BLURB:
Why is “soccer” called soccer? Steven answers this
question—and more!—in his second podcast about the 2014 FIFA World Cup. See him
cast wisdom on the following questions:
7. What is handball?
8. What is offsides?
9. What are red and yellow cards?
10. What’s a group stage?
Listen in and become a soccer expert for those
World Cup Watch Parties!
INTRO:
Welcome to the SteventheThorn Podcast! You’re
listening to this podcast because I’m an authority on many things. Why am I an
authority on many things? Because I have glasses and a beard.
RECAP:
In our last podcast, I talked about the 2014 FIFA
World Cup in Brazil. We learned:
1. The FIFA World Cup is an international soccer
tournament which started following the success of EA Sports’ FIFA 98 videogame.
2. FIFA, the governing body of soccer, was named
after the videogame.
3. The 2014 World Cup is in Brazil, which is one
of four countries in South America on the Risk world map.
4. The United States might win the World Cup if
Lebron James played soccer.
5. Landon Donovan is the United States’ and MLS’
all-time leading scorer, and he should have been on the USA World Cup roster.
TODAY:
Now we continue our series on the Top 20 Things to
Know About the 2014 World Cup. Today we discuss 6-10.
6. Why is
it called soccer?
To answer this question, I must first answer why
football is called football. Long, long ago, in a mythical land known as
Europe, rich people owned horses and land. They played games on horseback
whilst riding around their land. These games include such memorable sports as
polo, racing, fox-hunting, and Mount & Blade.
The commoners could not afford horses. Therefore,
they played on foot. Technically, you could say that the rich people were
playing on foot too, but not their own feet. They were playing on the horse’s
feet. The commoners had to play on their own feet, and they devised many games
on their feet. They called these games “football” to distinguish them from the games
of the rich folk.
Football has always been the working man’s game.
You just need a ball, a flat space, and some French people to drag their feet
on instituting goal-line technology.
Many different kinds of football arose, such as
rugby football (rugby league and rugby union) and association football.
Association football is our modern-day soccer. Football. Calcio. Fussball.
And, of course, American football follows in this
tradition. It has nothing to do with the amount of times you hit the ball with
your foot, but rather it’s all about the fact that the sport is played on foot.
Legend has it that someone abbreviated association
football into “soccer” by taking the “soc” from the word “association.” Then,
through some obscure etymological means, the word “soccer” stuck in Canada and
the US of A, but football replaced “association football” in Mother England.
So basically, when the English whine about Yanks
calling soccer “soccer” and American football “football,” they have only
themselves to blame.
7. What is
handball?
Oh dear. So you’ve heard about that, have
you? It is more appropriately called
“handling the ball.” Allow me a brief read from the FIFA Laws of the game:
The point of the law is to prevent people from
playing the ball with their hands. It’s a difference between hand-to-ball and
ball-to-hand. If your hand is in an unnatural position and you hit the ball,
that’s a penalty. If your hand is pressed flat against your chest or your leg
and the ball just happens to hit it, that should not be a penalty.
Unfortunately, not all referees understand the
rule, and most other people don’t understand it either. But a few people do.
No one understands the handling rule better than
Luis Suarez and the country of Ghana.
Just search Luiz Suarez handball vs Ghana onYouTube. You’ll see what I mean.
8. What is
offsides?
I will try to explain offsides in the most
confusing way possible. The spirit of the law is to prevent what is called
“poaching,” which is what the villain in The
Rescuers Down Under was trying to do to the golden eagle. The idea is that
we don’t want an attacking player of Team A to spend all of his time next to
Team B’s goal, chatting up the goalkeeper and distracting him until he grabs a
loose ball and buries it into the back of the old onion bag.
Three conditions must be met for a player to be in
offsides position:
a) The attacking player must be in the opposing
half of the field.
2) The attacking player must be in front of the
ball.
d) There must be fewer than two opposing players
between the attacker and the goal.
Therefore, in order for a player to remain onside (which is the place you want to
be), there must be two defenders between the attacker and the goal at the time a
ball is passed to the attacker.
I’ll try to demonstrate it with my fingers here.
See? Here’s the goal, here’s the goalkeeper, here’s the defender, and here’s
the attacker level with the defender. The ball is passed to the attacker, he’s
onside. But if he’s over here, between the defender and the goalkeeper when the
ball is passed, he’s offside, got it?
I hope my visuals have been helpful.
9. What are
red cards and yellow cards?
A yellow card is a caution. That means that the
referee has had enough of fouls and offensives from a certain player, so he’s
writing the player’s number down in a little book. If the player commits
another foul and receives a second yellow, the referee will then show a red
card. A red card is an ejection. The player must leave the game and will be
suspended for the next game.
Two yellow cards equals a red card.
If a player receives a straight red, say for
knocking down a Ghanian shot on goal with his hands, then he will be suspended
for the next two games. More serious offenses receive longer suspensions.
I would personally love to carry around red and
yellow cards for everyday life, so I could caution people and eject them as
needed.
10. What’s
a group stage?
That’s a great question, citizen. As I mentioned
in the last podcast, the 32 teams are divided into 8 groups of 4. Each team
will play 3 games in group play, meaning that they play each of their group
opponents one time. The top two teams from each group will advance to the Round
of 16, where it’s one game elimination from then on. After the Round of 16 is
the Quarterfinals, then the Semifinals, and then the Third Place game and the
Final.
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