There difference between the announcers in those two clips is great.

Hi Steve
Diego was a Mestizo, Of European ( Italian ) origin on his Mothers side and Amerindian on his fathers side.
I visited Argentina on a couple Rugby Tours and it is a very European or White country, The vast majority are White but the rest are of course Mestizo and Amerindian to one degree or another.
Most of the Mestizo population are more recent immigrants and their descendants.

IMO Diego Maradona is the greatest footballer of all time who flourished in a tough era where skillful players were afforded no protection as they are today.

As usual most people in America have no clue who he was. They thought Madonna died.

https://www.rt.com/usa/507837-madonna-maradona-dead-twitter/

Maradona was definitely a Mestizo. Something of an anomaly, because Argentine was one of the very few countries to officially proclaim & successfully go through with the policy of genocidal extermination of local (Amerind) populations.

It seems that Maradona’s ancestors st(r)ayed under the radar….

Best of all time.

The photo from the Belgium game doesn’t lie:

The Wikipedia entry has his dad as Guaraní (mainly Paraguay nowadays) which seems about right.

In the same game as the two goals highlighted in the videos, he was smashed in the face by Terry Fenwick, one of the hapless England defenders. Throughout his career he took incredible abuse from guys much bigger and stronger than him and kept coming. The most notorious was the appalling tackle by Andoni (“the Butcher”) Goikoetxea of Bilbao when his career could’ve been killed in his teens. And match officials gave him zero protection unlike the perfumed princes of today’s game.

Short he may have been but still head and shoulders above anyone else. And the best goal he was involved in was his creation of the Caniggia goal vs Brazil at Italia 90.

RIP.

Maradona teaches us an important lesson: the most phenomenally talented football player in the world was also a filthy dirty rotten cheater.

And it’s not like his team was no good, either. So we’ve got the best player in the best team drawing deep into the second half against a team notorious for choking at the crucial moment… and he still cheats.

And it’s not just Maradona. Watching football over the years, you could see this in all South American teams: some of the best players in the world, but still the most inclined to cheat.

Of course, their dishonourable bullshit has spread to the rest of the world, so there’s no-one left to hold their head high: everybody’s diving now, everybody’s fucking gurning harder than Jim Carrey when they fall over, everybody’s sneaking everything they can get.

I have no problem believing that South American countries are all crime-ridden basket cases.

Around 1986 I was at a concert and during the interval chatted to my neighbour, who turned out to be from Naples. He told me that when Maradona arrived, he was greeted like Moses, come to lead his people to the Promised Land. A record was released and topped the local charts – “Maradona, take the shame from our city” (they’d never won the league title – won it twice with Maradona in the following years).

Napoli was Maradona’s sort of city – girls, clubs, cocaine, crooks.

He fathered eight kids, including three in Cuba, where he’d gone for cocaine addiction treatment.

Not sure he was the greatest human being, but a wonderful player. When he scored his second goal in the World Cup against England (the first being the hand-ball goal) the Brit commentator’s reaction was “you have to say that’s magnificent“.

Reminds me of Roberto Duran for some reason. When he’d been kicked all over the pitch by Bilbao in the Spanish Cup, with little protection from the referee, he lost it at the final whistle and started a scrap.

“Using expletives, Sola mimicked a gesture from the crowd towards Maradona by using a xenophobic term. Maradona then headbutted Sola, elbowed another Bilbao player in the face and kneed another player in the head, knocking him out cold. The Bilbao squad surrounded Maradona to exact some retribution with Goikoetxea connecting with a high kick to his chest, before the rest of the Barcelona squad joined in to help Maradona. From this point, Barcelona and Bilbao players brawled on the field with Maradona in the centre of the action, kicking and punching anyone in a Bilbao shirt.

The mass brawl was played out in front of the Spanish King Juan Carlos and an audience of 100,000 fans inside the stadium, and more than half of Spain watching on television. After fans began throwing solid objects on the field at the players, coaches and even photographers, sixty people were injured, with the incident effectively sealing Maradona’s transfer out of the club in what was his last game in a Barcelona shirt”

Even his warm-ups are worth watching.

I visited Argentina on a couple Rugby Tours and it is a very European or White country

Was likely many years ago, else you stayed in the ” nice ” areas. There’s been a flood of Amerinds from Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador over the past few decades and Argentina has changed a lot.

The idea that you can fight your way to the top despite a less than perfect athletic body is appealing

The Democrats are fixing this issue, as soon as they notice the Disparate Impact issues in college and pro sports. Right, Democrats? Right? Is this thing on?

I have no problem believing that South American countries are all crime-ridden basket cases.

Your own country is following them right down the tubes, and for much the same reason.

He fathered eight kids, including three in Cuba,

Eight he admitted to

And Lance Armstrong is a beaner.

Maradona’s performance in the 1986 World Cup was amazing but he was really peaking during those years at Napoli.

The appeal of football (not soccer) is that statistics are really meaningless. A player with fantasia and supported by able teammates can change an entire game. This is what Maradona did on many occasions.

Athletics were much rougher in the 70’s and 80’s, and we all should know why: Boomers are the most insanely competitive generation.

Argies will need cheering up today https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EntCITpW8AAwDty?format=jpg&name=900×900

He was unpopular with the comorra. A lot of Neopolitans placed a customary, and usually hopeless, bet on Napoli winning Serie A. Then Maradona arrived and they got to collect on long odds.

Better than Pele.

No way that linesman didn’t see the handball, but that is how it works south of the border though.

Excerpts from the Observer list (July 2001 – so no St Lance) of Top Ten sports cheats:

“6 Fred Lorz
Marathon champion who travelled by car

The marathon at the St Louis Olympic Games of 1904 was held over a hilly course in the middle of a scorching afternoon. Small wonder only 14 of the 32 starters made it to the finish. First home, after three hours 13 minutes, was a New Yorker, Fred Lorz, who was immediately proclaimed the winner. He had already been photographed with Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of the President of the United States, and was about to be awarded the gold medal, when word got out that he had covered 11 miles as the passenger in a car. The crowd’s acclaim rapidly turned to abuse. Although Lorz claimed it was a practical joke, he received a lifetime ban, which was later lifted. Thomas Hicks, an English-born American who was awarded the race, might have been disqualified himself after his handlers gave him strychnine and brandy to keep him going.

7 Sylvester Carmouche
Jockey who ensured that punters didn’t have the foggiest

On a foggy afternoon, a real pea-souper, in January 1990, Sylvester Carmouche surprised punters at Louisana’s Delta Downs Racetrack by finishing first on 23-1 long-shot Landing Officer. But all was not as it seemed. Carmouche had dropped out of the mile-long race while lost from view and then rejoined the field as they came round again before galloping to ‘victory’. He should have waited a little longer. The fact that he won by 24 lengths and came within 1.2sec of the track record inevitably raised suspicions. The stewards disqualified him even though he protested his innocence. Later he received a 10-year ban after the other jockeys in the race testified that Carmouche had not passed them.

Eventually he admitted to what he had done. He was reinstated after serving eight years of his suspension.”

I was shocked that the NYT didn’t release an editorial complaining about the frankly Brexit-like discourse surrounding the unfounded conspiracy theory that Maradona ‘stole’ the hand of god goal.

“Don’t cry for me, Argentina”

I really need to know why he was playing with Kadyrov. What life choices led to that?

Maybe because back in the day losing teams were used for ritualistic human sacrifice.

Whate are all those White players doing on the English team?

The hand of God goal was ridiculously offsides, as well.

Who’s the guy who missd a goal and the fans killed him?

The greatest player in the biggest sport .

( And I’m only a minor soccer fan )

May I add that it is rather tiresome to keep on about cheating .
Cheating is tried on in all sports : that’s why we have officials .

Football (soccer for the Americans) has gotten way more competitive since the days of Maradona, that “Goal of the Century” shown in Steve’s second clip could not have happened with today’s defenders, the defenders in that clip seem rather lethargic and slow.

The heavy drug use couldn’t have been good for his heart

The idea that you can fight your way to the top despite a less than perfect athletic body is appealing.

I think you mean: he was a classic endomorph ( Sancho Panza ). Heck, he even looked liked Sancho Panza. Hence, his weight issues, and why he got done for taking fat loss drugs.

Very few endomorphs make it to the top in professional sport. Even less stay there because of the problems of keeping the weight down. One of the very few I remember is Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, the Spanish Tennis Grand Slam winner. Like Maradona, she has had lots of tax issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arantxa_S%C3%A1nchez_Vicario

PS I know very little of Maradona’s background, but Oswaldo Ardiles, Argentina’s key player of the 1982 World Cup, looked much more obviously mestizo.

What I get most out of those kinds of photos now is – ah the 80s, when Western European football teams were still actually, well, European.

Traveling around Argentina you find that the North is Italian / Spanish and the South is Swiss / German. It is a wonderful place to visit if you are a young American male of means with a sense of adventure.

The phrase I heard about the origins of the population: “In Peru the people descended from the Incas, in Mexico they descended from the Aztecs, in Argentina they descended from boats.”

Looks like his body was pretty athletic. Although most soccer players are of average hight, there have been some wonderful very short players. These very short players have a low center of gravity, which gives them some advantages, but they do need to be extremely tough.

Billy Bremner, captain of Leeds United and Scotland, at 5″5′ was another giant of the game.

As usual most people in America have no clue who he was.

And this is why I am against open borders. The Americans who want them have no idea what foreigners are really like. This is a trivial example, of course, but there are plenty of other examples of their ignorance.

Ciccone-Madonna is one of those entertainers whose success puzzles me.

It has nothing to do whether I like it or not, or how it changes over time. I don’t care for the Beatles, but I can see the gift. I despise Clooney’s politics, but I see he can act. The same with Streep.

Leonard Cohen is North American version of Becaud, Aznavour, … Most of his music belongs to funerals. While not very impressed, I accept it.

With Ciccone, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand…. meh. Perhaps this is a type of music I simply don’t “get”.

Maradona was the first rockstar in football in the sense that the notoriety played almost as big a part as the football in his lore. The drugs, violence, paternity suits dramas, his relations Castro, and his hostility to the international football establishment. I always thought of him as football’s Che Guevara which is fitting given the tattoo he had of him on his arm.

