Soccer Has as Much Scoring as Baseball and Football

A common complaint among American non-soccer fans is that soccer doesn't have enough scoring. This is nonsense.

The average score of a game in the English Premier League is 2-1 (there are roughly three goals scored per game). The average score of a game in the National Football League is 4-3 (there are roughly 47 points per game, which divided by seven equals seven). Since an American football game is about twice as long as a soccer game, the rate of scoring is similar.

Yeah, I know some of those are field goals, but field goals are boring anyway. The point is that American football tricks you into thinking it has more scoring than it does by assigning multiple points to each score.

Baseball in the past season had 8.3 runs per game, but since up to four runs can be scored on a single play, there are probably only about five scoring plays per game. That's comparable to American football and soccer when considering the length of the games.

Only basketball, a game for people with ADHD, actually has more scoring.

More to the point, I don't understand why people think a lot of scoring is ipso facto good. A high-scoring game, in whatever sport, might be a good game. Or it might not. Same with a lack of scoring.

If you are a baseball fan, consider this scenario: The lead-off batter in the first doubles to the gap in left field and advances to third on a passed ball. The next batter pops up to short; then there's a strikeout after the batter hits a couple long fouls. With two outs, the clean-up man hits one into the right field stands just foul. On the next pitch he hits one almost as far to almost the same spot, but just inside the line; it looks like it will drop in for extra bases until the right fielder makes a diving catch on the warning track to end the inning.

At which point you would no doubt turn to your friends and say, "Looks like this game is gonna suck -- no scoring."

Of course you wouldn't. You would have been on the edge of your seat with excitement throughout the inning. Scoring is fun to watch, but so is good defense.