271–280 of 338 posts
In case someone has not seen the second goal against England in 1986 Original footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wVho3I0NtU An interview many years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOz2uGMTA2w
Man all before the professional foul became a thing. That kind of play doesn't happen much these days.
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It's interesting that you've never heard of one of the most famous people in the world. Probably a reflection of insular American media perhaps. It doesn't work in reverse, Babe Ruth was one of the most famous people in the world even though most people around the world don't follow baseball.
It would be even more interesting to compile a list of the world's most famous people that most of the world's people have not heard of. My point is that a person can be very famous around the world and still not known by many people. Parochialism doesn't need to be invoked, just math.
I laughed my ass off, because I decided he was the only person in LA County to have asked that question anytime recently. Incidentally, I guarantee you he has no idea who Diego Maradona is.
Crunch also once asked me, 2 days after the election, "Did Obama win?". He was traveling overseas and was "out of the loop". I saved the email and laugh about it to this day.
(If you don't know who Crunch is, and you're using this website, that's funny.)
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Lionel Messi, same goal, 2004 (or thereabouts) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAehMNYw0ig
Messi feels 2x faster than Maradona here
Pele was he even a good soccer player. Nobody knows. He never played in a European club or tournament against and with the world's best players. He choose to spend he entire career playing in the USA. The US, at that time, was not big into soccer. Had no good players or soccer environment. They had a lot of amateurs and showmanship and if you were just a little above the performance and skills on an average European player you could easily run around the corner with the American player and that was what Pele did. There exist no proof that he was particlar good a playing soccer. He might have been but your guess is as good as mine but his marketing skills must have been amazing. He soccer skills probably not so much.
Maradona on the other hand. He was an amazing player. RIP
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Exactly right. Football grew to be what it was from the slums in Latin America. It's always been human, analog, with all the faults this may have - perfect in its imperfection. If you've grown up watching the game, many of the memories are about some poor (intentional or not) calls -- offsides that weren't, handballs that were let to pass, penalties that weren't called, etc. And we still talk about these moments (or…
I can get that analog simile... but not the toleration of cheating. Wasn't the 'hand of God' cheating? He knew he hand-balled and he didn't own up to it. To me that's such a grave betrayal of sportsmanship. Everyone else seems to see it as a bit of a joke? Why play at all if you're going to be dishonest? Seems like if we're going to tolerate that the whole thing is corrupt and rotten and has no honour.
The litmus test for somebody’s football beliefs, of this generation at least, was the Luis Suarez handball against Ghana at WC 2010.
Was Suarez justified in volleyball-spiking the shot out of the net? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDpx9GGH79I
When I was younger, I was bitter and thought it wasn’t fair. But I’ve come around. Handballs are part of the game. The punishment in that circumstance is a red card and a multiple game suspension. Most people would have done the same thing in his boots. If you want to remove cheating, you’d have to ban people from the sport. But I think people would prefer to have controversy than to have a synthetically clean game.
(Where I draw the line is tackling with intent to injure, or intentionally escalating physically dangerous situations. That is never OK.)
People are gradually trying to make the game more binary. They tried to make the handball rule more black and white this season, and many players and most fans agree it’s a regression.
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The limitations of the referee were a part of the sport, which was always about humans and stories, not the mechanical application of rules. That's why we are here once again remembering the memorable moment that the Hand of God goal was.
Why is that more true for football than it would be for, say, tennis, where hawkeye has been in operation for and widely accepted for years?
For some examples, see the handball rule definition, the definition of when a penalty should be given when a foul occurs near the edge of the box, and the body parts that render an attacking player “offside”. What constitutes a foul vs a fair tackle, especially during set pieces. And, at what point in time should one draw the offside lines?
This year they’ve made enforcement of offsides extremely arbitrary, overturning goals by a distance smaller than the margin of error for the technology. The lines are drawn from players armpits. Armpits are a continuous body feature, and different humans have different dimensions.
In short, two good referees can review an identical event from omnipotent angles, and reasonably come to divergent conclusions.
In case someone has not seen the second goal against England in 1986 Original footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wVho3I0NtU An interview many years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOz2uGMTA2w
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly right. Football grew to be what it was from the slums in Latin America. It's always been human, analog, with all the faults this may have - perfect in its imperfection. If you've grown up watching the game, many of the memories are about some poor (intentional or not) calls -- offsides that weren't, handballs that were let to pass, penalties that weren't called, etc. And we still talk about these moments (or…
I can get that analog simile... but not the toleration of cheating. Wasn't the 'hand of God' cheating? He knew he hand-balled and he didn't own up to it. To me that's such a grave betrayal of sportsmanship. Everyone else seems to see it as a bit of a joke? Why play at all if you're going to be dishonest? Seems like if we're going to tolerate that the whole thing is corrupt and rotten and has no honour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can get that analog simile... but not the toleration of cheating. Wasn't the 'hand of God' cheating? He knew he hand-balled and he didn't own up to it. To me that's such a grave betrayal of sportsmanship. Everyone else seems to see it as a bit of a joke? Why play at all if you're going to be dishonest? Seems like if we're going to tolerate that the whole thing is corrupt and rotten and has no honour.
It’s a fine line, for sure. Cheating is considered by some to be part of the game, too. The referee is there to prevent cheating, and without VAR they are liable to fail. We do not tolerate cheating, but but we can not prevent all forms of it, only punish it when it is uncovered with some certainty. The litmus test for somebody’s football beliefs, of this generation at least, was the Luis Suarez handball against Ghan…
And Panama's ghost goal keeping USA out of the last World Cup. Ridiculous. I thought they at least had goal line sensors.
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> (in a game England invented) It seems that soccer was invented in China, not in England. [0] [0]: https://www.athleticscholarships.net/history-of-soccer-footb...
My understanding is that kicking something about with the aim of getting it somewhere or other existed in lots of different places, independently. The modern, codified game more or less resembling what we have today was invented in England.
Arguably Scotland but we're used to England stealing our inventions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_Game#Queens_Park_F...