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Is football a more complex sport than baseball, basketball, and soccer?


Duluther

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2 hours ago, Melbourne 9er said:

Oh and cricket is much more complex than baseball. Imagine baseball with the pitcher and hitter in the middle of the field, the pitcher has to "bowl" the ball (must have a straight elbow so can't throw it) into the dirt so it can go anywhere, anything over waist high on the full is a no-ball, which needs to be rebowled and a run given up, and aims at 3 small sticks (stumps) to get out the hitter. The hitter can then score runs by hitting the ball anywhere in a 360° area of the pitch. The bowler can deliberately aim at the hitter and this is a genuine strategy to get the hitter out.

For strategy you want to watch a test match that can last 5 days and still end up in an exciting draw.

For an entry level, and just for some entertainment value, watch a 20/20 game from the Big Bash or the Indian Premier League. Only lasts a couple of hours but is worth the watch.

That is it in it's simplest form. You haven't yet mentioned LBW, pitching maps, shot types, fielding positions (check a couple pages back), averages, strike rates, declaration, weather affecting the ball path and condition etc etc. :D

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At first glance I thought football. But imo it's a rhetoric question. Can't be answered correctly. Just like there are people who excel in mathematics or learning a new language, there are people who grasp football easily and for some it's too complex.

I played soccer and football at ambitious amateur level. Anybody with the necessary physical tools can become a good football player, even make it in the NFL. We see it all the time, kids from Africa with no knowledge of the game turn into NFL stars within a few years. Or kids from Europe who haven't heard of football until high school. As for lower level football, if you are very fast or very big/strong, you can make an immediate impact when it comes to amateur play. Hand the ball to a very fast guy who doesn't even know how to hold it and has no vision, but because he's fast as lightning he may still score. Put some big strong ox on the OL/DL and let him bury his opponent, even if he has no clue about hand placement and other technique.

Soccer seems easier when you watch it. Just run around and kick the ball lol. But it's so much more complex to the point that pro soccer players have classroom meetings just as much as in football. Especially in countries like Italy where it's all about tactics. There is more freelancing in soccer of course, but lots of players movement when in possession is drawn up. Basically the whole defensive phase/movement when out of possession is schemed. I lived in Italy for some time and I can tell you even the lowest amateur teams practice tactics way more intense than your average park football team. Ideally you attack and defend as one unit in soccer. Nowadays in soccer, you have to be really dominant in attack to be able to afford not contributing in the defending phase. Maybe you can have 2 or 3 defenders who stay back all the time if you have good attackers.

Then there is that: you can't become good at soccer if you start later than at child's age, even if you have worldclass athletic traits. Controlling and passing the ball is an art that requires lots of natural talent and lifelong practice. If you are weak with the ball at your feet, you have no place in soccer. Even goalkeepers these days need to be decent with the ball at their feet. In football you can take a physical freak, scheme him some touches and let his speed take over. He will understand his job in no time. But in soccer, regardless of position, you need the feel for the game and tactical knowledge in both attack and defense, as well as in counter and transition. There is no time in between plays that a coach can tell you what exactly to do. Each situation is different. You will identify a soccer player that's totally lost on the field much easier than in football.

That's obviously only true for the competitive game, be it amateur or pro. You can play 5 vs 5 soccer or casual football in the park just at any age, size and next to none knowledge of the game.

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1 hour ago, Fullback said:

I lived in Italy for some time and I can tell you even the lowest amateur teams practice tactics way more intense than your average park football team. Ideally you attack and defend as one unit in soccer.

Yeah Italy and Serie A known for defensive strategy and competence. England still haven't caught on...xD

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13 hours ago, Fullback said:

At first glance I thought football. But imo it's a rhetoric question. Can't be answered correctly. Just like there are people who excel in mathematics or learning a new language, there are people who grasp football easily and for some it's too complex.

I played soccer and football at ambitious amateur level. Anybody with the necessary physical tools can become a good football player, even make it in the NFL. We see it all the time, kids from Africa with no knowledge of the game turn into NFL stars within a few years. Or kids from Europe who haven't heard of football until high school. As for lower level football, if you are very fast or very big/strong, you can make an immediate impact when it comes to amateur play. Hand the ball to a very fast guy who doesn't even know how to hold it and has no vision, but because he's fast as lightning he may still score. Put some big strong ox on the OL/DL and let him bury his opponent, even if he has no clue about hand placement and other technique.

Soccer seems easier when you watch it. Just run around and kick the ball lol. But it's so much more complex to the point that pro soccer players have classroom meetings just as much as in football. Especially in countries like Italy where it's all about tactics. There is more freelancing in soccer of course, but lots of players movement when in possession is drawn up. Basically the whole defensive phase/movement when out of possession is schemed. I lived in Italy for some time and I can tell you even the lowest amateur teams practice tactics way more intense than your average park football team. Ideally you attack and defend as one unit in soccer. Nowadays in soccer, you have to be really dominant in attack to be able to afford not contributing in the defending phase. Maybe you can have 2 or 3 defenders who stay back all the time if you have good attackers.

