Basketball and Soccer

Basketball was born in 1891 by James Naismith who was a professor of physical education. Soccer was born in 1863, by people in England. Both are really fun sports that are played around the world. The statistics say that 80% percent of people around the world can play one of these sports while 95% know about these sports. CNN, "Expansion En Alianza," says, that basketball and soccer fight to be the most popular sport in the world. These two sports require teamwork, therefore, Pat Summit in 1980 said, teamwork is important in these sports and doesn't come naturally. It must be taught. What can we learn from these two sports? Why are they important? Basketball and soccer are entertaining games with some similarities and even more difference such as players and each team (positions), and the rules from each sport.

There are many interesting similarities between basketball and soccer such as teamwork and professional salary. Basketball and soccer require intense teamwork as opposed to other more individual sports like golf and tennis. Also, both are enjoyed by people of different genders, readily understandable, and "…intimate in the sense they each depend on the ability and resolves to work together spontaneously". Another similarity is the tremendous amounts of money the professionals receive. On average for basketball and soccer, athletes make per contract more than 15 million dollars.

Some well-known examples, Cristiano Ronaldo, a soccer player for Real Madrid made 21 million of dollars this year, and Steph Curry made 34.7 million dollars this year alone. Although salaries vary between leagues and players, we see that generally professional athletes of both sports have enough to make ends meet. Basketball and soccer are games of geometry. They are played with a ball on a court or field moving forward and backward. Both have coaches and assistants. Kobe Bryant exemplifies how playing one sport helps with the other. Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, credits his exceptional footwork and court vision to playing soccer.  In conclusion, with all these similarities s we can see how similar and are these two sports, but at the same time, we can see all the difference.

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One of the differences that both teams have is the people on the team. Basketball is a sport that is played with two teams of 5 players for each team on the court at the same time, and each player has his position that needs to protect from the opponent so that they cannot score. The number of player in the bench differs by the league. For example, in the minor league, the number of players is 9, but in the NBA the number of players is twelve.  In soccer, there are eleven players per team. One goalkeeper and there are ten outfielder players. Each team has seven substitutes players on the sideline. But each team is allowing to have three substitutions per game.

These players have a position, but they can change in the order of the other players in the opposite team run. Therefore, the reason why these two sports have this quantity of player is to give all of them the opportunity to play and if one of them has a injure the other one can replace it.  Another notable difference is the positions on each team. The position in basketball is: Point guard, shooting the guard, small forward, power forward, center and each player need to focus in his position. Also, the position in Soccer are Attackers (3 players), midfielders (3 players), defender (4 players), goalkeeper (1 player); also, they need to focus in his positions so that when they are playing, they can to protect his position. These two sports have an interesting difference, but this difference like people on the team and positions make the game unique.

The last difference is the rules of the game and the style to play. These are some rules that players cannot do it in the game. Of the essential rules in each sport is it so, any player possessing the ball cannot stay inside of the foul ring with his back to the basket for more than three seconds. Also, the players are allowing to have contact with the opponent when they are going to make a point, but they cannot obstruct them. Players cannot carry the ball with them and walk or run. This is called traveling. Also, a player that makes more than six fouls are removing of the game. They should shoot the ball before the shot clock clicks. These are some of the essential rules that people need to remember when they are playing basketball. These rules are to help the game being more interesting and faster.

And the other side we have the rules of soccer. They cannot touch the ball with their hands. Also, the ball cannot go outside of the boundary. The players cannot receive more than two yellow cards because they are going to be kit out of the game; also, if one of the players get a red car, they are automatically removing of the game. This rule is to have control of the game. Continually both sports have a different strategy to play. Basketball needs to have a fast offense so that they can make point faster. A press offense is used against full- or half-court defensive presses and requires strong passing and ball movement to get the ball inbounds and across half court in the face of tough defensive pressure. Soccer has different strategies such as pass the ball and moves quickly to make a goal. Another approach is to switch the attack and keep the position for an extended period.

Rules and strategy are essential and these two sports but in this case, are different.In conclusion, there are so many similitudes like both sports played with a ball and they play in a court, they have assistant and couch. But there is more difference between soccer and basketball such as people on the team and the way to play. But in these two sports is relevant all the big difference that has it. With the time these two sports have growth and change, but the strategies and rules are the same although different from the sports.

Popularity of Soccer

Soccer — or football, as it is called by the rest of the world outside the United States — is surely the most popular sport in the world. Every four years, the world championship of soccer, the World Cup, is watched by literally billions all over the world, beating out the United States professional football's Superbowl by far. It is estimated that 1. 7 billion television viewers watched the World Cup final between France and Brazil in July of 1998.