However, the talent is what I prefer to think of. He was a wonderfully gifted player. As has been mentioned, he played at a time when defenders could get away with brutal treatment of their opponents. I once saw a stat that during the time he played the fitness levels of the game almost doubled without it affecting his game. The legend of Maradona is that “won a World Cup by himself.”This was always an exaggeration but Argentina in 1986 was seen as distinctly average. As a kid the football magazine I read had a big top 100 with him at No.1 with the line “it’s not even close.” And they pointed out that he took an even worse Argentina team in 1990 to the final again. Argentina is known for offensive and captivating football but those sides had less talent and a smart and very defensive coach. They were the first side to play with 5 defenders which really put the onus on Maradona to provide the creativity and attacking moves.

His other great football achievement was with Napoli. In Italy, the Northern teams dominated completely, which had an added weight given the hostility between north and south. Suspicions and allegations were that they dominated among the refs as well. This was finally confirmed in 2006 when a huge cheating scandal broke out. So for a southern team to win was unheard of and Maradona won it for Napoli twice. Again it was with a talent imbalance compared to the big teams.

To bring it all together there’s the story of the World Cup in 1990 in Italy. As fate would have it Italy, who had been the best team, met Argentina in Naples. Maradona decided to exploit the north and south divide.

In a press conference on the eve of the game, Maradona – in perhaps the gutsiest move in a career filled with them – implored Naples to ignore their nationalistic urges and get behind him and Argentina. Citing, with an element of truth it must be said, that the rest of the country look their noses down on Naples, but that he had embraced the Neapolitan way of life, and was one of them. Maradona was pouring gasoline on a smouldering fire.

Maradona’s call to arms worked to some degree; the atmosphere inside the San Paolo wasn’t as euphoric as the Olimpico had been throughout the competition. With Napoli fans holding a banner for Maradona saying that whilst they loved him, Italy was their home.

https://www.football-italia.net/118913/throwback-maradona-pits-naples-vs-italy

My favourite moments:

1.The Caniggia assist against Brazil in 1990. Check the highlights of the game and you see how outgunned Argentina was. It was an incredible performance by Brazil who should have won by a lot against a defensive Argentina side that was holding on. A classic “smash and grab” performance executed with an exquisite run and through ball by Maradona at the end. Such lopsided games and unfair results is one of the great things about football. It’s Ali on the ropes waiting and hoping for the opportunity.

2.The game winning assist in the World Cup final 1986. Argentina went ahead by two goals and Germany managed to back in a game as they always do. Maradona had been man marked well the entire game by Germany’s big star, Lothar Matthaus. They dropped that man marking at the end and Maradona pounced immediately surrounded by 3 players and with no time to control the ball he first touched a pass for Burruchaga.

3. His two goals against Belgium in the semi final in 1986. The famous picture above of 6 players focused on him is amazing but so was his performance. Two great goals to send Argentina in the final.

Maradona – about ⅔ SW Euro, ⅓ Amerind?

I reckon the player of the last few decades who most resembles him in playing style & personality – Luis Suarez – has the same ethnic blend.

Seems to select for superb, sharp-witted deep-lying forwards.

Maradona was fantastic. He’d have made a wonderful scrum half at rugby – not fly half because he was too one-footed. I’ve played against people with a better right foot than Maradona. But bugger what he couldn’t do – just glory in what he could.

I only watch soccer during the World Cup, but I always watch that on the Latino TV channels. Much like opera, oh God it can be so boring in English

Maradona’s mother Dalma (named after Dalmatia) was half Croatian. A friend of mine, a Croatian immigrant fishmonger, played against Maradona in the Italian league. He said he once, half-jokingly, told Maradona not to make him look bad for the sake of his mother’s people. Evidently Diego Maradona was a likeable guy.

Also the ridiculous big contract money was not quite pouring in yet

Napoli was Maradona’s sort of city – girls, clubs, cocaine, crooks.

Never having cared at all about soccer, I remember Maradona more for that sort of stuff. I moved to Seville when he was playing for Sevilla for a year on the downside of his career, and Seville is like a much less crooked Naples in the ways you indicate. The city afforded him ample opportunity to live his dream as the futbolístico Hunter Biden: I dimly recall a famous indiscretion of his involving plenty of hookers and blow in the best suite at the Alfonso XIII.

But as that video of yours demonstrates–even to someone who couldn’t care less–he was pretty great in the sports department too.

I am not a big footy fan but I did watch Argentinian Ardiles once at Tottenham in the 1980s where he danced around defenders and was clearly a gifted player. But he still threw himself on the ground at regular intervals.

When I heard about his death I just knew he would be honored on this blog. That epic Goal of the Century looked familiar to me — shades of Mario Lemieux, in that other wonderfully difficult sport

I played a lot of soccer, and those short guys with thick, powerful legs had a particular advantage in the game. When you tackle them they don’t really fall, or at least they don’t keel over like taller guys. If they’re really good you can hit them with all you’ve got and they’ll bounce back up and still have the ball. When you see guys like Messi and Maradona maneuver past these defenders it looks like they are magically dancing by these guys without being touched, but that’s an illusion that makes what they do all the more amazing. The truth is that they are being grabbed, elbowed, kneed, sideswiped, tripped and much more with great force, often by much larger men, yet they still manage to hold onto the ball. It’s really incredible.

You would think that a great soccer player would have to be super fit and therefore unlikely to die of a heart ailment at 60. Aside from vaguely recognizing the name I knew nothing about Maradona, so I was motivated to do a little research to find out what happened. Man, he really wrecked himself!

Maradona came up lower class hardscrabble in the streets of BsAs and made it out the only way he knew how. His home professional team was the Boca Juniors which traditionally sucked hind tit to the elitist Club Atlético River Plate (a multi sport “gentlemens” club–they even play chess) established by English diaspora aristocracy.

He is worshiped by the dispossessed lower classes (cabecitas negras) in Argentina.

https://bocajuniors.com.ar/?lang=en

The NYT did have a down-with-the-kids moment when its report on Maradona’s death recalled his great victory against a British team.

“Much of the appeal of soccer lies in two attributes: you don’t need to be tall, and that it’s not like baseball with its tedious statistics. Instead, it’s more like Beowulf. ”

Fullbacks are always tall.

Goalies too, for that matter. Back three. Tall.

But yeah, overall American obsession with height isn’t as all pervasive, the game rewarding skill and speed more than a skewed genetic predilection.

Alot of the players are jockey sized, probably due to the need for stamina, playing out 90 minute games that invariably turn into 100 minutes – and that’s real game time, not some fat fuck c**n sitting on the sideline for 50% of the game

English music too, is made for the game.

So what did he die of?

Argentine futbol fans quickly noticed when Maradona’s degenerate life style was starting to show about 60% through his pro career. He started getting fat (unusual for a coke head) and the other lifestyle scandals were quite copious on the pages of the tabloids. Many commented on his inability to handle fame and wealth. How do you say “nigger rich” in Spanish?

Yes it was huge news in England, where all of the sophisticated people flooded the pages of the Daily Mail to pour abuse on Maradona, referring to his drug use, marital affairs etc. etc. We need to be more like them and never forgive and never forget that a guy once broke the rules in a big sportsball game causing massive outrage and grief. Why aren’t they angry at the ref? Because the English are a bunch of children.

Even Red Sox fans were more forgiving when Buckner died and that’s saying something.

It was fun to see how his death picked ancient scabs between England and Scotland. The Jocks love him lol.

OT.

A senior ‘progressive’ Atlanta politician, heavily involved in BLM – and doing her utmost to promote a gay friendly agenda – is named none other than ‘Keisha *Lance-Bottoms*’.

Sorry, but you just can’t make it up. Life imitates art. Synchronicity etc.

Argentina is where America is heading, well throw in more Blacks than Argentina, and eventually America will be Brazil if we don’t turn things around.

Boxing is yet another sport that is HUGE in Argentina and they have produced some truly great fighters like Carlos Monzon, Victor Galindez, Nicolino Loche, Luis Firpo, Pascual Perez, Sergio Martinez, Marcos Maidana, Hugo Corro, Miguel Cuello, Oscar Bonavena, etc.

Bonavena and the great, Nicolino Loche were of Italian descent. Luis Firpo and others looked to be true Latins, either of Spanish descent or Italian descent. The only ones listed above who appear to have a good deal of Amerindian DNA are Monzon, Maidana, and Galindez. Monzon actually was described by a writer in Sports Illustrated as a cross between Charles Bronson and Jack Palance in appearance so Galindez and Maidana are obviously more connected to their Amerindian ancestors. Monzon would later be convicted of murdering his girlfriend and like POS, Jake LaMotta was a known woman beater.

What I find most remarkable in ethnic-appearance terms of the picture of Maradona and Kadyrov is not that there’s a mestizo from a country with relatively few mestizos but that there’s a blond-haired man from a (semi-)country where almost everyone has dark hair.

If you spend time around Salta in the northern part of Argentina you see plenty of mestizos.

I have a relative who played high level youth soccer and went on to play with top Division 1 college team. Not professional level of course, but still pretty intense.

Defenders are taught at an early age when dealing with the best attacking players to poke, prod, grab a bit of flesh, dig a few fingers in. Subtle stuff to distract and disrupt timing, given the fact that they may dance by you because they are so much better. Good defenders make conscious blatant fouls only when there is no other recourse available. They take a yellow, or sometimes a red, for the team.

Moreover, even if you’ve never seen a particular team, it will take about 5 minutes to see who the best players are. The refs know it too, so fouling a Messi obviously will get you in trouble. Messi infrequently gets a foul that leads to a dead ball, not only because he is good, but because the refs know that if you, the defender, do take him down it’s your fault, not his.

Would be good to see a HBD study on height correlated with national success.

Today’s alt-right consensus is that height is selected for success yet peak Britannia saw heights at 5 foot tops, as can be attested by door frames here in Sydney from 1820.

Americans have always been taller than mainland poms, something to consider? Were the poms that constructed post revolutionary america made from a stock of uncoordinated rejects who made good fortuitously in a land that had never before encountered such predation in number?

It wasn’t on account of the greater skill of the new arrivals as much as it was their number.

Why the divergence in height? Clearly, the colonies were beneficial to rejects.

Americans worship height (along with african-americans) because all people tend toward worshipping their own traits, and pre-supposing those traits as to their own success.

Combine tall people with sizeable slice of africans in a nation whose only internal borders were defended by an outclassed stoneage rival and you’ve got the classic setup for basketball – the world’s most boring and stupid sport.

There’s so many better things to do:

Here are some Chechens

Goikoetxea in action:

IMO Diego Maradona is the greatest footballer of all time who flourished in a tough era where skillful players were afforded no protection as they are today.

