I suspect those joystick coaches also failed to acknowledge any partial responsibility for that play as well.
I had the pleasure of working my first professional gam win the middle this week. Pre-season match with a USL team and a D-1 men's college team. I was a little nervous going in, but everything went well. Can't wait to do it again.
We have lots of high schools that don't have very many club soccer players. Often the keepers are recruited from volleyball, though recently I've heard of schools recruiting softball players.
Back in Oklahoma a lot of the schools recruited from other sports. One girls team's center midfielder was an all state basketball center. Lets just say I called a fair few fouls on her because she used her basketball skills, in a not entirely soccer legal way, to get position on punts.
You need to cut some of those "joystick coaches" a break. Or at least around here we do. More than a few of them are dealing with kids who have never played soccer before (and they might not have ever coached soccer before), and some of them might only get one or two practices in a week, so a lot of basic coaching is by necessity going to happen during games. You might even go so far as to say there is soccer, and then there is HS soccer, and then there is HS soccer. One night I might be ref'ing a game between two state championship contenders, and the next it might be two teams with no club players and a couple of retooled basketball coaches. The worst is when it's one of the former vs. one of the latter, but that's what the mercy rule is for. Speaking of the mercy rule, last night I had a couple of games that weren't top tier vs. lowest, but they were in that direction. Before the girls game my dual partner said "Mercy?" and I said "Yes, but it's going to take longer than you think because the home team is endlessly creative in finding ways to miss the net. In fact, I'm guessing it will take them 25 shots to make the 10 goals." And then, just to keep myself engaged and entertained, I counted the shots. I was off by one – it took 26 shots by home to get to 10-0. Of course, by that time we had missed the halfway point where, under our arcane mercy rule, you cut the half short to twenty minutes and so, under our arcane mercy rule, we had to play all the way to 40. It took them another 16 shots, for a total of 42, to get to the final score of 12-0. (And that's the first time under this mercy rule that I've ever had the occasion to report of score of greater than 10-0.) Walking off and shaking the home coach's hand he said "Thanks ref" and I said "42 shots coach," and he said "Wow you're really keeping track of stuff out there" and then "Wait – really, 42 shots? That's not a very good percentage, is it?" "Nope." "Huh. We'll work on that."
Hmm. 12 out of 42 is 28%; 10 out of 26 is 38%. From the most recent USMNT games (both teams combined): 14 shots = 1 goal 20 shots = 0 goals 21 shots = 4 goals 20 shots = 3 goals 28 shots = 2 goals So for those international games, conversion rate was just shy of 10%. Of course a shot is not a shot, but the ratio you list certainly does not inherently show ineptitude.
If you compared shots to shots on goal it would be. 80% of the misses were misses, not blocks; I suspect (and hope) the USMNT stats are different in that regard. But nonetheless your point is well taken.
OK, added: 14 shots = 3 on goal = 1 goal 20 shots = 3 on goal = 0 goals 21 shots = 10 on goal = 4 goals 20 shots = 10 on goal = 3 goals 28 shots = 14 on goal = 2 goals I think sometimes a couple of bad misses can create the confirmation bias that the shooting is terrible --w hen it is really just that there were so many shots that, of course, there were a lot of misses. But I think I've taken this digression from ref issues far enough (well, probably too far ...) already.
I would bet that I see at least as much bad high school soccer as you do. 13 games into the season and I've seen 2 first year teams and 4 third year teams. And those 6 teams plus all but 4 (?) of the others were coached by school employees with little to no background in soccer (many with no coaching background of any type as well). Perhaps I was too free with my "joy stick coach" description, but I'd recently come from a game where the coach stood at the touch line and called out instructions to the player with the ball for the entire 80 minutes. That level of "coaching" does little to improve the decision-making and confidence of the players, and is the ultimate joy stick coaching. Fortunately I get to see some decent soccer as well. This week one of my games is in the center of a VB match between two competent teams from neighboring cities that don't like each other much at all. Oh and neither one likes me that much either. It should be entertaining.
Well I had my first drone during a game. Our high school association has a no fly policy but I couldn't remember if our Ussf side did. I erred on the side of safety and demanded it taken down. Luckily the damn thing took off right behind me so I knew it was a parent. Got quite a few grumbles from people until I reminded them them a 20 pound drone falling from 200 feet can leave a big boo boo.
Oooooh Louisville we hate you! There's a couple of guys who reffed me in indoor adult co-ed rec who I always gave a hard time to and we became fast friends. I've seen them both reffing at STLFC matches and boy, is it fun to give them guff there. Great guys, great refs. I don't know how you keep track of it all at the upper levels, I'm always impressed.
I already had two mercy rule games so far. a 12-0 at the end of the first half, of course that 7th goal came in the 21st minute, and a 9-0 that was 8-0 at half. I don't understand why we even bother playing a 20 minute second half. If you are up 7-8-9 in the first half, what the heck is the point of even go back out there? That makes no sense.
Girls varsity match with a really not so good HS team and a decent one. I am AR 1 on the defending side of the not good team. The GK had been struggling with goal kicks the entire half. On one goal kick the coach yelled at some other field player to go take the kick. This girl runs back to where the ball is on the 6 yard line, picks up the ball and punts into play like she was the goal keeper. I thought I saw it all...
Men's O-50 1st division, 63 degrees and mostly sunny, everybody happy to not be playing in the rain. I think we had only seven fouls in the game, all by the losing team. U-14 girls waiting for the field next gave a big cheer when the losing team scored. I don't think these guys are used to having people actually watching them play. But 63 degrees and no rain!
It depends on the purpose of the game, doesn't it? Is it just to decide who wins, or for players to play? As a player and coach, I hated mercy rules -- regardless of what end I was on. You don't get better by not playing. I imagine the 20 minutes is the compromise between playing the whole game, regardless of score, and ending at half time. And it may well be a good time in terms of when, for many players, the frustration exceeds the learning that is going on.