Goals! it's what the game is about, achieving them and of course scoring them. We spend hours of our lives watching and waiting for the Goal. It's all about getting the ball in the net and it's sometimes surprisingly difficult and that, is the value of football. Other sports achieve their excitement in other ways but many treat their scores with as much value as a parking fine for a millionaire. Basketball for example a sport where 'goals' come thick and fast and because of that it's not a sport I value very highly. They don't value their scoring and I don't value their game. Football is different, 90 minutes and 22 players with 20 of them all trying to enable a goal,it often results in just 1 or 2 Goals and sometimes none at all. Goals in football are so precious, so special, when they happen we record them, we remember them, sometimes for the rest of our lives. I'm sure American sport does not understand this at all, their games are all about scoring, and it's why Football is not understood by the majority in the U.S.A. Football is the world game because it's so difficult to score a goal, it mirrors life for the majority. Most people know how very difficult it is to achieve their goals and they don't want their games to cheapen the effort by making it easy. That's right I am in a philosophical mood! But talking of Americans, imagine if our Dempsey had managed to get his foot on the ball 4 or 5 times this season and put it in the net. Would we all be questioning the wisdom of signing him? I don't think so do you! He's had 4 or 5 chances but being a fraction too late or too early, just millimeters, he hasn't connected with the ball in that perfect way that sends it crashing into the net, changing him from a liability into a hero. That of course is why strikers cost so much, we pay for the millimeters, we pay for those tiny fractions that turn a Postiga into a Greaves. I will try to remember next time I am watching Spurs with my legs twitching as I try to put the ball in the net for them (not easy from the sofa) how valuable goals are and how difficult they are to come by. And I will also try to remember that it's the rarity of goals that keeps me coming back for more.
Goals - The thing AVB only ever seems to want one of in a game before bringing on DM's and CB's to try and preserve it. But then concede.
With goals being the key element to the game, technology has been a long time coming to decide if the ball has or hasn't crossed the line. Its incredible really the key elements of other sports have had technical back up for years, but the old farts that run our game have managed to shun it this long, despite pressure from within the game.
They're close to bringing in goal-line cameras aren't they? I thought it was going to be tried in some competition or other. FIFA perhaps, they know the value of a goal.........about 1.5million per board member. Did I say that!
For me, yes. In the same way as you've described the value of a goal, I think it's just as important to value the build up that leads to that goal and the overall play amongst 5 or 6 potential players who were part of it. I think this is why I couldn't stand Darren bent, despite him scoring goals. There's something very unsatisfying for me about a player that doesn't possess certain skills required in their position that lead up to a goal, or, the way the goal is scored. - tap in's or 6 yard scrambles for example, do nothing for me, and that's all that Bent seemed to have in his locker when he was with us. Almost every goal was minging. I'm not saying that every goal needs to be a wonder strike, but you've only got to look at you tube video's of Dempsey in his fulham days. There's so many goals where he's sliding on his arse from 6 yards to poke it in the net. Lennon and bale are exciting. Although Lennon doesn't score many, the excitement of him on the ball beating defenders with his pace just for that split second is enough to give me a sense of that "wow" factor. The same goes for JD. He can do very little for an entire game, but suddenly he'll pull something out of nowhere when you need him most; often scoring a goal that oozes class, whether that's from 6 yards or 20 yards. he's got many different characteristics to lennon, but perhaps it's that sense of feeling that you can rely on him in certain situations to produce something quite magical. - Take that first goal against maribor where he opened up his body and just connected with the ball and guided it with his right foot into the bottom corner - one of the reasons why i don't understand why he gets so much stick. There's something about Dempsey that isn't exciting and even if he'd scored 4 of 5 more goals, I would still be left with a feeling of emptiness due to his overall play. it's hard to explain what I mean, but I think it can only be described as "not being a spurs type of player" (from what I've seen so far). Goes back to my point about Darren Bent. he'd often not be involved (a bit like berba at times). But when Bent got the ball I just didn't have that faith in him, and the type of goals he scored and his general input over 90 mins just didn't do it for me. Berba was a strange one. he'd walk about the pitch looking like he was putting no effort in, but you always had that sense of feeling that you could rely on him to set something up when it seemed impossible, often with his back to goal, or he'd score something which was just genius. I'm yet to see anything from Dempsey that gives me that spurs type of player adrenalin rush. But it's not just about attackers and scoring, it's about all the positions on the pitch. Vertonghen and Benny are just 2 defensive examples of this. There's just something about them from a defensive point of view, where I also get that feeling of them just being suited to us and being exciting in their own way.
Roo I agree with most of that especially about Bent and of course I'm not saying that strikers are the only ones that count, far from it. I was just trying to look at the essence of the game and the point. The complexities we debate all the time, this is a sort of back to basics thread.