Maradona wasn’t the greatest footballer. The best one was Pelé. A black brazillian.

Maradona had definitely a large Amerindian ancestry. Maradona was born in a Buenos Aires slum, but his parents had migrated from the largely Amerindian northern province of Corrientes. No big surprise here, many other Argentinian soccer players have Amerindian ancestry, notably Carlos Tevez (but not Messi).

It’s true that Argentina has a large European ancestry (coming from the millions of Europeans that migrated to Argentina in the early 20th century, when it was expected to be the next big thing in the world), but it is not as large and some people think. Today, though the government keeps no official statistics on ethnicity, perhaps 60% or less of Argentines are of European ancestry (concentrated in Buenos Aires and the central and southern provinces of Argentina) and the rest is Amerindian and Mestizo (from the northern provinces, some of which once belonged to the Inca Empire). The European proportion has been falling for decades since middle-class whites in Argentina tend to have fewer children than the largely Amerindian lower classes – and a not trivial faction of the middle-class is migrating to Europe (from where their grandfathers once came), or to the US.

And the best goal he was involved in was his creation of the Caniggia goal vs Brazil at Italia 90.

There was no genocide of the Indians in Argentina. Many may have died from disease, but many others intermarried with the Europeans and were absorbed into the general population. These tales of genocide are almost always propaganda.

“Napoli was Maradona’s sort of city — girls, clubs, cocaine, crooks.”

Interesting. Naples: the Miami of 1980s Italy. Isn’t Naples the most heavily mafia-saturated city in Italy?

“it’s not like baseball with its tedious statistics”

I thought Steve was Mr. Baseball Statistics.

“… Short guys with thick, powerful legs had a particular advantage.”

Right — to analogize to hockey again, that powerful trunk — immovable despite all the shadowing, shoving, holding and cross-checking — is what puts Sidney Crosby in a class by himself, along of course with the great hands, dance moves and obsessive dedication.

And in all the sports I played as a kid, plus track, the fastest guy of all was pretty much the shortest, and very blockily built.

There difference between the announcers in those two clips is great.

No it isn’t.

But is Madonna a mestizo?

Cheating is tried in all sports but I’ve seen soccer games where I had the impression I was seeing nothing but cheating.

WGAS

Happy Thanksgiving:

Suspect in fatal Calif. church stabbings identified as illegal immigrant with extensive criminal history – https://t.co/O6CPdLfQwo #OANN pic.twitter.com/bj6yeHAZ0q

— One America News (@OANN) November 26, 2020

Short, athletic guys like Maradona and Messi have an advantage in soccer. If you’ve ever had to chase around short, athletic, herding dogs like Corgis around a field you’ll have an idea why.

It’s much more difficult for taller, lankier guys to handle and dribble the ball in soccer. Even if they’re very skilled, it’s a lot easier to take the ball from them. Taller player are better as defenders, where they can cover lots of ground without handling the ball, or as forwards for set pieces involving headings.

So Jim Thorpe doesn’t count? He was mixed. Or are you only referring to South of the border Indians?

In the photo supplied with the article I couldn’t help but NOTICE that the crime scene Baptist Church was sporting a large Rainbow flag and a large BLM banner on its façade. I guess the guy was pissed because they didn’t have a “No Human Is Illegal” banner too.

OTOH today’s forwards are protected from fouls by the refs far more than in Maradona’s, never mind George Best’s, day.

OT:

Lion of the Blogosphere is banning commenters who question the results of the election:
https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/the-cult-of-trump/

I want no part of this cult. Any of my readers who are cult members should just leave and stop reading or commenting.

This is the same man who fellated Andrew Cuomo while blasting Trump’s response to COVID:
https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2020/03/17/andrew-cuomo-great-governor/

I wish the Democrats could dump Biden and Sanders, and make Cuomo the nominee.

If you want to understand the mentality of neurotic, status-seeking New Yorkers, then reading Lion’s blog is a good place to start. He’s bitter and angry and resentful because he’s never managed to make it big in his chosen field (law). He’s the worst kind of snob – an insecure social-climber ashamed of his working-class background.

Lion is not stupid, and he’s fully aware of the realities of HBD. But he is so steeped in Northeastern leftism that he simply can’t see the forest for the trees.

For a man given to making bold statements, Lion displays surprisingly little faith in his own convictions.

For example, he predicted that Biden would win the first debate:
https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2020/09/27/prediction-biden-will-win-the-debate/

Then he hedged his bets:
https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2020/09/30/ok-so-i-was-wrong-biden-didnt-win-except-that-he-did-win-the-long-game/

Then he changed his mind again:
https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/looks-like-i-was-right-after-all-biden-did-win-the-debate/

In October 2019, Lion predicted that Trump would lose his bid for re-election. He based his decision largely on polling:
https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/trump-cant-possibly-win-re-election/

Naturally, earlier this month he crowed about his prescience:
https://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2020/11/09/as-lion-predicted-biden-wins-election/

He admitted, essentially, that he was wrong in 2019 – the polls that showed Trump losing by a double-digit margin were wrong. He asserted that COVID – a factor that no one saw coming a year ago – was largely responsible for Trump’s defeat. But he took credit for being “right” anyway.

If only Trump had taken the virus seriously, he probably would have won another four years in office. But it’s a testament to the power of cult-belief that so many people voted for him anyway despite how bad he’s been and how he has continually lied and bullshitted about the pandemic.

Note the condescension. Anyone who disagrees with him is a delusional fool.

If he had predicted in October 2019 that governmental policies would cause a recession in 2020, would he now feel entitled to say, “My prediction was totally correct. Government-mandated lockdowns trashed the economy. I am a prognosticator without peer!”?

Probably.

Steve, if you want an example of an indigenous South American (not mixed supposedly, though with the last name you’ve got to wonder), Alex Pereira, current Glory MW champion and interim LHW champion. He looks vaguely like an Amerind DDL, but around 6’4″. He is famed as the only man to knock out Israel Adesanya, who, like him or not, is very skillful and currently undefeated in MMA with several title defences at MW, holding a ridiculous record in Kickboxing, 75-5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Pereira_(kickboxer)

Ok, Maradona. He was great. I wasn’t old enough to see Pele, but I remember the media around him as a kid, he generated a buzz like no other soccer player since. Deservedly so, as who since then has taken a team like Argentina to win the world cup? And almost follow it up? I don’t even follow soccer.

Yes he did. Sort of like Lowell George.

I’d have though there was a critical mass of staffers who follow Premiere League football as a hipster affectation for them to not make that mistake but the idea of such people watching EPL matches every week but not knowing there is no ‘British’ or ‘UK’ national team seems depressingly probable given the other displays of worldly knowledge from America’s cosmopolitan progressives.

Right, in our West we have grasslands and deserts which are ideal for cavalry, but in South America they have impassably dense forest and high mountains. Many more ways for them to hide. There and in South Africa the reflexive presumption of genocide is a lying “explanation” for the explosive success of European settlers and modern agriculture as compared to what had been attempted before.

Andrés Escobar of Colombia scored an own goal at USA 94 and was gunned down shortly after returning home.

England always have a decent defence, I just looked up the England squad from 86, very strong team no obvious weak links, English fans need to grow up, Maradona was alway gonna win in 86, it was his destiny, if the hand of God goal didn’t stand, he would have made or scored another one

Its sad to see some of the English players are still bitter about it too, but nice to see that Gary Lineker got over it and was on good terms with Diego

If Maradona was playing today he would have been even better, skilful players get far more protection in the modern game

Blondish hair and blue eyes would seem to be defining characteristics of the Kadryov line.

Kadyrov’s grandfather

His father

Chechnya was long the territory of the Alans and the Khazars, both groups were said to have blond and red hair and blue/green eyes. There’s been a genetic link between the ancient DNA of the Alans and Chechens, and at least one ethnic group in the Caucasus (Ossetians) still speak an Iranian language. It’s possible Kadyrov is descended from Iranian or Turkic nobility.

Well , after all they are the real Caucasians…….and of course Ramzan is the Steve-o-spheres favorite Chechen. It’s nice to see someone enjoying life.

Anything is possible now that Ray Davies’s mixed-up muddled-up world has become ubiquitous as cherry cola.

The OG:

Why do you even bring up Maradon’a race? What has that got to do with anything? What’s up with this American obsession with “race”?

And the appeal of football, which Americans wrongly call “soccer” is not because it allows “genetically inferior” athletes who are not very muscular or tall to compete. That is just the typical American obesession with square jaws, height and muscularity as the be-all-end-all of athleticism and manhood.

Football, or as you Americans would call it, “soccer”, actually demands much more *overall* athleticism than any American sport. American sports, for the most part, are heavily skewed into favoring strength and explosiveness above anything else. The exception is basketball, but even basketball doesn’t demand much endurance as football due to the constant substitutions.

“Soccer” is the most athletically demanding of all sports, in the sense that is demands *all* the attributes that a great athlete is supposed to have: coordination, balance, endurance, explosiveness, toughness and tactical thinking. American football, conversely, demands only strength and sprinting. In fact, that sport demands the physical traits that Americans consider ideal in a man: height and muscularity. Most of the game the player sits on the bench, and when he plays he sprints for 10 seconds than rests for 3 minutes. Despite the fact that tall, muscular men are actually physically inferior in many ways. For instance, they have less energy, get infections more easily, have a higher incidence of cancer and a shorter lifespan than non-muscular men of average to below average. The vast majority of centenarian males and practically all super-centenarians are men 5’9 or shorter. The average life expectancy of an NFL lineman is 57 years.

This American ideal of what a man is supposed to be does not even reflect the reality of efficiency in combat. For instance, Napoleon was short and stocky, and not very muscular, and yet I am sure he would kill in one-on-one combat any NFL player. He was fast, extremely spry and quick-witted, and could “read” another man’s intentions and body language like no other. He would also outlast any of them. He could work indefatigably for up to 72 hours straight with no rest or sleep. Little men do tend to be a lot more energetic. That is a fact. And the American Military also discovered that the men that make the best warriors and killers tend to be men of average to slightly above average height with very balanced skeletal frames and balanced musculature. They are not hulking brutes. They look much more Christian Bale than The Rock. In fact, Christian Bale is a good example. He is “only” a little under 6’2, which is short by NFL and very short by NBA standards. But he has an extremely balanced frame and muscular strcuture. One look at Christian Bale and you immediately see that he is a Superior Male. His body reveals the best balance of strength, speed, endurance and coordination. Balanced frames also move more efficiently wasting less energy, which is why men with balanced frames tend to be more energetic than average. In fact, Bale looks a lot more like the Alpha Man leader of a pack of warriors than someone like The Rock, who’s extremely imbalanced frame of thick bones and excessive muscle bulk reveals decreased speed, balance, endurance and resilience. Big men tend to die more easily from wounds because their immune systems don’t work as well. And I am not even getting into Bale aristocratic thin and symmetrical facial features. It’s not wonder he is the most legendary Batman.

