In Reply to: Ho hum posted by Dr.Bruin on June 10, 2026 at 21:13:38
Can somebody explain why the player who is fouled doesn't take the penalty shot?
Couple of reasons:
(a) A penalty kick is only a special case of free kick, which is never assigned to the player who was fouled. It's assigned to *the team*. Whoever is good at taking the shot, takes the shot whether it's outside the penalty box or inside.
(b) Whatcha gonna do if it's awarded for a handball? You're going to now have two kinds of penalty kicks depending on what the infraction was? No need to add more complications on a thing that really does not need to be fixed in the first place.
(c) Sticking with your Kobe/Shaq example. If you know that Kobe will take the free throws every time you foul Shaq, you don't foul Shaq, and the game necessarily improves.
Can somebody explain to me why they can't put the exact time remaining on the scoreboard letting the ref add more time in the game if the team he bet on is losing?
This is something I'd like to see changed. I've been watching Australian football and rugby for a while now and I've grown to appreciate how both sports operate like basketball in the sense that the clock is stopped when the game stops and when the time is up, the horn blows. I think this is something that soccer can adopt, which would also take away the incentives for the leading team to stop the play to waste time. I wasn't sure how that concept would work for soccer but the AFL games provide an indication that it could actually work just fine.
You're missing another related questionable practice in soccer: when the stoppage time is exhausted, and the game is in an attack phase at the moment, the ereferee traditionally waits until the attack comes to an end or the ball goes out in some way before they blow the whistle. A loud horn that doesn't care what phase the game is at and just blows simply because the time is up is something I can get behind (even though last second goals can be very dramatic).
I understand the worldwide popularity but I've got better things to do than watch some guys run around and kick a ball for an hour and a half and score maybe once or twice.
I have had people in my life, even growing up in a soccer-crazed country, who didn't care for the game, so I can 100% understand this. If it doesn't speak to you, go do something else. Baseball never quite clicks with me. Neither does cricket. So I can fully understand that some sports don't click with some people. There's no sin in that.