Shamoozal.com - Smorgas Board

See I used to feel the same way and I still do a bit. But you also have to understand that these guys are basically running for 45 minutes straight (there is one 15 minute break at halftime, two 45 minute halfs and I believe they go straight into Injury Time so the second half is longer than 45 minutes). Them rolling around on the ground gives everyone on the field a breather hell most of these guys are still running around right before a corner kick. Every other sport has some kind of break outside of injuries. Basketball has free throws and is split into quarters and they change out a lot when the ball goes out of bounds. Hockey is 3 periods with players being on for usually about a minute at a time. In Football the Offense rests while the defense is on and vice versa. Baseball players sit on the bench when their team is on offense unless they are up at bat.

I would say that as far as non-running sports go (I mean running as in marathons and the 100m dash and stuff like that) Tennis is probably the closest thing to Soccer as far as cadrio intensive eith very few breaks. Especially mens tennis (mens matches are best 3/5 womens are best 2/3).

Actually I think tennis is more impressive the more I think about it. A tennis goes for hours. A lot of women's matches go 2ish hours and a lot of men's matches go 3ish however the longest pro tennis match ever was when Djokovic beating Nadal in the finals of the 2012 Australian Open. That match went 5 hours and 53 minutes (and this was I believe 1-2 days after Djokovic won a 4h50m match against Andy Murray).

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I love soccer, but they're not running for 45 minutes straight. You play your section of field, so unless it's an outlet pass there's not a lot of sprinting involved. They get time to "rest" while trying to setup plays and passing side to side. They're still out there moving, but it's not an all out run for 45 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, they're in tremendous shape, but playing 23-25 minutes in an NHL game probably isn't too far off endurance-wise.

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Soccer is no doubt an endurance sport, running like that is hard. The only criticism I have of the game is the lack of scoring, it makes the luck factor much higher over something like basketball or tennis. The amount of ball handling skill in soccer is also lesser than that of basketball. I'd say out of all major contact sports basketball would be the most physically demanding on your body aside from football/hockey which i'd put under violent as opposed to a contact sport anyways.


Also soccer is boring as shit to watch on a TV, it's really suited for a live event.

My biggest criticism of Soccer is that the field is too big. If they made it somewhere between where it is now and the size of a hockey rink and maybe made the net slightly smaller it would be substantially more exciting.

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