Wonder what Doyle would think of the Toronto fans who hold up the game by pitching streamers on corner kicks. Would he agree with MLS Comish Don Garber that it is "part of our game"?
The same line I quoted from Garber also mentions that "we must be careful that this practice does not affect the game on the field".
Um, Don? It already does. It delays the game. There's clear video evidence of that. People may disagree on whether or not the delay is significant enough to deny fans their fun, but it's funny to me that there's no acknowledgment from Garber that the game has been affected.
Just like it's affected by the delays Doyle points out in his article. I'm not sure I agree with his solution, though.
5 comments:
Hi solution would make things worse in my opinion. If the players know the clock is stopped, there's even less incentive for them to speed things up. A 90 minute game still won't be exactly 90 minutes. Also the point of time wasting isn't just to kill the clock it's also done to kill the opposing team's momentum.
There are two places where time wasting drives me absolutely nuts as a fan.
1. Throw ins: a player goes to take a throw in, picks up the ball, then drops it and jogs downfield while another player slowly jogs up to take the throw in. Whoever initially picks up the ball for a throw in should be required to continue the play.
2. Keepers taking an exceedingly long time to take a goal kick or punt the ball back into play. In MLS, Joe Cannon is the king of this move. He's good for killing of a few minutes every single game. It drove me nuts last season with LA...and I'm a Galaxy fan! How about a five second count, like an inbounds play in basketball. It would certainly make for some interesting rushed kicks...thanks goodness for the change in the back pass rule in the early 90's...
beax speax, in the case of a GK who picks up the ball, there _is_ a 6-second rule, and it is usually enforced. also, if the kind of delays you point to re. throw-ins and goal kicks, if a team leading (or hoping to salvage a point) does it in the latter stages of a match (ostensibly to delay the restart), the player usually receives a caution.
unrelatedly - I keep seeing links to this blog from si.com/soccer - that's wonderful, but the links are always placed under the title "Luis Bueno", even if the pointed to article is by Canales. I agree any traffic is good traffic, but I also wonder if SI is being silly here since Bueno writes for them while Canales writes for their "competitor" soccernet (among others).
Another possibility is that the blog is linked on some automatic feed, where one author field is allowed (most blogs are written by one person). Short of writing some weird amalgam (Luis Andrea) that includes both our names, SI might have just defaulted to giving their guy credit.
Nice blog. Thats all.
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