Okay, I'm a big, ugly American who thinks that soccer is for kids and proles. I believe my problem is that I'm used to seeing substandard American soccer. Why?

Well, the other day I watched almost the entire match between Man U. and FC Porto. It was excellent. The action hardly stopped, and the battle was quite tense. Still, I have a couple of questions about the game if someone could help me out.

Man U. went up 1-nil in the first period (forgive my ignorance of football lingo from here on out). They seemed to be always on the attack and looked like the more talented team. However, in the second half, FC Porto played the aggressor, and Man U. looked mostly washed out. Porto scored a goal to tie the game, but they advanced to some sort of playoffs because of a strange scoring system concerning home vs. away goals. Also, Man U. had a goal disallowed after an "offsides" call. After one of the announcers explained the offsides rule, it was pretty apparent that the goal should have counted (unless he was biased toward Man U.) Anyway, here are my questions...

1) Why didn't Man U. keep attacking in the second half? Were they trying to protect their lead or were they worn out from the first half?
(They still outplayed Porto in the second half, IMHO, as Porto's only goal came on a rebound kick after a penalty shot allowed mostly because none of the Man U. players came back to help the goalie)

2) Why was the Man U. goal immediately dismissed by the referee after the offsides penalty. Why didn't the refs gather together and discuss the situation to make sure the right call was made in such an important game?
(I didn't see that many referees, so maybe the point about them discussing the offsides is moot if there's only one ref watching the action at that end of the field)

3) Where was David Beckham?

Thanks.

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Chicken Feather Bed Bugs Bunny Hop Sing Out Side Street Walker Texas Ranger Cookie Dough Boy Wonder Years

Lewl.

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Batman created by Bob Kane

There is only one referee, the two guys who run the lines are his assistants, and must defer to him. Occasionally you do get goals wrongly chalked off for offside, and there has been talk about using video replays to check these things, but FIFA ain't having any of it. I didn't see the goal in this game, so I can't say if it should or shouldn't have been awarded. Sometimes these things are very tight, though.

The way the knockout stages of European competition work is that there is a home tie and an away tie. If the aggregate score is a draw, then the team that scored the most goals on their away leg advances. In this case, though, Porto won 2-1 at home, and then drew 1-1 at Old Trafford, so the final score was 3-2 to Porto. If it had finished 1-0 to Man U, the aggregate score would have been 2-2, but Man U would have gone through because they scored in Portugal.

"Offsides" is a term we in America are familiar with from our football games. However, in soccer (and hockey, for that matter), the term is never used with a trailing 's'. Some less amicable souls from across the pond would jump on you for less. Say, "... after an offside call."

Once the flag goes up and/or the whistle blows, that's it, the play is dead, and they can't reverse the call. That said, judging whether a player is offside or not is often a very hard call to make.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

What on earth is a prole?

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“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1945)

Proletariat.

Working class.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

The goal was ONside, being that there was two defenders between Paul Scholes and the goal when Van Nistelrooy played the ball to him, the linesman waited a while before flagging the offside, but flagged it none-the-less. It DID look offside at first, but in the replay it clearly wasn't.

Man Utd didn't play particularly well, they DID continue to attack and even brought on another attacking player (Cristiano Ronaldo) who was insanely injured after about 30 seconds. FC Porto played the same way they always do (and did at last years UEFA Cup Final) and fell after almost every tackle to try to win free kicks and gain fouls.

Neville, being a complete moron, gave them the foul they wanted right on the 90th minute and a free kick ended it for them. In my opinion, it wasn't a very good game, but you should keep watching European football, it's highly entertaining.

Also: David Beckham plays for Real Madrid now.

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Dad was flammable

With all the UK regulars on SC, I would have posted this in Fights Go Here.

Damned hooligans.

*starts a riot*

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Poop.

That's English football fans you're thinking of, Scotland supporters have won awards for behaviour, particularly the Celtic fans.

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Dad was flammable

Dont even ask about the offside rule at the moment. I think Fifa have issued Linesmen Magic 8-Balls, and essentially they shake it up and ask it whether the player was offside and interfering with play.

