FOOTY FIGHTS (http://youtube.com/watch?v=4aF8Gq4-iiw&search=arsenal%20fc)

All I can say is "ow".

Some really, really horrendous stuff here. Any who played football a lot will know that studs bloody hurt!
Especially the two footed stamp on head AND bollocks, the kick in the face, the rake down the legs, anything with S Gerrard or R Keane involved, Cantona, Deigo The Legend, reffing biting, Edmundo smacking... you get the picture.

And I will never tire of Paul Alcock going, going, going, gone.........

Seen this one? Ouch (http://www.geenstijl.nl/filmpjes/NielsKokmeijer.wmv)

As the host on the start of the video says, "it's not my choice, and I am not going to watch it either", yeah I thought it was pretty sickening as well.

Why are you even trying to prove it's not a girlysport ? The only ones who think like that are the ones who don't know jack about the game, and have never ever played on a regular basis. People in that category are not worthy of any explaination whatsoever. :D

Morgoth, I've seen that clip before, but DAMN, that guys leg must have broken in about 3 places with that beast of a tackle. Sickening.

A gentleman's sport played by barbarians...

That day, i was taking a dump and i was thinking about Eric Cantona and his two legged charge and how i think i am going to download the clip on the internet and there i have it. hahaha. Cantona and Keane are so classic, classic man u barbarianism.

People can say it's a girly spot yet the whole world loves to play it and it's their favourite game AND the maybe we should add it to the record that football playas get paid ALOT! :D

It's a girls sport because more often than not players are faking injuries, diving and screaming like little girls. When a Rugby player get's hurt they don't scream and whine, the assess the injury. For a soccer player it's all about opening your mouth, scrunching up your face in a pain-like expression the MOMENT you think you've been fouled. No pain registers that quickly and no 'man' screams about something like that.

more often than not players are faking injuries, diving and screaming like little girls. You have hit the nail on the hit on the thing that annoys me most about soccer. I have never worked out why that sport seems to have the most petulance and Hollywood play-acting of any sport. Why don't they just get on with the bloody game instead of making a damned fuss all the time?

Because it could help your team to victory. Behaviour like that is usually not appreciated in these parts of the world, but in South America and Mediterranean Europe, it has almost become an art to fake an injury, and get your opponent a yellow, or even a red card in the process. If it works, the opponent will have to play on with one man less, and if it fails....well, better luck next time.

You see, I play soccer and i HATE it when people do that. Most of the people that do that couldn't last in a fight more than 10 seconds and because of their easily identifiable weakness, they fake gettin fouled. Pathetic.

But if you look beyond that, beyond the acting that so many pathetic players do these days, you'd see that football is really an art and not a sport.

Diving and play-acting is cheating, and as such, all part of the game. Participants in all sports cheat in some way or other. Nobody likes it, but it's been around forever. It's a snide little game is football, full of ways of bending the rules to try and win the match.

And Luis Figo is the biggest cheat of them all.

I've only just stopped wincing! Those are some painful injuries.
These players don't bear in mind that they are being watched by thousands of people, children included, and then they wonder why soccer violence is escalating. What really annoys me is violence against the ref. He's just doing his job! If they have an issue with him they should take it up after the match, not set upon him like a bunch of dogs.


:toofar: at the Neil Lennon one, ouch

Shell, I know for a fact that you haven;'t just called football 'soccer'...

Diving and play-acting is cheating I don't mind if people attempt to cheat (good on them if they get away with it) but all that Hollywooding and whining and tantrums just makes the people who do it look like petulant little toddlers.

Lol BA

It's a phenomenon. Nobody calls football 'Soccer' in England, but everybody calls Football violence 'soccer violence' :)

Seriously when people BARELY get touched and they go down holding their heads like they were shot or something it REALLY pisses me off. Especially when over fify thousand or so people see it ...

It's not significantly different than when some 6'3" guard barely grazes a 6'9" power forward who outweighs him by 60 pounds, but who promptly flops to the ground looking for a charge in the NBA. (That being said, watching Vlade jump 15 feet backwards to skid on his butt, even before Shaq lowered his shoulder into Vlade's sternum, was high comedy :p .)

