Soccer vs Hockey
Majority of sports can be reduced to three basic elements; players’ physique, tactics and technique. In an exceedingly simplified form, this would be body, mind and skill. Soccer fits perfectly in the middle of this triangle and this would seemingly make it a more complete sport than Hockey, in terms of the basic elements. However, the differences between the two sports are as widely split as the fans that subscribe to either sport.
Physical
Physically, soccer requires players to have a lot of body strength and high levels of fitness because a soccer game entails many kilometers of running around the field. Hockey requires higher levels of complete athleticism, which is a combination of skating stamina and body strength, enabling players to hit their opponents on to the side boards.
Aim
The essence of the game in both soccer and hockey is basically the same: to score, albeit using different objects. In soccer players will try to score as many goals as possible by putting the ball behind the opponent’s goal post which is guarded by a net, while in hockey a puck is shot towards a smaller goal of the opponent.
Game progression also differs greatly. In soccer, a player uses his feet to move the ball forward towards opponent’s goal, making passes to teammates to maintain ball possession. Also, a player can dribble when he goes past opponents, although this requires a lot of personal skill. In hockey ,however, progression is made by skating and a hockey stick is used to pass the puck to other teammates during play. The passing and shooting here happens at great speeds of the puck so the goal keeper requires great levels of concentration to stop it.
Playing fields
Hockey is played on a not so usual surface of ice called a skating rink, and that is why it is mainly popular in those regions that are sufficiently cold for natural ice cover that can last a whole season. However, artificial ice rinks have made it possible for indoor games year round. Soccer on the other hand is played on a soccer pitch (field of play), which is essentially a rectangular field covered with leveled grass or an artificial turf.
Summary
1.Soccer is played on a grassy pitch while hockey is played on an ice rink.
2.Soccer requires more body strength while hockey requires more athleticism.
3.The hockey puck is shot at higher speeds than a soccer ball.
4.Soccer players use their feet to move the ball across a pitch while hockey players use hockey sticks to shoot the puck.
- Difference Between Nuts and Bolts - August 2, 2010
- Differences Between Crystal and Gold Silver - August 2, 2010
- Difference Between Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence - August 1, 2010
“Soccer fits perfectly in the middle of this triangle and this would seemingly make it a more complete sport than Hockey”
This is preposterous. If soccer fits perfectly, then its a more complete sport than ALL OTHER SPORTS? I prefer to measure a sports completeness by gauging the ability of that sport’s top athlete(s) to excel in other sports, vs. other sports’ top athletes ability to excel in sports other than their specialty, and how deeply that sport pushes such an athlete to approximate mastery. Example: Sumo wrestler is going to have a very hard time in just about any other sport he tries. Yet an athetic quarterback has a much better chance at excelling in baseball, hockey, soccer, basketball, tennis, etc. Soccer players lack brute strength, contrary to what this article states. Soccer is basically endurance, some speed, some quickness, and touch on the ball, with required tactics far short of those required by a quarterback for example. Hockey is basically having a strong core, toughness, but has the steepest technical learning curve of any sport requiring years to climb (as opposed to a running back being able to run north/south or laterally well). Basketball and the quarterback position seem frontrunners in the most complete sport, yet such assertions seem ridiculous.
Reply
Basketball is a more complete sport? Thats silly. Put lebron james on a football(soccer) pitch and he would be completely useless. Same for Tom brady. Both would get dispossessed far too easily. Definitely Ronaldo or Messi would embaress themselves much less playing basketball or quarterback than lebron or brady would embaress themselves playing football.
Reply
“Basketball/quarterback is a more complete sport”? Thats silly. Put LeBron James or Tom Brady on a football(soccer) pitch and they would be completely useless. Both would get dispossessed far too easily. They’d embarrass themselves. Definitely Ronaldo or Messi would fare much better playing basketball or quarterback compared to LeBron or Brady playing football(soccer).
Reply
I was led astray by the hockey field pictured – I was expecting field hockey!
Kind of midway between the two I reckon.
