Why Soccer Sucks

And How to Fix It.

I am blessed to have two daughters, even more blessed to have two daughters with no interest in team sports, soccer especially. As a result, I may have attended fewer soccer games than any middle class parent in the 21st century, so few I count myself lucky that DFS hasn’t taken my kids away.

All this to say is that I have no grudge against soccer. I wasted fewer hours standing in the cold on sidelines arguing with refs than was my due. My gripe with soccer is that it is a bore, and it is a bore because almost no one ever scores. There is an historical reason why this is so, and once that reason is understood, the solution will jump up and kick the soccer world in its teeth.

First, a word on the scoring. In 2006, I got roped into watching a sizable chunk of the FIFA World Cup. I think if I say “World Cup” without saying FIFA in front of it I will be arrested, so bear with me. In their slog to the championship that year, the Italians beat Ghana 3-0, the Czech Republic 2-0, tied the US 1-1, beat Australia 1-0, beat Ukraine 3-0, beat Germany 2-0, and tied France 1-1 in regulation.

In the final against France, the French scored first on a penalty kick, Italy then scored following another penalty. After 90 minutes of play, the game ended 1-1. Extra time—not “overtime”— produced no further goals so the game moved to the penalty shoot out. In American terms, this would be like ending an NBA finals with a free throw shooting contest. Italy won this contact-free skirmish 5-3.

Fans tell me that penalty kicks are harder to make than free throws. They appear to be right. In the last ten FIFA World Cups, players made 73 percent of their penalty kicks. NBA players on average make 75 percent of their free throws. Yes, much more difficult

Fans also tell me that what matters is not the scoring but the skill and the strategy of the players. This may be so, but how to explain that in the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals France went the first 70 minutes of the game without even taking a shot at the goal. Yes, American football games can end in 0-0 ties, but in the NFL the last such game was in 1943. Even in scoreless ties, football teams shoot for the end zone and satisfy their fans with measurable, incremental gains all along the way.

The heart of the problem is this: the size of the goal has not changed in the last 162 years, but the size of goalies has. The British Football Association set the goal size at 8 feet high and 24 feet wide in 1863. In 1863, the average British male was about 5’-5”. Today, in England’s Premier league, the average goalie is 6’-3”, somewhere between 6 and 10 inches taller than his 1863 counterpart. He is also much better trained and more athletic to boot.

When faced with the problem of a healthier, taller population, the NBA adjusted. Originally, the free-throw lane, more simply known as “the paint,” was six feet wide. To counter the dominance of athletic seven-footers, the NBA extended the paint to 12 feet and now to 16 feet. They also added a rule preventing a player from lingering in the lane for more than 3 seconds. To speed up the game and make it more exciting, the NBA introduced the 24-second clock and the 3-point shot.

Despite pressure to raise the height of the basket, now at 10 feet. the NBA resisted. The fans liked to see dunks. In 1967, to check the dominance of UCLA star Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the NCAA banned the dunk until 1976 before finally yielding to fan pressure to restore it.

The term “dunk,” by the way, originated in 1936 when the very tall AAU team, the McPherson Globe Refiners of Kansas, played in New York City on the way to the Berlin Olympics. A New York Times reporter described a player pitching the ball downward into the hoop "like a cafeteria customer dunking a roll into their coffee." The term stuck, and the Globe Refiners went on to win the Olympics.

Now that I have convinced FIFA—when they take a break from their various corruptions—to at least experiment with 9’ x 27’ foot goal, I will turn my attention to the NFL for another simple fix: narrow the goal posts. Field goals have gotten too easy, especially the 50-plus yarders.

Mr. Goodell, when you take a break from ending racism, I’ll send you the invoice.