I'll appease Barmy and refer to soccer as football, and if I want to refer to NFL I'll call it American Football. ;)

I've tried watching football. I've tried getting into it...probably never more so than when my kids were playing a few years ago and they wanted to follow the World Cup. I've tried to be more global in my sports appreciation of late and have tried to understand and enjoy rugby, Australian football, cricket...even curling...but in spite of my best efforts, I still can't get into football, for the very reasons others are mentioning here.

I've never seen more whining, flopping, complaining, histrionics, griping and feigning as I've seen in football. I watch sports to see physical performances not false drama. The only other sport that I think even comes close to the hissy dramatics I saw in football was NBA basketball...before they tightened the rules and started charging players with technical fouls if they didn't keep their mouths shut. The NBA still lets the superstars get away with too much, but at least their trying to make them "shut up and play"...I see no provisions to do that in football.

I guess for football fans, this is all just part of the game, but it's the part of the game that makes me keep turning it off. Possibly if I lived somewhere where I could see major football events live, I might get swept up into the emotion and not be bothered by it, but with my only access to world class football via television, I don't see myself jumping onto the band wagon any time soon.

[edit: I see dmc was already calling out the NBA for un-needed dramatics]

To be honest, I don't so much follow high end football for the reasons you have given. The Premiership, La Liga and Serie A leagues are full of overpaid, over-ego'd, over-dramatic, over-dressed pansies.
I follow lower league football, where the guys get paid a respectable wage, but not stupid money, and play the game as it always has been: Leg-snappingly tough.
I do enjoy any kind of football though, despite the histrionics and prancing. Footy is just in my blood.

That's true. In the lower leagues you could say the game is more fierce and there's more blood involved because they play the game properly because they aren't really trying to impress anyone. In the case of the higher leagues, players will do anything just to get ahead, but when they make a false move in front of 50k people THEN you have a problem because THAT's when you're not playing the game anymore. Pathetic really.

@Barmy

Biting? Did you say biting? Is there hair pulling too? And this R Keane, I've never heard of her. Is she hot? :p

Biting? Is there hair pulling too?Hey! That's the way girls fight! What a bunch of sissy poofs!

Ref biting! Imagine a basketball player suddenly turning around and taking a chunk out of the ref - Tyson stylie ;) .

Man, I love FOOTY FIGHTS (http://www.sissyfight.com/), best online game ever! :grin:

Looking at the videos I have yet to see ANYTHING in SOCCER to compare with LT breaking Thiesman's leg (compound fracture by bending Joe IN HALF - sideways - while a 350 pound linebacker was laying on Joe's legs).

Soccer is still not a real man's sport. Show clips from Rugby.

'Soccer' is not a real mans sport as apposed to what, baseball perhaps? Or maybe American football where a foul gets called when one guy strokes another guys nipple.

I'll leave it with you our kid...

Americans :shake:

American football where a foul gets called when one guy strokes another guys nipple.
Hmmm... never seen that one. Although I have seen 300 pound guys hit head-to-head and break their necks. Nothing beats the hit to a receiver during a high, over-the-middle catch. I've seen many receivers removed in a stretcher after those hits (and no penalties called -- I guess the defender stayed away from the nipple).

I'll leave it with you our kid... I'm really not sure what that means.

I'll leave it with you our kid...I'm really not sure what that means. UK, US, U figure it out. :roll:
'Soccer' is not a real mans sport as apposed to what ... ? I believe T2 mentioned rugby...

Hmmm... never seen that one. I have, and even at the superbowl. American football is the most stoppy-starty game I've ever seen.

UK, US, U figure it out. [whee!] ?
What I said is just a saying. It basically means 'you're on your own on that one mate'.

I believe T2 mentioned rugby... Rugby is a British sport which coincidently has fewer injuries than football, and far fewer serious injuries.
Play football and have someone two-foot tackle you round the back of your legs with metal studs. Weight and all this other fancy dan stuff is crap. That will hurt more than anything.

