NOW I HATE BASEBALL EVEN MORE
I recently complained about the MLS playing games on American football fields. I thought it couldn’t get worse in terms of venue for a professional soccer team. THEN I watched Columbus play at Kansas City in the first round of playoffs last night… ON A BASEBALL FIELD. Officials claim the converted CommunityAmerica Ballpark accommodated the FIFA minimum 70-yard width. I cross-checked a couple of maps and it actually worked out. There is JUST enough room for a minimum size pitch. The field just LOOKED 40 yards wide because we are used to watching quality matches on decent fields, 90 or so yards wide. The 70 yard minimum, as one ONN announcer put it, is more like a bowling alley. Don’t get me started on bowling!
Just look at this map!
You can sit on the grass (”cauldron”) 4 inches from the field, or pay for a seat in section 103, a location far enough away that you have to pay a different county’s sales tax on your ticket. This stadium looks like a Christmas ornament when you put a soccer field in it.
Conclusion: Play in a rectangle!!!
Shameful… simply shameful.
Yep. Just terrible. Especially since they’re going to be there forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
Oh look, the sky is falling.
Agreed. We in Columbus intend on showing KC what a real stadium environment is this week.
Have to feel for you football-loving Yanks, I sort of take it for granted that its the national sport over her.
I don’t think this has anything to do with baseball. I think this has to do with a bad league, and an even worse organization in the KC Wizards. Think about how many college or high school stadiums in the area that would be better than this venue.
What the hell’s wrong with futbol(Soccer)? If anything it’s bad for futbol because now it might be associated with that sh*thole thing they call a sport(Baseball).
Kevin, you mean the same Columbus team that can’t draw flies to their stadium?
if you’re going to type the rest of your post in english, why bother using the spanish ‘futbol’?
I had the same reaction, being a KC Wizards fan, but this is only a temporary stadium while their real stadium is built (so I was told by the Wizards people). They decided not to continue w/ Arrowhead due to prices to rent it out, so instead they went this route while their new stadium is being built. It is sad to see it, and while they are there I will never go to a game, but I will be there once they are playing in their new stadium.
I watched that game — well, the first half. I couldn’t get over it. Just awful. Plain awful. Kansas City has no business hosting playoff games there. It’s like the Yankees hosting the world series in a little league stadium.
I have to agree with Kevin, though. Crew Stadium is awesome. I visited three times this year (Once to see us beat KC, once to see us beat LA and once to see us beat DC) and I just love it. No ‘Shoe’, but it’s fantastic for the purpose.
90 yards width is not necessarily better than 70. I’ve seen a lot of good games, especially in Europe, played on fields that were neither the maximum width or length. If Americans want to learn the tight-space skills required to be competitive against class opposition, they had better get some experience on small fields!
Yeah, when I used to watch Bayern Munich in Germany, every once in a while they would say, let’s make the field a minimum width so we can really show off our tight-space skills!
mcavennie:
I have heard before Europe has better soccer than America… I’ll have to check that out one day. Is it televised?
The size of the field is not necessarily the problem. Americans are as adept at playing on small fields as they are playing on large. I think it’s fallacy to assume one format requires more skill than another. This is the reason FIFA recognizes any field within the acceptable dimensions… variance in these dimensions doesn’t significantly affect play.
It’s the introduction of a venue is in no way suited for anything but baseball, with playing surface at least 15 yards narrower than any other field in the league, DURING THE PLAYOFFS that causes the problem for me. And it sucked to watch on TV.
[...] O RLY? Hoffenheim is so small, the team plays in front of only FIVE THOUSAND. What’s worse? Leading a top European league and only playing in front of 5,000 or playing on a baseball field? [...]
The size of the field does affect the style of play, Brazilians for example always use huge fields to exploit their speed and to give more room for their Nº 3 and 4 to attack. A small field is an advantage to the home team if they learn how to exploit it, long balls to the fowards and a compact deffense can be very hard to overcome in a small field if your team is not used to it. Also the deffense needs to be more focused, because the ball can go from one goal to the other in no time….
wow….a baseball stadium is not a soccer pitch. Thanks for the update Captain Obvious.
