SluSignGuy Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 "please don't discourage those that do from using this Billiken.com not BillikenBasketball.com " actually it is Billikens.com, not billiken.com, just a little note (many people make the mistake, I am almost tempted to register billiken.com too and just have them forwarded to this site, along with billikenboard. But I haven't yet, and I don't think I will, but I am tempted. Anyway, I am okay with soccer talk. Doesn't do me any harm. I would create a soccer board, but when Nark had one on Rivals, it had about 5 posts in 2-3 years. If the demand is there, I will make it, but so far i like the way it is now. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 27, 2003 Share Posted July 27, 2003 I like it as it is now also and really appreciate the work you do to enable us to have these discussions. I can't imagine why there would be consideration put to a second soccer board no matter how many posts there were. If someone doesn't want to participate in any soccer talk ... that's great than don't. Unless I am wrong in my understanding of this board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 I hate soccer. It really is a total bore, played at the time of year when football (Good old USofA style) is the only good reason for being outside at a sporting event. As to my knowing nothing of the game, I think that a little harsh. I've played it, watched it a bit, and despise the heck out of it (world cup and NCAA) The shorts are pretty short compared to the basketball players and I realize that the NCAA doesn't have the absurdity of "free time" If you love soccer, don't read my posts. You'll never be amused by anything I have to say on the subject. I'll try to avoid ramming anything down your throat( like a Columbian soccer fan after Brazil just kicked their booty) If you are Mrs Donnegan, my apologies, I don't wish your son any ill will. I just wish he'd take the team back to Fenton so we could watch some hoops in peace! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 watching it! Please don't stop bringing it up on my account! Be prepared to be chuckled at though! Peace out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 Soccer is the worlds game Rich ... The beautiful game. With shorts that fit. Now comparing futbal to football. Real futbal players don't need a 30 second break every 10 to 15 seconds, they can think as they play without having to stop action to huddle up and decide what to do, they also don't need all those pads to be sure they don't get hurt ( though I have to admit they like basketball players like to roll around on the ground for a few minutes after minor contact ) and they can actually run for 45 minutes straight. Soccer fans don't need to see someone score every few minutes to remain interested ... we understand that it is the opportunity to score that creates the excitement. AND NO REALLY FAT GUYS WHOSE MAIN ATHLETIC TALLENT IS THE ABILITY TO CARRY THREE TRAYS FROM THE BUFFET LINE. This one is important as soccer fans like all the players to have some level of skill. Please Rich give us a chance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 I dare you. Tell Reggie White he isn't talented. How about Charles Haley? Larry Allen? Pleasingly plump? You betcha! Lets compare the gladiators to the christians. Lets compare the lions to the christians. Sure the christians could run in circles for 45 minutes but then they have to stop. Then they die. Ballet dancers are terrific atheletes as well. I've no desire to see them either. Again post a thread a day about Billiken soccer. I wish you and the boys well. Don't expect a great deal of respect from me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 Rich ... Sorry I didn't get you at first ... I thought you were being serious and trying to disuade soccer talk on the board. Keep up the banter ... I enjoyed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 skip said, "Soccer fans don't need to see someone score every few minutes to remain interested." i have to admit, the fact that a 1-1 game is somewhat common makes me crazy. probably the reason i detest hockey as well. bad enough i just took two hours to see virtually no success, but then a freaking tie is acceptable? forget it. i am thrilled we have a very good soccer team at st louis u, but dont expect to ever see me at a game either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 I'll bet if we could get sharon together with arafat and the leaders of hamas and islamic jihad, Colin Powell could forge a coalition of Isreal and a new free Palastinian State on an anti-soccer platform. Stranger things have happened. Who thought the Berlin Wall would come down in our lifetimes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 I agree with the tie's. Seems to me there ought to be a better way, You play until someone scores ... fitness will really become important at that point. I love Basketball ... but aren't many games decided in the lat 5 minutes .. why watch the first 35. Football ... sudden death .. what is that .. whoever wins the coin flip gets the ball .. has to move it 30-40 yards and then kicks a field goal ... again ... must be a better way. I really think that to be passionate about soccer, you have to grow up playing it ... as the intricacies sp? of the game are not learned by being passed down from fathers ... as is