Bloody fifa. "interfering with play" indeed. As a famous pundit once said "if they are not interfering with play what the hell are they doing on the pitch"

United have been playing poorly for a lot of reasons, on and off pitch ones: - manager Alex Ferguson has fallen out with one of the major shareholders over a racehorse, Roy Keane, imperious midfield general's powers are waining, selling Beckham deprived them of a star player who wasn't replaced, Arsenal are laughingly much better than them at the minute, which hurts them a lot; Rio Ferdinand's 8 month ban for "forgetting" to go to a drugs test, Gary Neville being a prat, suspensions...

Etc.

The Arsenal-Chelsea quarter final will be a good game. I predict 2-1 to Arsenal.

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Please replace the handset, and try again.

I predicted the same result. The draw was being branded a "sad day for English football" on the news today, which I found laughable, granted it means that only one England team will advance, but on the other hand it means that at least one English team will go through.

It wont be half as exciting as the Livi vs Hibs CIS final though.

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Dad was flammable

quote:

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It wont be half as exciting as the Livi vs Hibs CIS final though.

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Thanks for all the info, answers, and conjecture.

I thought that Beckham had been sold, but I wasn't sure if the deal had gone through.

The announcer I was speaking of said that the offside (singular) should not have been called because the ball had already left the foot of the passer. After that, the striker wouldn't have been offside whether or not there were defenders in front of him. However, with only one referee and no discussion, it was a very hard call to make correctly.

That's one problem Americans have with soccer (and hockey)--the offside rule. If you beat the defense down the basketball court, you wrap things up with a sweet jam or breakaway funk-a-dunk. If you beat the defender down the football field, then you've burned the DB and taken his lunch money. Where did you take his money? To the house, of course. We want scoring, damnmt!

Leave it to the Scots to invent a game where the object is to get the lowest score. Fore!

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Chicken Feather Bed Bugs Bunny Hop Sing Out Side Street Walker Texas Ranger Cookie Dough Boy Wonder Years

Hey umfum, what channel are you watching this on? I did a scroll through the guide and had difficulty finding it.

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Peeing sitting down is the gift you give yourself.

Didn't we invent football too? Not to mention the telephone and the television, boorite showed me a book once that was all about how awesome the Scots were at inventing shit.

Then a whole volume of books about how awful we were at everything else.

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Dad was flammable

I watched the game too. Im a huge Man U Fan. I cant believe they lost. FC porto are nothing but a pile of diving bastards. There worse than the italians. Scholes's goal should have counted and the lines man was very stupid to have not seen that Paul timed the run to perfection. http://www.cantkickwontkick.com anyone who follows the english league should check out that site, the comic's on it are hilarious.

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o.O

quote:

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Didn't we invent football too? Not to mention the telephone and the television, boorite showed me a book once that was all about how awesome the Scots were at inventing shit.

Then a whole volume of books about how awful we were at everything else.

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American Football is such a pussies game. They put on all this padden, now rugby, thats a mans game.

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o.O

A shithead is you.

You mispelled "Madden".
Hey, I'm sick of him too.

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I was gonna send a robot back in time, but I got high.

All DX managed to prove was that America "invented" the diet that kills most of them year by year. Also, that Rugby was once "kind of like" football, in that some overweight public school boy sat on the football so that it turned egg-shaped and they invented a new game from it.

This entire debate is being brought to you via a television monitor with information being carried over a telephone line.

You can praise Scotland for that privilege.

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Dad was flammable

I believe the match was on ESPN2 Thurs afternoon (March 11th). Check your local listings for future games. If anyone knows when Rugby or Australian Rules Football is going to be shown on ESPN, ESPN2, or FoxSportsSouth, please let me know via email: umfumdisi at yahoo dot com. Thanks.

I don't know how they snuck in soccer considering it was NCAA Championship Week over at ESPNville featuring such games as the Fighting Menbahs of the University of Central Kentucky at Frankfort (UCKF) vs. the Gravitons of the Tennessee Institute of Technology, South (TITS).

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Chicken Feather Bed Bugs Bunny Hop Sing Out Side Street Walker Texas Ranger Cookie Dough Boy Wonder Years

You mispelled "Madden".
Hey, I'm sick of him too.

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Poo perhaps?