World Cup Try Hards

Parent Cafe
21

<p>Partially eating crow here. The US never looked better with only 9 men on the field! Go figure.</p>

<p>Must be hard to stomach though–their only goal off the boot of an opposing player. Chalk one up to the power of xiggi’s dreams! They are still in the hunt by the grace of God–or xigs. Take your pick.</p>

<p>LOL cupcake. World Cup watching banned at Oxford???</p>

<p>However, having had the lovely opportunity to watch hoards of English fans celebrate sport, I can’t say that tea was their drink of choice!</p>

22

<p>Cheers:</p>

<p>On our first evening in London, we were treated to the sight of Scots celebrating their win over England in Leicester Square. It was not tea flowing in their blood, but beer and perhaps the hard stuff. They were waving the flag of St. Andrew, singing, thrashing things. The morning after was not a pretty sight.</p>

<p>Oh, and by the way, anybody seen Bend It Like Beckham? It’s a charming movie about soccer-mad girls.</p>

23

<p>You know what would be really improve soccer? Make them put on some skates and play on some really slippery ice. For good measure, let 'em beat the crap out of each other every once in a while, eh!</p>

24

<p>the US played so well today. they really deserved the win but a tie will have to suffice. playing with nine players is so incredibly tiring, can you even imagine…that ref was horrible and hopefully his days of being a referee in the world cup are really over this time.</p>

25

<p>marite…you personify the ivory tower, and you’re darn cute about it. ;)</p>

<p>Keira Knightely, the co-star of the 2002 Bend it Like Beckham, is THE ‘It’ girl at the moment. EVERYONE has seen that movie!</p>

<p>I thought the ref was okay, emj, but how did you get to ‘deserve to WIN’ !?? Huh? They did not score a goal! They have not scored a single goal in this World Cup! </p>

<p>But they are really really nice and really good looking. For that they should get something.</p>

26

<p>

</p>

<p>One word: Money.
Another: Fame.</p>

<p>Why continue playing soccer when you could play baseball, basketball, or football, and potentially make millions?</p>

27

<p>Cheers:</p>

<p>It’s my French education coming through. My brother is a devoted St. Etienne fan.</p>

28

<p>Until the soccer players in the US can garner the fame and $ of a Michael Jordan, or Olajuwan, etc., we will lose our best to other sports. In the rest of the world, the best soccer players are idols, and on pedestals that reach to the heavens!<br>
I heard the commentators talk about the ref who had to be one of the worst I have ever seen! Apparently, he did not ref the last World Cup because he had been suspended from refing due to “questionable” actions that other refs called him on. Now, he is back. The first red card was quite clearly appropriate, but the next two were incredibly impetuous bad decisions. More power to both teams who had to play under the most trying of circumstances.</p>

29

<p>Unless you’re saying that only American money and fame will do, the argument doens’t hold water. Huge money and fame are available from European teams. </p>

<p>Besides, in every sport and especially in a country as big as the US, the pyramid is so steep and so tiny for Big Money and Big Fame. Great 15 year old soccer players are not giving up the game to play football so that they can one day garner bigger money or bigger fame. I don’t see that happening. </p>

<p>Stats from the US Soccer page:</p>

<p>Team Participation by year (in thousands)
1987 1993 1998 2001 2002 2003 16-Year Change<br>
Baseball 15,098 15,586 12,318 11,405 10,402 10,885 -27.1
Basketball 35,737 42,138 42,417 38,663 36,584 35,439 -0.8
Touch Football 20,292 21,241 17,382 16,675 14,903 14,119 -30.4
Soccer 15,388 16,365 18,176 19,042 17,641 17,679 +14.9</p>

<p>All parents get a few eye rolls from their progeny, marite but you may get more than the rest of us…? Surrounded by all those 18 to 22 year olds too!</p>