with baseball, basketball and football ... all american sports Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted July 28, 2003 Share Posted July 28, 2003 ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 29, 2003 Share Posted July 29, 2003 How about when the idiotic (pro?) soccer games end in penalty kicks? Lets end tie baseball games with a home run hitting contest. Or football games with a punt pass kick contest. Give it up, soccer is part of Rumsfeld's "old europe" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 29, 2003 Share Posted July 29, 2003 As I stated ... I don't like the tie situation either ... they should play until someone wins. But ... sudden death isn't any better ... it is not evenly balanced a coin flip decides who may get the only opportunity to score. Baseball and Basketball have it right. If you had to play until someone won ... maybe teams wouldn't go so defensive near the end of the game, fitness would become more important. To paraphrase St.Louisan Craig Hawksley in todays Post ... St. Louis is not a Baseball Town ... baseball players come and go, and most of them aren't from here anyway. St.Louis is a soccer town ... our sons and daughters play it and they stay here to coach it to there sons and daughters ... It is part of our fabric. I am not from here and grew up playing soccer in Dallas and LA. in the 70's. Everyone I knew who was a real soccer player knew St.Louis was the soccer capital. A kid Joel ... can't remember his last name moved to Dallas from ST.Louis during my senior year .. wow was he good .. he understood the game and had great skills, that really cemented my belief in St.L as the capital of Soccer in the USA. I didn't go to SLU but used to watch them play SMU a couple of times in the late 70's and early 80's. It has always stuck with me. Every where I have lived .. I have always been the soccer nut .. I played in Europe ( very low level ) coached High school in OK city ... I've always had more understanding and knowledge of the game than any one I knew. Here in STl it is different ... I go to a SLU game and talk soccer and so many people know the game. It is not like that elsewhere. So Rich my point is that either you are a renegade who just want's to stir the pot are you are an outsider trying to infiltrate STL. and destroy the city's backbone. COME CLEAN RICH EXACTLY WHO ARE YOU? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted July 29, 2003 Share Posted July 29, 2003 skip said, "either you are a renegade who just want's to stir the pot are you are an outsider trying to infiltrate STL. and destroy the city's backbone." hmmmmm, i was accused of similar by soccer nuts. my daughter's grade school didnt have enough kids to play both soccer and softball. the socccer parents insisted that softball be disbanded so that they could have the player for soccer. of course the few softball kids and their parents had enough sense to ignore the "soccer mandate" and all refused to waste their evenings playing the nonsensical sport choosing to play select basketball or just not playing at all. the "soccer mom's" didnt talk to me all year long. it was amazing how many of the "soccer dad's" thanked me though. actually made for a much easier year imo. so with such a scientific study, it is obvious that soccer must be some kind of a woman's sport. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 29, 2003 Share Posted July 29, 2003 Outside of Stlouis University it no longer is. Cardinals fans know the in's and out's of baseball better than anywhere else I've ever been to. They can appreciate a 1-0 win between two of the best pitchers in the game (no they haven't seen that recently) A 1-0 soccer victory will bore most St. Louisans to tears. Even a well played 3-0 football game (gladiators on the frozen tundra) has more to enjoy than soccer. 10 europeans, 3 Eithiopeans, 2 Americans (1 with a cousin in Bethalto for a little local flavor) St. Louis is a soccer town, right. One of my favorate lines from the show "WKRP in Cinncinnati" was Sparky Anderson interviewinf a local soccer player. Sparky asked him how the team looked this year. The answer was, "mostly Venezuelan" I bear foreign players no ill will. I hope IO and Ian kick some serious booty for us inside this year! I'll just leave you with this. What is the favorite game of Osama, Sadaam, Al Quada, Islamic Jihad, The Ira, The Basque Separatists, Shining Path, The Khymer Rhouge, and the 500 Communists on McCarthy's list. I'll give you a hint! IT ISN'T BASEBALL! It's Soccer! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 29, 2003 Share Posted July 29, 2003 Actually it is like that still .. even outside of SLU. St.Louisans have a knowledge of the game that people in most cities do not. Now as the rest of the USA catches up ...and second and third generation kids start to play the gap will lessen. But don't discount St.Louis as a soccer city ...our young talent is still as good as anywhere in the USA ... especially when you count the size of ST.Louis as compared with the east coast, Dallas-FT.Worth, and Southern Cal. Look at our National Youth teams we are always well represented sometimes with 2, 3, or 4 players. When was the last time STL. had 2 or 3 of the top basketball, football, or baseball players in the country. How often does it happen ... it is the norm in soccer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 29, 2003 Share Posted July 29, 2003 how many St. Louisans skip school and work and hover around the tv to watch Team USA in the World Cup? Not a hundredth as many as were slackers when the Cards were in the Series. Maybe you need to get out more? I talk to a fairly wide cross section of St. Louisans as an insurance agent and none of them are talking about soccer. The Cards, The Rams, The Dallas Cowboys even (There's a picture of my son in an Aikman jersey on my wall,) all get talked about. Nobody has ever brought up soccer. If Saint Louis is a Soccer town then they're doing a lousy job promoting it. It would be marginally better to be known as a scoccer town rather than a declining population, deteriorating infrastructure, politically wacko, crime infested town. