Why are long free kicks suprisingly effective in soccer matches? Science explains!
For a well-struck soccer ball, the researchers estimate, one might expect a gentle arc followed by a sharp hook at about 50 meters -- in rough agreement with the distance of Roberto Carlos's free kick. In other words, if a soccer player has the strength to drive a ball halfway down the field with plenty of velocity and spin, he or she can expect to benefit from an unexpected curve late in the ball's trajectory.
But really, this is just an excuse to show you Roberto Carlos' amazing free kick against France in 1997:
Pure awesometown. But it might not be even be better than this one:
Professionally. From the tail-end of a recent interview with the sprinter:
Ultimately, he says, he'd love to make a go of playing football professionally. He's being deadly serious. One of the perks of being Usain Bolt is that sporting stars love to meet him, so whenever he's travelling and there's time, he tries to train with a top football team. Last year it was Manchester United, a few days ago it was Bayern Munich. He's still carrying a copy of the French sporting newspaper L'Equipe, which features a spread on his football skills and praise from Bayern manager Louis van Gaal. He shows me a photo of himself with his arm wrapped round the dwarfed 6ft German forward Miroslav Klose. "If I keep myself in shape, I can definitely play football at a high level," he says.
"With his physical skills, I reckon he could play in the Premier League," Simms says.
Professional American football would be even more of a no brainer...Randy Moss with Darrell Green speed++.
In blind soccer, there are five on each side, a goalie and four outfield players. The goalie can be sighted or visually impaired and must stay in his designated goalie box. His teammates, meanwhile, wear eye shields so as to take away any competitive advantage from those players that may have limited vision over those who have no sight whatsoever. There are no throw-ins, as there is a wall surrounding the shrunken (at least, by typical soccer standards) playing field, and each team has someone calling out instructions from behind one of the goals. The players can call each other either by name or by shouting "Yeah!" And when you're approaching to engage another player to steal the ball, you must shout "Voy!" -- Spanish for I'm here! That means that you've got to discern the voice of your teammates -- since everyone on the pitch is yelling "Yeah!" -- and have a sense of where you are with the ball (which contains ball bearings, to help with tactility on the foot) in relation to the goal.
I've been meaning to post these since the beginning of the week. Here's Ezequiel Calvente's penalty kick for Spain from a U19 game against Italy. He runs up to kick with his right foot, but just before making the kick, Calvente pushes the ball into the other side of the goal with his left foot. Fantastic.
And a bonus amazing sports play. Spiderman in center field.
The broadcast of live games had been banned to avoid national embarrassment, but after the spirited 2-1 defeat to Brazil, state television made the Portugal game its first live sports broadcast ever. Following ideological criticism, the players were then allegedly forced to blame the coach for their defeats.
What's annoying, beyond the obvious totalitarian issues, is that they played really well against Brazil, the top-ranked team in the world at the time.
"Soccer," by the way, is not some Yankee neologism but a word of impeccably British origin. It owes its coinage to a domestic rival, rugby, whose proponents were fighting a losing battle over the football brand around the time that we were preoccupied with a more sanguinary civil war. Rugby's nickname was (and is) rugger, and its players are called ruggers-a bit of upper-class twittery, as in "champers," for champagne, or "preggers," for enceinte. "Soccer" is rugger's equivalent in Oxbridge-speak. The "soc" part is short for "assoc," which is short for "association," as in "association football," the rules of which were codified in 1863 by the all-powerful Football Association, or FA-the FA being to the U.K. what the NFL, the NBA, and MLB are to the U.S.
Congratulations to the Dutch for reaching the World Cup final. To celebrate, here's a great Dutch moment from a past World Cup...Dennis Bergkamp's epic goal vs. Argentina in the 1998 WC. Turn the speakers up...the sound is everything.
Congrats also to Spain, but I couldn't find a Spanish WC highlight as entertaining to match.
Messi simply does things -- little things and big things -- that other players here cannot do. He gets a ball in traffic, is surrounded by two or three defenders, and he somehow keeps the ball close even as they jostle him and kick at the ball. He takes long and hard passes up around his eyes and somehow makes the ball drop softly to his feet, like Keanu Reeves making the bullets fall in "The Matrix." He cuts in and out of traffic -- Barry Sanders only with a soccer ball moving with him -- sprints through openings that seem only theoretical, races around and between defenders who really are running even if it only looks like they are standing still. He really does seem to make the ball disappear and reappear, like it's a Vegas act.