Then there is that: you can't become good at soccer if you start later than at child's age, even if you have worldclass athletic traits. Controlling and passing the ball is an art that requires lots of natural talent and lifelong practice. If you are weak with the ball at your feet, you have no place in soccer. Even goalkeepers these days need to be decent with the ball at their feet. In football you can take a physical freak, scheme him some touches and let his speed take over. He will understand his job in no time. But in soccer, regardless of position, you need the feel for the game and tactical knowledge in both attack and defense, as well as in counter and transition. There is no time in between plays that a coach can tell you what exactly to do. Each situation is different. You will identify a soccer player that's totally lost on the field much easier than in football.

That's obviously only true for the competitive game, be it amateur or pro. You can play 5 vs 5 soccer or casual football in the park just at any age, size and next to none knowledge of the game.

There is a huge difference between an individual player in football and the game as a whole. It is true most positions only need to know what they are doing and a couple other players. But once you add it all up the military analogy for football makes so much sense.

You have multiple branches who are working independently from each other but need each other to function correctly. In most sports if one guy is off script it wont be a disaster. In football on cb thinking he is a flat zone and not in cover 3 and its a td. One lineman thinks he is doubling on the a gap when he shouldn't be and its a free sack or rush for a loss.

You are right though that from the players perspective that you can learn tour spot quickly(in comparison) and play well if not great. Obviously some positions are not like this such as qb and ilb.

Tldr: the true art and complexity of football is the machine not the parts.

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On 01/06/2020 at 7:40 AM, THE DUKE said:

On any given NFL football play there are 2-5 checks and adjustments for the offensive line alone.  Add in motions, audibles, hot routes, edge blocking changes, etc...  And that's just the offensive side of the ball where there will be 120-150 plays run per game between the two teams.  There are just as many adjustments made on the defensive side of the ball as well.  In a given game, there are probably 1000+ things modified just from original play calls when the huddle breaks, and that's before you get into play calling strategy.

This is the problem is Football though.  It's more elaborate, in that it requires these pre-determined setups to even function as a sport at all.  But it's still all pre-determined.  There's no adjustment on the fly, beyond snap adjustments and options routes.

 

On 01/06/2020 at 5:47 PM, DannyB said:

If Charlie Conway couldn't teach you, there's nothing I can do

Dude even did 3 dekes.  Allegedly.

 

On 01/06/2020 at 5:47 PM, BleedTheClock said:

You can find a random group of people and play any other sport on the fly. You can’t play football on the fly. You have to design plays and be on the same page with everything to avoid catastrophic failure. Plus there’s a timed clock that means you have to signal in the play, relay it in a huddle, and then execute to perfection AFTER making any checks. There is pre and post snap movement on almost every snap that drastically changes the blocking scheme. There are a ton of coverage checks and killed blitzes based on shifts and personnel groupings. 
 

Football is insanely complicated. It’s not even close. 

I feel like you can play a version of Football on the fly though.  Did you not ever play a game back and forth with some teammates just having fun "scrimmaging"?

 

On 02/06/2020 at 2:02 AM, Hunter2_1 said:

Yeah, totally agreed.

I got two buddies together not so long ago just for a bit of throw and catch, they'd never watched a game in their lives. Made one be a receiver, one be a DB (I was 'QB')...I got with the WR and said THE most basic coding I could think of (If I say red, go right, blue go left, green straight on). I shouted red, hiked the ball to mysef....he ran straight on. AT it's most basic you can ever make it, football is still more complicated than soccer :D

I mean, if you overcomplicate it by trying to assign colors to plays...yeah, that's going to be more complicated.  What was the rational for that?  Just tell them to run a route...if that's what you're doing.  And throw it more accurately to them.

 

On 02/06/2020 at 9:09 AM, Snake Plissken said:

I guess you could take a random group of guys, put them on skates, and send them out on ice to play a game of hockey, but it would be a complete gong show.

Give a random group of guys 1 year of coaching and I bet the football game would look better than the hockey game. 

People always wildly underestimate how complicated "skating" on ice is.  Like yeah, you can strap some on and maybe not fall over too many times.  A lot of people can even kinda move around pretty alright.  Slide along in a direction.  But hockey is a game that progresses at about as high a speed as anything i can think of...and you need to be able to skate in all directions to adapt to that as it constantly switches back and forth.  

 

You play football, baseball, basketball...yay, you can run on turf, like a normal human being.

