World Cup/Soccer for Dummies and soccer silliness

[Pujols is a God]

There are a lot of things you can do to get a yellow card, time wasting, pulling a guy down from behind, bad tackles. To get a red it has to be a real bad tackle where you go in with the studs of your cleats showing cause you can easily hurt people that way. Also stuff like elbowing people while going up for balls in the air can get you cards.

As far as the 3 best players Howard, Donovan, and Dempsey are probably the 3 best. But Onweyu is really good, and Altidore and Bradley are youngsters who are very good and only going to get better.

You only get 3 subs but you keep a bigger bench, because injuries happen and you need to have sufficient backups at each position in case of injuries.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

What does a guy have to do to get yellow carded? What kinds of things? How about red?


Also, I don't know one players name on the US team.. Who are the say, top 3?


Also, someone said you only get 3 substitutions per game. Why all the players on the team then?

1) Like fouls in basketball, it's a bit of a gray area. For another basketball analogy, think of yellow cards as an intentional or flagrant foul, they just happen more often. A straight red(as opposed to accumulating 2 yellows) is for a particularly egregious foul, either very dangerous in nature, a clearly intentional foul to prevent a chance to advance the ball and score, or both.

2) Howard the goalkeeper is our best player, after that, the attacking midfielders, Donovan and Dempsey, round out the top 3.

3) In case of injury, and to keep different types of players available for different situations. Soccer more than most sports has a wide variety of styles, and different players' strengths will do a better job of having success depending on the tactics of the opponent. It's hard to compare because the 3 major sports have very clearly defined offense and defense. I guess think of it as carrying 4 different pinch hitters who specialize in hitting certain types of pitches? That's as close as I can come up with.

[thrill]

The deep bench is so you can tailor the personnel on the field to suit the tactics of the game. If you fall behind, you may want to put on another forward late to try to score a goal. If you're ahead and want to try to hold the lead, maybe you take a forward off and replace him with a midfielder to have more people back defending. It gives the coach flexibility to to change his tactics on the fly.

[jim]

What do you mean "bad tackle" and "deliberate tackle"? What I think of tackling I have never seen happen on a soccer field.

[thrill]

What do you mean "bad tackle" and "deliberate tackle"? What I think of tackling I have never seen happen on a soccer field.

A bad tackle is when a player slides to take out the player and not the ball, when a player tackles another player who no longer has the ball or when a player tackles from behind.

Obviously when we say tackle, we're not talking about wrapping someone up with your arms and dragging them to the ground. A tackle (sometimes called a challenge) is when someone tries to dispossess another player of the ball by sliding in or pushing them off the ball and taking it.

[Fat Strat]

Here's a very educational youtube video about good and bad slide tackling.

[/youtube]

[Fat Strat]

More educational videos: Proper slide taclking

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ794D3z ... re=related][/youtube]

[jim]

So is this just a sport you have had to have played to understand/appreciate/enjoy?

[TabascoElvis]

So is this just a sport you have had to have played to understand/appreciate/enjoy?

When I left for work this morning my wife was on the couch watching Netherlands v. Denmark and the closest she's come to playing soccer was almost getting beaned during one of my daughter's games a couple of weeks ago. Granted, she's got more appreciation as a result of having watched little kids run around a field over the last several years, but she's got no vested interest in watching World Cup. She actually paused action a couple of times while I was getting ready so I could see a play. And she paused appropriately.

[Leroy]

Like I said before, I liked the US game just fine.

What gets under my skin is the people on ESPN that kept calling it a 'beautiful game'. They acted like you had to know lots about it to appreciate it. I mean, I don't have a deep understanding of it, but I see nothing that makes it anymore beautiful than any other sport. I can deal with the lack of scoring. I like 1-0 baseball games more than slug fests. A few more scoring chances wouldn't hurt anything though.