You really should try and not to be so narrow-minded, Bruno. I say these things for your own good. I try to educate people.

Rugby is a British sport which coincidently has fewer injuries than football, and far fewer serious injuries. Because the guys who play rugby don't fall over in agony every time someone comes anywhere near them, like they do in soccer.

Now for a *real* man's sport, look no further than Aussie rules football. No play diving, no armor... just 1970s style shorts, ridiculous socks, and mullets for everyone and you're good to go.

Too bad nobody gives a crap about that one.

A few million people in Melbourne might dispute that. Those guys go absolutely nuts over that sport. I've seen women cry who missed out on getting tickets to certain games.

"Aussie rule" was the only way I played football as a kid. No one in my neighborhood had pads, just a lot of broken bones and scars.

You really should try and not to be so narrow-minded, Bruno. I say these things for your own good. I try to educate people. Good one. I like that.

No one in my neighborhood had pads, just a lot of broken bones and scars.And mullets. A lot of them. You too. Admit it.

Actually, Aussie Rules is very different from US football. It's played on an oval field, with everyone running about madly making forward passes by punching or kicking the ball. At least Rugby rules football is played on a grid.

When I was in Melbourne in Fall 2004 all these fans were running around wearing scarves that were either red and gold or teal and black (brisbane vs part adilaide?). Like Gryffindor was playing Slytherin.

The whole point is. Uninformed people (read: Americans) refer to football as a girls sissy sport, to try and ridicule it. But when broken legs, snapped metatarsals, broken noses and crunched nuts happen quite regular, it clearly isn't ;) .

It's the worlds most popular sport for a reason.

Thats why everyone should follow the Scottish league. Sure its not perfect, but Scots hardly play act when you compare them to the English, Italians, Portugese and Spanish. Also, SPL is far more interesting now that its not all Old Firm dominated, mainly due to Romanov's influence in making Hearts into a European class team.

I don´t understand the obsession of the american for prove his manliness. Ok, the (american) football is entertaining, but a sport with two hippos with shoulders pads struggling between, is not really a "really man sport", maybe a "really fat man sport".
The soccer is not rude, is more based in skill and intelligence, but sometimes is very rude with broken legs and noses.

The girliness in soccer is nothing to do with the injuries that people get (a broken leg does not make you a man). The girliness comes from all the play acting and fake injuries that the players in the top leagues keep suffering from (which then unfortunately encourages the junior players to do the same).

Cheating happens in all sports. I see players in rugby try to disguise offside tackles. I've seen cricket players try to claim catches they never made. I see football players to trick the ref into giving them a foul, when they weren't fouled.

Professional sports have cheating.

It's not the cheating part of it that's girly. It's the girly cry baby play acting.

"Boo hoo, that horrible man bumped into me and I fell over. Waaa, waaaa, Mr Referee! Save me! Save me! I'm dying, save me! [referee makes a decision or ignores player, and player is instantly cured, just like a little baby who falls over and cries and then stops when he sees a butterfly go past]

A cricketer doesn't cry and moan when a fast bowler hits him hard on the body somewhere. A rugby player doesn't cry and pretend to be mortally wounded after someone tackles him. I'm sorry, but big league soccer players come across as being petulant little brats. It's that that makes it a girly sport. The sport itself is great, but many of the players spoil it by being silly and immature. And the biggest problem is that kids copy their heroes' behaviour in their own games.

A cricketer doesn't cry and moan when a fast bowler hits him hard on the body somewhere. A rugby player doesn't cry and pretend to be mortally wounded after someone tackles him. I'm sorry, but big league soccer players come across as being petulant little brats. It's that that makes it a girly sport. The sport itself is great, but many of the players spoil it by being silly and immature. And the biggest problem is that kids copy their heroes' behaviour in their own games. That's because those things in cricket and rugby are perfectly legal. Tackles in football are usually very borderline legal, so to try and get an advantage to his team, a player sometimes tries to sway the referees decision. It's not petulance,it's intelligence. I don't like it and never have done. But it's a smart thing to do if you know you've lost the ball.
Fortunately, the English leagues are not 'so' much like this as the Spanish and especially Italian leagues are. I can barely watch a Serie A match because of all the whistles going off all the time. But that's just the Italians being very good play actors. But they get away with it. Don't blame the players, they're just doing their best to get advantages for their tean. Blame the ref's for being stupid enough to fall for it.

