It's official- Michigan Stadium will host European Soccer- Real Madrid vs Mancheter United
There will be a stream at Noon for free on MGoBlueTV on what the "historic event" is at Michigan Stadium.
European Soccer.
EDIT: It's official
Apparently tonight, the Bo Schembechler statue will be unveiled at Schembecher Hall. Tomorrow, the new Towsley Museum will be open to the public for the first time from 9am-Noon.
I'll be going in the summer to avoid the crowds of tomorrow.
Sweet! Now we'll get to see the Euro's playing the sport they love up close and personal and witness first-hand exciting action like this!
I too think football is way more fun to watch than soccer. However, it would be simplistic to paint soccer as merely a bunch of actors flopping around. Let's not forget that soccer does feature some incredible feats of athleticism and teamwork:
And even our beloved football is not free from sin:
Again, I think football is 1000x better than soccer. But soccer can still be pretty cool, too.
That first gif looks like potential offside......just saying
It was onside.
and I guess there is occaisionally flopping in football, but let's not even pretend we're even on the same order of magnitude. I enjoy a good soccer game, but the flopping is just perpetual. I was just watching El Classico and saw one of those old time fake headbutts and the guy basically died. Flopping is an epidemic in soccer and it ruins the game a bit for me
That's fine and dandy, but it doesn't make the tool that constantly says "Soccer sux because they are pussies" any less douchtastic.
If you don't like soccer, don't enter into a discussion about it.
Also, I don't understand why flopping doesn't earn major fines/suspensions in all major televised sports where they can go back and look at the tape after the fact.
In contrast to 'pretending' anything about magnitude, my use of gifs was to illustrate how poorly isolated moments are able to characterize a sport in any quantitative way.
To keep things quantitative, however, my real claim is absolute, rather than relative. I think football is cooler and features less flopping (relative), but there is greater than zero to like about soccer (absolute). The existence of amazing soccer highlights proves that pure moments exist.
Those football flops are hilarious! I love how they both just launch themselves. And the hands in the air by the Bills guy is just perfect. Any idea if these drew penalties?
There is a ton of diving in soccer, but I would much rather watch euro soccer than football most of the time. Michigan football will always be number one in my book, and college football has great atmosphere and passion, but the National Felon League just isn't very compelling. I am a Colts fan, but I missed a number of games, and it didn't bother me one bit. I like the length of a soccer also. There isn't a lot of wasted time on commercials either, which makes my limited time to watch sports better. Way too much wasted time during a football game, for Michigan games, I will watch a 4 and half hour game, for the NFL and the rest of College football, nah.
You're really old.
I'm pretty sure my username declares that but hey - thanks for the noticing. BTW - what exactly does that have to do with flopping in soccer?
Fun fact! Type in "European Football Dives" in a Google search and you'll get over 66 million results. Type in "American Football Dives" and you'll get back 294 thousand. Seems like the concept of faking injuries, at least according to the good people at Google, is a wee bit more prevelant worldwide in the "beautiful game" than it is in the barbaric sport that is the centerpiece of this particular web site
You do realize that in any given year there are probably a thousand more soccer games being played by thousands of more people than football right? Obviously diving is less prevalent in football if you judge by just going down after being touched but defenders over sell holds all the time, receivers over sell pass interference and the level of bitching for calls is just as high, players will always do what they can to gain an advantage, that is part of sports, it just looks different in the nfl because on most plays going to the ground isn't advantageous for your team like it is in socccer.
And you do realize the term "europussies" came from people watching soccer not porn right?
And for the record I happen to like soccer - I just HATE the constant flopping and diving that plagues most matches i've watched and to my untrained eye it seems to be getting worse. How anybody who contends to be a supporter of the sport can defend this type behavior is beyond me. IMO if a player leaves the pitch due to an injury he should be required to sit out for a period of time and not run back onto the field seconds after a near-fatal shin injury that requires them rolling around on the ground pretending to be dead or something.
That's interesting. So how would you explain the 66MM to 294K differential then? Seems like a pretty wide chasim to me.
It's not a valid measure of correlation because Google casts a very loose net - it's awesome for finding the most relevant things and putting them at the top of your search results, but the sheer number of results can be influenced by many, many factors.
