By Harold
The NCAA Division I men’s soccer tournament — the College Cup — was played in the Raleigh suburb of Cary this past weekend, and I followed top-seeded Akron for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
There were some great storylines coming in, including your classic underdog story. Akron had never won a national championship in any team sport. It was going against three perennial powers, including five-time national champion Virginia. And it had to do it in the big dog’s backyard, playing its semifinal against North Carolina just 25 minutes from Chapel Hill.
So I wrote five stories about Akron soccer over a three-day period as the Zips moved through the tournament, totaling about 3,500 words. Unfortunately, the one thing I could never write about was a goal. In both the semifinal against North Carolina and the final against Virginia), there were a total of zero goals in regulation or overtime. That’s a total of three hours and 40 minutes, and the best teams in soccer scored as much as Noodle.
Here you can read about Akron’s semifinal win, and then the heartbreaking finals loss.
If anyone needs an excuse not to follow soccer, seeing the two most important matches of the season decided on a skills competition provides an obvious one. But I don’t know any other way of doing it. I know hockey and field hockey start taking players off the field in overtime, but I’m not sure how realistic that is for soccer since players are already exhausted. An interesting idea I’ve heard is making the goal bigger (it’s currently 24 feet by 8 feet), but the dimensions are so ingrained by now I don’t think it would ever happen.
The one thing I would like to see is more coaches take chances offensively. I think both Akron and Virginia (combined shots on goal: 6) were too willing to go to PKs. I think 110 minutes in college (or 120 in the pros) is plenty of time, and if you stayed back and didn’t push forward the whole game, then you can’t complain about whatever happens after overtime.
Laura
Harold
OK, full disclosure — this is your father who knows (and generally cares) nothing about sports.
But this seems an opportune time to mention how utterly idiotic it is to decide a hard-fought no-score soccer game on penalty kicks. They don’t decide tied baseball games with a home-run derby or basketball with a mid-court shooting contest, do they? What in the world does the penalty kick have to do with soccer skill? All that matters is that the goalie happens to move the wrong direction, which is solely a random choice on his part. Just flip a coin if the contest is going to be decided purely by chance. OK, now back to work.