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Why I find soccer boring
Do I have a theory for all of my idiosyncratic preferences? Well, with soccer it is simple. There is too much apparent noise in the data. Too many salleys and thrusts lead to immediate reversals. Moving the ball down the field generates information about the relative strength of the teams, and in theory that is interesting, but I am poorly equipped for interpreting this information. (I recall reading, with bewilderment, the claim that the French 1-0 victory over Brazil "wasn't even close.") To me all that back and forth looks random. In this regard soccer is like baseball, hockey, or perhaps even chess and Go. Only the cognoscenti know what is going on. In particular, the meaning of the drama is clearer when you grow up with it.
Basketball, my favorite sport, generates ongoing data but those results are marked by numbers, most notably points scored, but also rebounds, turnovers, steals, etc. It is far easier to approach a basketball game "cold" and figure it out on the fly. If you tune in during halftime, a few stats will indicate what is going on. It is the perfect sport for people who, like myself, don't have much time for sports.
Here is a good essay on whether soccer is boring. Read this too, it compares soccer and hockey.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 3, 2006 at 07:36 AM in Sports | Permalink
Comments
I feel the same way, and feel liberated in knowing you feel this way too. I have just chalked it all up to me being poorly equipped to interpret what's happening. I figure it's a great sport, but I just can't understand it. I tried to get a sense of where each player was and how maybe their collective efforts were interesting, but I got really bored really quick and decided I wasn't meant to be a soccer fan.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Jul 3, 2006 7:50:51 AM
Now that's an interesting argumentation: soccer is boring because it is unpredictable. Or, in other words, only the predictable is interesting. This is the kind of conclusion that arise if academic filters aren't switched off after work.
Posted by: la deutsche vita at Jul 3, 2006 7:55:44 AM
OK, that was an odd experience - like reading Martians describing human life. The reason a lot of people around the world like football is because they have actually played it and have a basic understanding of the game from experience, not just from random observation. My impression of American sports is that they are so specialized that just about no one have a fairly recent experience of actually playing the game, be it grid iron, basket, or baseball.
Football is a very organized game, so organized that if the organization breaks down if only for a couple of seconds, a good team will punish you. From that point of view , France-Brazil actually never was close. France did an excellent job of containing Brazil's offensive - arguably the best in the world - and posed a deadly threat to Brazil's defence, which is not even among top ten in the world. That much was clear after 30 minutes.
Actually, your primer for understanding basket works for football, too. In Europe you always get a breakdown consisting of possession time, total shots, shots on goal, corners, free-kicks, and cautions. With some prior knowledge of the teams playing, such stats give you a good picture of the game.
Posted by: Dan K at Jul 3, 2006 8:16:05 AM
Soccer may not have the array of statistical data generated in say basketball or baseball, but it has a few crucial indicators such as possession (which team is controlling the play), fouls (which team is struggling to cope with the opponents offense), corners taken (team that is on the attack in the opponents box) and goals on shot (team that has created more chances). Now individually, these indicators are not clear-cut but collectively they can paint an accurate picture of the match in hand.
Of course there are always anomalies. A team that has most of the possession, attacking instinct and shots on goal can lose the match. It would only happen because something out of the ordinary happened. Something unexpected, unpredictable, a spark of genius. And that's the key ingredient that makes football special. In the end, its the simple matter of putting the ball into the net!
Posted by: Sunny at Jul 3, 2006 8:33:51 AM
Technology is changing the way you get data in soccer. Now, for every single game you can get now lots of computer-generated information, like average position of each player (telling you which team dominates, how they attack/defend, why team A is winning or why it did not transform field domination in score); ball possession in every area of the field (simple possession is not enough : only possession in opponent's area is relevant); number of balls played by every player, number of duels, balls stolen, balls lost, direction of balls played, number of shots, etc.
So now, it is easier to get an aggregate view of the game with data.
The quality of comment is also very important. Usually, active coaches are good commentators, because they understand modern football tactics, can tell you who is good at what, show you important actions and players, things that journalists and players are not really good at.
All these improvements in data and comment can really change the way soccer is watched, and make it easier to appreciate - and less boring - for unused watchers.
Posted by: alexandre at Jul 3, 2006 9:18:45 AM
My impression of American sports is that they are so specialized that just about no one have a fairly recent experience of actually playing the game, be it grid iron, basket, or baseball.
Your impression, while honest, is very mistaken. While people generally do not have experience playing professionally, recreationally all those sports are very popular.
