OT: How to make soccer more exciting

It will open-up the game and help scoring more goals plus will reduce the amount of controversial calls.

It's one of my favorite sports and I don't think changes are particularly necessary. That said, you could modify the offsides rule to be the entire offensive player's body clearly past the defender rather than just a part of the body. This would prevent the cherry picking while opening things up a little and making the offsides trap harder to pull off.

have a lacrosse style rule so that the team can only have so many back on D because theres nothing more buzz-killing in soccer when you see a team on a breakaway for them to be stifled because theyre literally in a 3 on 10 or when a super star goes in to attack and he literally has 4 D on him.

If that article is serious, it is beyond terrible.

If that article is satirical or supposed to be funny, it failed.

Seriously how old is calling Obama unamerican because of his name?

Make college soccer more like FIFA soccer

• Trot out two flags with the logos of each school
• Teams come out holding hands of local schoolchildren
• Play fight songs of both teams
• Go.

The thing that's most bothersome is that a normal build-up requires so many properly executed passes in order to get in an area where you can actually score.  One slight hiccup and you lose possession.  So a big chunk of the game is played in the midfield, where no one can score.  That's what makes it boring.  Imagine if hockey was played between the blue lines the whole time, it'd be boring, too.  I don't know if a shorter field is the answer, because goal kicks can almost reach the opposing penalty area as it is.  It's more like there's too many players and not enough open space.  There needs to be some room for error with the passing.

If there is one thing soccer definitely needs, it's a way to make itself more marketable. It's definitely not the number one sport in the world or anything.

To me, the biggest downside is flopping. Solution? Play doesn't stop when a player is down, just like in the NBA. Play only stops to tend to the "injured" player when there is a set piece, throw in, or free kick. Thus, it disincentivises flopping, because while you're rolling around on the ground, your team is playing a man down. I think this is far better than the "red card for flopping" stuff, because that's so subjective. This would be an objective rule.

However, the problem often is, when a guy flops, there is a free kick given right there, or a yellow/red. I don't know how you'd deal with that, I guess. But flopping just to flop, where no card or free kick is given, would mean that, theoretically, the flopper wouldn't be rewarded, and a real, hard tackle that warranted a free kick or card would still be punished, because that would be your "stoppage" to deal with the guy who is down.

Just my e-pinion, from someone who just recently started really enjoying soccer.

that Rick Reilly wrote the essentially same piece a few weeks ago and was actually being serious.

I can only assume PJ O'Rourke meant to mock that.

Here's a question - is the dissatisfaction with the pace of the game, particularly the coring, predominantly a US thing, or is that shared equally around the world?  I honestly don't know and am curious.