I've watched just enough soccer to realize that despite having scored no goals and having, by FIFA's reckoning, only a single assist, Messi is having a great World Cup. He attracts so much attention on the pitch -- two or three defenders swarmed him on every touch in the Mexico game -- that he should get an assist on nearly every play for opening up the rest of the field for his team. It's one of those things that the new soccer fan (as many Americans are) doesn't catch onto right away. (thx, djacobs)
This spring, we recruited Aleksandar Hemon to write a monthly column about soccer and encouraged him to write without pandering to a broad audience. And that's the same spirit that we've embraced for this enterprise. Our cast of bloggers is filled with many eminent novelists and journalists (and a Deputy Mayor of New York City). They will write about the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of this tournament, I'm sure. But they will also write about tactics and players and coaches. They have a green light to be as wonky as they want.
If I was a fan of England, this wouldn't make me feel too confident. J.P. Morgan's quant team used FIFA Ranking, historical results, and something called "J.P. Morgan Team Strength Indicator" to predict the winner of the 2010 World Cup. Their results:
Ultimately our Model indicates Brazil as being the strongest team taking part in the tournament. However, due to the fixture schedule our Model predicts the following final outcome: 3rd: Netherlands, 2nd: Spain, World Cup Winners: England. Alternatively, we point out that the 3 favourite teams (from market prices recorded on 30 April of 3.9-to-1 for Spain, 5-to-1 for Brazil and 5.4-to-1 for England) represent a 52.5% probability of winning the World Cup.
World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! World Cup!
1. All 64 matches will be broadcast live. 2. In high definition. 3. On either ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC.
Of those 64 matches, 52 will be simulcast online at ESPN360.com. Which means many many Americans with be able to either secretly or not so secretly watch games at work 100% legally and in high quality (although the service is only available via certain internet providers).
Some of the games will also be broadcast in 3D, which...I don't even know what to say about that.
MyFootballClub has about 31,000 members/owners from all over the world (including the author of this article), all of whom pay an annual subscription of about $60 to be a member of the nonprofit trust that owns "the Fleet." The club is run on the principle of one person, one vote for every decision, major or minor. Ebbsfleet recently made headlines in the British press when members voted to sell John Akinde, a talented young striker, for about $250,000, the first vote of its kind.
In what was probably the weirdest soccer match finish ever, Barbados tied their match against Grenada with an own goal to send the match into overtime where they won by the 2 goals needed to qualify for the finals in the 1994 Shell Caribbean Cup.
Needing to beat Grenada by two clear goals to qualify for the finals in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados had established a 2-0 lead midway through the second half and were seemingly well in control of the game. However, an own goal by a Bajan defender made the score 2-1 and brought a new ruling into play, which led to farce. Under the new rule, devised by the competition committee to ensure a result, a match decided by sudden death in extra time was deemed to be the equivalent of a 2-0 victory. With three minutes remaining, the score still 2-1 and Grenada about to qualify for the finals, Barbados realised that their only chance lay in taking the match to sudden death. They stopped attacking their opponents' goal and turned on their own. In the 87th minute, two Barbadian defenders, Sealy and Stoute, exchanged passes before Sealy hammered the ball past his own goalkeeper for the equaliser.
The Grenada players, momentarily stunned by the goal, realised too late what was happening and immediately started to attack their own goal as well to stop sudden death. Sealy, though, had anticipated the response and stood beside the Grenada goalkeeper as the Bajans defended their opponents' goal. Grenada were unable to score at either end, the match ended 2-2 after 90 minutes and, after four minutes of extra time, Thorne scored the winner for Barbados amid scenes of celebration and laughter in the National Stadium in Bridgetown.
In celebration of Euro 2008, public prankster and more-than-fair soccer striker Rémi Gaillard made the following video of himself using the urban landscape as a soccer pitch. Gaillard scores goals into police vans, trash cans, open windows, etc. to the annoyance of his oblivious goalies.
Something about the video seemed familiar and after a bit of searching, I discovered that the same fellow was also responsible for one of my favorite links from a few years ago, Rocky Recreated. There are tons of his videos on YouTube, most of them centered on Gaillard's brand of graffiti-esque performance art. I can't condone some of his actions but he's certainly amusing to watch. (via memeticians)
There is still some faint resistance to the notion that a kicker could ever really do anything great. Brett Favre can throw 10 more game-ending interceptions and fans will still cherish his moments of glory. Reggie Bush may fumble away a championship and still end up being known for the best things he ever does. Even offensive linemen whose names no one remembers are permitted to end their days basking in the reflected glory of having been on the field. Kickers alone are required to make their own cases.
Maybe soccer goalies can identify with NFL kickers?
The Daily Mail, with corroboration from the Times, has some information on what Marco Materazzi said to Zinedine Zidane to provoke the latter's career ending headbutt in the 2006 World Cup final (more info on that here). They both hired lip readers to decipher Materazzi's dialogue before the incident and this is allegedly what he said (translated from the Italian):
Hold on, wait, that one's not for a nigger like you.
