Most sports have bonuses for performance, so why wouldn’t soccer?
In tie breakers, the sport could decide that no goals over 10 count, or that there is no extra time in a lopsided victory (like a running clock in other sports), but it doesn’t happen that often so probably not worth changing the rules for the few times it happens.
The better rule, to me, would be to not have such mismatched teams. It happens in the Olympics all the time, it happens in college sports when Nebraska schedules a game against some tiny school so that Nebraska gets a big win and Tiny School gets big bucks. It happens in the NFL.
Why do they schedule these games? Because every once in a while, the underdog wins. Last year #16 UMBC took #1 UVa out of March madness and this year UVa came back to win it all. Teams go from Worst to First.
For the record, Megan Rapinoe did slide after a goal.
But, I occasionally play in a local adult pickup league and if I ever scored a goal in one of those games, I’d probably strip naked and do back flips and cartwheels. OK, maybe just strip naked, collapse to the turf and make snow angels.
@sushiritto That’s Premier League contracts and different from what you posted in supportof your position re: the USA women’s World Cup match being talked about here. I’ve never heard chatter that players are paid bonuses for World Cup goals scored. Some knowledgable soccer buffs have told me they are unaware of it as well. If true, what do the defenders get?
@doschicos Yes, I know it’s an EPL contract, but financial info like this is closely guarded. This is an example of a leak of info.
Performance-based bonuses are paid by the country’s federation as well as the sponsors. Contracts are private, I’m sure because they don’t want the public to know: a) how much a player is paid and b) when a target is approaching for reasons that are self-evident.
In terms of the defender being paid, how about “goals allowed” or “tackles” or maybe their pool of money is also determined by “goals scored” but to a lesser degree than a striker? Defenders can score as well.
I’ve had a verbal conversation with a female player that’s playing in this World Cup. I believe her when she tells me that she’ll get a bonus for each goal. I didn’t ask for proof. You and your “soccer buffs” can believe whatever you want to believe. Not my problem. I’m not going to argue any further over what in my mind is obvious.
Defenders in other sports get bonuses for tackles, sacks, blocks, saves, interceptions, NOT getting penalties, steals, ground ball pick ups, rebounds, etc. There are ways to measure (and reward) skills that are not scoring skills.
I don’t fault the US team for continuing to play hard and score goals. That’s the main point of a soccer match. But I do think that once a dominant team gets ahead by say 5 or 6 goals, sportsmanship and common decency should tell them to tone down post-goal celebrations a notch or two.
@Scipio – Good point. My daughter played college squash. She had only played some as a child, and was on a low ranked team, so most of the time she faced much better players. The match she remembers the most is one against one of the top Yale players, a nationally ranked player with international squash experience. The young woman quickly realized this was going to be a breeze. It could have been the tournament equivalent of a wham-bam-thankyou-mam. But the Yalie actually played against my daughter: hitting shots she knew my daughter could return, encouraging her to press on, applauding when my daughter scored a point. Of course the Yalie won. But my daughter had an actual match, a high caliber squash experience, and learned a lot from this gracious, classy athlete. She remembers that loss with more affection than many a win.
In some other sports, score differential is still a tie breaker, but a lower one compared to others like head-to-head win, so there is less incentive to run up the score in a blowout.
Some other sports also allow unlimited substitutions (versus 3 in soccer, which does not allow substituted-out players to return unlike some other sports), so emptying the bench during “garbage time” late in a blowout is easier to do and lower risk.
For comparison, among US leagues, MLS has goal differential as the second tie breaker, after number of wins (so a team with one more win is favored over one with three more draws).
Perhaps it is more traditional among soccer to use goal differential as a higher tie breaker than in other sports. But that means there is more incentive to run up the score in a blowout in soccer than in other sports.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, you can take a player or players off the field, if desired, and play 10v11 or 9v11. Or just continue back-passing to the goalie and swinging the ball around from defender to GK and back to the defender. And have the weaker team just chase the ball for 30 minutes. Both of those are embarassing.
In terms of mass substitutions, for US, the bench players are extremely accomplished players, even towards the end of the bench, someone like Tierna Davidson, the youngest US player at 20 was a Collegiate National Champion at Stanford and now plays in the NWSL.
Mallory Pugh, Carli Lloyd, Kristen Press, all bench players, all fantastic and probably starters at some point.
The women’s teams are definitely playing much better than the previous world cups but the quality is still not comparable to men’s soccer.
As far as pay goes, if the women bring in more revenue than the men, they should be paid more, if not, they should not be paid the same. It is a business and their pay should be tied to how much money they generate. I do think they have a legitimate argument about more money being spent on marketing/advertising of their games so that they have ample opportunity to increase attendance at games and TV viewers.
I do think the US women’s team celebrating the way they did will go a long way towards solidifying many countries view towards us as “ugly Americans”.
“Whether it was because the final list of goal scorers was so long it had to be scrolled on the screen like movie credits, or because the USWNT elected to celebrate each and every goal as if they had just gotten chosen to be on The Price is Right, people immediately had a lot of big thoughts about what the game meant. What about sportsmanship? What about international decorum? What about all of those Thailand players holding back tears as the final whistle blew?”
Someone at WaPo has decided to make the pay gap for the US National Women’s Team a priority. There have been multiple opinion pieces, each with a separate author, in the last two weeks. However, there are two things that the articles pretty much avoid addressing:
That the women are wanting equal pay, but are not nearly the revenue draw that men’s soccer is (this last article mentioned it, and then ignored it, as though the math could magically be wished away).
That in terms of skill, women’s soccer is nowhere near men’s soccer. There have been several matches around the world between a country’s women’s national team, and a local boys soccer team. By the time the boys are about 16 years old, a local team of talented boys can often beat the women’s national team. That is just how powerful the effect of testosterone is.
Makes for a great “zinger” to cite this game like it was serious play or means anything, but no one but those of you with an agenda took this seriously.
