It is the summer solstice today, the longest day of the year for the northern hemisphere. It is also the high time of the World Cup Soccer, once every four year. People say if you are really interested or crazy about any particular event, you should go to where the action is. In general this is true. However, practically it is not that attractive or economical to do it. Like travel, you like to see the place first hand with your eyes and personal presence, but you can't see all places in the world with your limited time and resources, you just have to make some trade-off. In this age of mass media, TV, Internet and DVD are so popular and easily accessible, we can really make the most out of it and our life is never be the same. Instead of going to Brazil, I stay at home in my family room with big TV screen. I can watch every match and replay with all the analysis and comments on the sport. It is really great. As to the feeling of the on-site excitement, I did have one in 1994. It was 20 years ago, the US hosted the World Cup Soccer. I got two tickets of the Stanford Stadium for the match between Brazil and Russia. I took Helen, my daughter, with me to the stadium for that particular afternoon. We still remember the excitement and the grand feeling of the event. Yes, there is something you can only feel it by being there. However, with the improvement of the quality of mass media, the difference of being there and not being there diminishes rather quickly.
The FIFA World Cup is the quadrennial soccer championship held every four years. The Cup’s final game is the single most viewed sporting event on earth. It is like a special Olympics. The 2010 match between Spain and The Netherlands was watched by an estimated 700 million people. Meanwhile American Football is only ranked #9 as the most watched sport in the world.
I watched most of the World Cup matches and found them very interesting and rewarding. It is kind of odd that soccer in the US is way off the chart regarding to the popularity. The reason may be the following:
1. Low score of the match, 0-0 is very common.
2. Continuous play without stop makes TV commercials impractical.
The low score is due to the difficulty of kicking the ball into the goal. The game can be exciting or boring depending on how often players attack the goal. If both teams are good in defense, the whole 90-minute match may look very boring especially to American people who get used to the American Football.
I found that if the total goals are divided into 8 parts, the distribution of the scoring goals is something like the following:
3: Heading
2: Quick and lightning attack
1: Powerful long range kick
1: 12 yard penalty kick
1: Perfect pass and penetration
It is logical to see heading is the most common goal, as it is the only way to attack from the above in soccer in front of the goal. It is also interesting to see the methodical way to win a goal is only 1/8. Perfect pass and coordinating attack are not that important comparing to the quick attack at the opportune time. The reason of this is that there are just too many players running in front of the goal during slow attack. It is usually the lightning attack that you find only 2 or 3 defenders in front of the goal. The other reason is that you can't touch the ball with hands and also you can't go 'offside' while attacking. The offensive player cannot wait for the ball behind the last defender (not counting the other team's goalie). If that offensive player shows just a little part of his body or more behind the imaginary line where the last defender is before the ball is kicked and sent forward, it is an offside violation. Since the game makes the offense hard to proceed, it tends to create a score 0-0, a boring match.
One thing odd is the Fake Injury in Soccer. It is quite common and well known. I watched video and some replay, it seems half of the time, they are real but the other half is questionable. Sometime you don't see the body contact, but just a free fall causes some severe pain to the player. Is this a real injury? For this case, it is highly possible that the player fakes his pain. Perhaps FIFA should adopt some instant video replay or some high tech scheme to decide who should get penalty for faking. But then the play has to be interrupted that will generate some other issues. The soccer players only wear T-shirt without helmet and shoulder padding but with spike shoe. This perhaps the reason the players get hurt easily. Although the body contact is not that severe comparing to American Football, most soccer players play rough and show no hesitation tackling the other players.
Since World Cup Soccer is watched by people of almost all countries of the world, the teams qualified to play make their countries quite visible, especially if the teams get to the semi-final and final matches. Since the inception of the World Cup Soccer, China never passes the qualified stage and so China is almost invisible on the world stage of soccer. If a country can make so much progress in Summer Olympics, why can't it make any improvement or breakthrough to the soccer? This is a good question and can only be resolved by Chinese people.