We all know you are the son of a terrorist whore.
So just fuck off.
So it might be fair to say that Materazzi got what he deserved, as did Zidane when he got sent off. Not that two wrongs make a right. Even so, I agree with these thoughts from That's How It Happened:
[Zidane's] willingness to headbutt Materazzi makes him more of a hero, not less. Admittedly, since France went on to lose, he's something of a tragic hero, but a hero none-the-less. If someone insulted my race, or my religion (if I had one), I wish I'd be as ready to attack them, no matter what the circumstances. Zidane's action highlights for the world the fact that the racial unity of France is more important than winning the World Cup.
If the lip reader is correct in what Materazzi said, I may like Zidane even more than I did before the match. (via wikipedia)
I held his shirt for a few seconds only, he turned to me, looked at me from top to bottom with utmost arrogance (and said): "if you really want my shirt, I'll give it to you afterwards". I answered him with an insult.
Update: Several UK newspapers enlisted lip readers to determine what Materazzi said and ended up with many different accounts. Lip reading + language translation = unreliable. (thx, luke)
I'm rooting for France today, but I feel that Italy has the best chance of winning. But we shall see. Allez!
Update: I'm stunned. Not so much about the loss, but Zidane...what was that? That headbutt is one of the craziest things I've ever seen in sports.
Update:Video of the headbutt. There's some speculation that Materazzi twisted Zidane's nipple...or if not, I wonder what he said that could have riled the Frenchman so?
Update: Ok, here's a video of the whole exchange. No twisting that I can see...Materazzi obviously said something. With all his experience, hasn't Zidane heard it all before?
One of the theories about Zidane as a player is that he is driven by an inner rage. His football is elegant and masterful, charged with technique and vision. But he can still erupt into shocking violence that is as sudden as it is inexplicable. The most famous examples of this include head butting Jochen Kientz of Hamburg during a Champions League match, when he was at Juventus in 2000 (an action that cost him a five match suspension) and his stomping on the hapless Faoud Amin of Saudi Arabia during the 1998 World Cup finals (this latter action was, strangely enough, widely applauded in the Berber community as Zidane's revenge on hated Arab 'extremists').
By the way, I've been watching the World Cup for four weeks trying to decide which NBA players could have been dominant soccer players, eventually coming to three conclusions. First, Allen Iverson would have been the greatest soccer player ever -- better than Pele, better than Ronaldo, better than everyone. I think this is indisputable, actually. Second, it's a shame that someone like Chris Andersen couldn't have been pushed toward soccer, because he would have been absolutely unstoppable soaring above the middle of the pack on corner kicks. And third, can you imagine anyone being a better goalie than Shawn Marion? It would be like having a 6-foot-9 human octopus in the net. How could anyone score on him? He'd have every inch of the goal covered. Just as a sports experiment, couldn't we have someone teach Marion the rudimentary aspects of playing goal, then throw him in a couple of MLS games? Like you would turn the channel if this happened?
Link via David, with whom I was chatting last week about Mr. Iverson's excellent chances, soccer-wise.
Not to go on and on about it like the stupid announcers on American TV, but this passage from Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker piece (sadly not online), may explain why the American team did so poorly in the World Cup:
Every kid in the American suburbs, it seems, owns a pair of shin guards. Soccer accords nicely with baby-boomer parents' notions about sports: every kid gets to play, no one stands out too much, there's plenty of running and trophies for all. If [John Robert's] children are typical, they will play neighborhood soccer for a few years, with enthusiastic but inexperienced parent coaches, and then wander away from the game by adolescence. Great high-school athletes tend to migrate to football and basketball, where they can play in front of big crowds and perhaps qualify for college scholarships. Soccer in the suburbs serves mostly as a bridge between Barney and Nintendo; it's a pleasant diversion, not a means of developing brutes like Jan Koller, to say nothing of the magicians who stock the Brazilian team.
This dovetails nicely with what my friend David wrote during a discussion about the disappearance of the US from the World Cup:
Our best athletes go to basketball, football, and baseball, roughly in that order. Soccer gets the dregs, sadly. Don't you think Terrell Owens would be a better striker than Landon Donovan? Even a 50-year-old Darrel Green might be faster than the fastest player on the US Soccer team, and so on.
We know these guys are smart players, and they may have the same instincts that even the Brazilians and Ecuadorians do. But they're just not nearly as good. Watching Brazil decimate Japan yesterday, even briefly, it was obvious how much stronger they were than the US team.
Over IM just now, David and I were musing about Allen Iverson's possible greatness as a soccer player; so creative, quick, and fearless. I bet if some the NBA's best players grew up playing soccer the way they played basketball, the US would have a pretty great team.
