Category: Unit 2 (Page 3 of 42)

Soccer and its perspective 

The sport, or game we all know as Soccer or futbol is wrongly confused from where it originated from. Many people say that Soccer or futbol originated from Mexico or Italy, and some even say it was started in Greece and Rome. These are all wrong, the beautiful game of Soccer originated in China during the Han Dynasty, then the game started to be played in Greece, Rome and Japan and Vietnam, but the more and more places that started playing the more and more rules that were being changed. In ancient China the sport was known as cuju and it was still very competitive  It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th century that soccer started to develop as we know it now. Soccer as we know it now is played for entertainment, for fun, and even competition to see who is the best team for example every year there is a huge event where the two most liked Spanish teams compete to see who is better and those teams are Barcelona and Real Madrid. But back then in ancient China this sport was used for training in the military but it was played for entertainment in wealthy cities like Linzi.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14660970.2012.753540

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuju#:~:text=Invented%20in%20the%20Han%20dynasty,in%20Korea%2C%20Japan%20and%20Vietnam.

With the research I was doing I went around and did a little experiment and I asked some people where they think Soccer originated and most of them said Mexico, England, and Italy. After telling them they were wrong and revealing the answer which is China they were surprised. Many people think that Soccer is a sport that not many Asians play so they would say one of those countries and that is where they are wrong. According to FIFA, which is a non profitable “Soccer has easily become the world’s most popular sport.” This quote comes from the official FIFA website and it shows how when something that is different from anything everyone has seen it will grow and spread fast. Soccer spread rapidly beginning in China then Greece then Rome to Japan and other countries in Europe and then from Europe to the Americas. 

https://www.ussoccer.com/history/organizational-structure/fifa

As soccer continues to be more and more popular there have been many rule changes. Some of the rule changes are offsides, penalties, referees, fouls, goalkeepers, red and yellow cards, and free kicks, corners and the whistle. Here is an explanation of what each rule does and how they work. The role of referees being in the sport to keep order began in 1871! The referee calls when there is a penalty, a free kick, a foul, offsides, he decides if the “accident” that occured betweens two or more players is a yellow card or a red card.The ref also starts the game with the whistle, he shows when it is half time with the whistle and he ends the game with the whistle. According to FootballHistroy.org the author states, “Before the referee the team captains were told to keep order in the field due to the fact that this is a gentleman’s game.”’ Just by reading this there can be an observation made and it is that the team captains had a lot of things to be in charge of and that is to make sure everyone on the team is safe and not getting into fights with the other team’s athletes.As the role of the referees were being played in the soccer game there has been many cases where one team would cheat and “buy the referee” which is against the rules if you did not know, and because this was a repeated case in the 2018 FIFA world cup which is one of the biggest soccer events ever besides El Clasico and Copa de Oro, the body of the FIFA government decided to put in cameras.Besides the fact that the cameras were to help the referees in the first game to call a red card, penalty, or foul, it was also used to check on the referee because there was a game where the referee dropped a few thousand dollars in the field.

The next important role in a soccer game is the goalkeeper, who is the last person on the field. His job is to avoid being scored on, and taking the ball out of the area where the other team can score. The referee is the only person on the field who can legally use his hands. Like the soccer players he can use any part of his body to stop the ball from passing the crossbar and going into the net. As stated in Football History.org,”In the early days the goalkeeper was a non distinctive position. Then in 1909 everything changed because the last person on the team got to wear a different colored jersey and got to use their hands to stop the ball from going in the net.” This role changed everything because there was finally a person who can block the other team from scoring. There is a twist to the goalkeeper using his hands and the twist is that he can use his hands near his goal and in the box but if it is farther than the box it is a foul.

FOOTBALL.ORG

https://www.footballhistory.org/rules.html

Another important rule of soccer is the corner. The corner is obviously a corner on the field but what many people do not know about the corner is that if team A shoots the ball and the goalkeeper for team B knocks it out of the field team A would get the corner kick. The corner kick is often kicked by one person on the team and during this kick both teams are in the box trying to either make a goal or get the ball out of the dangerous area. The corner kick is given to the defending team if the ball is shot and no goal is made or if the ball is shot and passes the line which is an out. The referee calls the corner and calls when the player would kick it with his whistle.

