Off Topic: Soccer and NASCAR

[Fraquar]

We would play soccer at recess, but nobody knew what they were doing. It would nearly always morph into kill the kid with the ball.

Didn't play a lot of soccer growing up, but watching an FA Cup match between Liverpool and Leeds did leave an impression. Whenever someone went down some guy would trot on the field with a sponge and a bucket and I don't think they changed the water in that bucket the whole game.

[Marko69]

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3Fterm=magic%2520sponge&amp=true

[Fraquar]

Lol

[FVD]

Played soccer in youth leagues as a kid, as I got older I stuck to baseball. My friends and I played a lot of pickup games of baseball, basketball and street hockey. Actually, the kids in my subdivision organized a street hockey league with teams from all over the subdivision.

[Fraquar]

Curb ball. Get it over the sidewalk on the other side it was a HR.

[froot loops]

Leeds was the team I rooted for on early ESPN. They were close to getting promoted to the EPL last year but kind of fell apart in the homestretch.

[froot loops]

Fraquar brings up a good point about the pickup games developing core skills. Nobody said I'm going to go work on my core skills, we were just having fun. But my baseball coach in the city league would tell us after each practice to go play over the weekend.

Any player whether they have a lot of talent or no talent, you have to work on the game you are playing outside of practice. If you don't you'll never get better. If you are a basketball player, you won't learn ball handling by the three drills you run through in a team practice. You have to get out there in the driveway with a ball. I imagine it is the same with soccer.

[Marko69]

Fraquar brings up a good point about the pickup games developing core skills. Nobody said I'm going to go work on my core skills, we were just having fun. But my baseball coach in the city league would tell us after each practice to go play over the weekend.

Any player whether they have a lot of talent or no talent, you have to work on the game you are playing outside of practice. If you don't you'll never get better. If you are a basketball player, you won't learn ball handling by the three drills you run through in a team practice. You have to get out there in the driveway with a ball. I imagine it is the same with soccer.

Very much the same. And it's enjoyable anyway so why not practice more. We also played 5-a-sides on the AstroTurf down at Portobello, (dodgy knees forced giving it up) but that was great for close contact with the ball skills.

[Marko69]

Frank mention street hockey? Shit, now I need to go watch Wayne's World.

"CAR!"

[Marko69]

Must admit, don't really pay much attention to the CONCACAF World Cup qualification standings, but...........,

http://www.espn.co.uk/football/table/_/league/fifa.worldq.concacaf

You guys really have slipped. Didn't realise it was that bad. 5th in that table is nothing short of a disgrace for the Americans. Good job the majority don't give a fuck.

[Malto Marko]

My take on sports in general is pretty simple. When I was growing up you developed your core skills through pickup games - in EVERY sport.

Today, I look in a 20 mile radius of where I live and I see two things:
1) A lack of space, and most of what space there is they close off to pickup style games. Pretty sad watching a perfectly good baseball field go unused for over 300 days a year.
2) Available free space that is essentially unused the kids don't take over like we did growing up. Case in point is a wide expanse of grass that has gone unused for 20 years where I live, and the sad thing is even adults don't even take their dogs there to take a dump......

Growing up we needed space to play baseball and the best available space was land behind the local church. We approached the Pastor, asked him if we could use that space and told him we'd maintain it. His only request was that we supported his church in the church league which we happily agreed to. Cut the grass, lined the field, and the Pastor even had a single dugout built for us to keep out equipment in. It was our "Field of Dreams" long before the movie.

When winter started setting in and the local park was no longer being actively used we approached the local Fire Department and asked them to flood the parking lot so we could turn it into an ice rink. Shoveled up snow and created walls around the rink and it lasted for a good 3 months - just had to keep the toddlers with their shovels and pails away from it until the ice set. lol.

Both those locations served us kids well for about 4-5 years until we outgrew them. Saddest thing was the next generation of kids coming up behind us just didn't seem to care about pickup games anymore.

This!

In my hood, we had plenty of people to play just about any sport we wished. Of course, baseball was king but come fall, football was more popular.

We could never talk the hood into playing soccer because while we were introduced at a young age, it was relitively unknown to our peers. I was by far the poorest player between me and my brothers but I was a superstar compared to our buds. They refused to play because they had no ball handeling skills and any team with more than one Scicluna was a lopsided team.

My Dad kept coaxing us to teach the others but, they had little patience to learn any of the skills. After all, sport skills were eye hand coordination, not eye foot, to our generation.

........and they just could not grab the concept that you can't touch the ball with your hands unless you are the goalie. They thought that was so unfair.

.....we also convinced the Mayor of our town to have the tennis courts flooded in the winter that we used as an ice rink. The city did have two outdoor rinks but by flooding the tennis courts at our local park, we were able to play hockey without having to ask for a ride to the rink.

[edindetroit]

And then in Geelong, played pickup Aussie Rules up at Bell Park playing fields. Used to get my fkn head kicked in. The Australians are tough to a whole other level. Remember this dude called Deon......, 12 year old brick shitehouse. Scared the hell outta me...... when I saw him running at me, little bit pee would come out due to the fear!

Pussy

[froot loops]

Must admit, don't really pay much attention to the CONCACAF World Cup qualification standings, but...........,

http://www.espn.co.uk/football/table/_/league/fifa.worldq.concacaf

You guys really have slipped. Didn't realise it was that bad. 5th in that table is nothing short of a disgrace for the Americans. Good job the majority don't give a fuck.

The whole qualifying cycle was a disaster. Between Klinsmann and Arena, the direction was a rudderless mess. There was no consistency in tactics or lineups by either coach. At the end the emergence of Pulisic was the only reason they nearly qualified. I mean defensively they gave up 13 goals in 10 games, that's atrocious.

All of the arguments about talent pool and growing the game, they are fun to have but they aren't really pertinent to getting bounced out of the hex. when you get battered by Belgium in the World Cup, fine it's natural to wonder why if you will ever get to the top level. You don't need that kind of talent to finish on the top 3 off CONCACAF

[chemiclord]

It might help if US Soccer wasn't hellbent on using the USMNT as an advertisement for MLS. Something like 17 of the 24 players were MLS players, with a handful of potentially promising players in Europe left off the squad.

[Marko69]

17 of the squad were MLS? That explains the 5th in the hex!

Scotland boss, Gordon Strachan leaves on own accord. Yeah right! Politely asked to leave no doubt.