And it is also a genuine world championship, involving teams from 32 countries in the final rounds, unlike the much more parochial and misnamed World Series in American baseball (that doesn't even involve Japan or Cuba, two baseball hotbeds). But although soccer has become an important sport in the American sports scene, it will never make inroads into the hearts and markets of American sports the way that football, basketball, hockey, baseball, and even tennis and golf have done. There are many reasons for this.

The biggest reason for soccer's failure as a mass appeal sport in the United States is that it doesn't conform easily to the demands of television. Basketball succeeds enormously in America because it regularly schedules what it calls "television time-outs" as well as the time-outs that the teams themselves call to re-group, not to mention half-times and, on the professional level, quarter breaks. Those time-outs in the action are ideally made for television commercials. And television coverage is the lifeblood of American sports.

College basketball lives for a game scheduled on CBS or ESPN (highly recruited high school players are more likely to go to a team that regularly gets national television exposure), and we could even say that television coverage has dictated the pace and feel of American football. Anyone who has attended a live football game knows how commercial time-outs slow the game and sometimes, at its most exciting moments, disrupt the flow of events. There is no serious objection, however, because without television, football knows that it simply wouldn't remain in the homes and hearts of Americans.

Also, without those advertising dollars, the teams couldn't afford the sky-high salaries of their high-priced superstars. Soccer, on the other hand, except for its half-time break, has no time-outs; except for half-time, it is constant run, run, run, run, back and forth, back and forth, relentlessly, with only a few seconds of relaxation when a goal is scored, and that can happen seldom, sometimes never. The best that commercial television coverage can hope for is an injury time-out, and in soccer that happens only with decapitation or disembowelment.

Second, Americans love their violence, and soccer doesn't deliver on this score the way that American football and hockey do. There are brief moments, spurts of violence, yes, but fans can't expect the full-time menu of bone-crushing carnage that American football and hockey can deliver minute after minute, game after game. In soccer, players are actually singled out and warned — shamed, with embarrassingly silly "yellow cards," for acts of violence and duplicity that would be smiled at in most American sports other than tennis and golf.

Third, it is just too difficult to score in soccer. America loves its football games with scores like 49 to 35 and a professional basketball game with scores below 100 is regarded as a defensive bore. In soccer, on the other hand, scores like 2 to 1, even 1 to 0, are commonplace and apparently desirable; games scoreless at the end of regulation time happen all the time. (In the 515 games played in the final phase in the history of the World Cup games through 1994, only 1584 goals have been scored. That's three a game! And if there is no resolution at the end of overtime, the teams resort to a shoot-out that has more to do with luck than with real soccer skills. Worse yet, it is possible for a team to dominate in terms of sheer talent and "shots-on-goal" and still lose the game by virtue of a momentary lapse in defensive attention, a stroke of bad luck, and the opponent's break-away goal. Things like that can happen, too, in baseball, but the problem somehow evens out over baseball's very long season of daily games.

In soccer, it just isn't fair. Soccer authorities should consider making the goal smaller and doing away with the goalie to make scoring easier. And the business of starting over after each goal, in the middle of the field, has to be reconsidered. It's too much like the center-jump after each goal in the basketball game of yesteryear. It seems unlikely that Americans will ever fully comprehend or appreciate a sport in which players are not allowed to use their arms and hands.

Although the footwork of soccer players is a magnificent skill to behold, most American fans are perplexed by straitjacketed soccer players' inability and unwillingness to "pick up the darn ball and run with it! " The inability to use substitutes (unless the player to be substituted for is lying dead or maimed on the field of play) is also bewildering to Americans, who glorify the "sixth man" in basketball and a baseball game in which virtually the entire roster (including an otherwise unemployable old man called "the designated hitter") is deployed on the field at one time or another.

Finally, the field in soccer is enormous. Considerably larger than the American football field, the soccer field could contain at least a dozen basketball courts. Americans like their action condensed, in a small field of vision — ten enormous sweaty people bouncing off one another and moving rapidly through a space the size of a medium-sized bedroom, twenty-two even larger people in bulky uniforms converging on a small, oddly shaped ball. In soccer, on the other hand, there is a premium on "spreading out," not infringing upon the force field occupied by a team-mate, so that fancy foot-passing is possible.

This spreading out across the vast meadow of the soccer playing field does not lend itself, again, to close get-down-and-dirty television scrutiny. Soccer is a great sport and it certainly deserves the increased attention and popularity it is getting on all levels. But — primarily, again, because it does not lend itself to television — it will never make it big in the United States the way these other sports have, not until it changes some of its fundamental strategies.

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