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Pretty Simple

If the USA wins their last game of the group stage, they advance.

If they don't win, they are eliminated.

I've been watching a lot of this tournament, considering I don't really "get" soccer.

I find these 0-0 ties pretty hard to stomach.  You watch for 2 hours and nothing happens.  I don't think I understand the game well enough or something.  Like, I understand the rules, but it seems like an entire game of "almosts."  And if you don't actually score, everything resets anyway -- it's not like there's some greater field position battle.

It's just hard for me to feel invested, other than gambling or blind nationalism.

It's a lot more exciting once the scoring starts because those "almosts" are either soul crushing or thrilling depending on who you're rooting for. Still, not as exciting as football.

But it is nonstop. 90 minutes of soccer = 90 minutes of  action and takes 90 minutes of your time.  60 minutes of NFL is 20 minutes of action and takes 3 hours with all the timeouts and commercials.   

I can honestly say that I have never watched an entire soccer match. Not a single one.  I start watching, but then about 15 minutes of them running around not scoring, I think "Surely there is something else on TV that I could be watching..."

The schedule has prevented me from watching any USA group games. I usually catch one replay at night and most of the weekend games live. There has been a lot of controversy about this tournament even before it started. That isn't going to keep me from watching though.

You can't appreciate the game of soccer off the ball if you don't already understand it. That's why so many Americans do not "see" the action you speak of. It's much easier to see a guy lay out another guy or break away and score ... even if they are doong it between the commercials.

You can witness this complete lack of understanding at every youth game as parents yell at their kids to chase the ball even though the coach is teaching them not to.

I don't think it's this.

I can see the flow of play and the spacing and I can see pressure.  It's not all that different from hockey in that respect.

I think what troubles me the most about it is that there's really very little damage done unless you actually score a goal -- all the pressure in the world doesn't matter once you miss the goal.  The other team gets the ball in a complete reset.

With football, you at least flipped field position, you hit the opposing QB and rattled them, you kept the defense on the field for a long time to tire them out -- there are elements to winning a football game besides actually scoring the points.  OT games are rare.  Ties almost never ever happen.  And 0-0 ties ....I don't think I've ever even seen one.

I used to be the President of one of the largest clubs in Central Florida now operating as Orlando City Youth so I've seen some things. I've been fortunate to be around some very successsful people in the sport in both mens and womens.

The American clubs will always be behind unless the pro teams actually start investing in the clubs. As it is, places like Barcelona do not keep score until kids get to a certain age because they don't want kids worried about failing and since parents aren't paying they have no say so. They teach to maintain possession of the ball until an attacking opportunity presents itself and to not be afraid to take risks at an early age. That's how dynamic players are created.

In the US we have parents who pay thousands of dollars who want to win now so we kick the ball to the fastest player so they can outrun everyone and score. You aren't allowed to try something new if you aren't going to be successful and if you aren't winning players will leave and so will their thousands of dollars they are paying. Once you get to the higher level athleticism will only take you so far so if you haven't learned to posses, counter attack, and create opportunites then you are screwed.  

We've had coaches who didn't say anything during games and parents would get goofy but that's how kids learn. I used to laugh because one of them was Barry Hulshoff who was a former Ajax defender who helped them dominate in the 70s. He played many years with legendary player and coach Johan Cruyff. These parents really had no idea. Most of us don't and only "get it" once our kids are much older.  

The last NFL game to end in a 0-0 tie was 1943.

Watching some of these games I will say that some of these players are much bigger flop artists than even the most talented flop artists in the NBA.  Seems like every time a guy goes down he's writhing in pain grabbing his ankle or leg trying to draw a penalty.  And when he doesn't get the card he gets up and sprints down field like nothing happened. lol

Yeah? That’s soccer for you. Not the NBA. Soccer is played by a flopping  drama queens. Don’t compare it to the NBA. You can find a plethora of whiny flopping little baby soccer players falling down for no apparent reason. YouTube all of that. It’s disgusting sportsmanship. But part of the game. So that’s soccer.

I think that flopping and performance is literally part of the game.  Yellow cards are administered, in some cases, for continued harrassment.

In the NBA, a play is either a foul or not, and sometimes the refs get that wrong.  In soccer, what is not a yellow card now starts to become a yellow card the more you keep doing it.  It's almost like a technical foul in the NBA, but even more murky than that.  You can get a yellow card for not that big of a foul if you've been skirting the line for a while.

So, it's kind of the job of the players to roll around and show off contact to build a case, almost moving the refs in "make up call" territory.

This happens to some level in the NFL and NBA but is definitely more prevalent in soccer culture.