Face it: football, the real football and not the fake American version, is the most athletically balanced and demanding sport in the World.

Rainbow flag AND a BLM sign on a CHURCH???

Hell give this guy a medal

>He was unpopular with the comorra. A lot of Neopolitans placed a customary, and usually hopeless, bet on Napoli winning Serie A. Then Maradona arrived and they got to collect on long odds.

That’s not how odds are calculated. There is a relatively even amount of money on each side of a bet and the house just collects 10%. It doesn’t matter who wins the games, because the house always collects their percentage.

Who’s the guy who missd a goal and the fans killed him?

I think you’re referring to Andrés Escobar of Colombia, he wasn’t a goalie but a center-back and made an own goal at the 1994 World Cup against the U.S., with Colombia losing by 2-1 and eventually being eliminated due to this defeat. Ten days later he was murdered in Medellín, Colombia. His murderer served 11 years and was released for good behavior in 2005.

Be as it may, Indians were cleansed & decimated purposely. Not each & every one of them, but it was a planned policy:

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1101&context=gsp

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.512.9201&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The tendency to inflate the figures out of proportion doesn’t alter the fact that it was more than just a case of lack of immunity.

Pelé is over rated by people who never kicked a ball, I can think of a long list of players who were better than Pele, any Brazilian I asked about Pele said Garrincha was better

Yes, its truly terrible we English have a sense of fair play.

I made a lot of use of the shoulder charge as a defender. It was usually pretty effective, as I was a large, physical player and fast enough to use it against breaking attackers. You can sometimes perfectly legally send guys flying over the sidelines and just take the ball at your leisure.

But with a certain kind of player – that tough, stocky, very skillful type – it doesn’t work too well. I remember really clobbering these guys on a few occasions, and yet there they were, still on their feet with the ball. At best I could slow them down enough to get a few more guys between them and the goalkeeper, but that combination of stocky strength, tenacity and skill is what the game is made for.

Maradona wasn’t the greatest footballer. The best one was Pelé.

Maradona was the greatest. You don’t know the rules – the most recent half-decent player to die is always the greatest.

Just watched a very sad, but, very good movie from Argentina, “Notes for My Son”. Starring, nothing but white people. There is another movie, “The Headless Woman” that deals with the racial divide, wherein a white, wealthy, Argentinian woman (possibly) does a hit and run on a less white person.

But is Madonna a mestizo?

Ethnic breakdown

Ancestry of Madonna

Famous Kin of
Louis Riel: Madonna

Zacharie Coutier– Notable descendants

No that man was George Best, who sadly squandered his talent. I did see him play, in person, at his peak. He could do things no other player, then or since, could do. I did meet him several times – in the pub, as ever. He was an amusing, often charming, alcoholic. It killed him.

George Best – Every Woman Wanted Him, Every Man Wanted to be Him …

Highly talented soccer player, but a cretin in terms of character. It sometimes showed on the field, it showed the longer the more in his private life, and it showed whenever he made forays into the political arena. Can’t help but seeing parallels to the much-hyped and obnoxious Clay / Ali creature (though Maradona was more dissolute).

Yeah, heavenly peace and all that to both of them. On this earth, I don’t lament either one of them.

Maradona may have been slightly before my time, so my primary memory of him was as a coked-up has-been cheat and a crybaby in the 1990 World Cup final against West Germany. My father disliked him, so I probably got inherited the disdain. Looking at clips has allowed me to appreciate his talent more objectively.

You are right about South American cheating. My modern point of reference is Luis Suarez of Uruguay, whose deliberate handball pushed Ghana out of the World Cup in 2010.

It’s a pity that blatant cheating doesn’t result in harsher penalties, like multi-month suspensions.

That isn’t really true. Bookies will try to make the book such that they win whatever the outcome but it isn’t that easy to manage with all the bets coming in and they might be out of the money if a favourite or near favourite wins. Otherwise why would about a dozen online bookies have restricted my account?

I don’t think the English had any bad feeling towards Maradona. When he got fat he was a bit of a laugh. And at least he cheated fairly and not in a sneaky way. Unlike Ronaldo who got Wayne Rooney sent off.

That’s the theory in a balanced book. But even with legit bookies it doesn’t always work that way. Eg in UK horse racing, the bookies tend to lose out if a red hot favourite wins.

And I am guessing that the comorra were not taking many bets on Napoli not winning, and were still giving long odds, and didn’t have a balanced book – that’s what the newspapers reported at the time.

One of the Patagonia travel writers (?Chatwin) describes meeting an old shepherd who was originally from Lewis, Scotland. The old man told the writer about the recruitment process and the bounties paid for verified kills of natives. The description of the hunting of the final native islanders of Tierra del Fuego is all the more horrible for being matter-of-factly understated.

It’s an “interesting” place. The traffic has to be seen to be believed – manic, horns blaring, kids and old ladies crossing at huge personal risk. Lots of dodgy people looking to fleece the tourist, but great food and drink, wonderful old buildings and people. Like a more violent Benares/Varanasi, which is the place in India for mad traffic/human/cow/pilgrim/beggar interaction.

It’s got character in spades. My understanding is that the port (biggest in the Med IIRC) is pretty much Camorra-controlled, with a large amount of Chinese traffic and perhaps influence.

While we were there a couple of stolen Van Goghs, stolen in Amsterdam 14 years earlier, were discovered in a villa just along the coast.

Note the condescension. Anyone who disagrees with him is a delusional fool.

Thanks for reminding me why I’ve never bothered with his blog; the insecurity is palpable.

When he was playing, the Northern Ireland team had no other world class players, except maybe Pat Jennings. So he missed out on top level international football.

One thing about George Best was that he was one of few public figures who bridged the sectarian divide – on the one hand he was a Prod, but he played for ManU which was still somewhat seen as the RC team in Manchester, back then.

Isn’t Naples the most heavily mafia-saturated city in Italy?

No. It’s Palermo. Then, Naples.

Good lawd- no.

It is a phrase usually associated with entertainers & playboys who live in the limelight & have numerous affairs with physically attractive women- like Sinatra, Rubirosa, various male Hollywood womanizing celebrities etc.

The answer is thundering: no.

These guys are boring & barely bearable, as are their lays.

This is the first time I’ve seen a really young picture of him, and I think he looked quite Southern European, specifically Italian. My Italian forebears landed in NYC, didn’t like it, and headed West. A few of them left for Argentina, and one of them showed up for a cousins’ reunion in Italy.

The Argentinians did very well for themselves. By now they may be mixed with Native or Portuguese for all I know.

Maradona really looked like a blend of Southern European and Indian, with the Indian being much more apparent in his recent photo(or he could have just put on weight.)

The Conquest of the Desert wasn’t exactly fun and games….

The Conquest of the Desert (Spanish: Conquista del desierto) was an Argentine military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s with the intention of establishing dominance over the Patagonian Desert, inhabited primarily by indigenous peoples. Under General Roca, the Conquest of the Desert extended Argentine power into Patagonia and ended the possibility of Chilean expansion there.

Argentine troops killed more than 1,000 Mapuche and displaced over 15,000 more from their traditional lands. White settlers moved in and developed the lands through irrigation for agriculture, turning the territory into a breadbasket that made Argentina an agricultural superpower in the early 20th century.[1][2] The conquest was paralleled by a similar campaign in Chile called the Pacification of Araucanía.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Desert

Doing jobs Americans won’t do.

And the appeal of football, which Americans wrongly call “soccer”…

What’s The Origin Of The Word “Soccer”?

THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD “SOCCER”

…you should know that it was the British that invented the word and it was also one of the first names of what we now primarily know of as “Football”.

In fact, in the early days of the sport among the upper echelons of British society, the proper term for the sport was “Soccer”. Not only that, but the sport being referred to as “Soccer” preceded the first recorded instance of it being called by the singular word “Football” by about 18 years, with the latter happening when it became more popular with the middle and lower class. When that happened, the term “Football” gradually began dominating over “Soccer” and the then official name “Association Football”.

What is the etymology of the word “Soccer”?

The Online Etymology Dictionary says: “1889, socca, later socker (1891), soccer (1895), originally university slang (with jocular formation -er), from a shortened form of Assoc., abbreviation of association in Football Association.”

Partridge’s Slang and Unconventional English (1982) says: “socker – from circa 1890, originally Harrow School; soccer general by 1903. The Oxford English Dictionary records socker at 1891, soccer at 1895.”

Both quotes slightly abridged.

On “football” and “soccer”

In late 19th-century England, students at the Rugby School in Warwickshire began using the suffix “-er” to form slang words. The practice spread to other public schools, such as Harrow, and on to Oxford University.

Typically, an existing noun would be clipped and “-er” attached to the end.

Among early examples in the Oxford English Dictionary are “footer” (for football, 1863), “ekker” (exercise, 1891), “brekker” (breakfast, 1889), “bonner” (bonfire, 1898), and “cupper” (intercollegiate cup match, 1900). Perhaps more familiar to Americans is the later example “bed-sitter” (1927, short for “bed-sitting-room”).

“Soccer” was one of these schoolboy formations. It was a slang term for association football—that is, football played according to the rules of the Football Association. In this case, the “-er” suffix was combined with a clipped form of “Assoc.”

Rainbow flag AND a BLM sign on a CHURCH???

Hell give this guy a medal

Quite right. Englishmen complaining about “soccer” are tedious ignoramuses.

George Best and (Sir) Ryan Giggs are the single greatest “what ifs” in modern football. Northern Ireland and Wales were never going to make it far in the World Cup, but if by some slight twist of fate Giggsy or Best had been an Englishman, it’s pretty credible a 3 lions team with them on it could have won. (Especially Best)
I grew up in NI in the 90s, and even decades after his glory he was still a legend

Maradona will go down as a tortured genius legend. For my money, #1 is Ziadane, who is, himself, and equally tortured genuis legend

Right, it was a war over territory. The type Indians fought among themselves for years before any European ever set foot in the Americas. The Europeans won. That doesn’t make it genocide.

