Holy cow, that was aggressive. 3406 going all Steve Wilkos on fools..
It really isn't that big of a deal...as someone who has followed the game for over a decade I understand how Americans don't get it but lets put it in perspective.
In American sports (Football, basketball) you have a number of timeouts to utilize which in effect make the game longer. I mean seriously how do you explain it taking three hours to play a football game that on the clock should only take one hour and fifteen minutes including half time.
I can promise you that every soccer player in the Premier league or equivalent expects nothing less than 2-5 minutes of extra time at the end of the game. It isn't a big deal after you have played ninety minutes especially when you know it is coming Keep in mind that the goal scored against the U.S. yesterday was the latest goal in the history of the World Cup.
My rant on injuries and flops. Certainly players take flops but as a student and a coach of the game I can tell you that a lot is straight up. In World Cup there are plenty of attempts to get call but many are legit when you look at replay and others are just an attempt to slow the game down and get a breather/ water break. In American sports the same is accomplished with a timeout which isn't available in soccer.
How physical is the sport? I've personally witnessed the following in youth soccer from U-11 to U-15: Serious Concussion that required medical intervention on the field and ambulance transport, torn ACL (twice including my daughter), shattered eye socket, broken femur, dislocate knee (worst thing I ever saw in sports), ruptured spleen, a broken fibula. I've also personally witnessed one of my daughters take out tow goalies. One with three sprained fingers trying to block a goal and another with a hyper extended elbow trying to block a goal.
There are certainly flops in soccer but often times there is more than meets the eye.
Ah soccer injuries...nothing like reaching the field before the medics to see a 12 year old girl standing up, unapproachable even by her parents, as her broken upper arm was swaying in the wind. I'm with ya, seen some things make you toss cookies in soccer over the years. You're one acl up on me...
Omar Gonzalez has the rep of being one of our best center backs. He was expected to be starting but injuries in the last month delayed that and then Besler and Cameron have been playing really well. If the pass by Ronaldo was a "perfect" pass, why would it matter where our defenders were anyhow? The fact is, they had good positioning and you are right, it was a perfect pass made by the best player on the planet. The problem I had was that we got way too conservative on the other end and didn't attack their goal when we had numbers.
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