A Basic Primer on Soccer
…so you don’t sound like an idiot during the World Cup.
The football season is finally over, and unfortunately the Red Wedding Super Bowl of 2014 was a huge disappointment. In a normal year, some of us would only have pitchers and catchers to look forward to, but luckily it’s a World Cup year and that means you can get excited for a sport the rest of the world actually pays attention to.
During the Super Bowl kickoff celebrations, a woman actually rode a horse onto the field as flames shot up around her; America is awesome at making sports super-fun to watch. But when it comes to our appreciation for soccer, we’ve always lagged behind Europeans, South Americans, Africans, and pretty much everyone else on the planet. It’s a universal language spoken by everyone and we are too busy with our Bronco-riding-through-flames insanity to bother to learn how to speak it. Think of America as a giant sports (and system of measurement) hipster, only not annoying or from Brooklyn.
This has left the casual American soccer fan at a severe disadvantage when it comes to the beautiful game. The last thing you want is to sound like a complete idiot in front of your family, friends, and those drunk English guys at the bar, so let’s correct that with a quick “Soccer for Dummies” guide.
What the hell is soccer?
Soccer actually shares some similarities with football. Both sports involve getting a ball from one end of the field to the other. Both also have offsides rules, and only allow 11 players from each team on the field at once. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end.
Soccer is different from most other sports, which usually involve the use of an individual’s hands to either catch, throw, hit, or sweep a broomstick really quickly. Human hands are stupid, so using them to move the ball around the field — which is usually 100 yards long and 60 yards wide — is strictly prohibited. The only player on the field who is allowed to use his hands is the goalkeeper. Yes, that means you’re only using your feet here, guys (or anything else you can move the ball around with). You “score” in soccer by kicking/heading/kneeing/buttstomping the ball into your opponent’s net. Pretty simple, right? If you answered “yes” to that question, then I have successfully insulted soccer coaches everywhere.
As stated previously, soccer involves 22 players on the field (11 from each team) who all play in a set formation. Matches last for a total of 90 minutes, plus whatever time was taken up for substitutions or tending to players with injuries.
The above picture is your standard 4-3-2-1 formation for a single team: four defensemen, three midfielders, two attacking midfielders, and one center forward or “striker.” Goalkeepers aren’t mentioned during formation descriptions because they only stay in one spot: right in front of their own team’s goal. Formations can change dramatically from team to team, but most teams nowadays play with four defenders: two “centerbacks” and two “fullbacks.”
Centerbacks are usually huge, strong, and good at clearing the ball away from the net. Like their name suggests, they usually operate right in front of their own net in the “center” of the field (pitch). Fullbacks or wingbacks are also good at carrying out their defensive duties, but you’ll also see them parade around further up the field.
Midfielders have a pretty simple name description: they operate in the middle of the field. A pretty standard formation is to have one defensive midfielder (who primarily sits back and helps out the defense); one creative midfielder (who can make long passes to the more forward-operating players); and one “box-to-box” midfielder (a workhorse who tries to destroy everyone all the time).
Forwards are the guys who score the goals. There can be anywhere from one to three (or even four!) on the field. Sometimes forwards are out-and-out “strikers” (which means you pass them the ball and they try to score) or sometimes they’re “wingers,” a.k.a., guys who operate on the far ends of the pitch and try to lob the ball in the the center of the field and make defenders go cray-cray.
Forwards also tend to be the guys who draw the most fouls. Like in basketball, a “foul” in soccer is any time you collide with a whole lot of your opponent before you get a touch on the ball. Some fouls are more serious than others; if you lunge at your opponent (feet first) in an attempt to get the ball and you miss, you can be given a yellow card. A yellow card is a sort of cautionary measure which gives you a warning for the rest of the match. After a second yellow card, you’re automatically given a red card, which means you’re off the pitch and your team has to play a man down for the rest of the match. If you tackle an opponent in a particularly nasty way (or if you headbutt them on the field), you can be given straight red card. Obviously, playing a man down is reducing your team from 11 men to 10 men, which could put a damper on the coach’s planned formation.
A formation is the basic blueprint of a team and dictates what sort of game that team will play. Formations can change dramatically, sometimes even in the middle of a game. For instance, The U.S. Men’s National Team often plays a 4-3-3, but has also played a 4-4-2 and a 4-2-3-1. It’s easy to pretty wonky about the various tactical aspects of different formations, attacking movements, and defensive lines and all that, but that’s all a little too crazy for a short blog post (for starters, check out this site).