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 29, 2003 Share Posted July 29, 2003 Of course Soccer doesn't have the popularity of Baseball or Football, If we had an MLS team you would hear more talk. IF you weren't a Billiken fan ... how many people would just initiate a conversation about Billiken Bball. Not many. Come on out to a game ... I'll buy you a hot dog in the Billiken Club tent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gister Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 I did not attend many soccer games while I was at SLU or in high school and was never a big soccer fan. Now that I am back in St. Louis, I have been attending the soccer games pretty regularly over the last 5 or 6 years and have found that they are a lot of fun. The crowd is usually into the games and the atmosphere on a fall evening is great. There are normally a lot of students there, more than at most of the basketball games. I am a soccer convert and I wouldn't be surprised, with the quality of this team, that there may be a few more converts over the next few years. If you want to pick a game you might try the Octover 11th game against South Florida. They always have a good team, it's the homecoming weekend, and the fireworks, as an extra bonus, are really very good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeSmetBilliken Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 I just read through this entire discussion on soccer and figured that I should post my reply at the end of this thread rather than somewhere in the middle. Anyway, I think Skip was right when he said that most people who enjoy soccer played the game at one time. That would be true for me, as I played for 9 years from Kindergarten to 8th grade. We were pretty good and made the playoffs every year from 5th through 8th grade, with our best finish as coming in 2nd place in the City/County playoffs in 6th grade. I would have liked to continue playing in high school, but the problem was that I wasn't too good. Personally, I love walking over to Hermann Stadium to watch SLU play. I know some people who think watching a soccer game is like watching paint dry, but I also know others who really enjoy the games. I think we all know where different people stand on this issue. And by the way, I don't like the idea of finishing up games in a tie either. Put in at least some overtime period, even if its not sudden death(aka Golden Goal for soccer fans). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Rich Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 We aren't a Soccer Town (and soccer sucks)!!!!!!!! 1 No Major league Scoccer team in St. Louis. 2 The Steamers 3 The Ambush 4 The Best Billiken Soccer player in recent memory transferred from Harris Stowe!!!!! 5 We are in fact a baseball town 6 The French Like soccer alot! 7 When's the last time anyone cared about highschool, AAU, Select league soccer? 8 No good Lingo. Maybe "He's gotten a yellow card" sounds hilarious in Portugese. 9 Pele is dead (he may in fact be alive but the last time he was in St. Louis was the last time we were a soccer town) 10 There is a perfect spot for my basketball palace that won't be bulldozed by the powers that be and I do not mean the Drake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 Rich, Rich, Rich relax buddy and go get an orange. You are giving away your lack of knowledge about soccer. Our best player in recent memory did not transfer from Harris Stowe. Dipsy was good and scored a lot ... but he was basically a trash man. Brad Davis is the best player we have had since Brian McBride. Who is a SLU grad and arguably a top 25 player in the world. Jason Cole was also very underated ... If his head was on defense he would be excelling in MLS right now. He was the best man marker I have ever seen in college .... and that is a lot of soccer, all over the country. I'll meet you in the Billiken Club tent on the 15th ... I'll know who you are by the paper bag on your head Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 what is a "best man marker"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 It is a soccer and a rugby term for someone who defends another player ... usually the other teams main threat one on one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeSmetBilliken Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 > > It is a soccer and a rugby term for someone who defends >another player ... usually the other teams main threat one >on one To put this into basketball terms, think Josh Fisher. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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