Spurf, i know you weren't saying strikers are the only ones who count, i just had to use other positons to get across what my thoughts were mate it's a very interesting thread, hence why i've gone off on one! However, at the same time as trying to go back to basics, it almost opens up a can of worms. I've of a generation that's only witnessed us win 2 league cups. terrible, eh? But this means that winning isn't something i'm used to. Therefore I always look at Spurs for the entertainment I get for 90 mins and always have done. "goals" are are a far more complexed topic for me. The thought of us winning 1-0 each week and scoring poor goals would be enough for me to disown Tottenham as the club I love. I just want entertainment, excitement and a rush for 90 mins. - which in recent years, we've had an abundance of with spurs, good and bad. That comes from the types of players I've mentioned above and makes scoring a goal mean so much with such a level complexity overall. (bit of an exaggeration on the disowning bit btw, but i'm sure you get what i mean.)
They are mate, it was all passed in July this year, with the authorities saying, "yep, right, we'll implement it asap"....and still we wait to hear a thing since! In contrast Tennis looked at this during 04, trialled a system in 05, and it was in competition in 06...and thats a system that judges whether a ball has crossed how many lines!! The dithering by footballs governing bodies is unbelievable!
Agree again! at Spurs we expect exciting football it's a part of our history. The American philosophy is all about winning. The trouble with that is that there is only one winner so most of us have to settle for something else as well, otherwise it becomes pointless. If Spurs have played well and entertained and still lost we accept that, it's when we have played badly and lost or even won then we don't feel good. In a way being a Man. U. supporter in recent years is not as exciting as say being a Fulham supporter or a Spurs supporter. They have come to expect success so can only get a downer when thing go wrong the winning is status quo. When we beat them I'm sure we get a bigger high and when we win something (and we will) we will all go ballistic.
Random point: Steven Caulker - Centre back - 7 league games, 2 goals. Olivier Giroud - Centre forward - 11 league games, 3 goals. Price for Caulker - £0 + Development fees. Price for Giroud - £12,000,000
I enjoyed reading your philosophical interpretation and I think your spot. I think you have been smoking some good herbs since yesterday judging from this and your comments on the 'am I the only one' thread by RCL
The truly great goalscorers, like Jimmy Greaves, just always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and rarely spurned a goalscoring opportunity. So, I think there's more than just luck to it.
Interesting thread. Also, cool profile picture. Fans of other teams don't understand how important Lennon's ability to create a buzz is. So often it seems like the turning point of games, whether it's because he got the team or crowd energized, or the other team scared. I like the scarcity and value of goals in football. What has really gotten me hooked, though, to tell the truth, is that American sports are always to some degree a province of the stupidity of men in groups; you enter a world of willfully dumb American athletics. For example, you're not allowed to take part in an American professional sport without dressing up like a fool. They often tend to depend on genetic freakishness/alteration; a simple combination of size and speed. Football is frighteningly like life; more or less normally dressed people compete in a game almost totally reliant on skill. Its much harder to maintain distance from it, to shunt it off into a fairly minor category of life the way most US fans do with most of our sports. Having said all that, most non-Americans really need a good second sport, if only to give the poor football players enough time to rest up and recover properly for another season. You might give basketball (see below) or gridiron another look, though rugby may be better than either. I feel compelled to address the criticism of American sports, even though I more or less share it. You know, outsiders criticising your own, etc. I'd first point out that in baseball (though it's duller than watching paint dry), only a couple of hitters per year manage to get a hit one time in three at bats. In cricket, batters get hit after hit at the same at bat, which is truly dull. Baseball batters have to use a rounded surface to hit, while they give cricketers a flat bat. Hit a round ball with a round bat squarely defines the goal of baseball--while the ball is going 90 mph and spinning and curving in any direction. At least it's damn hard. Basketball for me is ruined not so much by scoring as by the fact that all the scoring means most games come down to the last two minutes--meaning you might as well not watch the rest of the game. But it is the game of our poor city kids (not to mention much of the rest of the country). There's a similar general idea to football, and a similar emphasis on dribbling and passing flair--except that it's all trumped by planet theory (Planet theory points out that there are only a handful of seven foot tall people on the planet who can run the floor fast and hit a twenty foot jump shot consistently.)
I was thinking after I'd written it that this might prompt an interesting post from your self and you didn't let me down. I take your point on baseball the trouble is in the UK we associate it with rounders, a game we played at school with girls. (Que the smutty remarks). From the point of view of an outsider Baseball does seem about the most interesting American sport. Cricket is rarely understood by foreigners. Many years ago I was in the Frankfurt region of Germany a friend and myself (Both English) got a lift on an American bus carrying American kids to a baseball match. They asked us about cricket. We had great fun telling them that the idea was to knock the batsmen's head off with the ball which was as hard as a rock. What they could not believe was that the game could last 5 days and end in a draw. I think it confirmed their suspicions that the English were all mad!
Great thread Spurf! Goals are so rare that it always surprises me that the better team so often wins close matches. I feel it ought to be more random. But it also punishes mistakes which is our problem this year
