When you first saw soccer, what did you find odd about it?

I created this thread just because of some random thoughts I had, and I put it here since almost all of us grew up with sports besides soccer. When I first saw soccer as a child, two things stood out to me.

#1) I couldn't get to used to how there weren't instant highlights. Because of the nature of the game, minutes can pass before you can even see a highlight of a play, which I wasn't used to because of the instant highlights I saw in basketball and football.

#2) I found it odd that the referee didn't need to check or set the ball after a foul or throw in. I thought it was the most peculiar thing that a player could just grab the ball from the ball boy, or set the ball down and continue play as if nothing happened.

The "Magic Spray".

That is all.

Along those same lines: Having grown up a big basketball fan, I was always a bit perplexed by the laxness on throw-in locations. In basketball, a player stood stationary and inbounded the ball from precisely the spot where it had left the court; in soccer, it seemed nobody really cared where the player did the throw-in, or if he ran a few yards in one direction or another before actually doing it.

Also, even after all these years of watching soccer, I still to this day get a little stressy as the five-second mark approaches during a throw-in. My basketball instincts kick in, like "OH MY GOD, GET RID OF THE BALL, MAN!!!!"

I think it's because the field is so big and the ref can't always be there to spot it. I have seen them blow the whistle and make players move if they try to move to a better spot to a ridiculous degree.

I don't recall finding anything odd. I mean, it's a game, so it has rules. The idea that you couldn't use your hands on the field unless you were the goalkeeper didn't seem any stranger than the fact that you can't kick a basketball or that infielders aren't allowed to tackle baserunners. And the "magic spray," well, in the days of baggy baseball uniforms, guys used to get brushed all the time and pretend to have been drilled. OR some guys, anyway.

Really, about the only thing I found odd about it is that some of the people I know became absolutely apoplectic when they found out I'd started to play soccer. Usually on the grounds that the game is "unAmerican." But that was 30 years ago, and that's in the process of changing. And it had nothing to do with the game itself.

So, in conclusion, about the only thing I found odd was that some of my fellow Americans behaved strangely at the mere sight or mention of the game of soccer.

As an Englishman the first thing that stood out to me when watchin the mls is the terminoligy of the commentators.

The first time I watched a World Cup game (94), the offside rule confused the hell out of me...which is why I continued my ignorance by playing the FIFA games without it...once I figured it out in 98, that's when I started playing with it. lol.

The first time I saw an EPL game, my ears had a case of "I know that they're speaking English, but what the hell are they saying?!"

But overall, another thing that got me was the clock going up and the fact that there were no timeouts. The clock going down and the use of timeouts are basically afterthoughts when it came to sports, so I was just all kinds of confused. That's why I liked the MLS thing, until I realized that it was a hokey crap dumb rule.

i understand what your saying about the commentary i guess thats how i felt when watch the mls

Pretty similar here. I was routinely accused of being a communist, and it was actually half-serious or more much of the time. The only reason it wasn't full-on serious is because the ones who were the most vocal about it were football coaches who wanted me to play some position - ANY position - for them. And I was a big guy. It was a strange recruiting tactic to mosey into the basketball lockerroom in the offseason and ask "when are you going to give up that commie sport and play for us?"

Football coaches sometimes aren't very smart.

I guess later in life what surprised me most was how extremely free-market oriented the game is in societies that are much closer to command economies than ours (and by extension how most of our sports are run in almost the polar opposite way - especially American football). It's pretty true both on and off the field, if you think about it.

Yep, soccer is the most libertarian sport of all -- both the game itself and the structure that supports it.

It's funny when you get these occasional essays from armchair sociologists, proclaiming how the "teamwork" and "organization" of gridiron football makes it so quintessentially American. It's like... huh? Which "America" are you talking about? This was a country proudly founded on individualism and liberty and disdain for "leaders." In that regard, soccer is far more American in spirit than the command-and-control ethos of gridiron football, with its six gazillion arbitrary rules and stifling overcoaching.

Yeah. I guess I should thank those mouthbreathing football coaches, because they made me actually THINK about it as early as high school and work out that they were living in a world full of their own cognitive dissonance ('course I didn't know what that phrase meant back then).

Think Barca's neon yellow kit and then worse than THAT!

Alternate tops.

I.e. a team's away jersey could have colors in it that had absolutely nothing in common with their crest or home jersey colors. Very, very odd for a U.S. sports junkie to witness.

