Of Bars and Posts and Memories, and Rooney's "red mist" . . .

This morning as I was reading the report of the Fulham/Liverpool match, some memories of my years in the North American Soccer League came flooding back from more than a quarter-century ago.  Not waves of nostalgia for the days gone by, but ripples of amusement at some of the foolishness of those days.   "I summon up remembrance of things past..." as Shakespeare wrote in a sonnet, and what I summon up from years ago causes me to smile today.

It has to do with goalposts and crossbars, which featured prominently in the match at Craven Cottage.  Featured four times for Liverpool, in fact.  Early on, Skrtel, via a deflection off Dossena's head, crashed a shot against the bar.  Then as reported in the TIMESONLINE, "...after the half-hour point Alonso belted a 25-yard howitzer on to the bar following Gerrard’s corner. Before we could draw breath, Gerrard and Torres had combined exquisitely in midfield for the Spaniard to run on, round Schwarzer and roll what seemed certain to be the opener against the post. Another breath, another Liverpool attack and a fourth great escape for Fulham. This time Gerrard crossed from the right and the unmarked Dossena displayed the finishing of a converted left-back to head against the bar from six yards."

And why my smile?  Because I remember discussions that took place in the early years of the NASL, talks intending to do something about that perennial complaint of those who neither understand nor appreciate soccer.  How can we get more goals? the owners asked.  Then came a stroke of genius, an analysis so subtle and clever you had to wonder why no one had thought of it before . . .

One of the owners noticed that a lot of shots hit the bar or the posts, and a lot more whizzed just over or just outside the woodwork.  "You know, if we raised the bar no more than a foot, and widened the posts by no more than a couple of yards, all those shots that just miss would go in!"  Brilliant!  The world's game improved at one stroke by good old American ingenuity.

As you might guess, no one figured out that someone would have to pay to change all those millions of goals all over the planet.  And once that ugly fact reared its head, the idea to change the goalposts died a rapid death, to the accompaniment of much snickering and snorting among the calcio cognoscente.

And Rooney's "red mist", the one that rises out of the pitch when things don't go his way, about which there have been columns and columns of scribbling in the UK newspapers?  Will his lack of control end his career prematurely?  Will he injure himself in one of the savage challenges for which he has become known when he loses his cool?  Or does his temper make him the competitor he is for Manchester United and England?  Take your pick, but if you want to see his wild challenge in the international this week, take a look here, and make your own decision.

Even Graham Poll (yes, that one) entered the discussion by lamenting his own leniency when he refereed Rooney: "I had my chance, in his formative years at both Everton and at Manchester United, most notably when he appeared to tell me to 'f*** off' 27 times in 45 minutes! The fact that I didn't, troubles me now but at the time there was an expectancy to manage a game with tolerance, understanding and empathy - that was wrong then and is wrong now."

Comments

[Dustin Edwards]

Why change them all over the planet? Just do it in the big leagues or something. And College and High School leagues will adopt it when everyone can. If High Schools can spend up to a million dollars on nice turf fields then they can get some bigger goals.

[I think you are missing one important point: that this is the world's game, played with one set of rules everywhere, and billions of people are happy with it that way, except.... (RE)]

[Optimus_Cane]

There are two sets of rules everywhere in all walks of life: one for the superstar elite, and another for everyone else. If only soccer were the only arena where this needed to be addressed...

[I agree. RE]

[Brian Smith-White]

The analysis was probably something like #shots hitting woodwork/#goals - standard accounting (where accounting in defined as knowing the cost of anything/everything while knowing the value of nothing). The only way to get #shots hitting woodwork equal to zero would be to put the goalposts where the corner flags currently are. No problem for innovative entrepreneurs.