30

<p>I think they deserved to win because they played a lot better than Italy did today regardless of goals scored USA played hard and well today and Italy didn’t play even close to their full potential (in my opinion of course). they also still managed to stay in the game with only nine players for most of the second half which is incredibly hard on the body and mentality of the players. And in terms of the ref the red card on the flagrant elbow to the face was the right call, but the other two red cards were way to extreme and as the commentators said “ruined the game” Apparently (according to the people at abc) this ref didn’t participate in the last world cup due to a suspension he received for his questionable calls in other games. People almost always have problems with the calls refs make and I’m no exception, but this ref really changed the whole game with his bad calls so I felt particularly annoyed about it. but what can you do, I just hope they beat ghana and italy beats czech so usa stands a chance in it all</p>

31

<p>i hadnt seen what erj said when i posted so sorry for being repetitive about the refs history</p>

32

<p>Cheers:</p>

<p>Right now, I’m not. This is the blissful time when the college students are gone, the summer school hasn’t started and most high schoolers are still in school.</p>

<p>You are right about soccer’s increasing numbers. Cambridge is full of soccer teams and soccer fields and probably soccer moms, too!</p>

33

<p>Hmmmmm…I still don’t agree about the money. </p>

<p>Do you know a talented young player who gave up soccer for another sport?</p>

<p>The best teenage soccer players in the US are focused on getting an opportunity to play soccer in college. I have never seen a player switch sports. Talented soccer layers are usually passionate about the sport.</p>

<p>I have a friend who scored a goal in a World Cup game and he puts the failure down to culture. The young players in the US aren’t growing up in a culture dominated by soccer–watching top games with their dads, hearing game analysis at the dinner table, recalling great moments in past games with their grandads and uncles. US players don’t understand the nuances in the same way as the Brazilians or the English.</p>

<p>It may be a bit like learning to speak tonal languages. If you didn’t hear it as an infant, you’re never be as fluent as the person who did hear the language as an infant.</p>

<p>I am a current soccer mom. S2 started out as the keeper on the Freshman D team and rose to be keeper of the varsity team–only to be demoted to the B team for missing a game to take the SATs.</p>

34

<p>It’s all about culture. Generations upon generations of it. Until the last twenty years a soccer program on any high school campus was difficult to find. Soccer in this country is just coming into it’s own. It will take another 20 years for the U.S. Team to dominate. Going into the World Cup ranked 5th is not too shabby. Now, the culture is much different when it comes to the women soccer players. Women in many of these soccer nations are not encouraged to play, thus the dominance of the U.S. Womens Team.</p>

<p>Slowly but surely America is changing and more and more we are changing our opinion of soccer. My H who played hockey, baseball, and lacrosse in college would not have dreamed of watching soccer 20 years ago. Now, with a D playing soccer in college, he is glued to the television watching three taped games per day until July 9. Our children (current soccer players) will introduce their children to the beauty of this sport at a very young age and they will be the heroes of the 2030 World Cup.</p>

35

<p>My brothers all played soccer in the US 40 years ago. They started in second grade but they couldn’t play on their high school teams–it was too competitive and they weren’t good enough. Our metro league was highly competitive in 1965 onwards. My brothers played indoor and club soccer instead (and ruined their knees).</p>

<p>As the US has not scored a single goal in this World Cup without the aid of an errant Italian. Obviously the ranking of 5th was dubious–or more likely–a marketing ploy by FIFA.</p>

36

<p>H has a Ghanaian colleague. He predicts no work will be done on Thursday (and not much has been performed since th EC began, either). As for me, I’ve seen better matches than the Korea-France one. I’m heartbroken that Zidane won’t be playing in the next game.</p>

37

<p>“Obviously the ranking of 5th was dubious–or more likely–a marketing ploy by FIFA.”</p>

<p>No it’s not a marketing ploy if you look at the methodology of the rankings essentially you get points for every match you play (even if you lose - more if you beat a better team or matches at prestigious intl tournaments)…so teams that play many many exhibition matches, like Mexico and the United States, are highly ranked. Brasil rarely plays intl friendlies…they play in the WC, Copa America, WC qualifying, and some minor tournaments like the gold cup (which they send their second team to). Other than these matches you rarely see them playing friendlies while Mexico and the US constantly play friendlies (Mexico plays most of theirs in the US).</p>

