10 Possibly Stupid Questions You Might Ask If You’re New To This

Okay, We Know You're Not That Dumb

Hi, welcome to UF.

We’re guessing with today’s US v. England match some new people might be stumbling across our site. And while we sometimes seem like elitist pricks, we’re not (well save for NYK, but that’s another story). Anyway we usually talk about the game with a certain level of knowledge and understanding without always considering that not everyone has been watching the game for years; and sometimes that can be off-putting.

We don’t mean it that way. And we want to invite all people to watch and enjoy the game with us.

So with that in mind, here are some answers to some really basic questions that you might be afraid to ask or simply just don’t know enough to ask about the game the rest of the world calls football.

1) Why don’t they shoot more?

Well, players usually don’t have much time or space on the ball when they are in what looks like a scoring position. Often they look wide open, true, but that’s usually when they are well outside the 18-yard box. Those really aren’t high percentage shots because anything on target, and a good international keeper can usually get to without much problem. So that leaves players aiming for the corners, where even a slight mis-hit can send a ball embarrassingly wide.

However, the ball in use at this World Cup supposedly takes off (as in ‘comes off the foot like a rocket’) and sometimes does all sorts of wicked bending stuff and takes detours in midair like it has thoughts of its own. If that’s the case, expect to see more shots from distance with the hopes of leaving a wrong-footed goal keeper helpless to look at a ball that’s defying Newtonian laws of motion.

Bottom line is that most shots from distance end up either in the keepers hands or Row Z.

2) Do formations and tactics really matter that much, I mean, it looks like 11 people just running around?

Yes and no. Yes, it does matter that much and no, it’s not just 11 people running around chasing a ball.

To keep this short, we’ll give an example from this season. Jose Mourinho was hailed as a tactical genius (something he’s probably never stopped hailing himself as to be honest) for playing a 4-3-3 with Inter Milan this season. Oh, if you don’t know, formations are given from the defense to the midfield to the strikers (the keeper is a given). So a 4-3-3- is four defenders, three midfielders, and three strikers.

Anyway, it wasn’t simply the formation, it was how they played. They essentially ceded possession to the opposition, letting them into the attacking third. Then waited for opportunities to counter attack (kind of the soccer equivalent of hockey’s ‘odd man rush’). He’s not the first to run a 4-3-3, but it’s not every manager who will say “To hell with possession, take all of it you want and I will stymie you with an organized defense. I’ll only need to convert one or two of my counter attacks and I win.”

Did it work? Yes. Inter won the treble this season—its domestic league (Serie A), its domestic cup (Coppa Italia), and the Champions League.

This stuff matters. And, much like the NFL is a ‘copycat league’ so too is soccer. Expect to see a lot more of the 4-3-3 at the World Cup this summer.

3) Why is it so boring?

Is it? Because to us (and most of the rest of the world that isn’t the 300 million Americans) the game is awesome. Maybe you mean something like: “Why isn’t there much action?” or “Why isn’t there much scoring?”

Regarding the first question, if you don’t want to see any action in sports, then I suggest you watch American football. It’s got about 11 minutes of action in a 60 minute game. And that 60 minute game takes about 3 hours to play. Soccer is 45 minutes of continuous action with a short break at halftime, followed by another 45 minutes of continuous action. There is nothing but action in soccer.

Why isn’t there much scoring? Let’s respond with a question: “Why do you equate scoring with excitement?” The best baseball game I ever watched was Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, a 10 inning affair that finished 1-0. Christ you can’t have a stop-and-chat with George Will without him waxing rhapsodic about some 1-0 pitchers duel from the Thirties. Plenty of awesome triple overtime NHL playoff games have ended 1-0 or 2-1 and been completely enthralling. One of the best Super Bowls (Patriots v. Giants) in recent memory finished 17-14 (not exactly a shoot out for football).

You don’t need a scorgasm for something to be exciting. You just haven’t figured that out yet (or just refuse to admit it to yourself).

Now something like “Why aren’t there more scoring chances?” that might be a better question. In soccer, at the highest level, there just aren’t a lot of them. They come at a premium. It’s just the nature of the game.

4) How come the US isn’t better?

The simplest answer is that our best athletes don’t choose soccer (see: James, LeBron; Ware, DeMarcus; Heyward, Jason; etc.). We’re currently ranked 14th in the world. That’s about right (even though most people with knowledge of the game think the FIFA rankings are a bit of a joke).

