when BS like this happens as much as Falconeer says.

[Sjofn]

Football and soccer are vastly different games, I wouldn't look to football as a way it should be done in soccer. Hockey maybe.


EDIT: Like how would you do challenge flags in soccer? You can't, you'd have the asshole coaches throwing flags just to stop the game. There's nothing like a timeout to cost a team in soccer. You could maybe do yellow cards if you were wrong, but that's a pretty nasty penalty. Give the other team a free kick? Maybe, but if the goal was to give your team a chance to get back on defense, the free kick is a small price to pay. Only allow challenges when the play is stopped anyway? What happens when a guy is utterly mauled yet somehow no call is made just outside the 18 and then it gets cleared and the play never actually stops? Etc.

I like instant replay fine in games that naturally stop anyway, but I hate the way every time there's something even remotely questionable (this case is beyond that but go with me here) that might've affected an outcome, people complain there's not ENOUGH instant replay. Because apparently we want to sit and wait for the refs, whom you don't trust to start with, to decide if they fucked up or not every time anything ever happens.

[Teleku]

Its basically exactly what Falconeer was suggesting.  Each team gets 2 challenges per game.

[Falconeer]

I can find you thousands of simple TV replays where you can easily see the blatant mistake and that YES it would have saved the game. Sometimes it's fuzzy, but most of the times it is not. Instant replays would have fixed countless situations that happened so far, and there's no way around it. Hell, you can't dismiss something as huge and obvious as Ireland-France with "Bad calls are part of every sport". Technology is now ready to help the sport to be fairer than it has been in the past. It should be used.

I mean, fuck this shit






FAKE EDIT: Football and soccer are the same game. American Football is the word you are looking for Sjofn 

[Sjofn]

And when I say "flow" I don't mean "oh noes now we have boring parts." I mean for the players on the field, it wrecks momentum if they have to stop and hang around waiting for refs to get their shit together and see what the call was. It wrecks it in football, which stops anyway, so I'm pretty sure it would utterly fuck up soccer.


This doesn't really matter, as I am pretty sure Jesus himself would have to come down from the heavens and command FIFA to add it before it even got considered.


EDIT: Bite me, Falconeer, I specified American football several times, and figured it was finally to the point it would be redundant to do so further. :P

[Ingmar]

There's a lot they could do to improve the refereeing without resorting to replay. Adding more refs would seem to be the obvious step to me.

[Falconeer]

What people should be mad at for stealing the flow away from American sports is advertising, not instant replays. I still can't believe they really delay the game for TV shit.

And sorry for being a jerk about terminology. I apologise. It just strikes a nerve every time, part of that tradition shit I mentioned before. My bad.

[Sir T]

I believe they have multiple Refs in championship games in Gaelic Football. One ref is in charge of the others, but there are multiple on the pitch. The system works pretty well and could be adapted for soccer.

[Teleku]

You know, they call it Soccer in South Africa.   

[stu]

Not only would instant replay break the flow of the game, but it would also take away some of the humanity of the sport. Part of the beauty of soccer is that kids in a field can play under conditions nearly identical to the pros. The more basic the game stays, the more appeal it has, heartbreak or no. You just have to trust the refs to be properly trained and good at their jobs.

It seems like every American sport has instant replay. I need something that doesn't allow for commercial breaks unless it's halftime.

[Hoax]

Not only would instant replay break the flow of the game, but it would also take away some of the humanity of the sport. Part of the beauty of soccer is that kids in a field can play under conditions nearly identical to the pros. The more basic the game stays, the more appeal it has, heartbreak or no. You just have to trust the refs to be properly trained and good at their jobs.

It seems like every American sport has instant replay. I need something that doesn't allow for commercial breaks unless it's halftime.

Smart post, replay is shit. They should test/continue to test another official standing near the post on the other side of the goal from the linesman. It would be his job to judge infractions during free kicks, look for hand balls in the box, help judge if the ball crossed the goal line and especially look for clear dives by strikers in the box.

The reality is the US didn't get robbed, they gave up two very horrible, very lazy defending goals in the first half.

[Falconeer]

The reality is the US didn't get robbed, they gave up two very horrible, very lazy defending goals in the first half.

This is stupid. You don't even deserve a metaphor.

[Sir T]

That bird on the Algerian goal looks really comfy. 

[Ingmar]

The reality is the US didn't get robbed, they gave up two very horrible, very lazy defending goals in the first half.

This is stupid. You don't even deserve a metaphor.

No, this is how all sports fans in the SF Bay Area are. We are keenly aware when our guys screwed something up and missed the easy way to win. We have years and years of practice with it.

