Personal Writing Project
Tony Liang
Teacher: Ms. Natasha Stubbs
Grade: 11th B
Date: 23-5-2018
Soccer and Basketball are the world’s most popular sports in the actual world. More than
80% percent of the world’s population is practicing these sports. Even though both sports are
tremendously interesting and challenging, there are diferences between them.
First, Soccer is a sport played by 22 people with a ball and there are 2 teams, each side
played by 11 players. The way to know which team has won the game is to see which team scored
the most by shooting the ball into the goal that is defended by the goalkeeper. There are various
methods to score a point, for example you can score with your head, with both foots, with your
chest, basically any part of your body except for your hands. And by this, professional players
have scored many astounding goals such as the bicycle kick, scorpion kick, dolphin heading, back
heel goal, trivela, among others. After scoring, the only way to maintain an advantage is to defend
your own goal. To defend, you may control the ball at your own side or just have possession of
the it . Also, by blocking the shoots of the opposite team to your own goal.
A soccer team has players of different positions such as: goalkeeper, striker, centre-back,
fullbacks, center midfielder, attacking midfielder, defensive midfielder, wingers, etc. Essentially,
everyone has their own responsibility. Ones are responsible of defending the goal, ones are in
charge of taking possession of the ball, others to score, or start an attack then counter-attack.
Moreover, none of the players can use their hands while playing on field excluding the goalkeeper,
or when the ball is out of the sidelines of the field. Because of these simple, authentic rules, many
people in the world enjoy this sport and practice it. You can see kids, juveniles and even adults
playing soccer almost everywhere with full passion, joyfulness, and satisfaction.
Aside from soccer, another sport practiced by the people is Basketball. It is a game played
by 10 people with a ball, 5 people per team, and a plenty subs on the bank to be substituted with
the players on field. It’s known to be an easy learned, interesting sport to compete. It's a game that
depends a lot on tactics, teamwork, and a smart, genuine coach to lead the team. The way of
winning a basketball game is to see which team can score the most in 48 minutes, which is divided
into 4 quarters of 12 minutes, by aiming and shooting the ball into the basket, or hoop. But, unlike
soccer, there are only two ways to score, either by shooting far away from the hoop; or dunk, score
by shooting the ball down through the basket with the hands above the rim. Different from soccer,
basketball is a much fast-paced sport; the offense and defense can be changed immediately just in
one second. It’s very a delicate sport because even a little mistake that you commit can make you
loose the game.
But in reality, Soccer is the most popular, diverse sport played by the people around the
world. Thus, it’s harder to play soccer than to play basketball, since controlling the ball with your
foot fluently is much harder than controlling and dribbling the ball with your hands. A total of 270
million people - or 4% of the world's population participate actively in soccer, while basketball
has only 26 million people playing it. And, soccer athletes are much more famous and are easier
to recognize by the majority, compared with basketball stars. In my opinion, I would say soccer is
a much more challengeable, attractive, fascinating sport; because you can`t enjoy as much as of
playing soccer and score some stunning goals than by playing basketball. In conclusion, both
soccer and basketball are the greatest sports created humans. Each of them have their unique and
interesting parts that attracts most of the people. Without doubt, soccer is more popular since
almost every part of the world is playing soccer; meanwhile, basketball is only famous in the
America.