Dear dimwit on the phone

Right, not always, which is why I won't ask for them on a game the coach calls in, but if you're covering the game you should have a sense of which team is controlling possession and corners is a good way to quantify that. The other option is to have a stop-watch handy and keep track of time of possession for each team, but even that doesn't tell you if they possessed the ball in a spot where they could score.
In those situations where one team controls the run of play for much of the game but the other team has an edge in corners because of several right in a row, you can make note of that in your gamer. "Podunk held a 6-5 edge in corner kicks, but three of those came in a flurry of chances in the 67th minute as East Bumblefuck controlled the flow of the game most of the way."

 

Oh, no question there are exceptions. I covered a high school playoff game a couple of years ago where one team had like a 7-1 edge in corners, but couldn't put one in the net, then they gave up a cheap goal in the last three minutes and lost 1-0.

 

Seems like every soccer game I've ever covered --- which is somewhere in single digits, but still --- ends 1-0, often on a soft goal.

 

You're lucky. I've covered a bunch that have ended 10-0, and that's with the winning coach being merciful and the refs shortening the halves from 40 to 30 (or even 20) minutes. Covered one last year that was 10-0 and should've been twice as bad. The refs cut the second half down from 40 to about 15 minutes when it was 8-0 at halftime.
I do remember one from several years back that might have been the worst ass-kicking I've ever seen. Girls game between a pretty good Class 1A squad and a terrible 5A squad from the inner city. The city team, of course, had no select or club team players, and thus no real chance to win more than two or three games a year against similar teams.
The final score, IIRC, was about 12-0. The shots -- and this was me tallying them up, not a coach inflating them -- were 60-1.
The 1A team just kept getting breakaways and sending stuff toward the net. Not always great shots, but good enough that they were on frame and the keeper had to make a save. I think the keeper had about 35 saves. All things considered, she didn't do a terrible job.

Almost as bad as the blowouts are the ones that end in a very one-sided 5-0 score, where the shots are 20-2. Those are just flat-out boring. At least the blowouts you have the possibility of the shortened game to look forward to. The 5-0 games are just close enough that they play them out, yet everyone can tell within the first 10 minutes how it's going to go.

 

Batman, they don't call it early when the score gets out of hand, like in softball?

In fairness, I was never a regular soccer reporter. I'd occasionally get pressed into service when the schedule got full and there were too many events at the same time, usually in the playoffs. So the teams were at least respectable.

But it reminds me of Jim Rome's comment to David Beckham: "It's soccer. All you have to do is count to one."

 

Missouri does have a mercy rule in soccer, 10 goals in the second half.
And Jim Rome is an idiot. Ask Atletico Madrid is one goal is enough.

 

I didn't cover the game (it was on the road) but when I was sports editor for my college paper, our team won 19-1. After trailing 1-0. And with mentioned mercy rules applied.

And our team finished under .500 for the year.

 

I've mentioned this before, but Iowa plays its high school baseball and softball in the summer.

Usually, there is an overlap of a couple of weeks with the end of the spring season (soccer, golf and tennis postseason tournaments) and the beginning of the summer season. This year, because of the way the schedule was set up, it's a three-week overlap.

The summer baseball and softball seasons started last night in our area (some schools in other areas actually played games on Memorial Day). We covered one baseball game (the lone ranked team in our area, a fringe school, played one of our local schools), and then covered soccer and golf tournaments (golf was a state qualifying tournament). Everybody on my staff covered something (I did the golf, and then came in and did pages).

So of course, this morning, we get an e-mail from an angry softball parent upset that their daughter's game was in the roundup on Page 4. "These are two great programs, they have no business being on Page 4, they should be on Page 1." Of course, neither team is ranked and the score of the second game was 20-8, but they are "great programs." Our coverage was "PISS POOR."

Yep, it's going to be a long summer.

 

Sometimes there is such a thing as poetic justice.

A few weeks ago, we got a call from a fan of a 1A school in a town that is near the outer edges of our coverage area.

Their baseball team, despite a fairly average record, somehow won their region, and this fan was demanding coverage and in a fairly overbearing way.

So we sent a reporter down there to cover their playoff opener against a very good team that somehow finished second in its region. Yep, they got run-ruled, then went over to the opposing school the next night and got run-ruled again. End of season, end of coverage.

 

That's the best.

 

Then you get the flood of "you only cover us when we lose" complaints.

 

To which the response should be "What do you think I am, psychic?!"