Add to this in that in the early 90's some alternate jerseys were horrific in appeal.

Re: Think Barca's neon yellow kit and then worse than THAT!

Mullets.

I was exposed to soccer as a kid and played it, didnt watch it...

i didnt watch a soccer match on tv til like... the 06 world cup probably

What do you consider baseball then?

Financially, it's run as an oligarchy (I mean, MLB has an anti-trust exemption, do they not?).

The game itself is highly top-down.

Not even a little bit libertarian.

An individual sport masquerading as a team sport to a self-obsessed audience. Oh, wait, you meant the economy of the game. Ah, in that case, it's about as free market as it gets, at least in terms of domestic transfers.


I played soccer from the age of 4, didn't watch til I was 16. The only thing that confused me growing up was the offside rule. We didn't have it until U-12, so until that time, it was like some labyrinthine puzzle that hovered over us, awaiting on the front end of teenagerdom.

Once I started watching soccer, the sheer variety of competitions teams take part in overwhelmed me. EPL...ok. Champions League...ok. FA Cup...uhh. Carling Cup...what?! Let alone Community Shield/WC/WCQs/Friendlies/etc.

In explaining the game to newbies, I've found the "plays for USA, also for Everton" situation to be very confusing for them. Most don't understand that the best Americans play in Europe, but that it does not effect their status as Americans within the soccer world.

Well, hell...just point them to MLB. It's pretty much exactly the same thing now that they're trying to soccer-ify the international game.

We're talking about when I was like 10 or something, so I would have to say that the ascending clock was odd at the time. Heck, I had to explain this clock recently with Husker football fans who don't get it.

Since then:

1. Teams wear their "dominant" jerseys as much as possible as opposed to the common American trend of set home and away kits.

2. The number of multiple top teams in one city. There is a bunch of Premiership teams in London. Yet, two teams seem to be the maximum in the U.S. and that's reserved for places like L.A. and N.Y.C.

3. The cup-tied concept - In reality, this isn't really a difficult concept as American leagues restrict player movement during a playoff, which is what the Champions League is. Still, the length of the Champions League made it odd to me at first when a player can't play for the new team just after midseason.

4. Aggregate scoring (and away goals tiebreaker by extension)
5. The length of a soccer season
6. Free transfers and sale of players instead of trades

...and more

I guess some of these things fall under the "different" category than odd, but I found it odd after being weaned on American sports all my life.

I've had a lot of trouble explaining the concept of multiple competitions running simultaneously. I had this conversation (paraphrased here) with a friend of mine today:

US Friend: "Why are Everton playing Sigma Olomouc? They're not in the Premier League"
Me: "That's the Europa Cup. European-wide competition"
US Friend: "Oh. So if Everton win, will they get to play Real Madrid?"
Me: "No. Real Madrid are in the Champions League. Completely different competition"
US Friend: "Real Madrid are in the Premier League now?"
Me: "No, the Premier League is the English domestic competition. Real Madrid play in their own domestic league in Spain"
US Friend: "So how come Tim Howard plays for Everton. I thought he was American."
Me: "He is. He plays for both a club team and a national team."
US Friend: "That's weird. How come he wasn't playing in the game that the US lost 5-0 to Mexico? I saw him play against Brazil."
Me: "The game against Brazil was the Confederations Cup. The game the US lost to Mexico 5-0 was the CONCACAF Gold Cup. Two different competitions involving different versions of the US National Team"

**friend's head explodes**

I've been following the game for years, and I can't think of a single good reason for having the cup-tied rule.

OK, back in 1875, when the FA Cup was the only competition in existence, it made sense that teams couldn't just invite players from clubs that have been knocked out to play for them, but things have changed a little bit since then.

Especially with the transfer windows. These days, it's not like a finalist (of any competition) can buy all the knocked out semi finalists best players.

When recently in North America, I had a hard time explaining to some Canucks how difficult soccer is to play. They kept comparing a soccer goal to a basketball hoop; saying that basketball players can aim for that tiny hoop with great accuracy, but soccer players couldn't hit a target that was x times as big. They simply couldn't grasp the skill required.

sheffield 'Wednesday", so many Uniteds???? the British commentary?? Freak clock going up. No overtime!, lack of substitutions. Lack of instant replay(higlight) unless it was a late goal or something.