Ze Bill....I think I found a home for you...

[texgator]

http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=542224


You could spends days in this thread.

[Dr. Foosball™]

Even better...

http://www.uniwatchblog.com/

[Zé Bill]

thanks for thinking of me, tex, yes ... there appear to be some like-minded geniuses there on that thread. Geniuses I say! I will definitely contribute once I get over the shock of reading Scipio Gothicus' collected posts over these last few months.

AHF4FCD, that dude [uniwatchblog] is totally nutso over sports uniforms, though he states in his FAQ that he admittedly has very little material [pun intended] on soccer 'cause he doesn't know much about it.

There were however items in uniwatchblog about an EPL player's name [Betnley] misspelled on the back of his jersey. and about how Pantsil is really Paintsil but he's just going along with a mistake made on his passport.


2 random unsolicited bonus uni thoughts: One area of sports that has frquently has real GOOD team differentiation is college football, precisely because college football DOESN'T have a single uniform sponsor, or identical league-wide numerals, identical template, identical fabric. etc...

the more differences the better [I won't have a cow over standard-issue numerals font ...on second thought I will: the more differences the better]

I remember channel-surfing past an NFL match [all Reebok, right?] and it was like one team in slate, the other in designer teal , but both colors seemed like they were kind of from the same palette,

and the field was artificial,

and it was indoors iirc

and the whole event immediately felt claustrophobic and dreary.

iirc one team was the Seahawks.

2) Green Bay's logo should be GB, not G

[Zé Bill]

somewhere in the vicinity of "claustrophobic and dreary" up there in post #3 should be the phrase:

"smothered by a somniferous shroud of sameness"

Don't you agree, dear reader?

[Dr. Foosball™]

Now I see why your computer blew up the first time....

[texgator]

Now I see why your computer blew up the first time....

It was an act of matrydom?

[Zé Bill]

I get what yoiu kidders are trying to say in your mysterious, roundabout ways:

my edit should probably go:

"smothered by a shroud of somniferous sameness"

since it's the sameness that puts you to sleep, right? not so much the shroud?

thanks

and P.S. FieldTurf is getting better --- ---it'll get there one day if it already hasn't --- but they've got to get rid of that glossy reflection of lights it has, like moonlight on a polluted lake.

Taking bets on when my current computer will throw itself under the bus for the team

Feb 08
mar
apr
...
...
...
Jan 09
feb 09
mar 09

[Zé Bill]

if this thread was the movie "Throw Mama From The Train" then the word "stultifying" would be my version of "sultry"

and don't pretend you don't know what I mean --- "stultifying" would have summed up the overly artificial quality of the NFL broadcast very well.

of course you guys wouldn't help me out and proffer "stultifying" noooooooooooo

btw what if it WAS a dark and stormy night????? ??? yeah, what then????? nights aren't all uniformly dark, ya know.

..........................
life is just a bowl of dried cherries soaking in Bombay gin.

[Zé Bill]

if anyone is watching Fulham x Aston Villa live this Sunday morning, Feb. 3, '08, I suggest you freeze-frame your TIVO box at 47:33 at the beginning of the second half

or ANY other long camera shot showing lots of players

and THEN, texgator, tell me that the uniforms the teams are wearing are doing their basic job of INSTANTANEOUSLY, without study, indicating to the spectator who the heck is on which team.

Take 2 on the same topic:

Fulham, whose kit's most attention-grabbing feature is white,

faces off today versus

Aston Villa, whose kit's most attention-grabbing feature is white.

Take 3 on [yes] the same topic: [skip this one][definitely do not read this one]


Do you figure shirts are above shorts??? . well ...

On your two-dimensional, glass TV screen, the image of a guy on the far side of the field is actually a few inches above the image a guy on the near side of the field.

so, frequently, white pants will be "above" white shirts. when you're at the match in person you've got three dimensions helping you see things and you'd never think of a farther-away-player being "above" a nearer player. [even though he is "above" in terms of your angle of sight]

take 4 on the same topic: [read this one]

The traditional method of saying "Fulham's in white", "Aston Villa's in claret" [or whatever] would be just peachy if only the players were wearing no other garments besides jerseys. [ ... your quip in this space ... ]

Take 5: as the visitors, Aston Villa could easily and completely SHUT ME UP if they would simply adjust to Fulham's hometeam uniform prerogative by not wearing white, for example, just wear gray or claret shorts.

