Saturday, June 21, 2008

Screams in the night

I do not know the first thing about how futbol is played, but I must admit that the screams (and now gunshots) from my neighbors when Turkey is playing--and winning!--are intoxicating. Anyone want to volunteer to teach me a thing or two?

4 comments:

Adrian Cotter said...

I was going to ask what it was like!

What do you need to know?
Turkey's games have been very exciting with last minute wins and ties (they are undefeated but have only had the higher score for a grand total of 2 minutes + -- out of at least 360!).

I'll be rooting for them against Germany this wednesday.

The Turkish Life said...

The rules of the game would be a good start ;)

That is some stat about the comebacks. Wow. It has been exciting, despite my ignorance. I'll be traveling around this week, but may see if I can find somewhere to watch the game. We appreciate your support!

Adrian Cotter said...

I actually looked for a youtube video for the rules, but came up empty :-)

So 11 players aside. Goalie's the only one who can touch the ball with his hands (unless another player passes the ball to him with their feet then he has to kick it -- i.e. he just can't pick up the ball and run down the clock).

The other exception is when the ball goes out to the side. Then it is a throw-in (hands allowed, but there are rules around what is an appropriate throw. Two-handed over the head).

Balls that go out at the ends are either a goal kick (if an attacker touched it last) or a corner kick (if a defender touched it last).

The most complicated rule is offsides. Basically the idea is to prevent someone from hiding down at one end of the goal past all the defenders. So, an attacker must have one defender between him and the defender's goal -- if he doesn't have the ball or the ball is on its way to him (so long as the ball was kicked when he was on the right side of the defender).

Fouls. offsides is one. hand ball (really any part of the arm). delaying of game (since the clock never stops this is important). the other ones are varying degrees of attacking the person as opposed to attacking the ball. A lot of shoving, shirt grabbing, tripping goes on. Occassionally there are things like head buts and kicks at people.

fouls can result in cards. yellow and red. 2 yellows = a red, and a red gets you ejected from the match leaving your team a player down.

Fouls can result in the befouled team having one of 3 different kicks, depending on what the foul was and where.
penalty kick -- if the foul occured inside the penalty box (the big box around the keep). this is the player versus the goal keeper kick.
indirect kick -- the kicker can't try and score a goal. He has to kick it to another player (usually they teams take these as quick restarts)
direct kick -- the kicker can try and score a goal. This is where you'll see players forming walls. They have to be 10m(I think) from the kick.

indirects come from hand balls, offsides, that sort of thing. directs come from personal fouls. (I think)

For international play -- 45 minute halves. Additional time gets tacked on for "injury time" or "roll around on the ground and pretend your injured time".

I think 3 substitutes are allowed the whole game.

That's the essence of it.

The Turkish Life said...

Wow, that's so cool, thanks!

Or, as my friend Phil says, "It's easy to learn the game, just drink Efes and scream a lot when the ball goes near one of the goals."