The FA-https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules/laws/football-11-11/law-17—the-corner-kick#:~:text=A%20corner%20kick%20is%20awarded,a%20goal%20is%20not%20scored.

The next new rule added to Soccer is the penalty. The penalty is a 1 on 1 kick where one player on the team that made the foul kicks against the goalkeeper. The penalty is given to someone as a reward or a chance to score on the other team if there is a foul that happened in the box that the goalkeeper is in. The referee can also call if it is a yellow card or a red card if there is a foul in the box but most likely it is a red card. There is also an event in Soccer called the world cup where the teams would go to overtime if the game is tied and if no team scores within the extra half an hour of overtime they would go to penalty shoot outs. This so called penalty shoot outs are where the teams choose five of the best shooters and they would take turns kicking penalties until there is one team that fails to make it. The team that makes the most without missing wins and the team that missed loses. The penalties are what save the game from being tied or being dry because there must be a winner in this event.

https://www.si.com/soccer/2018/06/12/extra-time-rules-overtime-world-cup-how-work

The next rule is offsides. This is not a foul or misconduct it is a play that the referee can stop at any time. If you do not know what offside is, it is when the person who has the ball has any body part closer to the net than the second to last player on the other team and did not pass across the field or back to someone who is behind in the field.In FOOTBALLHISTORY.ORG it states,”The first change happened 1907 and stated that a player could not be offside in his own half. In 1921, another rule was added to make life easier for the attackers by making it impossible to be offside on a throw-in.A further step was taken in favor for the attackers when it was decided that only two instead of three defenders had to be between the ball and the opponent’s goal.” This quote by itself shows the changes made in the game to make it more easier when there is no sportsmanship happening in the game. 

https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules/laws/football-11-11/law-11—offside

There are a few more things that need to be talked about and those are the formations that the teams play in. One of the most famous teams ever Barcelona plays in a 4-4-2 formation. This formation consists of 4 defenders, 4 midfielders, and 2 strikers. For this club this is not a good formation because they lost in El Clasico and they lost many other f=games with this formation than with the 4-3-3 formation. The formation rule was not around when it began in China because it was introduced to the world in the 19th century in England. Soccer players often audition for the club and if the coach wants you they will recruit you and once they have you there would be other team owners wanting to buy you and how much you are worth is based on how well you play. One of the most expensive and most famous soccer players Lionel Messi is worth $92 million dollars and that is real money that the other owner has to pay if he wants to buy him from the current team. Another expensive and famous player is Cristiano Ronaldo who cost $64 million. These players are worth so much because they are good and they make the club they are currently in famous. The money these players cost is not only in soccer they really are worth this much in real life.

Many people did not know china started soccer and when I would go to the park and play they would say,”Who is gonna get the asian on their team?” I am not Asian but when we are making teams I let them talk and when it comes time to play I make them look clueless and confused because I am good at soccer. The people I play with spend days at the park and play all day everyday but I do not do that if I am not playing soccer and scoring goals on other kids and making them feel dumb I am skatebaording. I also go to the park to prove people wrong because they said,”Asans are not good at anything and they ruin everything.” I was assigned to a team and when the time came the ball was passed to me and I scored many times their faces had the look of disbelief and they would do anything in their power to try and stop me but I am simply just too fast.The game would continue and for me this was just for fun, but, they would get mad and they would try to foul me and they would slide but that was not allowed in the game. They would want me to leave the game because I was scoring a lot of goals but it was not for my purpose I was trying to prove a point and that point was no matter how you look and what other people say about you just reflects what they think about themselves. When I started playing soccer all the big kids would tell me that I’m a bad player and no one is going to put me in to play and how slow I am and I would listen to them.Now that I know more about the game and know more about what i am good at I do not listen to them.Then when I went to high school there was no soccer team so I went to the principle and told him to make a soccer team and as I started making the list of students who agreed with me more and more people who were hating on me were wanting to be part of the team. I let them in and when we faced off as practice I scored many goals on them and they could not believe what they were seeing.

As I come to a conclusion people would rather stick to popular beliefs than to look up or investigate the real information and prove many people wrong. Soccer did not come from Europe, it came from China. China was where soccer originated from and that is where it is going to stay because no European thought of coming up with soccer it was for military training or entertainment in wealthy cities.