So, to recap: soccer consists of 22 guys on a field, moving that ball with their feet down the field and into their opponent’s net. If it all works out according to plan, it usually looks like this:
Of course, there are a ton of rules that go into soccer: if a ball is played to someone who is behind the opposing team’s “last man,” that’s offsides; if the ball goes out of play along the length of the pitch, it has to be thrown in; if it goes out of play at the end of the pitch, it’s a goal kick, etc. There are corners, free kicks, penalty kicks, and other various rules, but those are probably better understood if they are seen as opposed to read (that means you should watch a game). If you’re a glutton for punishment and really want to read all about the rules, go here.
Who even plays soccer?
If all you really wanted was a basic description of the game, you don’t really have to go any further (but you’d be super lazy). However, exactly who is playing at the World Cup and the organization of the tournament can be pretty confusing.
Club vs. International Play
International teams are the only kinds of teams that play at the World Cup. They represent various countries around the world. It may sound kind of crazy, but the World Cup has actually been going on for the past couple of years; lots of teams were just trying to qualify for it.
These are the eight groups of teams that will play against each other during the competition. The groups only compete within themselves, and the top two teams from each group will move on to the Round of 16. After the groups, it’s one v. one, so if a team wants to advance, they have to win.
In the World Cup, each team only plays each other once during the group phase, so this means that if the US wants to get out of Group G, they’ll have to score more points than at least one of Germany, Portugal, pr Ghana (a very tall order). The same goes for Nigeria: if they want to get out of Group F and Argentina has more points than them, they’ll need more points than Iran or Bosnia. As in all soccer competitions, a win is worth three points, a draw is worth one point, and a loss is worth zero points.
International teams are made up of players from each respective country; Germans play for Germany, Italians for Italy, and Greeks for Greece. What qualifies you as a “citizen” of each country is complicated (for instance, Pablo Daniel Osvaldo, who was born in Argentina, plays on the Italian national team), but the general rule of thumb is: once you’ve made your choice to play for a certain national team, you’re stuck there; no backsies.
International play is substantially different from club play. What is club play? The easiest way to explain it is to think about the United States Dream Team at the Summer Olympics.
Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson all played for the Chicago Bulls, Boston Celtics, and Los Angeles Lakers, respectively. Those are obviously different NBA teams, but they all played on the same team for the Olympics, against other countries.
Club soccer works the same way. Players from various countries play in various leagues around the world. Big cities in those various countries are usually represented by one or even two teams.
The biggest and most popular leagues in the world are in Europe. England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France all have widely popular leagues. But not all of the players who play in England are English, and not all of the players who play in Italy are Italian.
Take A.S. Roma, an Italian soccer team from Rome. Their starting lineup consists of Italian players like Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi, but Mehdi Benatia (from Morrocco) and Kevin Strootman (from the Netherlands) both play for the team as well.
Strootman will be representing his country at the World Cup this year, as will Daniele De Rossi. It’s possible you’ll even see Strootman and De Rossi face off against each other if Italy plays the Netherlands (hopefully they hug it out).
Sometimes, club teams from various countries play each other. There are two major tournaments that allow for inter-league play: The Europa League and its big brother, The Champions League. The World Cup is the Big Kahuna of soccer competitions, but The Champions League Final is also a major sporting event and it happens every year.
Ok, so how do I start watching soccer?
If you want to start getting into soccer now, before the World Cup starts, the easiest thing for Americans to do is to start with English soccer (officially called the Barclay’s Premier League). For one thing, the commentators speak English. For another, it’s broadcast by NBC, so if you have an iPad or a tablet, you can download the NBC Sports “Live Extra” app and be on your way.
If you have a cable provider and have access to beIN Sports, you can watch the Italian (Serie A) and Spanish (LA Liga) leagues. Club teams from the big European leagues that you’ll want to keep an eye on are Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, Athletico Madrid, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus, AS Roma, Napoli, Paris Saint Germaine, AS Monoco, Bayern Munich, and Borussia Dortmund.
Outside of the U.S., the rest of the world calls soccer “the beautiful game.” The speed, ball movement, and elegancy of it all coming together make it a lot of fun to watch. Americans may find themselves bored by the low-scoring games (the infamous 0-0 draw) or the “diving” that some players engage in, but the sport, as a whole, is just like any other: it’s a ton of fun to watch once you take the time to get into it. Millions of people tuned into the winter olympics last time around to watch people do strange thing with broomsticks; it’s time to give soccer a fair shake.
If Americans still feel the undying need to take a giant crap on soccer because they think it’s “boring,” they should probably understand that most of the world feels the same way about football and its incredible ELEVEN MINUTES OF ACTION EACH GAME.
So start watching soccer now or those English guys at the pub will call you goofy names.
