I'll start out by saying I love soccer (or football as every other country but the USA accurately calls it!). I grew up watching and playing many sports, and a good football match is just about the only one I will watch the whole way through.
That said: a couple things need to change, in my opinion of course.
1. Stop the damn clock, just like they do in college soccer. We have the technology to do so, and it will eliminate the ridiculous time-wasting and some of the injury antics. I saw a dude from Columbia take 2 minutes to tie his shoe. Adding on the extra time at the end is just dumb and wouldn't be necessary if they did like every other sport with a time clock. "But it's tradition!" Yeah, a bad one. Sports change, hopefully for the better. Basketball added a shot clock, Baseball is trying to speed things up and clean up the cheating.
2. Speaking of injury antics--faking injuries is just lame. It's worse than lame. I know there are fake fouls in other sports (basketball used to have tons of flopping to draw charges) but faking an injury is another level of bad. I've always rooted against the worst divers and fakers, and that has generally meant I can't stand any South American team, and throw in Italy and Spain as well. These days European soccer is far better than it used to be, but the Copa is almost unwatchable. Great skills, cringeworthy fake injuries. With video review, they should start handing out yellow cards to the blatant ones. When you roll 17 times screaming in agony, and HD video is showing you peeking at the ref, only to get up and run full speed 30 seconds later--that's a damn card. A couple times in the Columbia Argentina games players went down like they were punched while lining up for set pieces--reply showed they were barely touched, it was just trying to draw fouls.
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