Reply
Hockey is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball or a puck into the opponent’s goal using a hockey stick. In many areas, one sport is generally referred to simply as hockey. Association football, commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball. Hockey and football are the two greatest sports in the world. Both demand that their players possess the unlikely ……….http://ogibogi.com/node/1525 for details.
Reply
However the games are always good for health but i’ll be say hockey is as dangerous as a boxing. It’s a every time you fill peril when you play hockey that when anybody don’t stick-ax you. So your article is so good but still you could mention some more things and made it more effective. I’ll be waiting your new update. Thank you to this article.
Reply
My God, who wrote this nonsense? Soccer requires more overall strength than hockey? Are you insane? Soccer requires lower body strength ONLY, and not much of that. Soccer requires no upper body strength at all. Hockey requires strength all over – that’s why hockey players outweigh soccer players by at least 50 lb / 22 kg at least. I like soccer a lot, but don’t overstate the case for it.
Reply
and most importantly — soccer is a pussy sport.
Reply
Ya soccer is a pussy sport all you have is brute strength but because you are allowed to hit someone it takes skillto get the ball from someone without smashing someone fucking idiot
Reply
Hockey is also much more entertaining to watch. A soccer game needs more than 1 hour and 30 min for on average a 15 shot game. On average 2 hockey teams can get 60 shots in a game, in a hour. Hockey is much more faster and entertaining then boring ol soccer. Goalies in hockey rely on more reactionary skill then soccer goalies who just run from each side of the post. It seems 50% of the time in soccer a shot scores. Because it’s harder to score in hockey, and there are more shots it is one of the most entertaining sports in the world.
Reply
If hockey was the most exciting sport to watch in the world, it might have the most viewers. it can’t even compare to baseball (snooze). People watch hockey for the fights.
Reply
It depends on viewers wheather ther like hockey or football not its popularity
Reply
This article is nonsense hockey needs more body strength than soccer.
Reply
Hockey requires more body strength than soccer? I’ve played both and I don’t know about that. If you look at the pros, soccer players have to run around for 90 minutes whereas hockey players seldom get more than 20 minutes per game. Pro hockey players are expected to be able to fight, which requires a level of strength not required of soccer players. And hockey players crash into each other all of the time, (called checking), but that has it’s roots in the fact that skating is hard and young players generally cannot stop or steer as well on skates as they can on shoes.
I’m also not sure about the upper body strength thing. If you compare the average NFL quarterback to the average top level soccer player they aren’t a lot different in height/weight. The main difference would be that all soccer players are expected to be able to throw the ball (yes, non soccer fans who don’t understand the game there is a lot of throwing, it just comes from the sideline not the middle of the field. My guess is that if you bothered to count you’d see that soccer players make about the same number of forward passes with their hands as a football quarterback does during a game, they just come from the side.)
So the main difference between soccer and football is that in soccer everyone can throw and everyone can kick, there are no special teams (I’m obviously leaving aside the rugby style scrum and physical tackling.) Also the number of players is an obvious difference, a football team will have over 40 players to play 60 minutes, whereas a soccer team will have 15 players to play 90 minutes.
As for scoring really all the games break down about the same. An exciting soccer game might end 4-3. Well, so does a good hockey game. Football games might finish 27-21, but really that is 4-3 if you divide by the 7 points a successful drive gives. The big difference with football and rugby is there are “half points” for field goals when a touch is not forthcoming. So if soccer had some way of scoring a “half point” say for kicking the ball over the net it wouldn’t be much different. Change soccer so that a goal is worth 7 points and kicking the ball over the net is worth 3 points and vola! Football scoring.
Hockey is a different game of course, but I would say any game that requires so much equipment, such expensive playing surfaces, and a totally novel way of getting around will never be a mass market sport for the world in general. They simply aren’t going to build hockey rinks all over Florida, Africa, and Brazil. It’s too hot.
Reply
Pickle Ball is Pussy Ball
Thanks
Jeff
Reply