A sport needs to be neither totally predictable nor completely random in order to be popular. A sport where there was no way to tell which players or teams were better, or where the obviously better team (whether in general or on that day) only won 50% of the time, would generally not be a fun sport to watch. At the same time, a sport whose outcome can be predicted entirely in advance would not be fun either.
One of the biggest differences between soccer and many other sports is in the comparative lack of intermediate goals (whether the frequent points or runs scored in some games, or the quantifiable battle for field position in American or Canadian football) and in the relative inadequacy of the statistics. As far as the latter, really only baseball and cricket have truly effective statistics that can measure an individual player's contributions extremely effectively. Almost all other sports have synergies between teammates and things like effective passing and cooperation that is difficult to measure correctly the individual contribution, especially on defense. But this is because baseball and cricket, more so than other team sports, consist of players working together yet largely on their own, whether when pitching/bowling, at bat, or fielding.
Posted by: John Thacker at Jul 3, 2006 9:25:27 AM
At the same time, association football is tremendously popular at the youth recreational level, but this success has not lead to a greater appreciation for the game as a spectator sport. (Unlike how, say, golf and tennis playing leads directly to watching the sports.)
Some observers note that this is because a soccer game played by young, untalented players more closely mimics a real game to the untrained eye than baseball, American football, basketball, tennis, or golf, all of which look ridiculous if extremely young players have not yet learned the skills necessary. By contrast, most children can kick a ball, even if not very well.
Posted by: John Thacker at Jul 3, 2006 9:29:33 AM
This is an interesting argument to make for soccer being boring. Clearly its based more on your personal preferences for the kind of sports you enjoy, than the usual anti-soccer rhetoric that's easy to trot out (ie, its un-american). I agree that you don't get much information from a soccer scoreline. A 1-0 game could be a close game between two evenly matched teams or indicatea lucky goal by the under dog who then bunkers in defensively.
For me, I found that having a team to cheer for got me interested ( first it was the Bolivian national team, then DC United, and now the USA national team) and that got me over the ignorance part at the beginning. Slowly since then, and after playing too, I've gained a better understanding of the game, although its still very hard to watch a game where I don't have real vested interest in one of the teams.
On the time thing, I think that's not as strong an argument. Soccer is 2 hours, every time withouth a million time outs and commercial break. In tournaments, you might need overtime and pks to decide a winner. Meanwhile, I can't stand to watch most "American" sports for that reason, you end up watching more commercials than anything. Even the crown jewel of US sports, the Super Bowl, is arguably more of an event for what is televised during sports, than what happens on the playing field. Basketball is really only interesting at the end of the fourth quarter.
Posted by: Oscar at Jul 3, 2006 10:11:40 AM
Your observation that "It is far easier to approach a basketball game 'cold' and figure it out on the fly" is relevant. Soccer is a game that you must learn to watch. The most exciting scoring plays almost never start in the vicinity of the ball -- so you must be watching a much greater portion of the field in order to see it all develop. This is one of the reasons that soccer televises poorly.
Posted by: Michael Cain at Jul 3, 2006 10:37:48 AM
Soccer televises poorly, and while I love to watch it on TV, I do wish I could be at matches. Baseball also televises poorly, which is a shame. I think Baseball and Soccer also suffer from a problem of the metagame being just as important as the field of play. In both of those games management is just as important as play, this is less true in other sports where players can come in and out of the game at will.
I've found that my enjoyment of a sport is in direct proportion to how well I understand the game and how exciting it is when a team scores. Baseball is my favorite, because my dad played AAA ball for a season and I grew up with it. I prefer the NL because scoring is more exciting as the AL has the DH and very high run production. I understand hockey much better than I understand soccer, and they're about equal in excitement-per-goal, so I favor hockey. I especially like a few of the changes to NHL rules: getting rid of the two-line pass rule, not allowing goalies into the corners to touch up for icing, allowing off-sides players to touch up at the blue line. These things have helped speed up the pace of the game, which helps it as a TV sport.
Posted by: Timothy at Jul 3, 2006 10:53:54 AM
One easy way to statistically quantify the claim that the Brazil-France game "wasn't even close" is that Brazil only had one shot on goal, in the 92nd minute. This from a team that averaged over 9 shots on goal before that game. Fance's defense was very impressive.
That said, it absolutely true in general that soccer is harder to quantify in a box score.
Posted by: Silviu at Jul 3, 2006 11:11:30 AM
I'll be the token hockey fan here, and make two recommendations for enjoying the game a little more:
1. If at all possible, watch it live. I believe hockey has the widest gap between the televised and live experience of all sports... it just televises poorly (you never get a true sense of the speed of the game). Besides, Alex Ovechkin alone is worth the price of admission to a Caps game. He is a singular talent, and he is still young enough to play a little recklessly.