Ok. Let’s analyze objetive measures:

Goals during the career:
Pelé: 700
Maradona: 300

Average goals in international games:
Pelé – 0.84
Maradona – 0.37

World Cups :
Pelé won 3
Maradona won 1
Both participated in 4 Wrold Cups

Average goals per game in World Cups:
Pelé – 0.86
Maradona – 0.38

Who won most titles:
Pelé – 15
Maradona- 11
https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/pele-vs-diego-maradona-who-was-better-the-stats-head-to-head/i323ovsgdqhq1a1wx4p381uty

Pelé had clearly a better career than Maradona.

Lol, I lost track of the “lion” many years ago. Interesting to see the imbecile is still yapping out there on the net.

Even in basketball, the best ball handlers and players that can dribble around the court and drive to the basket tend to be shorter. It’s why point guards are generally the shortest players on a team.

But in basketball, this shortness advantage in ball handling, agility, and quickness gets negated by making the goal a small hoop 10 feet in the air.

In soccer, the shortness advantage isn’t negated because the goal is much larger and not high up in the air. Goals can be scored low to the ground, with the ball rolling into the net.

It’s going to take a landslide of statistical evidence to convince me that Trump lost. I’m not a big Trump fan, but the likelihood of urban blacks and even suburban women coming out in astronomical numbers for Biden, in a few counties only, is implausible. Convince me if you care.

Since you decided to racebait, let me put it this way:
Pele is the Rocky Marciano of football –amazingly overrated. Out of the 3 World Cups he won he only contributes significantly in the 1970 one, and with a star-studded team at that. His 1000+ goals scored is borderline hearsay against amateurs in Brazil.

Maradona on the other hand carried Argentina in 1986 with nobodies on his side, other than Jorge Valdano, and won 2 championships and a European cup with a second tier team in arguably the toughest national football league in the world at the time. Lots of players have done the magic tricks Maradona did with the ball, but it’s his leadership that makes him stand above the rest.

Back when sports were a pastime rather than an obsession. Do you think, Reg, were you transported to the Isles circa 900, that you could speak with the natives?

Who cares about the etiology of the word? Nobody in the World except Americans call it that. And it makes much more sense to call it football than the American version because, you know, unlike the American version, European *foot* ball is played with the feet. American football is played with the hands, despite the kicker there

Wow, just 35 years ago Belgian players looked like the descendants of the actual Belgae.

Bah! Compared to A.J. Foyt, this guy like all soccer players was a wimp.

For instance, Napoleon was short and stocky, and not very muscular, and yet I am sure he would kill in one-on-one combat any NFL player.

You’re weakening your argument with delusions like this.

Soccer is boring and a game for foreigners. Americans developed their own games, such as baseball, which you failed to mention.

LotB got angry with his commenters about 6 months ago (I think), eliminaed comments for some time, and now seems to allow them but only in a limited and tightly controlled fashion. It’s his blog so he can do what he wants with it, but it’s become a lot less interesting and amusing since he started censoring the comments.

And yet he seems to have no problem with the guy who constantly talks about the Hudson Valley, now that he lives in the Hudson Valley, and who used to talk constantly about status-mavens in Manhattan, when he lived in Manhattan. I’m awaiting his move to central Pennsylvania, and his updates on status-seeking in the Keystone State.

Bryon Butler’s commentary of that goal was the best: “Maradona, turns like a little eel…little squat man…”

The match was played in midday summer heat and at Mexico city altitude. It’s a wonder anyone was moving at all.

If you visited Argentina on a rugby tour I’d say that you travelled from middle class ghetto to middle class ghetto. But that’s also a very valid Argentina

Mind you there is a lot more to the sporting landscape of Argentina than association football ( soccer ) . They are a sporting country where the number of Olympic medals won does not do justice to its’s sporting prowess . They are the only country apart from the US , for instance, to have won Olympic gold in basketball since NBA pros were allowed . They have also had great results also in rugby and (field) hockey and won majors in tennis and golf ie sports that large numbers of people actually do

Remember most Olympic events are in sports and events which few people actually do ( which is why money- and doping – can so easily bring Olympic success – there’s a lot of low hanging fruit )

Much of the appeal of soccer lies in two attributes: you don’t need to be tall, and that it’s not like baseball with its tedious statistics.

Being tall is even less important in *playing* baseball, but it is extremely important in being *chosen* to play. Any evidence that it’s different in soccer?

Sure, he’s a doofus. All these guys who cultivate cults are. Why are you even paying attention to people like that?

I hadn’t watched much soccer in Spanish, but about 10 years ago I watched a Mexican league game in which the attacking team spent two minutes setting up a “set piece”. It immediately went awry, and the announcer thundered, “POR ESO?”

We waited two minutes for THAT?

Which was exactly what needed to be said.

football, which Americans wrongly call “soccer”

330 million Americans, plus Canadians, Australians and Japanese, can’t be wrong. It’s a choice we made. Didn’t bother reading your post beyond this arrogance.

I only watch soccer during the World Cup, but I always watch that on the Latino TV channels. Much like opera, oh God it can be so boring in English

You are easily fooled.

There was no genocide of the Indians in Argentina. Many may have died from disease, but many others intermarried with the Europeans and were absorbed into the general population. These tales of genocide are almost always propaganda.

Similarly, in North America.

Because I’m bored.

So how tall are you?

Yes, but it’s always awkward when the head cheerleader towers over the captain of the football team:

THIS is a real game.

And with just one hand!

Not at all, unlike the majority of NFL players, Napoleon actually did kill people. Dummy.

Napoleon was 5 foot 7 inches, which was a good height for a man 200 years ago. With better nutrition, conditions and healthcare, average height has increased markedly over the period. This might equate to about 6 feet today. He was certainly a fit young officer and could look after himself.
NFL players for the most part are drugged up, bulked up lumps, lacking in stamina. Very few would pass military fitness tests. From the military point of view, they’re useless.

Maradona was the best ever in my opinion. Carried 2 mediocre Argentina teams to the World cup final, winning one. Took Napoli to 2 Italian championships which might be an even greater accomplishment. Pele isn’t even close.

I spent today working on sports news at my job, so I must have looked at hundreds of photos of Maradona.

I gotta say: Man, that guy was ugly.

Okay, that’s probably too harsh. I’m not gay, so I’m not really an expert on what makes a man visually appealing, but whatever it is, I know Maradona didn’t have much of it. He wasn’t too bad when he was younger — he had that classic chiseled jawline you see in young men who are very physically active — but as he got older: Yuck. Man, he was fighting an uphill battle against his genes. He was born to be ugly.

He’s probably a terrific test case for manosphere types for how perceived success they pursue.

Talk about a tired topic

There are many sports which are called football by their fans . Nothing odd about that . Football originally referred to folk village games with local rules played on foot

In the 19th century in various places such games were codified . One of them was association football but there are a number of others
FIFA by the way translates from the French into English as “International Federation of Association Football ”

Most English speakers call the game soccer -not just the US ones – with the notable exception of the UK .Although even there “soccer ” was used as an alternative in the more up market media until about a generation ago
I recall the World Cup final in South Africa was played at “Soccer City ”
In Australia ,where I’m from , the game was originally called British football then soccer but lately the game’s masters are calling it “football” or sometimes “world football” . It hasn’t caught on . I note local clubs haven’t bothered changing their signs from “so and so Soccer Club ” Some media of the left wing variety will say ” football” if there is no confusion but even they will say the slave name ” soccer ” in general conversation

As did the Irish. I saw a match in the 90s on tv in a pub in Ireland between England and Argentina. It was high stakes, maybe part of the World Cup. Argentina won, and the pub was filled with cheers and everyone started singing “Cheerio, you’re Going Home!”

The game is popular because it can be played in urban environments, and it’s most popular in the most urbanized countries. For obvious reasons, games that involve people throwing themselves on the ground can’t be played on city streets. (Basketball is another game popular with urban youth for the same reason)

It’s unpopular in places with plenty of green spaces, where more complex games are possible, which aren’t limited to just kicking the ball.

This is why, despite having common cultural origins to the British, Canadians and Australians don’t play it.

It’s an excellent argument: Napoleon was an artillery officer. He’d give the NFL knucklehead a whiff of grapeshot.

I love the comments which suggest that soccer is not boring and baseball is a boring sport. haha. Granted a lot of Americans think baseball is boring and admittedly it is somewhat to the even the average baseball fan, and it is very boring to non baseball fans even in America. That is the main reason why baseball has not been America’s number one sport for probably 50 years and counting now, it was overtaken by football long ago. HOWEVER, soccer is much more boring than baseball IMO, and MOST Americans find the game boring beyond belief. Who in the hell wants to watch a game where you could show all the highlights in a 2 minute clip?

Soccer WILL NEVER be a top tier sport in America unless we keep letting all these Mexicans, and other foreigners become the majority of the population. MOST Americans, Black or White don’t give a damn about soccer.

They have also had great results also in rugby and (field) hockey and won majors in tennis and golf ie sports that large numbers of people actually do

The Argentinian rugby team, the Pumas, recently beat the All Blacks at rugby.

Ireland only beat them for the first time a few years ago (in Chicago!), Scotland have never beaten them in 31 attempts over 115 years. Wales haven’t beaten them since 1953.

Che Guevera was 1/64th Irish, not 1/2 Irish. Honestly, do you do any research at all at this point?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/diego-maradona-once-said-hated-142231578.html

Even Red Sox fans were more forgiving when Buckner died and that’s saying something.

Don’t give Bostonians too much credit here. They held that grudge for a long time. It also helped when they won the World Series in 2004.

The most athletically demanding sport is rugby sevens.

“it’s not like baseball with its tedious statistics”

I thought Steve was Mr. Baseball Statistics.

Who in the hell wants to watch a game where you could show all the highlights in a 2 minute clip?

Soccer is much more exciting, thrilling. Often everything can suddenly change. A lost game can be reversed in few minutes.

For instance, Napoleon was short and stocky, and not very muscular, and yet I am sure he would kill in one-on-one combat any NFL player.

Hey, give me an AK 47 with three fully loaded clips, and give Mike Tyson a butter knife. I’ll kill him”one-on-one combat.” Which proves . . . ?

What is it that you understand by the term “one-on-one combat”? Obviously, we’re not speaking of the use of artillery.