Props to soccer about two things, though -- pace of the game and technology.  And not just the running clock part.  The games move along.  They start when they say, there aren't a bunch of timeouts when the ball goes out of bounds.  There isn't a lot of waiting around to make decisions from refs.  They use technology to make decisions quickly.  It's a brisk process and I wish we could adopt some of that here.

Flopping in soccer is a learned part of the game in some parts of the world. In many places in South America it is taught. Marta is the best female player I have ever seen but when she plays for her national team of Brazil she becomes a huge flopper but while playing for a US professional team she does not.  LOL ... One time after flopping against the US team she was carried off on a gurney but jumped off while going along the sidelines to reenter the game. It was pretty comical.

If you don't watch soccer on a regular basis you won't understand what's happening. Much of what happens in soccer is about possession. Most sports one teams gets possession and they have a chance to score then the other team gets possession and they have a chance to score, back and forth you go, but soccer isn't like that, not really. There's no shot clock in soccer. There's no 4th down. There's no 3 outs. There's nothing forcing you to give up possession of the ball so a lot of the ball movement is designed to get your opponent out of a defensive posture and that is when teams try to attack you as you are more vulnerable then. So that's the chess match. The team with possession of the ball is the team that is in control of the flow of the game. If one team can deny the other team the ball, they control the tempo and the game and force the other team to try to get more aggressive to get control of the ball, but that's when teams attack you. It's all about ball control really. It's why you will see the possession stat thrown up in games, it gives you an idea of who is controlling play. But that stat can be misleading because there are teams that win even when they don't own the possession advantage. You can think of them as you would a really good offensive team. They don't need a lot of possession time to score, so they sit back and play defensive and they wait for you to make a mistake, get overly aggressive and out of position and then they pounce on you quickly. It's called counterattacking and it's very effective if you know how to pull it off and you have very good forwards that can beat players one on one.

Where this really comes into play is once someone has taken the lead. If you score first, now you are in a better position to control the game, all you need to do at this point is to try to prevent the opponent from getting good scoring chances. You can play more defensively. It's not unlike in football playing a prevent defense in the 4th quarter with a lead, however this can happen quite early on in soccer. However just like in football, it doesn't always work because you are giving up field position when you play more defensively and typically allowing the opposing team more possession, so it's a trade off. You really have to know when to attack and when to defend. The best teams in the world can score even if they only have a few real chances to score. That's what makes them so good is they don't need to try to score constantly, they wait till they see an opening and then they attack and they are pretty good at scoring when the chance presents itself.

Again, if you don't watch games regularly all of this will be completely lost on you which makes for a very boring game as it just seems like teams are knocking the ball around with no real goal in mind, but that's not what's happening at all. Teams are trying to get the opponent out of position and wear them down with passing making them constantly move. Once they see an opening, then they will attack. It's a chess match. The game is not about scoring a lot of goals, it's about scoring more than your opponent. If you can prevent them from scoring at all, all you need is 1 goal to win the match.

The other thing is that soccer is all about team and not about individual players. Even the best players in the world are supported by some of the best players in the world. Even the best player in the world on an average team will look average because there's really very little 1 individual can do if the other team is more talented than your entire team. You can just play keep away of that one player and there's almost nothing they can do about it. Good teams try to attack your weakest player, but teams try to protect their weakest player, so again it's a chess match trying to catch a team out of position and then exploit that. It's actually a very tactical and beautiful game once you know what to look for. It wouldn't be the most played sport around the world if it weren't.

Even though I don't watch it regularly (or much at all), I really do understand the principle of ball control. I just find a glorified game of keep away to be totally boring as shit.

I think most people in the US feel that way because you have options but if its all you've got then you jump on it. Easy enough to pick up a ball and kick it around but its hard to duplicate the excitement the NFL creates. We've had a National Team for 137 years and a much larger popluation than most and yet still can't compete on the World's stage. This pretty much proves to me that it isn't exciting enough to get invested here in the US.

Portugal just dropped 6 on the Swiss, that had plenty of goals

That's basically it. We have 4 major sports, not counting MMA. The rest of the world has Soccer and only sometimes Basketball, Hockey and Baseball. Plus, Soccer is the cheapest sport to play, just kick any ball into any area and you're playing it. Combine that with other nations being poorer than us and that explains the popularity.

Soccer will never be a huge thing in America with all of these other sports.

^ I think it's also that our best athletes don't choose soccer.  That's not where the glory or money is at any level.

If we had our Lebron Jameses and Tyreek Hills of the US playing soccer since they were 5 years old, it'd be a different story.