2. For keeping track of the game:
The number of shots on goal (a stat posted on the scoreboard) serves as a pretty good measure of in-game success. If one team is outshooting the other 40-25, it's a pretty good clue that they are having more success overall.
Additionally, pay attention to the number of penalties on a team. Often, players commit penalties when they've been beaten. If one team is racking them up, it probably means the other team is beating them to the puck regularly.
(There are exceptions two both of these rules, but they will hold a large majority of the time).
I am also perplexed about the second article that you link to, comparing soccer to hockey in difficulty scoring (and contrasted to American football). A hockey game typically has about 60 shots on goal (I think soccer has a dozen or so), and teams combine for an average of six goals.
I'm not sure how that is different from a 28-14 football game, and it's only a little less than the baseball I watched as a kid, where teams combined for about 9-10 runs a game (I think). Garkilov's suggestion that a team should need to score 12-15 goals to win would put the scoring rate ahead of almost every major sport out there, basketball excepted.
My parting thought: I wonder if we understand the stats of football and baseball better b/c there is so much time between plays. Announcers get frequent opportunites to explain, and indeed are expected to find ways to keep viewers entertained.
As I've gotten a little older, I find that I really prefer sports like basketball or hockey, where play continues, to baseball and football, where there is more time that the ball is not actually being played.
Posted by: Brad L at Jul 3, 2006 11:28:14 AM
I'll throw out my reason for sometimes finding soccer difficult to watch: it seems like players only sometimes have control of their passes, and rarely have control of their shot.
After some beautiful passing and ball control, the striker is lined up, has a little space and... nothing. The ball goes wide or high by 10 yards, or flutters harmlessly towards the goalie. It's as if Dwayne Wade got a look from 15 feet and shot the ball over the backboard.
Or a pass into the box lands on the other side of the field, 15 yards away from anyone, and rolls out of bounds. As if Jason Kidd saw an open man, and threw the ball into the crowd. On a regular basis.
I've heard that b/c this sort of play is the norm, not the exception, it adds to the beauty. Only a perfect pass and perfect strike will work, and rarity makes them beautiful.
Personally, I find it a little frustrating.
Posted by: Brad L at Jul 3, 2006 11:56:14 AM
The statistics that Dan K listed are quite useful, even if they don't fully convey the sense of play. Having more shots on goal doesn't necessarily translate into more serious goal-scoring opportunities, but having no shots on goal makes it obvious that you're behind, which was the case in the Brazil-France game, as Silviu noted.
Posted by: Jonathan Dingel at Jul 3, 2006 12:42:39 PM
Another soccer gripe (and I've watched lots of the World Cup this year -- I live in an area where World Cup knowledge is a social class signifier, it shows you are international, educated, and wealthy -- equivalent to discussing which hybrid car you want to buy).
Anyway, when I see replays of spectacular shots (like the chest trap to kick goal from 30 yards out in this World Cup) the majesty of the feat is diminished by how how much I know randomness and luck was a factor.
Even the best players don't seem to have that much control of their goal shots and passes. When I see a great play I want to think that the play was purposeful, and not just lucky. The headers in particular seem as likely to go to the opposite side as your own.
I'm reminded of when I learned to play racquetball. Lots of random ball hitting, with occasionally impressive, but unrepeatable results. Which made it quite fun. Actually, the better I got the less fun racquetball became, since it became more predictable and serves become dominant like in tennis.
Lastly, the massive incentive for diving does violate a fundamental tenet of American sports -- never let the opponent know you're hurt. Many great sports moments are about playing injured -- not faking being injured. There are flop artists in the NBA, but 1) they are disliked for this and 2)they fake a flop, not an injury. The size of the field in soccer, and fewer # of refs mean soccer players have to act out the injury to get the refs attention. It's like broadway plays vs movie acting. Soccer has these exaggerated injuries acted for the ref's sake that play horribly on tv.
The soccer guys act like their knee has just exploded, then sprint down the field after five minutes of rolling in fake agony. But getting a red card or penalty kick can radically alter a game, so the diving continues.
Posted by: mike at Jul 3, 2006 12:50:07 PM
Baseball also televises poorly, which is a shame.
True. Yet listening to a well-called baseball game on the radio is a pleasure.
Major league baseball is also relatively easy to attend in person, compared to other major sports (and especially football). Each team plays 81 home games, sellouts aren't too common, and ticket prices are reasonable.