Because, Take 6, I'd rather be watching the match rather than e-carping about the mediocre job the uni's are doing.

[Zé Bill]

take 7:

then yesterday I switch to Osasuna x Barcelona on GolTV and

in terms of the watchability of the match

well, it's like night and day compared to watching the trashy looking, white vs. white match of Fulham x Villa.

because
Barcelona and Osasuna's uni's succeed in doing the basic minimum task uniforms are supposed to do.

[Zé Bill]

Sunday morning March 2 '08

Everton x Portsmouth

you have GOT to be kidding

[Zé Bill]

otoh, a lovely pairing of uniforms:

today's Toluca x Pachuca on Univision

it's a real pleasure.

Red Toluca x white w/blue Pachuca means that, even in a wide angle showing many players, I, the viewer, effortlessly sense which team outnumbers which team, and where ... without having to focus specifically on all the different little groups of players.

Everton x Portsmouth bluewhitexwhiteblue will just re-inforce the USA Americans' prejudice that, and I do quote what I overheard at PHP,

"It just looks like a free-for-all out there" [snerky, negative tone of voice there]

[Zé Bill]

"just like seeing my name at the top of the main FCD page" bump


and, just 'cause I'm here: something about uniforms: ............. make them better?

Are you contradictors, and you indifferent ones, are you maintaing that the average American does NOT think of soccer as a formless blob?

[Zé Bill]

My "uniforms" concept and argument is based on "the eye* is drawn to white"

well, folks, in a beeeeeeee-YOOOOOH-tif-fulllll fresh snow-covered field, the eye is drawn to the two playful 80-lb. black labrador retrievers ....

and ...

Do you figure I could better tell them apart at a glance if they weren't both wearing international orange collars?

guilty, guilty as charged. I'm guilty of poor uniform differentiation.

*even texgator's eye

[Zé Bill]

adidas THINKS they are rewarding Houston's championship by giving the Dynamo, alone among MLS teams, a silver ball to play with for their home MLS matches.

In REALITY, adidas punished Houston by giving them a less-visible ball.

Yes. The silver ball looks gray in all but the most perfect, bright light. IMHO, even in bright sunny afternoon games, on TV the ball looks gray in wide-angle camera shots...then, in the closer-up shots, it looks silver again. IF it's bright sun.


Now, if adidas had a hyper-white ball in their trick bag, (?) THAT would've been a reward.

In the darker parts of an artificially-lit field, or on a gray day, the "silver" ball looks even LOOKS smaller than it is.

Everybody now! Sing along with Bing Crosby:

"Silver Balls, Silver Balls ... It's sil-ly time ... at adidas"

[Zé Bill]

This post has a title.

The title of this post is:

"In Order of DECREASING Importance:

Five Rectangles of Different Importance That Share Various Lengths of The Goal Line as One of Their Four Sides"

1) tied for most important The Goal

1) tie The Pitch

3) The Penalty Area, 18-yard box

4) The Goal Area, 6-yd box

5) The floor of the goal, defined at PHP by white-painted pipes at the bottom of the three sides of the goal net, and, of course, the afore-mentioned line.

In my humble opinion, rectangle 5) should not be given the same visual impact as 1) the Goal.

If rectangle 5)'s horizontal and out-of-bounds imitation of the posts and the crossbar were to be de-emphasized...visually de-emphasized...the posts and crossbar of the goal would THEREBY be GLORIFIED.

The goal-net defines that floor-of-the-goal area well enough ... If the safety of the players is being weighed ... well, I don't think an off-white paint job would camoflauge the hold-the-net-down-on-the-ground pipes to any dangerous degree.