[Numtini]

It's 80' in my house. I'm watching the world cup.

And I'm thinking of making coffee instead of pouring a beer.

Sad. Very sad.

[Sjofn]

See, I'm enjoying the hell out of the England/Algeria game. Algeria's been fun to watch, anyway. :P

[sigil]

Rooting for the 0-0 magic here.

[Sir T]

Always fun seeing that tosser Becham looking like he has a spicy taco shoved up his ass. 

[Sjofn]

Well!

[Numtini]

What an odd odd day of football.

[Sjofn]

England seemed really ... blah, the whole time. Algeria was a pip though!

The officiating was good. 

[rk47]

i want my 2 hours back honestly. I'll never watch an england match again. Capello you dumbfuck.

[lac]

Yea, it must be the coach when 11 of his millionaire chavs can't keep their shit together.
I don't know anything about Capello or England, all I keep seeing is these 'all star' teams looking like asses when faced against anything coordinated.

I'm rooting for North Korea, it's about time a team from Mars won the world cup.

[Hoax]

Sweet jesus I just watched the first half of the Germany game. That is some of the most perplexingly stupid and crazy ref'ing I've ever seen.

BUT

Why the fuck did nobody on Germany ever react to the way he was calling it. Stop making stupid unnecessarry bungled tackles from behind every 10 minutes you idiots. They teach you that when you are 12 years old, react to what the ref is letting go and what he isn't.

[Triforcer]

England deserves to go home and get some blue collar pub boot squarely up the ass.  What a pathetic effort.  They'll somehow beat Slovenia and stagger into the round of 16, though. 

[01101010]

Someone in Great Britain please tell me there will be rioting if England draws their third game... bonus points if its 0-0.

[Stabs]

While tonight we were shit I thought we actually played quite well against the States. Unlucky fumble, lots of chances created and missed, very few scoring opportunities conceded.

I thought tonight it wasn't so much a bad team performance but the fact that a couple of people went completely offline in front of a well organised defensive Algerian team. Lampard did nothing about from one tackle and 2 shots that he choked on. Lennon never got himself in a good position to receive the ball (except once near the end of the first half). And Rooney miscontrolled every pass he received. The rest of them played pretty well, Carragher was great, Gerrard and Barry full of energy.

I think England will be better against Slovenia. I don't actually think Slovenia are all that good, USA made them look amazing in the first half by giving them each 20 yards of space. So we don't need England at our best, just the standard we played at against USA will suffice.

Now while we do tend to concede people space when we get nervous like most teams we don't start games like that and I think England will hammer them before we get panicked enough to screw ourselves up.

We were so lucky to get such a soft group. If you had said to us before the World Cup beat Slovenia for a last 16 spot we would have jumped at it.

In a wierd way it might help England having a bad start. We can usually put together a run of 4 great matches then have an awful one. Getting the awful one out of the way might let us have a run of great matches after the group stage.

But no, no riots if we go out. Might be fights in a few pubs but most England fans are used to the hype bubble to banality cycle.

[Jobu]

I've yet to see any compelling reason to keep with Heskey. This supposed dynamic with him and Rooney hasn't seemed to materialize here where it counts. And why does Joe Cole get stuck on the bench? He was the best player at 2006 after Hargreaves, and the only England player in the squad with any bit of craft and guile to his game. SWP and Lennon are just fast with listless an erratic service.

I'm not feeling the love for Argentina from what I've watched. Heinze and Gutiérrez aren't convincing full backs, and will get severely exposed when they have to go up against people like Robben, Maicon, or Alves in the semis.

[rk47]

Yea, it must be the coach when 11 of his millionaire chavs can't keep their shit together.
I don't know anything about Capello or England, all I keep seeing is these 'all star' teams looking like asses when faced against anything coordinated.

He waited too long before taking Heskey off the pitch, that guy is past his expiry date and should not even start at all. All that screaming and shouting amounted to nothing if you never take out the non performing player from the pitch. He can't pass, he can't dribble, and he got no pace, barely heads. So what good is his value?! If you want physical presence, go for Crouch imo.

I'm not watching another England game ever again. That was just pathetic. Zizou's genes must be within those Algerians and the most ironic thing is that they're playing better than France at the moment with confidence and pace that made million dollar a year players from EPL scared.

[Paelos]

At least at this point, even with the draw, for the US it's very simple... win and you're in.

I can't really want more than that with one game to play.

[Triforcer]

My fiance is praying for a Japanese draw against the Netherlands, but that's probably unrealistic.  Hopefully Cameroon and Denmark draw- seems likely as both teams have been shit.