From smallball to a soccer ball

Last night, as we watched the fleet-of-foot Joey Gathright impose his dubious smallball theories on yesterday's game, we thought now might be an appropriate to switch gears to soccer, a decidedly anti-Fishman sport that has nevertheless filled a gaping void in our lives.


Living in a terminally depressed city of medium size and limited culture in the British midlands, one cannot avoid get swept up in soccer. We are not immune to it, and, for all its flaws, have found terribly exciting, and rich in drama and spectacle in the same way that the baseball is.

But if there is one thing which can ruin a game, and call into question the overall merit of a sport itself, it’s an unjust rule. Last night, Liverpool beat Arsenal 4-2 in the second leg of the Champions League Quarterfinal. The game was decided when Ryan Babel, a striker for Liverpool, was ruled to have been fouled by Arsenal’s Kolo Touré. Steven Gerrard tucked away the penalty shot, and the game was over. The English papers have debated the call for the past 24 hours, with each teams’ mangers and players have offered utterly useless and predictable thoughts on the call.

The point as we see it is not whether it was a penalty, but the lack of justice in a sport which allows games to be decided effectively by the judgement of a single referee, often from great distances. Why allow an important game to be decided by a penalty shot, which is basically an exercise in precision kicking? (In my five years of watching soccer, I’ve never seen a well-placed penalty – that is to say, fired into the high corner – parried away by a goalkeeper.)

Penalty bashing isn’t exactly new, but what is usually criticized is the penalty shootout, not the penalty shot. Then again, what does a expat from Suffolk County really know about soccer?