Posted by: Peter at Jul 3, 2006 1:00:37 PM
Soccer is 2 hours, every time withouth a million time outs and commercial break. In tournaments, you might need overtime and pks to decide a winner. Meanwhile, I can't stand to watch most "American" sports for that reason, you end up watching more commercials than anything. Even the crown jewel of US sports, the Super Bowl, is arguably more of an event for what is televised during sports, than what happens on the playing field.
I find the TV commercials in a baseball game more tolerable because they occur at natural breaks in the game. Baseball games are not deliberately interrupted for the sake of commercials, which unfortunately is not the case with respect to football and basketball.
Posted by: Peter at Jul 3, 2006 1:05:15 PM
It's easy to make soccer more exciting for American fans: make each goal worth 7 points and make PKs worth 3 points to make it more like "exciting" football (21-14 *sounds* so much better than 3-2), and/or play without a keeper to make it more like basketball (where it's more rare *not* to score on a possession). Also, if Jason Kidd had to make 30 yard passes, I doubt that they would be as relatively accurate as they are over 10 yards. Even with his hands. And even if his teammates didn't have the offside problem with which to contend (part of the problem is in trying to make no-look passes into a space where your teammates aren't *allowed* to go until the ball has already started moving there, much more difficult than making passes to players camped out under the basket who then have to drop the ball through an unguarded net - no wonder international bb allows goaltending!).
Soccer doesn't televise well because movement without the ball is much more important and because there aren't endless opportunities for replays. As for intermediate goals and/or stats, perhaps y'all would benefit from watching on a Spanish or other foreign network, where the shots on goal, corners, saves, and plays into the box are usually tracked and indicate offensive potential. From a fan's perspective, the most frustrating are the games where one side (the one you are supporting) dominates the other, and ends up losing on a single quick transition or (worse) on PKs.
But really - which is worse in the sense that it wastes your time: the basketball or football game whose last minute is mercilessly extended with fouls and timeouts and commercials, or the soccer game that lasts a (nearly) fixed amount of time?
American baseball, basketball, and football leagues could benefit from the system used in foreign soccer leagues where bad teams can get relegated down to a lower league, good teams from the lower leagues can climb up, and teams from different countries play in impromptu "champions leagues". The first makes the battle for last place almost as exciting as the one for first. The second gives rise to the possibility that your local AAA team could suddenly be bumped up to the majors, if only for a season or two. The third leads to all kinds of interesting match-ups and more games for fans to follow. The CBA was undeniably good for pro basketball, and this type of arrangement would promote more such innovations. The contractual game in pro soccer is much more dynamic than the overly stable NBA, MLB, and NFL.
Posted by: Eric H at Jul 3, 2006 1:05:29 PM
"American baseball, basketball, and football leagues could benefit from the system used in foreign soccer leagues where bad teams can get relegated down to a lower league, good teams from the lower leagues can climb up, and teams from different countries play in impromptu "champions leagues""
Yep, I was shocked when I found out about this. I work for a german firm, and when they explained how this worked, I was really impressed. It really reinforces the need to put a quality team on the field year after year. As I live in Chicago, I've experienced what ESPN has called the worst owner in Bill Wirtz and the 'anyone can have a bad century' Cubs. The White Sox, my childhood team, had burned me so badly with a bad new stadium, the white flag year and other bonehead moves that by the time they won, I was surprised to find that I could care less.
On topic, I think Soccer appeals to 'random positve behavior reinforcment'. At anytime, a team can score. Any game with a 1 goal difference can be change in an instant.
Posted by: mickslam at Jul 3, 2006 1:12:34 PM
The American chattering class' obsession with "understanding" soccer is becoming annoying. As a few posters have pointed out, those who have never played soccer can hardly be expected to understand the flow of the game. I wonder how much experience our host has with the game?
I personally was part of the soccer "youthquake" spending most Saturday mornings in the early to mid 80's between April and October playing in some form of youth soccer league. I was never very skilled, and like most American youths I gave up the game around middle school and have only recently started to play recreationally again. The most outstanding fact of my experience was as a member of a team coached by a former Argentinean professional. That team won the league 4 out of the 6 years I payed attention, mostly because even without the most skilled players having a coach who understood the game was usually enough to guarantee victory. That fact is important because the "coaches" of the other teams I was involved themselves had little soccer experience and their teams played like the stereotypical gaggle of 6 players chasing the ball wherever it went, 1 or 2 athletically gifted players who did all the scoring, and the remainder being disinterested players actively avoiding being a part of the action. Playing on such a team is like navigating the Tokyo public transport system without being able to read Kanji. It's confusing, frustrating and ultimately leads one to wonder what's so wonderful about the system anyway, but it's also a completely different experience from the average Japanese rider's.