In other news, the MLS sucks and so do its fans.
Brian: I didn’t say the size of a field didn’t affect the style of play. Style of play changes, but skill level requirements do not. I also said it doesn’t affect play in general, meaning, it’s still the same sport.
Grumpy: Thanks for the cliché, Captain Die Immediately
OrangeShorts - “I have heard before Europe has better soccer than America… I’ll have to check that out one day. Is it televised?”
Please…PLEASE tell me you are joking. Is European soccer televised? Of course it is! It is the best soccer (football to most of the world) you will ever see. Soccer in Europe is insanely popular around the world. You won’t have to “check it out one day”, just read the words I am typing: Europe has always been and will forever be better at soccer than America.
Joking?! Why would somebody joke about something so SERIOUS?
The problem with soccer in the U.S. is that it has too much competition from other sports for kids to be interested and develop to the level of players from around the world. There are other factors in the choice of sport among kids than popularity, and the biggest one in my opinion is economic. Soccer is by far the cheapest sport to pick up and play. All you need is a round object, a flat surface and 4 markers to determine goal posts. This means that any kid anywhere in the world, no matter how shitty his living environment is can find a way to play. In the U.S. however parents are willing to pay money to pick up equipment for their kids to play baseball, hockey, american football, and lacrosse. We even have a staggering number of charities that provide this equipment free to poorer families. This leeches our best athletes to these other sports leaving soccer in the shitter with our second tier athletes. The biggest problems for soccer in america is the fact that most families have enough money to pay for the equipment to play other sports, the popularity of a variety of other sports, and the fact that our best athletes leave to succeed in other sports. But let me say this. If athletes in the mold of say kobe bryant, lebron james, alex rodriguez, reggie bush, adrian peterson or tom brady had grown up kicking around a soccerball instead of passing around a football or basketball or hitting a baseball then the state of american soccer would be in a much better situation than it currently is, in fact, we could even be a world contender if we actually got our best atheltes into shape to play soccer on a worlds scale. Even as it is right now our second tier athletes are ranked 20something in the world in the FIFA rankings. Imagine what it would be like if the sport had no other competition in the U.S. and our most gifted athletes were playing the most beautiful sport in the world. It would almost be scary. Now im not saying that we could train the best current U.S. athletes to win at soccer. That would just be stupid. But imagine if they had the amount of experience that say a Ballack or a John Terry, or a C. Ronaldo, or a Kaka had playing the sport, growing up since pretty much birth with a soccerball at their feet. I bet they would be pretty damn good.
JIM PLEASE… PLEASE GET FUCKING REAL LOLOLOL
Yeah I write a soccer blog and didn’t realize they had soccer in Europe. I thought it was an American fad! Sue me!
Unbelievable.
P.S. Are you telling me Landon Donovan isn’t the best player in the world? Because this I know to be false.
Wow, how’d we go from talking about playing on a baseball field to a completely boring, re-hashed cliche about about how our “best athletes” don’t grow up playing soccer?
If only a great athlete like Kevin Garnett played soccer!
The first problem with football in the US is that there aren’t enough goals and it isn’t fast enough, meaning the average dipshit American will never understand the sheer joy one can experience from watching your team grind out a one-nil away from home against a better team. The second problem is you just don’t understand football culture, you don’t have the history to be passionate about your teams. Look at Chivas USA or whatever they are called. Best supported team in the country, because they are supported mainly by Mexicans, a nation who know football a hell of a lot more than Americans. Low media interest and poor support from the punters mean no funding. Stick to baseball or ‘gridiron’ or basketball eh?
Waaal,
Here is a nice link regarding how well supported Chivas USA is:
http://themlszone.blogspot.com/2008/03/season-ticket-numbers-released.html
As for the rest of your post, I’ve read it all a million times before and I’m actually surprised you wasted the time it took to type it.
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