Hockey is better than soccer

Some of the most sweeping remarks have been made showing an inherent lack of knowledge about the game of soccer. Beginning with the sudden death rule , I would like to enlighten my opponent that the sudden death rule or golden goal rule as it popularly known stands abolished for a decade now. It was last used 10 years ago in 2004. Here is a link which will help you understand the rules of the game before making such frivolous claims http://en.wikipedia.org...(association_football) Now let's take each of your claims in a systematic manner before determining their veracity 1) Length - As per my opponent the ideal length of any sport should be 60-75 min to keep it interesting for the spectator. Which is what makes ICE hockey popular. Soccer , Cricket , Tennis , golf , field hockey are the most popular sports in the world. Each of them are much ahead of Ice hockey in terms of the game length a) Soccer -90 mins ( only knockout games have an extra time of half an hour) b) Cricket - Test Matches - 5 days , with each day having a playing time of 7-8 hrs, One day matches - 7 hrs , t20 matches - 3hrs c) Tennis- Womens - 3hrs Men - 4-5 hrs , Longest game 11 hrs 9 minutes d) Golf - 4-6 hrs e) Field Hockey- minimum 75 min All these games are nautical miles ahead of Ice Hockey in terms of viewers which clearly proves that it is not the length of the game but the quality of it which determines its greatness. Just like a 4 hr epic lord of the rings movie will still be more palatable than a 1.5 hr Nicolas cage movie ghostrider. So the argument on length of the game is simply untenable Out of bounds - Another concern which shows a lack of research on the part of my opponent. He makes sweeping statement that "" A LOT OF TIME IS WASTED KICKING THE BALL OUT OF BOUNDS". Well an added stoppage time is given to make up for the "out of bound " period which is 2-3 minutes usually. This is completely at the discretion of the referee and could be as low as 1 min in some cases. Compare that with the length of the half of 45 min and you get 3-4 % of the time. Not much really. http://www.football-bible.com... Skill - Any sport be it garden bowls or sepaktakrav requires certain level of skill to reach professional standards. I don't understand the meaning of the term "Strongest talent". Any sport requires years of practice to prefect before one reaches international standards. And every sport requires a specific set of skills to reach the top. For instance cricket requires exceptional hand eye co-ordination , fast reflexes , and an eye for detail, Polo , requires exceptional skill as a horse rider and hand eye coordination similar to Ice hockey players , same is that for a field hockey player. Soccer requires a player to have fast reflexes , vision , passing , dribbling , shooting , heading, tackling, ability to maneuver the ball in tight spaces with feet, improvising, anticipating the other players moves. Saying that Ice hockey players are the best athletes is just like saying Nicolas Cage deserves and oscar for Ghostrider. I mean are they strongest , quickest on feet, have best reflexes. Anyone in their right mind would understand that they are all athletes with specific skill to skate on ice while they play hockey that's about it nothing more , nothing less. And skating being something of a talent is partially true as barely a small fraction of the people in the world have access to skating rinks. That's just like saying being an astronaut, or eating heavily priced caviar is a talent. Competitiveness- Ice Hockey is barely competitive with just about 16 teams in world champion ships . For a game which has been around for a while that is just abjectly poor. Compared to that almost all 205 countries of the world participate in the world cup Intensity- World cup soccer held every four years is a much more intense competition compared to IIHF world championship held every year. At best it is like an FA cup soccer held in england every year. Most sports get an "offseason" -- soccer doesn't-----For most top-flight players, there's a league season, a league cup, a club championship and international games all going on at once. If that's not enough, almost every summer there's an international cup or competition of some sort, not to mention friendlies and World Cup qualifying. It's the sport that never ends. Sportsmanship is an important part of the culture.-And even though there are rivalries, players usually respect one another for their individual talents and love of the game. This becomes no more apparent than when you see players exchange jerseys after a good match. There are always new superstars whose fancy footwork or goal-scoring prowess seems to be a gift from the heavens. It's the Beautiful game World Cups bring the entire planet together.And basically give everyone one VERY important reason to party. The FIFA World Cup is the world's most widely viewed sports event. Around 715 million people watched the 2006 final match in Germany, while the 2010 South Africa event was broadcast to 204 countries on 245 different channels. Goodluck matching that ICE HOCKEY