Seeing as how the Amer-kans are supposed to be vastly superior to Slovenia and Algeria, a tie with England is huge. Had they not tied, then one of either Slovenia or Algeria would have a great chance to jump the group with 3 points. That is three very huge three points for those squads and had USA been sitting at zero points today, then it would be very bad for their chances, albeit not impossible.
No, I get all that. I understand the importance of the single point in order to move on to the next round. We're talking about two different things. You're talking about (understandably) the point of the first round, as a whole; which of course is to just be one of the two teams in your group with the most "points." I'm not arguing the importance of the single point. I'm saying this match today, by itself, happened. It was a game that had no winner.
Honestly, why do you watch?
Because at its core, I think the World Cup is a super fucking cool idea. I wish every sport did this. It's a giant World War without guns. The best of every country comes together for a massive All Star Tournament to decide which country has the biggest penises and therefore gets to have sex with the better looking women. I think that's great. But it's like this every four years. I spend the month leading up to World Cup getting somewhat excited.......and then the games start. Sometimes I stay interested, but most of the time it's just cross country with a ball. Again, and I can't stress this enough, if I lived in a place where the people around me treated soccer as religion, I'd almost certainly be balls out huge into it. I think if I lived in Mexico or spent half my year in Panama, I'd be playing a kazoo as long as HH's arm right now and telling my friends about how amazing it was that USA got out of the England match with a valuable point. But I live in America, where soccer is the 8th most popular sport (behind shit like tennis and golf).
Oh, and my wife for some reason is oddly very excited about the Cup, so what am I going to do? Frankly, if there's a sporting event on, we generally have it on the TV (for Pedro's sake, I'm watching OU play UVA in college baseball right now for some reason) and usually find a reason to pick a team/player/whatever.
I think what also hurts me as a "fan" of soccer is that I know zero of the players. I know some names, but I know fuckall about the sport (which I think is clear from my posts). I've noticed that most soccer fans have their clubs of course, but it's a very personality driven sport. People that don't live in a city with a club will follow a player instead of a team. Since I don't have any of that, to me, it's just a very disorganized sport with incredibly relaxed and illogical rules (why is the ball out of bounds sometimes but not other times? Why bother having the white line?) and there's just too much luck for me to wrap my brain around. Honestly, like a lot of people who hate soccer but are familiar-enough with it, I like the concept of shootouts a hell of a lot more than the game part; just because I can see the point of it.
Player X is trying to beat Player Y at a very specific thing. Offense vs defense. It's a score or it isn't. At the end, the team with the offensive players that scored more (or the defensive player who allowed less) wins. I get that. I find that satisfying as a competition.
What I watched today was not satisfying at all from a single-event stand point. If I just wanted to watch some really really good athletes not win or lose, why are we bothering to have them play against another team? Why don't we just watch them practice and give them a point?
Look, I'm not trying to convince a single person to hate soccer. I appreciate soccer in that it's cheap, easy to get in to as kids, and clearly I'm the person who is wrong if 99% of the rest of the world gets it. I'm totally on board with that. Trust me, I would love to get soccer. I just don't. I get tennis. I get golf. I even get (but am bored by) hockey. I just don't get soccer.
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