soccer question!!!

ok, watched England win their first game. that was great!!!

Stan...

OK You two, Monday night: Born in the USA...Born in the USA!

Stan(who is never offsides) :):)

david...

oh, they're playing at 11 PM??? I thought it was 11 AM... uh.... would it
be socially acceptable if I watch the tuesday morning news for highlights?

Anne Jackson...

Perhaps you would like to explain 'the offside rule' to David, then?

second, we just watched sweden and trinad play. final score was zero to
zero, yet the trinidad players and fans were really excited... any one here
who can explain this basic info to a soccer neophyte? thanks,

JD Cooper...

Please bare with my humor here, OK? Just the other day I was driving to
work and heard a local radio and TV sports guy/coach/enthusiast/etc.
talking his morning bit on the radio. (Paul Alexander known quite well
in San Antonio and hereabouts.) He was on one his usual tirades about
sports matters when he answered the charge of some soccer fan who called
and admonished him that soccer was world wide in popularity and the USA
was backwards about soccer. Coach Alexander replied in his own sarcastic
but meaningful way something like this: "Oh yeah? 'Popular' in the rest
of the world? Well, so is CHOLERA!"

JD Cooper...

Heh.

It was his very Texan way to express his complete disinterest in soccer.
In reality, the guy is a hoot to listen to because he goes on humorous
tirades and really gets worked up on the dishonesty and cheating that
goes on in professional sports. He is, however, a super supporter of
high school and college sports.

david...

hi, JD... I think we need to find you another radio station... :))

Michael Fanner...

A soccer neophyte? Hmm! ;-)

The matches that you watched are first round matches and they are all
played in a league situation. Eight groups (I think) with four teams in
each and the winner and second from each group progress to the next round.

david...

Okay, thanks for the great info... let me play it back to see if I've got
it...

- England is in group B: England, Paraguay, Sweden, Trinidad
- It takes 6 games for each team to play the other 3
- by Trinidad not 'losing', they now are tied with Sweden

so the score for group C as of today, June 10th is
- first place: England, one win
- all others (sweden, paraguay, trinidad): zero wins

Hey, this is exciting. I have the FIFA website and it's being updated
almost every minute... :)

Okay, one more neophyte question: can you recommend a website that has
basics... really BASICs ... of how the strategies are developed? While
watching England win this morning, a ball was kicked out of bounds and
the announcer mentioned that one of the teams was setting up a particular
defense... (well, something like that...) I know dalin and i won't
master soccer after watching just a few games, but a few tips on what's
happening would help... right now, all we can say are that a bunch of men
are running around the field knocking the ball with feet and heads. we do
recognize a goal, but would like to grasp more of what is happening... is
that too tall a request? thanks,

Trinidad are effectively cannon fodder. They are expected to to end up
bottom of their group and to have scored no points at all. They just
confounded the pundits to the tune of a single point.

As it stands, they are off the bottom of the group and that is probably
more than they could have hoped for before the event