The irony of comparing soccer to basketball, a sport invented specifically to give soccer players something to do during the long dark Massachusetts winter, is hopefully not lost on our host. And the similarities to soccer are not lost on those who play either game at a sufficiently skilled level to understand basic strategy. As in soccer, the best basketball is played away from the ball, which is why teams with a lot of assists tend to win games.
Also the idea that scoring is largely a function of luck would be quickly dismissed of you actually went to a nearby field and tried scoring from 20 yards or more against a goalie. That only begins to underscore the difficulty of soccer, where on average a player has no more than 2 seconds, and often quite a bit less, to control and direct a shot before the defense closes off all angles. Furthermore, because of its light weight and large surface area, the flight of a soccer ball deviates significantly from a ballistic trajectory, unlike a basketball whose mass makes aerodynamic effects less of a consideration.
Posted by: Ssezi at Jul 3, 2006 1:40:42 PM
The France-Brazil outcome (1-0) was I think representative of how things tend to work out - a team dominates though the outcome is 'only' 1-0. There are of course exceptions where a team plays particularly poorly, but somehow manages to luck out and win (perhaps a bit more so in soccer than other sports). Some ways that I understand they have thought about increasing the 'variance' (and reducing randomness) is by making the goal bigger etc. - though given the history of the sport, I am guessing changes are unlikely. Still, one of the best sports around.
Posted by: teppof at Jul 3, 2006 2:03:34 PM
"As for intermediate goals and/or stats, perhaps y'all would benefit from watching on a Spanish or other foreign network, where the shots on goal, corners, saves, and plays into the box are usually tracked and indicate offensive potential."
But they aren't that great statistics. And they really don't do a great job measuring individual players' talents, especially defenders. Not that this isn't a problem with other football codes, like American football-- blocking is incredibly important there but tough to quantify.
"Also the idea that scoring is largely a function of luck would be quickly dismissed of you actually went to a nearby field and tried scoring from 20 yards or more against a goalie. That only begins to underscore the difficulty of soccer, where on average a player has no more than 2 seconds, and often quite a bit less, to control and direct a shot before the defense closes off all angles."
That it is difficult does not mean that scoring is not a function of luck. Indeed, at a certain point difficult directly translates into luck, if it becomes so difficult that only a lucky shot can be successful, if it becomes so difficult that the difference in percentage of success between all the players is small.
Playing on such a team is like navigating the Tokyo public transport system without being able to read Kanji. It's confusing, frustrating and ultimately leads one to wonder what's so wonderful about the system anyway..
Of course, a somewhat bad example given the amazing amount of English on the Tokyo train and subway system. Perhaps a visit to Kabuki-cho without any Japanese knowledge would have been a better example?
Posted by: John Thacker at Jul 3, 2006 2:13:42 PM
Of course, a somewhat bad example given the amazing amount of English on the Tokyo train and subway system.
I should have restricted myself to comments about the train system, I do not take the subway in Tokyo because my business takes place on the outskirts (Tachikawa, Akashima). While the map has English transliteration, the vending machines, which I understand have been discontinued since my last visit, do not have an option for English menus.
at a certain point difficult directly translates into luck
I am guilty of a lack of precision in terminology. My understanding of luck is an event that was considered so remote that it was never specifically planned for, for example the Immaculate Reception in American Football, no one planned on the deflection going in that direction. Soccer goals, even as rare as they are, are not equivalent, on a goal scored from play the players are usually aware of each other's position and momentum, and pass or shoot with intention. This is even more true of dead ball plays. Consider Thierry Henry's goal against Brazil, he was clearly on a run on the opposite side of the box and also clearly unmarked. Zidane's job was to get the ball over the intervening defense and into a position where Henry could make a play. If that was luck then golf is entirely about luck considering how infrequently even the best players hit their exact targets.
Posted by: Ssezi at Jul 3, 2006 2:35:59 PM
Random thought:
If part of soccer's lack of popularity in the US is due to the fact that it televises poorly, will the spread of large-screen TV's change that? Presumably the bigger the screen the easier the tradeoff between showing a large part of the field and showing action detail.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Jul 3, 2006 2:56:35 PM
Even the best players don't seem to have that much control of their goal shots and passes. When I see a great play I want to think that the play was purposeful, and not just lucky.
Watch some Ronaldinho footage and I think you'll see control, not luck. This might be a good start -- http://youtube.com/watch?v=fkrq1TtrsJo&search=ronaldinho
Posted by: Jonathan Dingel at Jul 3, 2006 3:48:51 PM
