Football

We in the U.S. know it as soccer, but most of the world calls it football. Football makes more sense to me, since, well, the players primarily use their feet, except for the goalie. I played soccer for a number of years, all the way through college, and it largely funded my education.
Nevertheless, I have a few gripes:
--I don't know of any other game in which a team that has possession so frequently puts the the ball up for grabs. For example, goal kicks generally don't appear to be intended for a particular player as much as for a general area of the field. The same applies to goaltender punts; here it is, go up and get it. Of course, the opposing team stands as much of a chance of coming up with the ball as the goaltender's own team.
--Injury time, also known as stoppage time, consists of minutes added to the game clock after regular time has expired. The additional minutes ostensibly make up for time lost to injuries over the course of a game and the time it has taken a referee to hand out yellow-card cautions and red-card ejections. Part of the problem appears to be that the referee is the only person with knowledge of how much time needs to be added. Maybe someone else keeps track. I don't know for sure. But it seems subjective. And, if a team has a free kick because of an opponent's infraction, and stoppage time subsequently expires, the referee allows it, as far as I can tell. I suppose that doesn't differ greatly from U.S. football, in which a game can't end on a defensive penalty. But what about the stoppage time to account for the injuries, yellow cards, etc. that occur during the first stoppage time? Stoppage time could have no stopping point because the referee has to continually add on for the delays in each previous stoppage-time session. And why not just stop the fucking clock as you go along? The clock stops for injuries and substitutions and out-of bounds plays in basketball and football and hockey.
--Penalty kicks can determine the outcome of a game, even the World Cup final. For those who don't know, a penalty kick involves just two players: the goalie and the kicker, who has an advantage in that he gets to shoot from 12 yards away with nobody between him and the keeper. Basically, if a player can shoot hard and not miss the net, which is 8 feet high by 24 feet long, he should score. Sometimes the goalkeeper guesses correctly when he picks a side to which to dive and stops the shot, but it pretty much shouldn't happen. Five shots per team in a shootout. If the score remains tied, then each team shoots once until somebody misses and the other makes. Hockey uses shootouts to determine winners of tie games during the regular season, but not so in the playoffs. They play until someone scores. So why can't soccer teams do the same? Probably because so few fucking goals occur and the game could last for 10 hours.
--As the World Cup recently demonstrated, referees remain fallible. England wasn't credited with a goal for a ball that clearly crossed the line. The referee disallowed a U.S. goal for reasons nobody can discern. Argentina received credit for a goal against, I think, Mexico despite the offsides position of the scorer. So, referees screw up. No big news there. But soccer officials appear to adamantly refuse to resort to video replays, even for disputed goals. I'm not sure how ensuring that calls are correct detracts from the game, but then there would be even more stoppage time to add for the time consumed during video reviews.
--Perhaps soccer's most disturbing feature derives from the drama. Not the drama of narrowly missed opportunities during a hotly contested match, but the drama when every one of these motherfuckers finds himself on the receiving end of a foul. If you've never seen a professional soccer game--and the higher the level, the greater the drama--you should watch just for this. Nearly every time a foul occurs, the victimized player screams out in agony and writhes in pain as if, I don't know, someone had just disemboweled him. In fact, disembowelment might be a suitable penalty for the perpetrator of such drama. If hockey players acted that way, they'd be run out of the game. Hockey players get teeth knocked out and finish the game. They get stitched up and reappear on the ice in five minutes.