The most athletically demanding sports have to be wrestling, boxing, MMA, triathlons, marathons, etc. or one on one full court basketball, hehe. I remember playing a full court game of 2 on 2 basketball, man, that shit was crazy. Me thinks that gymnasts and decathletes are without a doubt the best all around athletes in the world easily and that wrestlers are the best conditioned athletes.

Very few would pass military fitness tests. From the military point of view, they’re useless.

Does the name Pat Tillman ring a bell?

“A soccer player can be summed up in a few endlessly retold highlights.”

I am reminded of Roger Ebert’s review of “The Man Who Skied Down Everest.” Ebert ended the review with the observation that the Everest skier, no matter where his travels might take him, will always be easy to introduce at a party.

Argentina is really getting it together in the rugby. They’re playing NZ again tomorrow. That will be the real test as the All Blacks have tendency to knock 40 points on teams that give them a bloody nose the next time they meet. But I have a feeling it will be close. The Argentinian captain Pablo Matera is a magnificent speciman. Even Napoleon might struggle to beat him up.

haha. Good one, this poster must have had his chick stolen from some 6′ 3″ muscular football player or something, he is obviously suffering from the Napoleon Complex. Try doing 2 practice a day in Florida under an steaming and baking sun in full pads in the middle of August. Try doing up/downs or burpies until you puke. Football players would probably pass even special forces physical requirements much less just average boot camps. The huge lineman might have a problem but I can very well see backs, linebackers, and others smoking PT in even elite military forces like Rangers, Navy Seals, etc.

Unless one joins some sort of special force in the military the physical requirements are pretty minimal. I joined the Coast Guard way back in the early 1980s and the boot camp is very similar to the Navy. Good lawd, the physical requirements were a joke for some young person. You had to complete a mile and a half run in something like between 11 and 12 minutes, or something like that, been so long I can’t remember. If you cranked out 50 pushups or 15 pullups, ( you could use what I call girl pullups aka chinups were your grip is where your palms face you instead of away aka chinups. These are much easier than overhand grip pullups.) IF you were capable of 50 situps in a certain time you received a max score, again, a joke for any reasonably fit 18-21 year old. After being inspired by Sylvester Stallone in the original Rocky movie, I started doing one arm pushups long before going to boot camp. Needless to say, the guy seen me blast out 50 pushups like nothing and commented that I had at least another 50 in me. At that time I had indeed done 100 consecutive pushups and some days would do as many as a 1,000 for that day. I had done as many as 250 single arm pushups for each arm when the mood struck me. Then again, my legs were far apart like Stallone’s, so these were not true one arm pushups.

I even looked at the Navy Seals physical requirements and I could very well do what they demand for the calisthenics part back when I was young, I definitely would ace the beach runs in boots, did that as part of my routine. The obstacle course and the swim would have had me ring the bell. hehe. That and lack of sleep, and not sure I have the mental toughness either.

I did say very few,Tillman being an obvious exception.

Lion wants urbane, liberal, educated, upper class urbanites as his readership, and instead he gets prole white nationalists, Trump fanboys and Covid deniers. There is such a laughable mismatch that it’s almost like a situation comedy.

He was short. That makes you very agile. And it is easy for you to fall – and it is harder to make you fall than it would be if you were taller.

Your sarcasm is unwarrented. I am obviously talking about one-on-one combat in the way that it was done in duels during Napoleon’s time: sword duels. Do you think I meant a boxing match or something? At that, Napoleon might lose against a 300 lbs steroid junkie, although most of these NFL players couldn’t throw a punch to save their lives. Any welterweight amateur boxer would clean their clocks.

It’s so incredible to me that Americans actually think that their square-jawed muscle jocks from the NFL would actually be able to beat in one-on-one combat someone like Napoleon or Genghis Kahn or Alexander. Why? Because they have square jaws and thick necks? A tiny pocket knife would cut through their carotide artery just as easily as it does to the carotide artery of anybody else. What makes you think that these dumb, slow, easily winded steroid junkies would be able to beat men that actually conquered the World fighting at the front? You people are delusional.

Short, athletic guys like Maradona and Messi have an advantage in soccer. If you’ve ever had to chase around short, athletic, herding dogs like Corgis around a field you’ll have an idea why

LOL.

Very true. My (late) full sized dachshund Otto, a male weighing at his peak about 30 lbs. used to enjoy me trying to chase him around the back yard. Short legs but he could stop and turn on a dime.

It was fun but he knew I couldn’t catch him in the open. Even when I did I had to flip him over to stop him. Dogs don’t exactly laugh or smile but that’s what he did. Only when I tired him out could I catch him. They are great dogs.

I have 3 female dachshunds and they weigh probably between 15-18lbs or thereabouts, that 30lb male you had was a huge boy. I had a male once who weighed about 25lbs but he was carrying a little too much weight. He was the largest of the litter. Dachshunds are great dogs, I have owned 6 all together, 2 black and tan males, a red/brown male and the 3 females that I currently own. All the girls are reddish brown. Don’t dare get a male, I have a male American bulldog and those little dachshunds are little dogs who think they are dobermans. haha. Little male dachshund would attack the bulldog and be eaten for lunch.

Right, in our West we have grasslands and deserts which are ideal for cavalry, but in South America they have impassably dense forest and high mountains. Many more ways for them to hide.

The Spanish managed to wipe out the Incas on the west coast of S. America, and others pretty fast with tiny numbers. In high mountains and in some places, dense forests. Superior tech and weaponry, and of course disease.

Southern cone of S. America is mainly grasslands or scrub. It wasn’t heavily populated there since there was little to eat and Indians did little cultivation. They didn’t need to hide since they mostly weren’t there. Farther north more people.

In the very tip of S. America (Tierra del Fuego) very early sailors and a few explorers reporting seeing “huge” natives (> 6′) in small numbers hiding and watching. Later they seemed to disappear though some were probably hunted or died of disease. These “giants” are still something of a mystery.

In the American West disease and alcoholism did more than US cavalry. Tribal rivalries also enabled US military troops to chase down Indians after several decades. The last Apaches were defeated only because rival bands, numbering four times those they chased, were enlisted as “scouts” to chase the fighters all the way into Mexico.

That’s not how odds are calculated. There is a relatively even amount of money on each side of a bet and the house just collects 10%. It doesn’t matter who wins the games, because the house always collects their percentage.

That’s how it is supposed to work. However illegal bookies often rig given odds to attract more suckers to what they think will be the losing side. They then try to rig the game with refs or bribed players.

Also, they get into real trouble when they or bosses decide that they are “smarter” than the betting public. They try to get inside info (and sometimes do) on health, injuries, refs, psychology.

So the mafia bookies can get crushed because as crooks, they aren’t always as smart as they believe. This is why, when they bet themselves and can’t pay winners, they end up in the Bay of Naples.

But the rule is that you can’t use your hands, not that you must use your foot.

In fact, headers are an important part of the game, and despite the no-hands rule, even hands are important for throw-ins and for the goalies.

It would make more sense to call it no-handball or handlessball than football, but even that would be a misnomer because of the use of hands for throw-ins and by the goalies. So calling it “soccer” seems like a decent compromise rather than calling it misnomers like “football” or “no-handball”.

7.5 billion people > 330 million No, the arrogance is YOURS in being stuck in ypur ways for no other reason than xenophobic patriotism. Even when the changes make perfect rational sense, like switching to the metric system, you still won’t do it just because you are so arrogant and stuck in your American ways, which you always think is best even when it is clearly not.

7.5 billion people > 330 million No, the arrogance is YOURS in being stuck in ypur ways for no other reason than xenophobic patriotism. Even when the changes make perfect rational sense, like switching to the metric system, you still won’t do it just because you are so arrogant and stuck in your American ways, which you always think is best even when it is clearly not.

This is ridiculous. This is a matter of *proportion* The real football is mostly played with the feet, while the American version is mostly played with the hands. Sure, both sports use the hands and feet, but the question is: to what degree? In American football, the only time the feet are used is by the kicker. In the real football, only goalies can use their hands. Scoring a goal with the hands is *illegal* . What the hell are you talking about?

It’s crazy the degree Americans will go to justify their biases in favor of their native stuff.

You are right about South American cheating. My modern point of reference is Luis Suarez of Uruguay, whose deliberate handball pushed Ghana out of the World Cup in 2010.

I don’t know if that would be an example of cheating. It’s more like deliberately fouling a guy with a clear shot at the goal, which happens routinely in basketball but also not uncommon in soccer, hockey, etc., to force him to take a penalty shot instead of an easy goal.

George Best had the misfortune of being Northern Irish, so he never got to have the opportunity to play in the World Cup, as the four home nations each have their own soccer teams.

Ironically, NIR ended up qualifying in 1982, and won their group over host Spain. They ended up making it to the round of 12.

I used to do a fair amount of mountaineering. I did Rainier back in the mid 80’s, just the tourist route, nothing special. I saw an interview shortly after of a player on the Seahawks who had done the same route. He said it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

There are two kinds of countries in the world. Those which have put men on the moon, and those which use the metric system.

Maradona was such a great player that opposing players would try all kinds of tactics to disconcert him, including taunting him with racial epithets. The average Argentinian is whiter than the average norteamericano: Argentinians didn’t import non-whites from Africa, and massacred most of the Amerinds already in occupation of the land. As a consequence, being mestizo was not so common, and not respected — one could be insulted by being called “indio” — unlike in the US, where people so apparently white brag about their Amerind ancestry (all kinds of people, not just Elisabeth Warren).

BTW: Most Argentinians have some Italian ancestry. But, unlike the US, which attracted mostly unskilled workers from southern Italy, Argentina attracted skilled labor from northern Italy. It also attracted many very able Germans after the disaster of WWI. One has to wonder why a country with genetic foundations so supportive of capitalist development has moved from economic crisis to economic crisis.

You mean Germany? No, they use the metric system. I don’t think Von Braun switched to using yards, inches, pounds and ounces when he moved to America. In all serousness, NASA scientistis almost certainly used the metric system in their calculations, as inches, yards and miles are not as efficient as a system based around progrssions of 10.

And your bragging about putting a man on the Moon is pretty stupid as all the previous scientific accomplishments(done by Europeans) that allowed that to happen in the first place were done using the metric system, which is much, much more practical and efficient.

And America was only hindered by their ancient British measures. All else being equal, America was certainly not helped by their measuring system when it comes to the Apollo Project.