As someone already pointed out, there are more soccer games played around the world every year than there are football games. There are also a lot more soccer fans around the world. They generate content and post it on the internet, where it becomes searchable by Google. No matter what amount of actual diving happens in soccer games, the subsequent discussion vastly amplifies the coincidence of the terms. Additionally, a truckload of variance is introduced when you consider the diversity of search terms you could use for one topic - maybe instead of "diving", you chose "flopping" or "faking"? What if you searched "soccer" instead of "European football?" Answer: the numbers change. A lot.
Plus, you're assuming that any coincidence of the terms is evidence of a positive association, which is erroneous. If someone typed the sentence "There was very little diving in last night's soccer match" onto a blog somewhere, then Google would see "DIVING" and "SOCCER", put that result into a giant pile with millions of others, and hand it to you, who says "SEE? LOOK. TOLD YOU SO." It's too opaque. While the number of search results is a clean, simple number, what actually goes into creating it is too ambiguous and complex to be reliably interpreted.
You know, if it is indeed the Manchester United / Real Madrid match, this might very well rank up there as the single most unsurprising (thanks to early press) historic announcment in recent history at the University Of Michigan if not in the region at large. At the very least, it is in the top five in this particular category. If it is something else, then this is the more cunning misdirection tactics in college athletics as a whole thus far this year.
The icon that is on the screen while you wait for the presser is the International Champions Club symbol (soccer). Surprise? nope.
...but if Bo gets a statue, don't Yost and Crisler get ones outside the buildings with their names on them?
There is a british guy talking. OMG
Also: tickets will be as low as $40
I believe the guy said $45. Could be wrong, the audio is really low.
I think its funny too because he's right. On the world stage, soccer >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> hockey. I'd much rather see two of the most famous soccer teams match up in Michigan Stadium in a lowly friendly than the Winter Classic. Does more for Ann Arbor and the University. But thats just like my opinion, man.
A guy from Spain just called Michigan Stadium "The Famous House of Michigan"....
close enough if you're from Spain
seems simple enough
excellent
On the other, this is just weeks after the World Cup where many of United and Real's best players will have played in. Real is deep enough to field world class talent in their second team but United, well, isn't. In any case, for fans who have never seen big European clubs play before, it's a cool thing.
I'd advise following them on Twitter and maybe signing up for their email updates because they'll often invite fans to watch an open training a day or two before the match. I've been to several of these...sometimes they'll stick around and sign autographs, which is cool.
Only the few players who reach the semis or finals will be "a few weeks removed" from the World Cup. The group stage (where half the field is eliminated) will be over for over five weeks.
DB says the field will be natural grass. Hasn't mentioned elevation of field yet.
Dave has applied for another liquor license.
across the street from the stadium: Dollar Dave's Liquor and Package Goods.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a pro soccer field much larger than a football field?
i think UM could do 65/110 comfortably. the sidelines would be a bit to close to the wall, imo, if they try to do 70/110.
I think this is why we're getting an exhibition but will never get a world cup game. Apparently you can play whatever the hell size field you want for exhibitions but the Big House wouldn't hold a regulation size field
care doesn't mean "no one would notice." Three to five million kids play soccer every week. A Wikipedia article says 13 milion people play in this country--that's probably more people than play football, whichi is a game that I love but which--face it--is confined to a narrow stratum of guys who will look really really terrible when their playing days are over, and may not be the quickest thinkers, either.
Yesterday, Pele said youth soccer is more advanced here than in Brazil. MLS claims it's pulling 18,000 spectators a game. 24 milliion people watched the 2010 world cup here, and Fox sports is betting a lot more will this time. Again, if some mook here doesn't particularly get it, the world's most popular sport can probably handle it.
You totally mis-read what I wrote. I did not say or imply that no one here would pay attention; I said that the country could be ready to host with little advanced warning. "Zero notice." As in, FIFA could recognize that Qatar is a colossal mistake mere months before the event and the U.S. would have the facilities ready to do a great job hosting. The only real challenges would be acquiring good grass to lay over the fieldturf and the lodging challenges.
This is not totally unprecedented. The 1986 World Cup was moved to Mexico two years before it occurred because Colombia, the original host, was unable to pull it off. I'm not expecting that any of FIFA's top dogs would want to deal with the uncomfortable process of refunding the extensive web of bribes necessary to pull out of Qatar, but if they did the U.S. is a logical destination.
MVictors comes through with the question:
Same dimensions of "Old Trafford" or a stadium like than (not specific).
I think he said no platform and mentioned laying sod and other stuff (?) over current playing field.