<p>Brasil still remains 1st because major wins (winning the world cup) give you an outrageous amount of points.</p>

38

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Our local high school girl’s team had five players switch to other sports - one to lacrosse, one to field hockey, two to track and one to ice hockey. I would say that none of the five that switched were truly dedicated to soccer - none played all year. And actually, the team did better after they left.</p>

<p>The girls that switched to hockey (field and ice) both ended up with D-1 scholarships.</p>

39

<p>I think it may indeed be partly cultural and historical, similar to how hockey is to Canada. In the U.S., soccer is not the predominant spectator sport and thus does not have the same kind of interest or panache as it does in many international countries. There are many other options for the sports fan in the U.S. and it will take some time (if it EVER happens) for soccer to garner the same kind of interest professionally as other sports. </p>

<p>In Canada, even though there are other professional sports available, hockey is still the largest draw for the general public, both live and on tv. A relatively small country which continues to produce the majority of professional players, and probably always will. The Stanley Cup final series was a good example. Virtually everyone in Canada was cheering for the Oilers as THE Canadian team in the final. It’s an important part of Canadian life.</p>

<p>Soccer is a very popular sport in Canada, to PLAY, though, not to watch. My girls have all played since they were 5, this is common. Our home club has 12,000 kids playing this year, in a community of 100,000. Many times the number of kids who play hockey. Soccer is a game that virtually any kid can play, even those with limited skills. It’s a more forgiving sport for kids than most others. Even with that popularity, and this is pretty much the case across the country, Canada is not in the World Cup. The men’s teams have had little success but the women’s team is very successful, with many of the kids on the team playing at U.S. colleges. </p>

<p>I don’t see many kids switching sports here, especially if they’re still playing at late h/s age. Generally, the only time a soccer player would switch might be after college when so many of them are recruited as professional football kickers.</p>

40

<p>Bern describes the FIFA ranking system pretty well. However, there are a few omissions. which may lead to a different conclusion on how points are earned.</p>

<p>Taken into consideration for the ranking are all international-A match results over a time span of the last eight years: </p>

<p>World Cup finals matches
World Cup preliminary matches
FIFA Confederations Cup matches
Continental championship final matches
Continental championship preliminary matches
Friendly matches </p>

<p>The ranking list is produced by a computer program which assigns a team points for every match, according to clearly defined criteria. The factors taken into consideration are: </p>

<p>Winning, drawing and losing
Number of goals
Home or away match
Importance of the match (multiplication factor)
Regional strength (multiplication factor) </p>

<p>The importance of a game is also considered - a World Cup encounter is weighted more heavily than a friendly match. The method applied here is to use a pre-calculated factor by which the points totals of a given match are multiplied. </p>

<p>The factors used are: </p>

<p>Friendly match x 1.00
Continental championship preliminary x 1.50
World Cup preliminary match x 1.50
Continental championship finals match x 1.75
FIFA Confederations Cup match x 1.75
World Cup finals match x 2.00
This means that qualifying matches are weighted 50% higher than friendlies, continental final round matches 75 % higher and matches during World Cup finals twice as much. </p>

<p>Lastly, the following weighting factors will apply: </p>

<p>UEFA x 1.00
CONMEBOL x 0.99
CAF x 0.96
CONCACAF x 0.94
AFC x 0.93
OFC x 0.93</p>

<p>And, it is the last factor that allows the USA and Mexico to have climbed the ranking to their inflated ranking in 2006. In recent years, the USA and MExico have dominated the weak CONCACAF regional group and stashed the points away with glee. The regional factor of .94 for CONCACAF is an aberration. European teams have to participate in UEFA and World Cup preliminaries that are much harder and where victories and large victories are rarer. The historical rankings for Mexico in 2001 are much closer to their exact “value” in the world scales. Neither Mexico nor the US deserves to be ranked in the top 10 in the world. </p>

<p>Year BRA MEX USA
2006 1 6 4 </p>

<p>Year BRA MEX USA
2001 1 13 18</p>