A Neophyte Watches Soccer
I've never been able to get into soccer -- for all the usual reasons. But when the World Cup came to Boston and the US, I started watching since it was a cultural phenomenon and it was fun to get the fever a bit. I've watched a lot of the matches and felt like a traveler in a foreign land trying to make sense of the natives. Basically, I knew nothing about the sport, so started to make sense of it as I watched. Here are some impressions. 1. I had no idea that most goals, or at least half, are not scored with the feet, but with the head! This is because your best chance at scoring is when the ball is kicked so that it ends up head-height directly in front of the goal. At this point it becomes a toss up, with offense and defense fighting for it. The offense does have an advantage when they anticipate that the kick is coming. 2. It appeared that there are few ways to get the ball into the zone in from of the goal. The most common is the corner kick, which presents a mini-drama eac...
