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I think it comes down to personal taste. I could likewise see someone say that 80% of all soccer matches are the same. That once you’ve seen one you’ve seen the

I think it comes down to personal taste. I could likewise see someone say that 80% of all soccer matches are the same. That once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. And then on the opposite end you have people enjoying soccer who will be happy to tell you about the nuances between different matches, different players, different teams, etc.

gpspake 3y ago
That's actually a pretty good analogy.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? I would put myself in that camp - watching soccer just doesn't appeal to me that much, so it all kind of seems the same. But I can very much appreciate the differences to people that enjoy watching the sport, and I think this could be said about nearly any endeavor.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? Yep, hence the first sentence of my comment: “I think it comes down to personal taste.” :D
- harimau777 3y ago
  I think that soccer has a problem where the goalies are so effective that the game often comes down to attempting to shoot on the goal as many times as possible in the hope that eventually the goalie makes a mistake. Things are made worse by the fact that when the goalie gets the ball they generally throw it most of the way down the field; effectively resetting the state of the gameplay. As a result, any given segment of the game is not particularly relevant to the outcome; what's relevant is basically the overall time of possession/goal attempts across the various segments of the game. Compare that to something like football where the outcome of a given play depends much more overtly on the play the QB decides to run, the skills of the players, how the strengths & weaknesses of the two teams match up, etc. In addition, there's a greater degree to which the plays in a possession build upon each other in order to contribute or take away from a team's ability to score during that possession.
  - cool_dude85 3y ago
    I dont have stats on hand but I promise you a relatively small proportion of goals are scored on keeper errors, even if you expand the category to "shouldn't be beaten from that angle" type stuff instead of an explicit error. I suspect you do not watch much soccer.
    - harimau777 3y ago
      The point that I'm trying to get at is that, I agree with you that there's a sense in which different people are going to prefer different things, that people who are more invested in a given sport are going to be able to see more of the nuance in it, and that as someone who's not invested in soccer there's certainly a lot that I'm missing. However, I don't think that it completely comes down to personal taste. There can still be areas where the flow of a soccer match can be more samey or less intrinsically exciting than in certain other sports. For example, soccer doesn't have the same moment to moment, head to head, back and forth of something like tennis or boxing. That's not to say that it completely lacks those moments of conflict; say when a defender is staring down an oncoming striker. However, as far as I am able to tell, they are less dense compared to something like a tennis match where they take up the whole of the playtime.
hiccuphippo 3y ago
Ah yes, https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/
- codetrotter 3y ago
  There are only two certainties in life: 1. There’s an xkcd for that 2. Simpsons did it https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_It https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_I...
- harimau777 3y ago
  I kind of dislike XKCD strips like that because they seem to encourage people not to think. In actuality the issue may be much more nuanced: - Perhaps different things do have a greater or lesser degree to which they lend themselves to deep analysis & enjoyment - Perhaps engaging in meditative analysis of some interest such as wine is valuable in itself even if it is mostly arbitrary what people choose to analyze. - Perhaps the decision that wine is worth studying was mostly just an accident of history, but now that it's become part of culture failing to engage with it represents a failure to engage with valuable cultural traditions. Any of those ideas and others might be worth agreeing or disagreeing with. However, it sometimes feels like people just read the XKCD comic and don't think beyond "wine snobs dumb". Edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to say that the parent post is doing that. Just that I'm not a fan of how XKCD engages (or more specifically doesn't engage) with some issues.

gpspake 3y ago

That's actually a pretty good analogy.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? I would put myself in that camp - watching soccer just doesn't appeal to me that much, so it all kind of seems the same. But I can very much appreciate the differences to people that enjoy watching the sport, and I think this could be said about nearly any endeavor.

codetrotter 3y ago
> Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? Yep, hence the first sentence of my comment: “I think it comes down to personal taste.” :D
harimau777 3y ago
I think that soccer has a problem where the goalies are so effective that the game often comes down to attempting to shoot on the goal as many times as possible in the hope that eventually the goalie makes a mistake. Things are made worse by the fact that when the goalie gets the ball they generally throw it most of the way down the field; effectively resetting the state of the gameplay. As a result, any given segment of the game is not particularly relevant to the outcome; what's relevant is basically the overall time of possession/goal attempts across the various segments of the game. Compare that to something like football where the outcome of a given play depends much more overtly on the play the QB decides to run, the skills of the players, how the strengths & weaknesses of the two teams match up, etc. In addition, there's a greater degree to which the plays in a possession build upon each other in order to contribute or take away from a team's ability to score during that possession.
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  I dont have stats on hand but I promise you a relatively small proportion of goals are scored on keeper errors, even if you expand the category to "shouldn't be beaten from that angle" type stuff instead of an explicit error. I suspect you do not watch much soccer.
  - harimau777 3y ago
    The point that I'm trying to get at is that, I agree with you that there's a sense in which different people are going to prefer different things, that people who are more invested in a given sport are going to be able to see more of the nuance in it, and that as someone who's not invested in soccer there's certainly a lot that I'm missing. However, I don't think that it completely comes down to personal taste. There can still be areas where the flow of a soccer match can be more samey or less intrinsically exciting than in certain other sports. For example, soccer doesn't have the same moment to moment, head to head, back and forth of something like tennis or boxing. That's not to say that it completely lacks those moments of conflict; say when a defender is staring down an oncoming striker. However, as far as I am able to tell, they are less dense compared to something like a tennis match where they take up the whole of the playtime.

hiccuphippo 3y ago

Ah yes, https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/

codetrotter 3y ago
There are only two certainties in life: 1. There’s an xkcd for that 2. Simpsons did it https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_It https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_I...
harimau777 3y ago
I kind of dislike XKCD strips like that because they seem to encourage people not to think. In actuality the issue may be much more nuanced: - Perhaps different things do have a greater or lesser degree to which they lend themselves to deep analysis & enjoyment - Perhaps engaging in meditative analysis of some interest such as wine is valuable in itself even if it is mostly arbitrary what people choose to analyze. - Perhaps the decision that wine is worth studying was mostly just an accident of history, but now that it's become part of culture failing to engage with it represents a failure to engage with valuable cultural traditions. Any of those ideas and others might be worth agreeing or disagreeing with. However, it sometimes feels like people just read the XKCD comic and don't think beyond "wine snobs dumb". Edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to say that the parent post is doing that. Just that I'm not a fan of how XKCD engages (or more specifically doesn't engage) with some issues.