Is Soccer Boring?

To an American, it is easy to compare soccer with basketball-- without the hands. Just like basketball, it uses zone defense, man defense, a team-oriented attack and transition is critical to winning.

At the same time, it is unlike any other American sport since there are no time outs except at halftime. And unlike most American sports where everything is broken into innings, quarters etc, it is a continuous, physically demanding 45 minutes of play without clock stoppage on most out-of-bound plays.

Obviously, scoring is important and in the end it determines the final result, but in soccer the focus is on the buildup and buildup to an American is synonymous with boring.

Boring is of course in the eye of the beholder and is usually whatever you don't comprehend. I watch baseball and see a bunch of people standing around, that's boring to me, maybe because I don't get it.

Soccer however is all about time and space. Offensively, players try to hold on to the ball and get into dangerous spaces. Defensively, you're limiting an opponent's space and taking away their time by tackling the ball and increasing the number of defenders in an area.

Offensively, teammates try to lure defenders out of an area to give teammates more opportunities to get into dangerous positions and enough time to make goals happen with the best teams taking advantage of that transition from offense to defense, recognizing what they can do and then reacting. All this makes it confusing to a novice viewer.

In soccer, no two situations are the same unlike in football, with so many things turning different each time you have the ball including player positions, angles, etc. And that is also the difficulty of the game unlike say football where if a receiver moves in a certain direction, the safety also moves the same way.

While each players duties are comprehensible, it is difficult to appreciate if you have never been there - receiving a pass inside the 18-yard line and instantly assessing where your teammates are, how the defense is set up, whether you should pass or shoot and in what direction.
In essence, the tactics are simple to explain, but difficult to execute. And in many ways, it's a lot like military strategies in which defensively you have a line of retreat, just like an army in battle. Should you get caught unprepared, you use delay tactics until you get reinforcements and can get organization behind the ball.
But if you're in the third of the field near your own goal, you have to deal with the immediate danger with the "safety first" rule. Get rid of the danger, in this case, a shot on goal.
The best teams, with highly talented athletes, of course capitalize on situations in which they don't have numerical advantage, such as a two-on-two, or even a one-on-two attack much like a much more technological advanced army doesn't need large numbers to beat a less advanced army conventionally.

Having said all that, the game will be always be clearer to those who grew up playing it, but with this understanding, all that back and forth will look less random and when someone says something like the France - Brazil (1-0 final score) match wasn't close, you'll get the idea of what they mean. Now there'll be some meaning to the madness.