It’s so incredible to me that Americans actually think that their square-jawed muscle jocks from the NFL would actually be able to beat in one-on-one combat someone like Napoleon or Genghis Kahn or Alexander.

I think you are incorrect about “what most Americans think” in this regard. Most of us know actual American football players from Jr. or Sr. High schools and many from college teams.

They come in many different shapes and sizes. You seem to think they are all giant linemen or guards on the line. Some are but most play other positions where speed, agility and leaping are the main requirements. As a rule they are getting taller but you still see a lot of smaller running backs. Watching a game in person you see how quick and slippery they are. Fantastic leaping.

Even those big guys are often very quick. But no one “thinks” they are going to win man-to-man combat every time. Sure, some bar drunks try to act tough with these big guys and mostly find out they aren’t very tough. But combat skills aren’t comparable. On average based on historical records and archeology burials, people were much smaller in the past. Very few over 6 feet; many under five feet. Football athletes (American) are usually pretty heavy because they are muscled. But some smaller runners are well under 200 lb. Average warriors of the past were lucky to weigh more than 120 lb. due to poor diets. Trained knights were the elite warriors and many were pretty big, on large horses. But they didn’t wrestle their opponents.

Some like Henry VIII were very stocky and large, as were some noted warriors. So size is a factor. But ancient and even recent warriors were trained and skilled, like in most armies. Very few combats were done by sheer muscle strength though heavy swords and shields were better utilized by larger men.

Like in any sport, the pro players train for years and are selected for physical and mental characteristics which enable them to be superior. Except for boxing, MMA and similar, fighting isn’t one of those skills. Even in hockey. The toughest guys I’ve ever seen or known were usually not very tall, wiry guys who were agile and fast. Portuguese sailors (on many ships) come to mind.

Who won most titles:
Pelé – 15
Maradona- 11

To be fair, Maradona played his professional career in Spain and Italy, while Pelé played his in Brazil and the United States, where he and the Cosmos won the 1977 Soccer Cup.

You’re thinking of the forward pass in American football. The forward pass dominant game is relatively recent. Running the ball used to be the dominant play on offense. Moreover, only one position, the quarterback, specializes in the forward pass, making it no different from soccer, in which one position, the goalie, specializes in the use of hands. All the other players in American football are constantly using their feet – to get in position at the line of scrimmage, to make a tackle, to propel themselves across the field, the run the ball, etc.

You can’t score using your hands in American football either. The way to score in American football is either to kick a field goal, or to score a touchdown by crossing the goal line while in possession of the ball. You can’t score a touchdown with your hands, unless you’re able to walk or run on your hands, in which case you’d be using your feet anyway because you’d have to either catch the ball with your feet in the endzone or run on your hands with the ball held by your feet.

I have a good friend who worked at GE Space Systems in the late sixties while they were developing the MIRV. They used pounds and slugs, not kilograms. As did the engineers who designed and built the equipment that burned Germany and Japan to hollow shells.

LotB was much better when he called himself Half Sigma. He tried to change the focus of his site when he switched names but it didn’t take. Also, if you ever see his picture, he looks like he should be on Megan’s List.

Disease cannot be counted as genocide when carried by people who don’t know what germs are.

I’m sure you realize this, but this game was played at noon in order to accommodate European television, where it was 8 PM (7 in England).

I always thought “kickball” was a better name for soccer than “football”, since kicking is the main action in soccer. “Football” isn’t just a misnomer for soccer, it’s too general a term. There’s no sport that doesn’t involve the feet. Feet are fundamental to human locomotion. It’s like calling it “aerobicball” or “cardiovascular-systemball” because aerobics and the cardiovascular systems are involved when doing the sport. “Handball” is similarly too general. There’s no reason basketball couldn’t be called “handball”.

All Americans know “kickball” as the baseball type kids’ game where the “batters” kick a soccer style ball instead, but it’s not really a thing outside of elementary and middle schools and PE classes, so calling soccer “kickball” wouldn’t be too much of a problem and would be less confusing than calling it “football”. The main problem is that it’s a bit of a misnomer since heading and the use of hands are also prominent in soccer besides kicking.

I think it’s illustrative that the major non-English speaking soccer playing countries such as Italy, France, Germany, the Spanish speaking countries all use the English word “football” for soccer instead of using the literal terms for “foot” and “ball” in their respective languages. Germany uses a calque by combining the German word for “foot” – “Fuß” – with the English word “ball” i.e. “Fußball”. Using a foreign term makes the misnomer aspect less apparent and obscures it unlike using the literal terms in their languages. Similar to how using in American English what was originally a nonsensical slang term – “soccer” – for soccer is less of a misnomer and confusing than calling it “football”.

Ok, but you can also see,that the performance of Pelé in the international field is much better than Maradona. In other words, the data indicates that when Pelé played against the better rivals of his age, his performance was much better than when Maradona played against the better rivals of his age.

… the metric system, which is much, much more practical and efficient.

If you want to know how many of your thumbnails it would take to reach the moon. Metric would make more sense in base 12, where you could divide by three. Or base 60. 10 is stupid.

Economics flourished in Britain, using pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. The Dutch ran an empire with guilders, stuivers, duiten, and penningen, 320 of the last to one of the first.

Modern accounting developed under regimes such as this:

The lira (plural lire) was the distinct currency of Venice until 1807. It was subdivided into 20 soldi, each of 12 denari. The Venetian ducat (ducato) was equal to 124 soldi, whilst the tallero (also known as the zecchino) was equal to 7 lire. The lira of Napoleon’s Kingdom of Italy replaced the Venetian lira in 1807.

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_lira

If you’re going to attack Americans for being obstinate and “arrogant”, why not go after our decimalization of currency, republicanism, and disestablishment? We ignored world practice in those areas as well.

You have no clue what people in America know or don’t know. You ought to have a clue before you open your mouth.

All Americans know “kickball” as the baseball type kids’ game where the “batters” kick a soccer style ball instead, but it’s not really a thing outside of elementary and middle schools and PE classes

In recent years kickball has enjoyed some popularity among adult urban hipsters.

Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of WW2, was 5’5″ tall. I read a biography of him years ago which described one of his many combat skills was tracking and killing German snipers. Murphy was a native of East Texas. He died in a plane crash in the 1970s.

For a long time, maybe decades, Naples has had much more mafia activity than Palermo (only camorra instead of cosa nostra). In Sicily the mafia keeps a lower profile, at least since the Falcone/Borselino murders. Not that it doesn’t exist, of course; but it’s less visible, more involved with bribes to politicans and stuff like that. Also, Naples is (and always has been) much seedier than Palermo.

Visiting Naples in the 1990s, I encountered a couple of young guys riding scooters down the sidewalk. Only they weren’t just riding, they were popping wheelies and gunning their engines as pedestrians scurried out of their way. Nobody seemed to find this particularly unusual or disruptive. They just continued on their way once the danger had passed.

We’re not in Milan anymore.

Chatwin was not a completely trustworthy source.

“This work established Chatwin’s reputation as a travel writer. One of his biographers, Nicholas Murray, called In Patagonia “one of the most strikingly original post-war English travel books” and said that it revitalised the genre of travel writing. However, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin’s book. It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were later alleged to be fiction.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Chatwin#The_Sunday_Times_Magazine_and_In_Patagonia

I’d say soccer is pretty popular in both Canada and Australia
( Have you ever been to these places ??? You will see plenty of soccer fields )

But it is just not the Number One sport ( or maybe even in the top couple )

The thing about countries of British origin ( which maybe includes the US ) is that they shared the British thing about games being character building but had different ideas about which games and often preferred their own as a statement of being their own people .
Other countries came to the party a bit later and took up already established mature sports ( usually but not always soccer )

“Soccer ” and “rugger ” were originally posh boy slang . Like saying” breckers ” for breakfast
Think Wodehouse characters

Monzon actually was described by a writer in Sports Illustrated as a cross between Charles Bronson and Jack Palance in appearance so Galindez and Maidana are obviously more connected to their Amerindian ancestors.

Well, Bronson and Palance were both Eastern Europeans with higher ANE admixture, which is related to Amerindians:

https://racialreality.blogspot.com/2020/09/ancient-north-eurasians-from-siberia.html

The current heavyweight boxing champion is 6’9″ and in his last fight weighed 273lbs in fighting shape. Fighting shape is a helluva lot different than being in shape for football, although both athletes at the professional level have to be in good shape. That 300lb lineman in the NFL is probably in better all around shape than most of these commenters talking about how out of shape football players are vs. special force military troops. Sure, those military special ops are in great shape for their jobs and great cardiovascular condition, but what is their time in the 40, and their strength levels don’t even approach the average running back in the NFL, much less a 260lb linebacker or 300lb lineman. Strength and speed are indeed part of the fitness block and so is athleticism. You guys every hear of Jerry Rice or the late Walter Payton? Both of these guys ran hills as part of their conditioning program, the hill that Jerry Rice ran was notorious for being a real man maker for being a helluva workout on the cardiovascular system and for the legs.

Darwin passed though Argentina while this was going on and witnessed it firsthand. It influenced his belief that the superior races of man were destined to wipe out the inferior ones. (Something the modern liberal defenders of the kindly old gent prefer to ignore.)

I remember reading a book by an officer in Napoleon’s army which among many other things discussed dueling at some length. He said that the most dangerous duelists were the little guys. They would insist on fighting with the foil (which has a point but no edge) and would always pick fights with the biggest guys around, knowing that a small and agile guy with this weapon could kill an opponent of any size.

Conditioning is relative. IF you can run a marathon, then you are conditioned to run a marathon. Say the long distance runner does nothing but run, put him in a pool and the guy will be winded after a couple of laps, he is using muscles that he normally doesn’t use, and despite his cardiovascular system being in fine tune for running, his heart and lungs fail him in the pool.

Those football players do endless 40 yard sprints, try doing that and tell me you won’t want to puke or how dry your mouth becomes. Your body adapts to how you work out or train it. I remember the first time that I ever lifted weights, I was in great shape from boxing, bodyweight calisthenics, roadwork, bag work, sparring, rope skipping, etc., and yet I became winded from a set of weightlifting because it was all so foreign to what I was used to performing. Back in the day, weights were shunned by any boxing trainer and still many of old school guys don’t want their fighters near a weight room. The movements were also awkward, I performed more poorly than guys who I could push around on the football field, of course these guys had been lifting and their muscles had adapted to the movements. However, in a matter of months, I was lifting far more weight than some of the guys who had been training for a couple of years or more. Muscle memory, anyone? Your body adapts to a new stimulus and then genetics kick in.

