Budding Soccer Stars

It’s fun but aren’t we crazy?  The aim of the game is to put the ball through a large goal.  Any self-respecting hominid would pick up the ball with its hands and throw it through.  That’s what they do in basketball and other ball games.  Not us!  Forbidden!  We use every part of the body: feet, heads, chests, shoulders, legs, shins, heels and knees – everything except our hands, which means any part beyond the shoulder.  This is a game that a dog or polo pony could play with advantage – and without fear of handling.  But our two feet are nimble and legs strong, and that is what the game is most about.  It is also about smartness and inventiveness, which we use for the social skills that make our buddies winners.  We love our teams.

This is your book if you want to enjoy soccer the way we do.  It doesn’t matter where you live nor whether you have a mown grass field to play on.  We have, because we live in California where we benefit from the skills of our Mexican neighbors.  We’re lucky, but we have tried to keep our view general: some of what we have written applies to arrangements in the USA; though most of it is global.  We’d like to suggest how you can make the most of your game too.  If you are not from a soccer family, somebody will have to tell you about the rewards and demands of recreational versus competitive soccer.  There is a lot more that you’ll need to know, and we have tried to describe for you what we learned the hard way.

We play in leagues and tournaments.  The last requires travel and then we discover what a team we really are, with parties and sleepovers and ice cream – only after the games, because we have to be fresh and conditioned for play if we are not to waste our chances.  The better you are the further you go! 

My school is the same as schools all over the world.  Smart guys play soccer during recess and lunch.  They play for fun and pride, but every so often a disruptive kid picks up the ball and runs with it.  Before you know it your game changed to  (American) Football or rugby.  You’ve got to have rules if you want to keep it soccer.   You can find them on www.fifa.com but you should find our distillations easier to chew.  As football and rugby players get injured, soccer is favored by natural selection and this is one reason why it is the most popular game in our solar system.

Some rules need more explanation than others.  There has been a change this year in the most contentious rule of all, the offside rule.  That is why this book deals with this rule more fully than other rules.  To understand offside to have to think clearly, while for referees it’s even harder: they have only a few seconds to decide whether a player is offside.  Rule changes don’t need to be a moving goal.  Get clued!