 

Put Lebron on ice, and i could literally skate circles around him in 4 different ways.  His skill is...being super tall, and also very good at basketball.  But if we're asking about complexity...how would he do on hockey skates?  He'd literally fall over and it'd be hilarious while i dunked on him in hockey terms.  Then back they other way when it became a basketball challenge.  But the fact i could actually dunk THE BEST basketball player ever probably, in a "hockey challenge", has to mean something.  I think there are are star hockey players who could still dunk on a random schmo like me the other way around.

 

On 02/06/2020 at 9:24 AM, BleedTheClock said:

People do play pickup hockey all the time. You don't need complex strategies to play the full game of hockey.

Sure, you can play street football, but it doesn't work with a full team. You couldn't have an 11-11 football game.

 

You can freelance play in hockey with the full numbers. You can't freelance play football with 22 guys.

So you can't play freelance football without a full roster on both sides.  That makes it more...complicated?

 

Scheduling you see, is the greatest complication you can find.

 

On 02/06/2020 at 1:09 PM, BleedTheClock said:

I don’t think people realize how many hours are spent preparing for football. Its not debatable that it’s the most time consuming and complex. 

I think pretty much everyone here understands the time-consuming element of football.  Is the amount of time taken to establish a play, more "complex" than the alternative though?  Is rehearsal and obviousness "complicated"?

 

On 02/06/2020 at 1:29 PM, Snake Plissken said:

“Unless you are referring to floor hockey, “A random group of guys” doesn’t just play pick up hockey  Guys with hockey/skating backgrounds play pick up hockey.  
 

On a structural/organizational/strategic level, competitive football is the most complex. But, the addition of skating adds a level of complexity to hockey the other sports don’t have.  And it is not something that can be overcome with any amount of athletic ability, coaching or strategy.  The number one prerequisite for hockey is being able to “skate”, much like someone should need to be able to run in football, basketball, soccer, and baseball.  Any competitive hockey like youth, city-league, church league, old timers and higher requires a certain level of competence, much like being able to back peddle or slide step in other sports.  If you can’t skate, you can’t play. 
 

While football may be complex on some levels, it is also among the simplest. 
 


 

Hockey really is a unique sport in that...unlike any other, it requires you to be able to operate with skates on ice.  I guess it's easy to dismiss that if you don't understand how complicated it is...but it's ridiculous to equate skating with running.

 

Everyone knows how to run.  Obviously some people are massively better at it than others.  But it's not "complicated".  Some people are just faster than others.

 

Skating on the other hand...is a great equalizer.  It's not simple, it's a thing you have to spend a lifetime mastering.  

 

 

On 02/06/2020 at 2:37 PM, DannyB said:

That's not really the complexity that's being discussed here. Yes that's an extra skill that has been added to the basic formula of the team sport, but even if somebody had never seen hockey before, and you were showing it to them, you'd just have to be like "oh yeah, so they're skating on ice". The person wouldn't be like "How do these shiny metal shoe-blades work? What is this slick surface they are traversing?? I don't get it!"

You could make a rule in golf that you can only stand on one leg when you attempt a golf shot. That makes it harder to do successfully, but it doesn't add an entire dimension of complexity to the rules.

Have you ever actually seen somebody try to skate for the first time?

You say, "oh they got shiny blades on they feet, this ought to be easy".  But it's not.  If you don't know what you're doing.  Most people will just injure or embarrass themselves, the first time they try to *survive* on a ice rink on skates.

 

What you're not understanding here...is that as much as "footwork" matters in the game of football...it's exponentially more important in the game of hockey.  Four direction agility and movement, and ability to redirect on a dime, is what makes for a "great skater".  You have a blade, with a hollow...where you have to use two edges on each foot, to execute the footwork to play effectively.  It's not like football where you only learn a certain subset of "footwork" motions.  It's complicated.

 

Being able to kinda stumble forward like a skater zombie is not the same as being a strong skater.  It's all down to footwork in hockey too...but you have to do it, while balancing on two edges on a sheet of ice.  Everyone learns how to run on turf.  That's easy.  Moving on a sheet of ice...?  That's seriously complicated and most people never learn how to do it properly.

 

 

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57 minutes ago, Tugboat said:

This is the problem is Football though.  It's more elaborate, in that it requires these pre-determined setups to even function as a sport at all.  But it's still all pre-determined.  There's no adjustment on the fly, beyond snap adjustments and options routes.

Completely and utterly false.  Being able to create when a play breaks down is one of the biggest attributes a quarterback needs to have.  WR read coverage schemes and adjust to open space.  Once past the line of scrimmage essentially everything a running back does is improvisation.  A lot of defensive schemes will have a position or two just to adjust, read, and improvise based on what they are seeing.  Hell, even punters will adjust where the ball is going based on the return setup of the other team.