I persoanlyl think that yellow cards whenever the ref thinks a player has dived, will persuade players to keep on their feet much more.

It's not petulance,it's intelligence.No, it's petulance. People take dives in all types of sports when they think they've been fouled. Someone bumps into you when you're trying to make a shot in basketball, you fall down, hoping to get a foul called. When a receiver in American football gets bumped into and cannot make the catch, he falls over hoping to get a flag thrown. I can come up with other examples if you'd like. However, at no time does the player roll around on the ground in mock-agony. He gets back up immediately, unless on the off chance that he really is hurt, which 99% of the time, he isn't.

That's because in any sport I'm aware of, an injury is not the criteria for whether something is against the rules or not. If you do something against the rules, it results in a penalty/foul regardless of whether or not you injure the opposing player. How is it "intelligent" to pretend you're injured if that's not the basis of why a penalty/foul is called? If a player is injured by someone making a legal play, do they call a penalty/foul for that in soccer? They don't in any other sport I'm aware of. That's another reason why I don't think taking a dive should be called cheating. In fact, if anything, the person committing the penalty is cheating, i.e., he is performing an act against the rules of the competition, which seems to be the very definition of cheating.

Exactly, diving happens in all sports, it's not just in footy. It's rare that a player feigns injury in football, but when he does, he's trying to make a foul look worse than it actually was. He does this to try and get the other player yellow carded or even sent off. Simple as that. Going down under a foul, then getting right up, is honest and a good thing to do. But honesty does not win football matches. It's all about winning. If a player goes down under a tackle screaming and clutching his leg, the ref is going to be more inclined to think "bloody hell, that was a bad one, I'll book him for that". Good refs don't get swayed by that though.

It is cheating by the way. Someone going down when they weren't fouled. Or play acting to try and get another player sent off is against the rules of football. It's conniving and decietful, but a great advantage for your team if it works. That's why people do it.

Barmy,

What I'm saying though is that the only sport where I have seen players pretending they were injured by an illegal move is soccer. It goes beyond taking a dive. You're right in saying that people take dives in all sports, I think the problem people have with soccer is that in other sports people don't scream in agony and grab whatever part of the body the opposing player hit. They fall over, and immediately jump back up and get back into the game, without pretending to be injured.

Obviously, the point of taking a dive is so that it seems that the contact was greater than it was, and to therefore make the referee more inclined to call a penalty/foul. But pretending you're injured goes to another level, and I think that's where the debate is. Like I said before, if someone does something against the rules, it should be called by the referee regardless of whether you were injured or not. Legal plays do not become illegal plays just because someone gets injured. It happens in American football all the time. A guy will be running with the ball, he gets tackled from behind, and he sprains his ankle as he goes down. But it's a legal play. They don't call a penalty on the guy making the tackle just because the guy he tackled got hurt.

The other problem I think you get is that when people pretend to be injured so often, you won't know when the guy actually needs help, and needs to get off the field. When a guy stays down after the play in American football, you KNOW he's hurt, and a medical team runs out onto the field immediately. Granted, there aren't too many sports injuries where a delay in getting help for another minute or two is going to have any adverse effects on the long-term health of the player, but it's for the 1%-2% of the time that it will.

I think we're on cross-purposes here a bit. A player doesn't pretend to be injured to try and make the ref more inclined to call a foul. That's what they dive for. A player will pretened to be injured to try and make the punishment greater.

You're telling me that if say, in basketball two guys jump for the ball, and one elbows the other in the face, but doesn't hurt him, the punishment will be the same if he breaks his nose and blacks his eye? Of course not, he'll get a bigger punishment.

