Football conversation questions
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In the United States football refers to American football, a sport played with an oval ball.
In most other countries football is association football, a sport played with a spherical ball and the topic of this article.
Contents
General topics[edit]
- Typically the same clubs win every time. Is this fair? How could things be changed?
- Many years ago players for a particular team used to only come from that team's local area. Nowadays players for "local" teams come from all over the world. What is your opinion of this change?
- In some countries there seems to be a link between violence and vandalism with football. Why should this be?
- Which country has the most enjoyable football?
- Do you ever watch women's football? Why, why not?
- Should hooligans be banned from football?
Football changes?[edit]
Football is a very popular game – but could it be improved? Joseph “Sepp” Blatter came up with some innovative suggestions some time ago about improving the spectacle.[1] Before looking at his suggestions, how do you think that the game could be improved?
- How could it be made more interesting?
- How could women’s football be made more popular as a spectator sport?
- Are there ways in which the game could obtain more money from advertising?
- How could the quality of referees’ decisions be improved? Should the quality of their decisions be improved or are debates about their decisions a necessary part of the game?
- How could the game be made less dangerous for skillful players?
- Would you like to see any changes in the “extra time” rule?
- Are there any other changes you would like to see?
- How can technology improve football?
- Do you think that football has changed in last 10 years?
- What will football be like 100 years from now?
Suggestions for improvement[edit]
Mr Blatter’s ideas are summarised below. Suggestions from others are shown in italics. What do you think of each idea?
- Draws should be eliminated and penalties should be used to give a result for every game.
- Tighter and “more feminine” clothes for female players would make the spectacle more popular.
- Female players should have a kit based on tennis clothes.
- Male players should also have more revealing kit.
- Aggressive tackles should be prohibited so as to protect more skilful players.
- Bigger goals would allow for more goals to be scored.
- Goal posts should be made substantially thicker so that a near miss would be more likely to rebound into play.
- Neon advertising could be placed on the thicker posts.
- Points could be given for rebounds off the thicker posts.
- The linesman could be on pitch to assist the referee.
- Two or more referees could be on the pitch at the same time.
- All referees should be professional.
- The game could be divided into quarters to allow for more TV advertising.
- The offside rule should be abolished.
- Extra time should be abolished.
Football players (footballers)[edit]
- What is your opinion of football players' salaries?
- A football player has a career of, perhaps, 15 years. With such a short working life, do they deserve high salaries?
- What are the disadvantages of playing football for a living?
Vocabulary[edit]
- draw: when two teams score the same number of goals, and therefore there is no winner.
- fan: abbreviation of fanatic, an enthusiast.
- FIFA /ˈfiːfə/: International Federation of Association Football is the governing body of association football.
- footie, footy: informal names for Association football (British English)
- hooligan: noisy and violent sports fan.
- pitch: the rectangular field where a sport is played.
- soccerAmE /ˈsɒkər/: In the United States, association football (the topic of this article) is called soccer derived from the spelling of the word "association".
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ The Guardian, Soccer chief's red card for draws. Sepp Blatter's original comments. Highly recommended.
External links[edit]
- Learning English Through Football, weekly podcast