To keep 90 minutes interesting, you need an arc. To get an arc without structure, you need a conductor.
Maybe soccer has a secret rhythm.
In today’s Argentina/England World Cup Semifinal, the players came out swinging. Only three minutes into the game, an Argentine player whacked an Englishman in the back of the head. I immediately shouted, “Red card!”, much to Partner’s dismay as her ear was near my mouth.
And then, the refs… just… didn’t?
They awarded a free kick to England. At any previous point in the tournament, merely stepping on a guy’s foot has been enough to receive a card. But an unprovoked whack to the back of the head?
Just after the hydration break, one of the announcers said something like, “That’s probably the last foul they’re going to get away with like that before the ref starts handing out yellow cards.”
He was right. Shortly after, the first yellow card came out.
Wait… What?
A player can do the exact same thing in the beginning of a match and it’s a mere free kick, but later in the match it receives a card?
Do soccer fans like a specific emotional arc? It wouldn’t surprise me if all enjoyable sports share a common one (I’m looking at you, Freytag’s pyramid). But soccer is a relatively random-tension game. Tennis has tension management built into its structure: “game points” and side switches that increase and release tension. Soccer has no such machinery. So the refs supply the dramaturgy by hand — swallow the whistle in the first act, tighten as the plot demands, save the cards for the climax. The announcer wasn’t guessing. He’d read the script.
One of my biggest gripes about soccer during this World Cup has been the importance of the referees. But the game may actually need them. Soccer is the simplest major sport. (Its history can be traced back to the first time a child said, “Look, ma: no hands!”) That simplicity leads to games of unpredictable quality. The England/Mexico game was one of the greatest sporting events I’ve watched. Today’s Argentina/England was decently enjoyable. The remaining 6 games I’ve watched were terrible disappointments.
To fit an appropriate emotional arc, the game may require better structure. Update fouls and substitutions. Change the rules around contact. Start the game with 3 penalty kicks per side. Award corner kicks or penalty kicks at various times throughout. Something to make this game less universally flat.
Perhaps most of all: tell us how much time remains. (Yes, I know about the fourth official’s board. A minimum is not a clock; the actual end still arrives at the referee’s whim.) I’ll grant that the ambiguity creates drama — for the initiated. For the newbie, it creates only confusion. And a real clock needn’t kill your “play until an appropriately calm stopping point”: Rugby 7s has a clock, but the game only ends after it goes off and the ball next goes dead.
It might be true that avid soccer fans can feel the right energy of a game and thereby determine when a foul is a yellow card rather than a mere free kick. But the rules of a game should be comprehensible to a newbie, lest you end up with arbitrary authoritarian rulings.
You know, like ending the Argentina/England game when you did — ball still in play, within range of the Argentine goal.
Julian Wise 