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2 hours ago, THE DUKE said:

Completely and utterly false.  Being able to create when a play breaks down is one of the biggest attributes a quarterback needs to have.  WR read coverage schemes and adjust to open space.  Once past the line of scrimmage essentially everything a running back does is improvisation.  A lot of defensive schemes will have a position or two just to adjust, read, and improvise based on what they are seeing.  Hell, even punters will adjust where the ball is going based on the return setup of the other team.

Yep. What happens on a power play when the DE pinches down? What happens when a LB blitzes into the gap instead of staying at 5 yards and being the TE’s down block? There are so many adjustments that need to be made in split seconds. Literally 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The fact that football is paused between each play is all you need to know that it is the most complex sport out of these four. It seems a lot of the discussion on this page is about what sport is harder to excel at and that's an entirely different question where football might be the most approachable as it encompasses such a wide array of athletic and mental makeup whilst in the other sports, most players share much more similar traits.  

I'm also confident that futbol is the sport where it'd be easiest to throw a random scrub into the starting lineup and survive a game (put him as a wing forward and just let him run around). Excluding punter/kicker where you instead opt to go for it on 4th down every time the closest comparison is probably a WR on offense that you can completely ignore but I think it's easier to essentially play 10 vs 11 in futbal than in football. 

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22 minutes ago, evilflamingo said:

 whilst in the other sports, most players share much more similar traits.  

What's the 'other sports', do you mean American sports?

22 minutes ago, evilflamingo said:

I'm also confident that futbol is the sport where it'd be easiest to throw a random scrub into the starting lineup and survive a game (put him as a wing forward and just let him run around). 

Whilst I agree that soccer is maybe the easiest to just put someone in, there's a lot more to the winger position than just running around. Every outfield position has their offensive duties but also has to play their part in pressing, counter-pressing, and moving as a defensive unit - otherwise the whole thing falls apart. Needs a bit of coaching, but nothing like learning a playbook.

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2 hours ago, Hunter2_1 said:

What's the 'other sports', do you mean American sports?

Whilst I agree that soccer is maybe the easiest to just put someone in, there's a lot more to the winger position than just running around. Every outfield position has their offensive duties but also has to play their part in pressing, counter-pressing, and moving as a defensive unit - otherwise the whole thing falls apart. Needs a bit of coaching, but nothing like learning a playbook.

I referenced the sports from the topic, so futbol, basket and hockey but actually, I can't think of any sport that is as diverse as football. 

I agree about your point about futbol/soccer as well. I grew up playing futbol so that is my main sport and you are right that there's a lot more tactical nuances than simply running around kicking a ball about. For anyone interested, these link shows some scouting notes that were leaked about 15 years ago. Today, you'll have several coaches that are probably even more detail oriented:

https://www.sportbible.com/football/reactions-news-take-a-bow-jose-mourinhos-scouting-report-on-barcelona-from-0506-is-remarkable-20190911

https://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01927/art18-1_1927022a.pdf

What you'd probably do in the case with the random winger is to basically remove him from the game plan and scheme as you're playing 10 vs 11. Whatever you do, you're obviously at a disadvantage, but at least this way you wouldn't risk anything falling apart due to this one guy. 

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On 6/3/2020 at 4:31 AM, Hunter2_1 said:

That is it in it's simplest form. You haven't yet mentioned LBW, pitching maps, shot types, fielding positions (check a couple pages back), averages, strike rates, declaration, weather affecting the ball path and condition etc etc. :D

Many of these things have a direct analog in baseball...

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The defensive position aspect is very unique in baseball. A player who plays rightfield may suck in centerfield. You cant play SS, 2B, or 3B if you're a lefthander. Trying to get a player's bat into the lineup while finding his best position in the field is something that can get tinkered with well into their minor league stay. In football and basketball, you essentially have your position set in college at the latest, but usually way earlier than that.

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This is ONLY as a HS coach, but here's my "film watching" process.

Preparation for opponent:

Watching opponent's film the first time: Breakdown formations, plays, field vs. boundary, down and distance, gap scheme vs. zone scheme

Watching opponent's film the second time: Evaluate the tendencies. What plays do they love on what formations? What's their % run vs. pass in those formations or by down and distance? Are they more field or boundary? Who are their DUDES?

Watching opponent's film the third time: Evaluate whether they are more plays or players oriented. Does their RB line up in the slot? Is there a certain kid they want to get the ball to based upon formations or down/distance?  

Watching opponent's film the fourth time: Are there any tendencies that stick out beyond all of that? For example, a few years ago, we noticed that the ball would be run to a certain side of the field based solely upon whether the QB's right or left foot was offset (it was going the opposite way of where his foot was. They were an under the center team and he wanted to clear the pulling OG/C on power plays). Is that X WR's head down on running plays? Is there a personnel tell based upon ______?

So, not only does all of that factor in, but I need to get this ALL to my guys by Tuesday/Wednesday's practice, otherwise we can't use it on our gameplan for a Friday night.

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