This post has two alternate titles:

"A Copasetic Coat of Paint" ... and

"Addition by Subtraction"

P.S. "Addition by Subtraction" will also be the title in future, you lucky readers, of posts promoting the idea that the appearance of goal SHOULD be made more dramatic, and easily CAN be made more dramatic. I hope you can contain your excitement until then.

[FC Zippy]

This is a little bit OT from the absolutely scintillating Uniform Talk, but I thought Ze Bill would enjoy it. And, hell, it might even give him something new which to ponder. Original article can here found here. (http://football.guardian.co.uk/theknowledge/story/0,,2263956,00.html#article_continu)


"While watching Wales take on Russia, I noticed that the score in the top left corner of the screen was WAL 0 1 RUS," wrote Peter Scarborough, back in December 2003. "Remove the numbers and you've got a WALRUS. Can any other teams (international or otherwise) make up the name of an aquatic mammal?"
Who would have thought that such a question would get the knowledge readers' minds whirring so frenziedly - even if few of you managed to stick to the aquatic mammal specification? Elliot Jacobs did so with an imagined meeting of Belgium and Uganda, thus producing BELUGA - a species of white whale, and also a type of sturgeon. An impressive start, Mr Jacobs, but the rest of our respondents were forced to look on dry land for their tittersome combinations.
Graeme Peden is obviously a man with a sharp focusing pair of binoculars and a green wax gilet, having come up with the distinctly ornithological example of Finland versus China (FINCH). Meanwhile Nick Parkhouse speculates that Martinique versus Monserrat might be a heavily-built burrowing rodent (MARMOT). Moving away from mammals, this question also prompted some timeless gags, not least from Luke Dempsey: "When Real Madrid play Manchester United in the Champions League, ESPN2 in the United States puts the score in the top left hand corner as MAD MAN which is nice, don't you think?
Finally, Wayne from Frankfurt rounds us off nicely with this tale: "I recall with pleasure seeing a satellite transmission of a game between Arsenal de Sarandi and Newell's Old Boys a couple of months ago," he titters. "The match status in the corner of the screen was amusingly rendered as ARS v NOB."

[Zé Bill]

It apparently escaped FC Zippy's attention that the scintillating uniform talk (monologue) has morphed into scintillating white-pipes-holding-the-goal-net-down-on-the-grass talk.

But we must forgive him: At the hour he posted he was all a-twitter about going to section 104 and being near his darling Becks.

[Zé Bill]

this Newcastle x Reading match just ending: ok I can tell blue from black ... good differentiation in close-up ... poor in long-shot.

if you define "color" by "what was added when Color TV supplanted black and white TV?"

then this match was monochrome: blue

P.S. re: post #16: It is a widely accepted BAD practice for the pipe holding down the back edge of the goal net to the grass to be visually BOLDER than the goal line.

Is it not?

here is the thinking in the head of a typical Ze Bill reader:

"goal line ... pipe on grass. hmmm ...which is more important, hmmmm? gee, goal-line ... or maybe ...nice white net-holder-down-in-back-thingy ...hmmm. That's a tough one. The people who put on soccer games are infallible gods. Therefore, when I see the bright white horizontal pipe eclipsing the goal-line, I conclude that the goal-line is not important at those stadiums. At those stadiums you only score a point when you hit the pipe at the bottom of the net."

that's why few respond and why nothing changes

[Zé Bill]

The TV cameras are on the east side at Dortmund, Germany. Afternoon match from the weekend iirc.

Admittedly, granted, all right already! yes, only the near 1/4 [flank, endline to endline] of the pitch is in direct sunlight due to the quite high stands and roof on the west side.

80k stadium iirc, one of the biggest in the Bundesliga.

I'm referring to the first 10' minutes of Dortmund x Leverkusen on GolTV: some really dramtic light.

But even at 20' the whole pitch is in flat light, could it possibly have gotten cloudy in Germany? ... or maybe the sun totally blocked by the stadium at this point.

Nope, it was a cloud. now at 23' the near [east] 1/10 of the field is backlit with the beautiful light.

need I comment on the uniforms match-up? no