Likes and dislikes about (World Cup) soccer

Assalamu alaikum

It's been a while, but it's the summer and I'm back and my period of, uh, hibernation seems to be over. Anyway, with all the World Cup hype (unfortunately no successful Muslim teams) I decided to make a list of things I like and dislike about World Cup soccer. It might surprise, or annoy, you that most of the things that I like are about soccer in general and many of the things I don't like are about the World Cup. Here we go....

LIKES

1. Easy, fun, accessible game
2. Most popular sport in the world
3. No advertising breaks, no timeouts
4. Indiscriminate selection of World Cup host countries (Europe, East Asia, Africa, Americas, etc. It could be argued that Europe gets a lot though)
5. No need for certain climates in host selection. For example, the Winter Olympics are always in cold climates and the Superbowl is always played in a warm city in the south. But the World Cup is played in all climates. Some 2010 South Africa games were played in freezing temperatures, as it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
6. Many different leagues. This can be a good thing or a bad thing- see below for the bad. The good is that we get a variety of different players from a variety of different leagues and there's a league for every skill level (Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, et cetera). In other sports, like ice hockey, one league has a monopoly as the top league in the world - the NHL.

DISLIKES

1. The continuous clock. Why can't they just pause the clock if there's a delay and end the game at 90:00 sharp instead of having to worry about "stoppage time" in which the game ends abruptly at, say, 92:48? It makes it much more convenient.
2. Terrible refereeing at the 2010 World Cup - they should have more referees (the field is huge, they need to cover it) and video review. If the technology is available, why not use it? Besides, humans are humans and humans make mistakes. There have been too many so far in this World Cup and video review is necessary. Bad offside calls, disallowed goals, the list goes on.
   
3. Overtime - "golden goal" vs "silver goal." A silver goal (used in the World Cup) means a goal in OT is just a goal - it changes the score but the game goes on and the other team can still come back and win. A golden goal means sudden death - if you score, you win, and if no one does after a certain amount of allotted time, you go into a shootout. I like this because it adds drama and excitement to the game and makes a goal more, uh, what's the word.... epic. Scenario one: Rodriguez Fernando (made-up name) scores in OT of the World Cup final and goes crazy, knowing his team won. Scenario two: Rodriguez Fernando scores in OT of the World Cup final, but has to wait another 22 minutes until he realizes his team won. Even then the "stoppage time" dilemma creates more confusion. Scenario three: Rodriguez Fernando scores in OT of the World Cup final, but the celebration is dampened when the opposing team scores four minutes later. They score again and win the Cup (or win in a shootout). See what I mean? Scenario one would be the most wildly celebrated, and as soon as he found the back of the net he would know he just scored the biggest goal of his life.
4. Too many players on the field. This leads to difficulty penetrating the defense and low-scoring games (despite the 24 ft by 8 ft goal) that can be boring at times. "Argentina passes the ball around... they try to get it deep but a German defender steals it and passes it up the field.... Germany passes the ball around... they try to get it deep but an Argentine defender steals it and passes it up the field.... Argentina passes the ball..." I think you get the point. If it was 7 on 7 or even as radically low as 5 on 5, there would be a lot more scoring chances and the game would be more fast-paced, exciting and high-scoring (8-7 instead of 1-0?). This is probably why Americans don't like soccer much, because they're used to scores like 33-27 (American football), 112-105 (basketball), et cetera.
5. Too many leagues. I already said this adds variety to the sport, but it's a little too much sometimes. Too much going on, too many teams, and too many players to follow. And fans would like to see big teams from different leagues face each other more. I believe the top teams (i.e. league champions) from the top leagues only face each other once in a UEFA tournament.
6. Dominance of certain teams in their respective leagues. Manchester dominates the Premier League, Madrid & Barcelona dominate La Liga, and this gets boring as they win the championship year after year. Maybe a draft would help even things out.
7. The strange, irregular balls they use in the 2010 World Cup. Why can't they just use normal ones instead of ones that have different and unpredictable paths?
8. Ending matches in a draw. Come on, let's go to overtime and decide who wins!
9. Expensive tickets that are hard to get. This leads to a considerable amount of empty seats in World Cup games. If they lowered the price they would sell more (it's Africa, not Luxembourg).
10. Those annoying vuvuzelas! I can't get the noise out of my head! Like a swarm of bees!

I'm done complaining now! It may look like I don't like soccer much (10 dislikes to 6 likes) but I do. It's just that I think it needs to be tweaked a bit. If you have anything to say, you know what to do - leave a comment.

Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh