Now, I'm a big American Football fan. I know all the rules, and watch every game that I can. When I first found out that there was a manga about American Football, I was excited yet curious to whether or not the manga would actually do it justice. The answer to that is that it get the rules right most of the time, but whenever they mess up, it's always one of the rules that even a newcomer would pick up if they sat down and watched a game.
Now don't get me wrong, I liked this manga a lot. But there were certain parts of it that would make anyone who knows the rules scratch their head in confusion. Since I don't want to crowd up this comment with the examples and reasons why, I'll put two examples in spoiler tags that I can think of right now that made me confused as to why they didn't know it already.
1) When Panther put the ball in his hand over the goal line when that huge dust cloud came up, the referee was about to signal a touchdown. But Panther pulled it back saying that Sena got him before he could cross the goal line and it was decided that it wasn't a touchdown. Even though Panther says he didn't cross the goal line, the referee can't take his word for granted because he couldn't see anything due to the dust cloud. The first thing the referee saw after the dust cloud dissipated was Panther having the ball cross the goal line, which should be counted as a touchdown no matter what Panther says.
- During the Deimon/Bando game, Kotarou lands the kickoff just out of bounds right by Deimon's endzone and they have it to where the place where it landed out of bounds is where Deimon had to start. The ball is actually supposed to be placed at the 40 yard line because in went out of bounds during the kickoff.
Now as you can see, the title pretty much tells you what I thought of this manga. Personally, I think the manga started to go downhill a bit right when the Kanto Tournament arc started.
During that arc, I noticed two things. One was that the four games Deimon played always took at least 20 or more chapters to finish. Now seeing how there were other matches before and after those four that were shorter, it seems that they were needlessly stretching out those matches (One of the best examples is the Ojo/Deimon match which went on for 29 chapters). The second thing is that even though the games were good enough to make you want to read them again, they were also anticlimactic. When Deimon beat Ojo, I noticed in that game and the Deimon/Shinryūji game that Deimon was trailing at halftime but then came back and won. When I noticed that, it became disappointing because when they trailed in the other two games with Hakushū and Teikoku, I already knew they were going to come back and win. Even with these two reasons, the games were still enjoyable to read, just not as enjoyable as they could have been.
So, when the Kanto arc ended, most of us thought it would be over...
...until the World Youth Cup arc rose its' ugly head. I can't speak for anyone else, but this was one of the worst arcs I've read in ANY manga. It was like more like a bad fanfic or some "What If?" story than actual canon. The stereotypes, the uselessness of every country except America and Japan, the constant hyping up of America being the team no one can beat (Making it more than obvious that Japan was going to give them a tough challenge), and even the end result were all horrible. I agree with most people that say it should have ended with Deimon winning the Christmas Bowl.
In conclusion, this is a manga that's entertaining and funny from beginning to end (The only manga I've read that's funnier is One Piece), but it suffers from the constant misuse of basic American Football rules and poor writing from the Kanto arc onwards.