it's a shame... the germany turkey game was great yesterday. turkey did an awesome job but too bad germany is just better. looking forward to the russia spain game today. 230 ESPN
I don't usually watch soccer but I am watching Euro. So far its been a great tournament with some damn nice games. Turkey has been real exciting to watch the whole time.
Russia Spain will be a good game today. Spain should take it. Spain Germany in the final.
Yea spain should definitely get it. Do you know a good place to watch online? I'm at work so a lot of the websites wont let me in because of my firewall.
Soccer just isn't exciting enough when watching. And that's coming from someone who grew up playing soccer for over a decade, and still loves to play recreationally.
Both soccer and hockey are sports that are dominated by passing and battling to acquire/maintain possession of the ball/puck. Scoring only occurs when all the circumstances come together just right.
When the world cup rolls around I like to follow who wins and loses, but even then I can't say I spend much time actually watching the games.
Eh i think its exciting... Americans are just obsessed with getting immediate satisfaction in everything. A goal in soccer is 1000x more exciting to me than a touchdown. It makes the long wait completely worth it. Not to mention when people score its usually off some crazy impressive play.
not to bash football... i got to virginia tech and the football is almost more important to me than my degree lol. cant wait till next season btw.
and the world cup... definitely trying to get to south africa somehow in 2010. hopefully people will have discovered a better way to travel by then considering plane tickets are a million bucks a pop.
Soccer is starting to catch on a little more.. but nothing like it should be. You haven't experienced a true sporting event until you've been to a soccer game. Even an MLS game.. it's absolute madness. It's not like a football game where fans cheer when something good happens like a first down or touchdown, or when they make noise in order to try to distract the other teams defense.. it's a constant erruption. from the beginning of the game until the end it's absolute, nonstop craziness. People live and die by those soccer matches. If you want to get a real feeling of what it is to be a true, die hard soccer fan in Europe and other places in the world watch the movie Green Street Hooligans.
Also, I love other sports. I'm a die hard Stl Cardinals fan and Steelers fan.. but nothing compares to the atmosphere of a soccer game.
baaa dont tell me how it goes! i'm at work and im tivoing it...
yea i grew up in germany so soccer is where my heart is. Soccer fans are rediculously hardcore. football fans think they are all hardcore with pregaming a couple hours before and tailgaiting. they dont know what it's like at a bayern v. hamburg game... no comparison
ah man thats terrible! its like the super bowl... you gotta see it. thats one of things that is nice about having a 40 hour a week job, sundays are always free.
you a spain fan or just bandwaggin it for the game?
just bandwaggin for the game.. you have to have a team to root for. I'm a Portugal fan.. always have been. But they made an early exit. I assume you're a germany fan so we wont even get into talking about that game.. haha.
It's really just a preference thing.. if i want to watch a sport where something good happens every 20 seconds then i'll watch football. if i want to watch a sport where players play their as*ses off for 90 minutes for that one second of gloriousness, then i'll watch soccer. every player, on every team, in any sport works their as*s off nonstop, but a goal is so much different than a touchdown.. you have to wait for it and in my mind that makes it a ton more exciting when it happens.
Soccer requires athletes in much better cardiovascular condition IMO. Think about it, in football there is only a tiny fraction of the 60 minutes played where the players are actually in action. The balance of the time is run down between plays. 6 second play followed by 40 seconds between. If you put an average football team out on a soccer field you'll have a dead team within minutes lol.
Paul, the same applies vice versa as well depending on what position we're talking. Nothing will tire guys more quickly than human strength vs. human strength. A running back, for example, may have to exert the same energy on one play trying to get a couple extra yards with guys hanging off him, that a soccer player may exert in 20 minutes of jogging around. Of course there's no way to truly measure those kind of comparisons but it's worth considering.
Playing a game a soccer is like running on a treadmill, it's sustained, moderately intense activity for a long time, whereas football is more like a series of sprints, but on every single one you're expending every bit of energy your body will allow.
In fact a more modern school of thought regarding fitness and athletics says that very high intensity work being done in intervals is actually more fatiguing than steady state work maintained for a long time. So from a strictly cardiovascular standpoint, soccer, and i'd throw in basketball and maybe hockey as well, are the most grueling. But muscle fatigue and lactic acid buildup are relevant here too. If you plug a soccer player into a football game, even if we assume he is skilled enough to play, from an athletic and conditioning standpoint, he would fail as miserably as the football players in the soccer game.
Just some stuff to think about.
Regarding soccer being exciting or not, there is no debate there really, it's obviously a matter of taste. Some people get excited looking at their stamp collections, some people go skydiving.
Football is the ultimate chess game, the ultimate strategic battle. Baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, none of them compare (not knocking them, i love all these sports).
Your response is really just an extension to my point.
Funny, the difference in watching a football game in person and on tv are two different worlds. With all the tv breaks and "talk" time built into the game I found myself wondering how some players even break a sweat. Watching a game live is almost frustrating. Two plays and a 4 1/2 minute stoppage. One play and commercial break. Two more and the two minute warning. I sat there getting bored lol.
Another point I'd like to make is that I prefer watching light weight boxing than heavy weight on most occasions. Sure the heavy weight fight is filled with gigantic blows and furious power, yet the light weight match is loaded with action and quicker punches as well as the longevity to at least give you the sense of getting your money's worth from your ticket.
Tyson was fun to watch but at the end of that 90 second or less fight you felt cheated. Sugar ray or haggler always gave you a fight to watch.
As a die-hard mixed martial arts fan, I couldn't agree more about the lighter fighters Paul. The heavyweight fights often become so sloppy and lackadaisical it's painful to watch.
The 155 pounders in the UFC are absolutely amazing. Guys can go five five minute rounds at an incredibly frantic pace, and yet when they're standing with the ref waiting for the decision, bloodied, bruised and battered, they're dancin around shadow boxing like they'd be happy to go another five.
