From: mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.soccer
Subject: Re: AMERICA(N) RULES 8-)
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:01:39 GMT
Reply-To: mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.

Folks:
	
On other issues that I thought about while driving home after my last post:

Competitiveness: I did not mean to imply that the games in the in-town league
have no competitive element. It is more that the emphasis is on effort, fun,
and constructive criticism, rather than league standings, knock 'em down,
kill the ref, scream at the kids, kinda stuff.

For a large part, the use of the word "non-competitive" is to remind the
adults (coaches, parents, refs) to let the kids play the game their way, and
not try to project their own successes and failures onto the kids.  The kids
still try their best, get frustrated or angry, cheer when they score, and
feel sad if they lose.  I don't think this will make wimps out of them.

Rules: We use what the US federation recommends (at least our understanding),
and modify for safety (and honestly, for lack of qualified refs). Our mods
may go overboard on the safety side.  My concern about broken glasses et al
is from personally witnessed incidents, and these are exceptions. My only
personal impact on rules on our board was the 10 yard min indirect kick
for U8 only, and at higher levels, I like sticking closer to FIFA rules in
toto (I voted for extending yellow/red cards to U12, for example, this year).

Again, you need to understand the difference between countries where a sport
is established and others where it is not.  For Basketball, where kids
commonly play pickup games, court-specific rules always modify the FIBA ones
(hell, most or our kids, or adults, never heard of FIBA).  In a country where
the only understanding of offsides is the NFL kind (well, a few people under-
stand hockey), soccer offsides takes some explaining. If the application of
the rule is fuzzy even in r.s.s discussions, is it surprising that we don't
want to burden our U8 teams with it? And again the refs, who I have seen set
the defending team up to take a corner in their own end [well, it was just
after halftime, and he confused the sides, and the keeper had on a jersey
more like the opposition's than his own team's].

The stated objective by our league and the US Federation (as I understand it)
for U8's is to get the kids to like a foreign game before laying conceptual
rules on them.  For a native sport, this understanding happens organically,
like American kids assimilate baseball and basketball rules and nuances
because these are happening all around them.  Soccer is still more of a 
test-tube sport, by comparison, in the US (with some notable regional 
exceptions). For a reverse example, look at the experience the Russians are
having with baseball. They are learning from the ground up.  The same was
true of basketball, and look how far that has come toward being an inter-
national sport (forget the Dream Team and look at how well the intl teams
played among themselves).  Note also that the US plays international rules
when it is appropriate in baseball and basketball. 

Well, that's too long (again). Please continue the conversation. I am not
trying to preach. If you want to believe the US is an insidious influence
on soccer, I'll try to disuade you. But you might be right.  Only time will
tell.

Matt
And no smartass remark, either 
Newsgroups: rec.sport.soccer