Anyway, I don't like diving for play-acting any more than anyone else. I don't try to condone it, just explain it. Unfortunately, it's seemed to have seeped into the English game with all these foriegners coming into our our league. The Italians, Argentines and the Spanish are the biggest divers and play-acting in the game. The fact is though that it doesn't detract much from the game. Just because a guy tries to feign injury doesn't mean he's wimpy, just that he's snide. Leave them with it if they want to try it, a good ref won't be fooled. The game itself is still just as good and just as passionate.

I mostly watch lower league football anyway, following Chesterfield FC home and away. You want to see some tough football, check lower league football out. No messing around in there.

The whole point is. Uninformed people (read: Americans) refer to football as a girls sissy sport, to try and ridicule it. I'm American and I don't think it's a girls sissy sport (that would be tennis :D ). I was merely mocking your attempt at making soccer seem macho. It isn't. Moreover, it doesn't need to be.
If you like it, then enjoy it, and ignore what others think of it. You like what you like and that is what matters.

I don´t understand the obsession of the american for prove his manliness. Funny, this thread was started by Barmy, who was trying to prove that soccer was manly. Irony, it's what's for dinner! :p

Now let's stop all of this nonsense about girlishness and faking injuries and get back to...OW! I just got a hang nail typing this! OWIE OWIE OWIE! :p

You're telling me that if say, in basketball two guys jump for the ball, and one elbows the other in the face, but doesn't hurt him, the punishment will be the same if he breaks his nose and blacks his eye? Of course not, he'll get a bigger punishment. Actually, the punishment will not be based on the level of injury AT ALL. The only thing that would change the punishment is if the referee decided that the elbow to the face was deliberate or inadvertent.

If the referee feels it was a deliberate act, then the guy gets ejected from the game, regardless of whether the opposing players was hurt or not. In fact, in the NBA, you are ejected for even throwing an elbow or a punch at another player, even if you miss. In other words, the mere act of taking a swing at another player causes the ejection. It doesn't matter if you even hit the guy.

Conversely, if it was inadvertent, whether the guys gets a small bruise, or gets his teeth knocked out, it's just a regular foul, like any other. He gets two free throws, just like any other foul. If he is too injured to continue to play, then whatever player replaces him gets to shoot the two free throws.

I'll spell it out one more time - the fact that someone is injured is not why the penalty is called. The obvious corollary to that statement is that the severity of the injury does not cause the penalty to increase.

That's a bit silly. If I was going to foul someone in basketball, I'd make sure to break his leg or nose, or get him out of the game some other way, if I knew the punishment would only be the same.

I'm surprised teams best players aren't simply targetted for injuries in that case. Send on some big burly guy who you won't mind missing, and send him out to break Michael Jordan or whoever in half. Job's half done.

The punishment MUST match the severity of the foul in my book. In footy, for example, if a player jumps into some others knees two-footed with the studs showing, but doesn't really hurt the guym he'll get punished, definitely a yellow and maybe a red. If he breaks his knee or snaps a few liagments or whatever, and forces him too be stretchered off and spend a lengthy time in hospital - he'll get a straight red, and probably be banned for a few games.

You're telling me that if say, in basketball two guys jump for the ball, and one elbows the other in the face, but doesn't hurt him, the punishment will be the same if he breaks his nose and blacks his eye? Absolutely. Where the punishment comes into play is if it was through gross negligence or malice. The one incident that I always think of when it comes to serious injuries is about a year and a half ago in American football, when Donovan Darius clotheslined Robert Ferguson. In the replay you could see Darius's arm come up, and then back down, tracking with Ferguson's head and neck, intentionally trying to cold-cock him. Ferguson could have been killed. As it is, he was lucky not to have been made a quadroplegic.

On the other side, we have Donald Driver (another receiver for the same team) put in much the same situation, not once but twice. He makes a catch, gets hit in midair, and comes down awkwardly on his head and neck. Remember this happened twice and neither time was the tackler called for anything, because they weren't actively trying to injure him, just make the tackle. Intent is the golden standard.

