Dallas Morning News: World Cup Proves Soccer a Young Man's Game
Dallas morning news ( A World Cup for the Aged http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/14855618.htm ) rips into older players at the world cup, they are allegedly not performing well.
Such is again pseudoscience. These older players, probably have the same success vs failure percentage as the younger ones. With both older and younger players on the field, what you see at the World Cup is low scoring games, mostly failed attempts to score goals.
You cannot scientifically dwell on three anecdotes (Pope Zidane Nedved) of older players screwing up while looking at just two games in a tournament, while you ignore the hundreds of times young players have screwed up.
The article in question plunges into unscientific anecdotal speculation about who made a better failed attempt to score a goal.
At the World Cup, there are 750 players. 75 of them are at the top ten percent in age. The articles looks at 3 players over 2 games.
The article does nothing to disprove the thesis that teams in the soccer world have done worse than they otherwise could have by overemphasizing youth.
What is required is some standard by which to measure fitness for games, it should be in line with the newest scientific advances which show that aerobic fitness (as opposed to anaerobic fitness) is overemphasized in games like soccer.
What is required is hard facts, this kind of fitness is required to be able to play 20 minutes at this position in this kind of offense on this kind of team; that kind of fitness is required to play so many minutes at that position in that offense on that team. When you have that kind of info, you can avoid erring by failing to give time to older players and you can also avoid erring by failing to let youth run around.
The article is an example of the kind of blythe pseudoscience that has been messing up the nation and the world via its application to subject areas more serious and important than even World Cup Soccer.
What we see now in the world is nations such as the USA where employers favor youths, because the burden of health insurance ins left on the employer as opposed to shouldered by the government, running up huge trade deficits while similar nations where the government handles health insurance instead of the employers, run up trade surpluses. What we are seeing in the USA is a lack of realistic appreciation for the qualities older workers bring to the job, and a brainless mania for hiring youths with credentials, on the part of employers who have no idea what these youths spend their time doing while earning these degrees (plunging into irrelevant material that lacks real-world relevance and applicability).
As opposed to mounting anecdotal attacks on the performance of older players, it would be more reasonable to figure out how soccer can be changed to turn it into a game that is less demanding in terms of sheer physical endurance.
@2006 David Virgil Hobbs
Such is again pseudoscience. These older players, probably have the same success vs failure percentage as the younger ones. With both older and younger players on the field, what you see at the World Cup is low scoring games, mostly failed attempts to score goals.
You cannot scientifically dwell on three anecdotes (Pope Zidane Nedved) of older players screwing up while looking at just two games in a tournament, while you ignore the hundreds of times young players have screwed up.
The article in question plunges into unscientific anecdotal speculation about who made a better failed attempt to score a goal.
At the World Cup, there are 750 players. 75 of them are at the top ten percent in age. The articles looks at 3 players over 2 games.
The article does nothing to disprove the thesis that teams in the soccer world have done worse than they otherwise could have by overemphasizing youth.
What is required is some standard by which to measure fitness for games, it should be in line with the newest scientific advances which show that aerobic fitness (as opposed to anaerobic fitness) is overemphasized in games like soccer.
What is required is hard facts, this kind of fitness is required to be able to play 20 minutes at this position in this kind of offense on this kind of team; that kind of fitness is required to play so many minutes at that position in that offense on that team. When you have that kind of info, you can avoid erring by failing to give time to older players and you can also avoid erring by failing to let youth run around.
The article is an example of the kind of blythe pseudoscience that has been messing up the nation and the world via its application to subject areas more serious and important than even World Cup Soccer.
What we see now in the world is nations such as the USA where employers favor youths, because the burden of health insurance ins left on the employer as opposed to shouldered by the government, running up huge trade deficits while similar nations where the government handles health insurance instead of the employers, run up trade surpluses. What we are seeing in the USA is a lack of realistic appreciation for the qualities older workers bring to the job, and a brainless mania for hiring youths with credentials, on the part of employers who have no idea what these youths spend their time doing while earning these degrees (plunging into irrelevant material that lacks real-world relevance and applicability).
As opposed to mounting anecdotal attacks on the performance of older players, it would be more reasonable to figure out how soccer can be changed to turn it into a game that is less demanding in terms of sheer physical endurance.
@2006 David Virgil Hobbs
posted by David Virgil at 8:53 PM
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