I think Lebron and Tyreek devoting the next 2 years of their lives to soccer is enough. We have giant, genetic freaks in America. Top 11 Wideouts in the NFL would dwarf the size of any World Cup team and run faster too. They don't choose to play soccer because the money isn't there right now. Need some Saudi Arabian Oil Money into MLS to get athletes to choose the sport.

Players on European teams look like football players. Well, maybe not offensive lineman but definitley LBs and RBs in the group. If the teams likes targets instead of normal stikers then they may even have a TE or two. I remember the first time we had Stoke City in for a visit. I was blown away at how they dwarfed our Orlando City team. Peter Crouch was on Stoke and he is 6'7". We didn't have anyone much taller than 6' ... LOL.  I've stood next to many of our Dolphin players and they don't look any different.

I'm just here to say that the OT rules are dumb.

1) It should just be sudden death, next goal wins.
2) Failing that, if a team scores in the first 15 minute segment, don't force the other 15 minute segment.

Shootouts are bad, and a guessing game, which should be avoided when possible.

I see the Pros and Cons of it. Shootouts are indeed a guessing game, which is why some teams kinda play full on defense for 120 minutes so they can get to them against superior opponents.

What I will never defend is a penalty shot being a live ball after a goalie stops it. That's ridiculous, play should be dead right after the save.

I just pulled this off the internet "Those who study the physical demands of soccer generally agree that the average running distance in adult male professional soccer is between 6 and 8.5 miles". We've always said 7 miles. Either way, soccer is a tough game to recover from from a cardio stand. Add another 45 minutes or God forbid even more and there isn't anyone that can recover during a tournament. PKs are the only way to make sure that doesn't happen. In fact, it's a part of the game already and this just makes it a more important part of the game.

Just for the record, athleticism doesn't make the best soccer players. Skill does. You could take all the best athletes the US has and try to teach them how to play soccer and they would be HORRIBLE. Not nearly as good as anyone on the US mens team who have all been playing since they were like 3 or 4 years old. Sure running fast helps, but if you aren't carrying the ball at your feet while you do it, then it doesn't much matter and striking a ball isn't the same as throwing one or passing one with your hands. It takes years of training to be able to do it as well as the guys on the US mens team do. They make it look easy. It's not. Yes, it's true that the US will never be a powerhouse in soccer, but it's not because we don't have the best athletes playing soccer, it's because they don't get the same competition here in the US they get in other countries. Most of the US men play in Europe now, but they didn't grow up playing against the best in the world like the players in Europe did. That's how you get to be the best, by playing against the best. Till that happens that US will never be able to compete with the best teams in the world.

Unfortunately you can't play soccer until one team comes out on top because it could take a VERY long time so there has to be a way to determine a winner in the knockout stages of a tournament and a penalty kick shootout is actually extremely exciting to watch. I honestly don't know why people don't like them.

As far as playing the full overtime, well some tournaments do play what they call "Golden Goal" which means that the first team to score in extra time is the winner, but sometimes which direction you are going can make a big difference so they tend to not use that too much so that each team gets a chance to score going in both directions.

There are solid reasons behind all the rules, but again if you don't really watch the game or play it, it won't make a lot of sense to you.

I've always found it strange that the people who typically dislike the low scoring aspect of the game also dislike penalty shootouts which creates the excitement of goals.

If you want to "ease" into watching soccer, try watching some indoor soccer. There's a LOT more scoring in indoor soccer, but the basic rules of the game still apply. It's a smaller enclosed field with fewer players so there's very little "downtime". When my kids were growing up and started playing soccer we became fans of the Dallas Sidekicks and I fell in love with the sport. Very fast paced, much like watching hockey. We could afford to get front row seats for the entire family for several games a year. Massive fun.

The human lifespan is not long enough to make this a viable rule for soccer.

To clarify:

I understand going to shootouts if nobody scores in OT.

But if someone does score in OT, the game should end right there.....allowing more scoring in OT to then go to shootouts is dumb.

That isn't a bad alternative. Unfortunately it is much easier to defend in soccer than to score and as time goes on scoring would get much more difficult. At some point in time you have to stop the game and declare a winner.

I'd like to see NFL mindsets change if kicking FGs were what determined the winner of a tie game. A lot more teams going for 2.

You'd change your mind about that if the wind is blowing about 25 miles in 1 direction, in that case you'd say "both teams should get a chance to go with the wind". I actually saw a game once that went to extra time and the team going with the wind scored first and then the team going with the wind in the 2nd period of extra time scored twice to win the game. It's not as dumb as you think it is.