You take that football player and you let him train on some mountain trails for awhile and his superior genetics will kick in, granted football players aren’t endurance athletes so it isn’t like a Dick Butkus could ever compete in a marathon with a Frank Shorter no matter how many miles Butkus had under his belt, but then again, Frank Shorter would be flattened like a pancake trying to tackle Earl Campbell, hell, Campbell could put the skeletal Shorter in a coma if he ran over him. There is no one on here commenting even remotely close to the natural physical specimen that is known as Herschel Walker, a fine blend of speed, power and strength. And Herschel even competed in MMA as a middle aged man, was a member of the Olympic bobsled team, etc. To compare someone like Walker with a soccer player is LAUGHABLE.

Australians call it wogball

It gets more and more ridiculous. 90% of American football is played with the hands: the ball is passed from player to player either by thrrowing with the hands or by directly passing it hand-t0-hand. Points are scored by holding the ball and running with it and then touching the ball pass the opponents’ line.

What are you trying to argue here? That American football deserves to be called *foot* ball because it is played with the feet just like European football? It’s not.

More patriotic idiocy. You did not “burn Germany and Japan to hollow shells”. Pure American jingoistic chest-thumping. Germany was defeated mostly by Russia, and the atomic bomb was created mostly by scientists born in Europe. And you really shouldn’t feel proud of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the whole World considers it a shameful, cowardly act of a country that had to resort to deus ex machinae to win a war against a much smaller country because they were afraid of facing their enemy face-to-face to the end.

I’ve heard it called communist kickball.

The Soviets beat Germany using aircraft, trucks and tanks supplied by the US. The nuts and bolts were sized in 16ths of an inch, not in millimeters. The gasoline they got from us was delivered in gallons rather than liters. The European born scientists moved to the US because it was clearly superior. Apparently the problems of working in inches and pounds were preferable to those of working behind barbed wire.

So many Brits commenting I just had to.

The most hated soccer star. As arrogant and cocky as anyone I’ve ever seen. But still the best. What sets him apart from Messi, Pele, and Maradona can be seen starting at 24:37 of the video above. At 6’2″ and with NBA leaping ability, he’s probably the best header of the ball ever.

As Jim Bouton stated in Ball Four, in every sport where performance can be measured effectively, today’s athlete is superior to those who’ve gone before them. Watch the Ronaldo compilation, then view the Maradona video. The latter seems to be running in slow motion.

While we’re on the subject of Ball Four and the stories it contained, I think Maradona is soccer’s Mickey Mantle, a guy who’d have been the consensus GOAT if he spent more time on the training field and less time leading a dissolute lifestyle. Ronaldo, on the other hand, is Serie A’s second-leading scorer this year. At the age of 35. After having Covid.

I cant remember if it was this site or somewhere else, but a knowledgeable observer revealed that Ronaldo is at least 25% West African. Can anyone confirm? Anyway, Steve’s observation applies to a lot of current day soccer stars when I compare them to their peers of earlier years. Lukaku (Inter Milan) looks like a NFL safety/linebacker and he plays that way:

More historical revisionist insanity. The Soviets made most of their military hardware in WW2. Ever heard of the T-34 tank? The patriotic insanity of the conservative alt.right, which thinks America must always be the best at everything, is really annoying.

A deliberate foul is cheating. How could it be otherwise?

But he still threw himself on the ground at regular intervals.

They all do, it’s South America’s #1 contribution to the game

We learned it all from them

The Soviets beat Germany using aircraft, trucks and tanks supplied by the US.

Yeah, not really. 4,000 Shermans helped the USSR some, but 65,000 T-34’s and T-34-85’s helped just a bit more.

The nuts and bolts were sized in 16ths of an inch, not in millimeters.

Lol, evidence required.

Now run away.

I am ready to agree with anyone who says he was good at playing a game.

That being said, I cannot imagine, in this universe or any universe remotely like this universe, being proud to have a son like him, unless he showed some bravery and manliness in his later years that was not widely known.

You fanboys can get as mad as you want. I don’t care and I will never care what fanboys think on these subjects.

Lese majeste porteño style:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8993877/Funeral-worker-posed-photo-Maradonas-corpse-begs-forgiveness.html

The photo from the Belgium game doesn’t lie:

Actually, it does. The photo was taken from high in the spectator stand with a telephoto lens and the perspective is incredibly distorted. The photographer was on his first assignment for Sports Illustrated.

Much of the appeal of soccer lies in two attributes: you don’t need to be tall, and that it’s not like baseball with its tedious statistics. Instead, it’s more like Beowulf. A soccer player can be summed up in a few endlessly retold highlights.

I don’t think you can fully feel the game unless you grew up with it. I still mentally relive the hat trick I scored at the age of 11 almost every day. The first a rebound off the post came to me, and I slammed it in, then I got on the end of a cross and side-footed it into the net, and then in the second half I ran through the entire team and slammed in a left-footer from close range.

Then there is the memory of the first live professional game at the age of 8, and the wonders that were revealed seeing skilled full grown men playing.

Then the need to identify with a local team, in my case the great Leeds United team of the 60’s and 70’s, whose international careers for England and Scotland I also followed, so many of whom have died of coronavirus this year.

Even this year, when I see the results of Leeds United, who have recently returned to the top flight, my heart beats a little faster, and I feel a little happier when they win. And it must be 50 years since I went to a live game.

Watching on TV is OK, but does not compare in any way to the live experience of watching a pro game, or indeed playing yourself.

The best games are played at night under floodlights and driving rain in England in November. It is magic and the grass is so much greener.

I am ready to agree with anyone who says he was good at playing a game.

That being said, I cannot imagine, in this universe or any universe remotely like this universe, being proud to have a son like him, unless he showed some bravery and manliness in his later years that was not widely known.

I know, but he gave inspiration and hope to millions of poor children who knew nothing of his off-field conduct, so there is that.

Please. The soviets couldn’t beat little old Finland. You expect me to believe they could beat Germany without the US bombing their factories and oil production facilities and rail marshaling yards and the British burning their wives and children to death every clear night? Go on- pull the other one.

I don’t think you can fully feel the game unless you grew up with it.

Pretty much true of all sport. I have relatives who play golf and view it on TV. It’s different for them. Another man played semi-pro baseball, he finds baseball on TV frustrating because it doesn’t show enough of the outfield. Ditto American football, tennis, etc.

The neural pathways created and deepened by the actual physical experience of playing at whatever sport is just not the same as those possessed by a mere spectator.

Please. The soviets couldn’t beat little old Finland.

Actually…they did beat little old Finland. Twice. It was extremely expensive the first time to be sure, but the Soviets did defeat Finland. That’s why the Finns referred to the 1941 war as the “continuation war”.

You expect me to believe they could beat Germany without the US bombing their factories and oil production facilities and rail marshaling yards and the British burning their wives and children to death every clear night?

You expect to move the goalposts in this obvious a fashion and be even a slightly interesting troll?

lol.

Tell us again about all the Soviet hardware being SAE or Imperial rather than metric, that was funny.

Then run away.

By the 1980s skilful players had a decent measure of protection – the era of open on-field violence against attacking players really ended in the 1970s or even the 1960s. The growth both of television coverage and the the value of the game meant that the hatchet men of old simply couldn’t be allowed to assault the game’s top assets with impunity any more.

Some of the old blowhards were out in force, yes (principally members of the team that lost to him in 1986), but I think most English football supporters have been able to move on. I never cared for him or the chippiness of Argentina vis-a-vis England, but I wasn’t dancing a jig when I heard the news.

For all his many mistakes in life, you can’t doubt his love for country. One of the most intensely, scarily patriotic men of the modern era. And despite almost superhuman sporting gifts, a team player and a hard worker – not even a hint of the prima donna. That’s rare in modern football.

There difference between the announcers in those two clips is great.

Who cares?

Fortunately, the reaction in Argentina to the death of The Ugly anti-American was mercifully subdued.

The reason being that the people had had enough of him going on tv repeatedly to insult the mother of his children, then his children. Especially one daughter who came to the defense of her mother. He was a pig in clown make-up, and philistine to the core.

His Wiki page is high comedy of the first order. Though, clearly, whoever wrote it thought they were doing something else. Whatever. Anyway, yet another 20th/21st century pampered pop culture icon who was spoiled insane and squandered their gift, bites the dust. What’s not to like? Seriously. I’m far from the only one who’s had enough of them.

Anyone interested in reading a biography of sorts on Maradona, and not just Maradona, might want to check out The Perfect Guide To The Latin American Idiot.

“I hate everything that comes from the United States. I hate it with all my strength.”

“…all my strength.” Haha. As if he had the kind of strength that counts, or even lived like he loved himself, or his family. What a clown!

Sounds right, small time mentality.

He was always brave on the pitch, in the days when referees gave little protection to players. The Bilbao cup final where he lost it at the end is the sort of game that gave rise to the saying “they kicked him off the pitch“.

No one’s mentioned it, so I’ll just say that the Asif Kapadia film Maradona is very good. If you have something that persuades their website you’re in the UK, you can stream it here.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/diego-maradona

(Kapadia’s an interesting guy – it just shows that Newport Film School, in depressed and smack-ridden former industrial South Wales, can actually be a route to professional film making. His biopics of Ayrton Senna and Amy Winehouse may be worth a look.)

I hadn’t realised that Maradona’s Napoli downfall came in 1990, when Italy played Argentina at the Napoli stadium in the World Cup semi final. First Maradona gave an interview in which he said Napoli fans should support Argentina for his sake, then he put Italy out in a penalty shoot-out, leaving a stadium of shell-shocked Italians.

From that moment on, all the protection he had – from the gangsters, the tax men, the police, the football authorities – vanished. Soon he was serving an 18-month soccer suspension for cocaine use (which he’d been doing for ages). Then the tax men came after him.

With the possible exception of South America, deliberate fouls are seen as cheating in soccer. The general scarcity of goals probably leads to this attitude: a blocked goal deprives fans of a moment of release.

War time USSR would not have prevailed against the Wehrmacht without American aide in the form of food and raw materials. Ditto for Britain.

Nevertheless the Russians did most of the dying and most of the killing. Those battles fought in North Africa and Western Europe were dwarfed by the the cataclysmic war in Eastern Europe.

Oh I’m well aware. I couldn’t resist dragging those two along for a little ride. They are so earnest!