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Credit: Wake Up Barstool
The United States of America has World Cup fever at the moment. But Dave Portnoy thinks that soccer would be even better if it could be Americanized just a bit more.
This always seems to happen every time a major international soccer tournament happens, where big personalities have bold ideas on how to “fix” the beautiful game. But thankfully, we’ve come a long way since the days of Ann Coulter exploding in ignorant rage hating on the beautiful game. And the general American sports fan is way more knowledgable about soccer than the days when Mike Francesa was amazed to learn that players could kick with both feet.
On Monday’s edition of Wake Up Barstool, Dave Portnoy admitted he has World Cup fever. He says he is pro soccer. He’s putting out bets about the tournament. That’s great!
But he still has ideas to make it, well, in his words, less boring.
“I am pro soccer right now. I’m in World Cup fever. I’m watching all the games. I gave out my picks, 3-0 yesterday. I have a couple suggestions,” Portnoy said. “Make the nets about 100 times bigger. Have power plays. Have different things. I got a lot of things that I think soccer purists wouldn’t exactly love hearing me say.”
I don’t think once you get the ball past mid-court, or that center line, you can go backwards. Throw ’em out when you’re going backwards. You go forward and they kick it all the way backwards. It’s like backcourt, half-court violation, you lose the ball. So I have a couple viewing tips that I think could make this game a little more American. Maybe you get one full tackle per half where you can just tackle the guy. A couple things to make the viewing experience a little better, but I’ll get into that after the World Cup because I have World Cup fever.”
Admittedly, soccer purists can get in their feelings a little bit when it comes to changing the game. And nobody likes it when their sport gets called “boring.” And this World Cup has been anything but that with high scoring games and all the stars performing at peak levels, save for Cristiano Ronaldo. But since he’s approaching this in good faith, let’s take Dave Portnoy at face value.
Enlarge the nets by 100x? Probably a bad idea unless you want to make scoring a goal as easy as hitting a free throw.
Power plays? There has actually been trials of blue cards that would remove players for a set period of time and fall in between a yellow card and red card.
Backcourt violations? That might actually be really interesting, especially for teams that are dominating possession as it might invite teams to come out and press instead of sitting back deep and just defending for their lives to earn a turnover.
One no-holds barred tackle per half? Entertaining but probably not the best idea for the sport unless you want Lionel Messi clotheslined by the Austrian version of Charles Oakley.
Overall, Portnoy’s thoughts for how to fix soccer could be a lot worse. At least it’s less offensive than whatever Alexi Lalas would probably say.
The post Dave Portnoy has ideas on how to ‘fix’ soccer appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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