EDIT: If I was going to foul someone in basketball, I'd make sure to break his leg or nose, or get him out of the game some other way, if I knew the punishment would only be the same. 1. That's reprehensible. I sincerely hope you are only speaking in the theoretical sense and would never actually do that yourself in a game. :toofar:
2. That's also where intent comes in. If you were actively trying to harm him, you can bet your a$$ you're going to be ejected, fined, and almost certainly suspended (hopefully also jail time, but athletes are often above the law :rolleyes: ). Professional sports players, like it or not, are role models, and must act as such. Good sportsmanship is a requirement, not an option.

[ April 14, 2006, 19:11: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

Well yes, it has to be intentional...

I'm surprised teams best players aren't simply targetted for injuries in that case. Send on some big burly guy who you won't mind missing, and send him out to break Michael Jordan or whoever in half. Job's half done. Watch hockey sometime. They have no qualms about being sent to the penalty box for taking a good player out of the game. But it only happens there because they allow it to happen; punishment for that kind of intentional thing is more severe in other sports.
In footy, for example, if a player jumps into some others knees two-footed with the studs showing, but doesn't really hurt the guym he'll get punished, definitely a yellow and maybe a red. If he breaks his knee or snaps a few liagments or whatever, and forces him too be stretchered off and spend a lengthy time in hospital - he'll get a straight red, and probably be banned for a few games. That seems rather stupid to me. If the intent was the same, then what are you punishing? Skill? :hahaerr: Injury severity should only affect the fine, as compensation for what you inflicted. If you were trying to break his leg, it doesn't matter if you succeeded or not; the intent was still there. Where "attempted" or not comes into play is only in the legal system, where punishment is meted out (probably just a fine since athletes are above the law as I said before).

Well yes, it has to be intentional...That was my point. An inadvertent elbow to the face is going to get a regular foul called on you. A deliberate elbow to the face is going to get you ejected, and possibly suspended.

That's why I said the severity of the injury has nothing directly to do with the penalty. Attempting to injure someone carries the exact same punishment as actually injuring someone. They don't reward you for being an incompetent cheater as opposed to a competent cheater.

EDIT: Fel was typing while I was, and explained the same thing as me, but did so much more eloquently than my explanation.

"Woah, you should have seen this game the other day, Roberts threw a punch at Smith! it was mad!", "Wow, what happened, how bad was it?", "Well, he snapped his nose, 4 of his teeth fell out and he had to be carried to the hospital!", "****, Roberts'll get a nice ban then"

"Woah, you should have seen this game the other day, Roberts threw a punch at Smith! it was mad!", "Wow, what happened, how bad was it?", "Well, er... he missed", "Chuff me, big ****in' deal then!"

Ok? Get what I'm trying to say now? ;) Big injuries carry more weight, get more press and media coverage and are more likely to get fines / bans later. If he did sod all to him, it just doesn't LOOK as bad, so probably nothing will happen except punishment during the game.

It's all about making things look worse than they are. Which is what I've been trying to say. Anyway 'The fact is though that it doesn't detract much from the game. Just because a guy tries to feign injury doesn't mean he's wimpy, just that he's snide. Leave them with it if they want to try it, a good ref won't be fooled. The game itself is still just as good and just as passionate'. It doesn't effect the game being the best sport on the planet ;) .

So, let me get this straight, in soccer, if someone pulls someone elses hair on purpose, then they get in trouble. But if the guy only pretended to get his hair pulled, then it would be ignored, by a good ref? :D

Yeah, Jack Funk, I suppose it's similar to an American footballer only pretending to his nipple stroked, in order to draw a foul :) .

Jack likes to degrade football i guess, probably because Jack never really fully got tackled on the anckles while playing the game.

Oh wait....how silly of me...Jack is not a girl, so naturally he doesn't play that stupid game.

Sorry Jack

Pac Man - or, you could actually read Jack's posts, where you would find this:

I'm American and I don't think it's a girls sissy sport (that would be tennis ). I was merely mocking your attempt at making soccer seem macho. It isn't. Moreover, it doesn't need to be.
If you like it, then enjoy it, and ignore what others think of it. You like what you like and that is what matters.