5) Who is going to win?

We don’t know. That’s why we play the games. But they have staged this thing 18 times and only seven different countries have won it: Brazil (5), Italy (4), Germany (3), Argentina (?), Uruguay (2), France (1), England (1). Additionally at least one of either Brazil or Germany has been in every final except two of them.

So if you pick Brazil or Germany in your office pool, you’re likely going to have a rooting interest well into July.

This year the favorites are Brazil and Spain. The latter isn’t on the winner’s list, but they finally got over the hurdle on underachieving in major tournaments when they won the last European Championships (2008). Maybe in the next group down are England and Holland. But it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising if the list of World Cup winners failed to add a club member this summer.

6) If I don’t want to consume the stupid human interest pieces, what am I missing?

Something happened in 1950 that maybe involved some North Koreans whose borthers were dying of cancer the first time they went to Africa to stage an exhibition match to stop a war. Or something like that. We’re not entirely sure, we’re not NBC.

7) Can you explain the offsides rule?

No. Really, we watch endless hours of this stuff and even things like “passive offsides” sometimes have us questioning the refs’ calls and scrambling to the Laws of the Game to check and double check.

But basically you have to be at least level with the 2nd to last defender when the ball is played to you (when it’s kicked that is) to be onside. The goalie is usually one of the last two, so on TV they are usually focused on just the last non-goalie defender. Just watch, you’ll get the basics of it before too long.

By the way if you want to see a case of the goalie being far enough off his line so that he’s not one of the last two defenders keeping the offensive player onside go watch the disallowed goal from Mexico in the opener of the World Cup from yesterday.

Incidentally this is one of the toughest calls for linesman to make as they are watching two things kind of far apart at the same time. We’re not sure if we’re amazed how often they get the call right or amazed by how often they screw it up at the most critical moments.

8) Earlier you said each half is 45 minutes. How come sometimes play goes through 47, 48, even 49 minutes?

Okay, this is stoppage time. The halves are just 45 minutes but the clock runs continuously. The ref however is the only person with the actual game clock, and he’ll ‘stop’ it for things like injuries, goals, substitutions. So those little bits of time add up and are tacked back on at the end of the “45 minutes” so that the half is actually 45 minutes.

As the end of the half approaches the ref will go have a quick chat with the 4th official and tell him how much all of those little bits of time added up to. Oh, there are 4 officials for each match. The 4th doesn’t do that much besides take abuse from the two managers when there are bad calls. But sometime near the end of the halves the 4th official will hold up a number on an board. This indicates the minimum amount of stoppage time left.

Say it’s 3 minutes. Then sometime after the clock rolls to 48, the ref will blow the whistle and that is that. Still only the referee knows exactly how much time is left. This often makes for more than just a little drama.

Sometimes the 4th official will hold up 3 minutes and the clock will roll all the way to like 50 minutes. This is almost always a phenomenon exclusive to a place called Old Trafford and probably won’t be something a fan needs to worry about in South Africa.

9) What do the Yellow and Red Cards mean?

A yellow card is shown to a player to caution them for any of like five or six infractions (unsporting behaviour, persistent fouling, entering the field of play without permission, etc.). Basically if you’re fouling too much, or you commit a bad foul, you’re probably going to get a yellow card.

A red card is given for more serious offenses (violent conduct, spitting, deliberately handing the ball, etc.) and it gets you sent off immediately. You leave the game and your team is now a man down.

If a player receives a second yellow in the course of a match, that’s the same as getting a red, and also gets you sent off. We’re pretty sure that’s still the case since Graham Poll is no longer an FIFA match official (if you don’t understand that use the Google to search for some combination of “Poll, Brazil Australia, Croatia, yellow card” and hey, now you’re already getting history-based jokes!)

10) Can the US win the World Cup?

That’s a stupid question, we already have… a couple of times. Oh wait, we’re not talking about the women. See question 4 above. Once the best athletes in our talent pool start playing soccer, we’re never losing again. So enjoy it while you can Italy and Brazil.

Until then, it’s going to be a while before we are serious contenders. We should make the knock out rounds, but, once you get to the last 16, we’re in the bottom half talent-wise of those teams. That’s just the way it is. But we’ve gotten much better since we first started getting back to the World Cup in 1990. In fact we’ve qualified for every World Cup since (something not even mighty England can claim to have done). So we’re getting better. But so is the rest of the world, and the incremental gains are getting harder to come by. Still, on any given day…