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I tuned in when the Netherlands was leading the USA 1-0 in the first half of the World Cup octo-finals (octo-finals is high school debate tournament term for the round before the quarterfinals: the World Cup uses the term Round of 16)). “Wow, this is really boring,” I said as the Americans played a super-methodical game in which about 45% of their passes went backwards.
Granted, the Dutch are famous for the Ajax academy of super-technical skill training and have typically been the intellectual leaders of soccer for the last 60 years. So, it’s hard to score on the Dutch.
But then the U.S. gave up an easy goal to the Dutch right before the half, so down, 2-0, they played more desperately in an exciting second half, and what do you know, they scored a weird goal (3:48 in the highlight reel) to pull within 2-1.
But then the USA gave up a third easy goal to lose 3-1.
As 1990s American star Alexi Lalas said afterward, the really hard thing in soccer is to score goals. The USA has never had a goal-scoring genius of the Pele-Maradona-Ronaldo-Messi ilk. For that, you apparently need a soccer culture in which your boys don’t do much else but play soccer. To score one goal on the Netherlands in a crucial match is pretty good for the US.
But the US has for a long time been decent at collective disciplined defense, at marking your man, which is why the national team has often advanced from group play to the round of 16 and even to to the quarterfinals in 2002.
But to give up three totally non-fluke goals is pretty bad. For instance, on the third goal, the Netherlands scorer was waving his hand to his teammate with the ball to indicate he was ambling along only 30 feet from the goal and nobody was within 20 feet of him. Heck, I might have kicked it in from there, much less a world-class soccer player.
Oh, well, so the U.S. is out of the World Cup after a decent run of one win, one loss, and two ties, highlighted by a 0-0 draw with England. The next World Cup is in the USA-Mexico-Canada in 2026, with the final probably in New Jersey, Dallas, or, L.A.
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Holland is just 2 of the 12 provinces The Netherlands. I know some of you were wondering.
Holland is very roughly the equivalent to our New England plus Virginia: the history mostly happened there and now the important offices and museums are there. Still a useful category.
And the Pennsylvania Dutch are of German descent. The Dutch of the Netherlands are called Dutch because in the old proto-Germanic language from which both languages evolved, "dutch" meant people, or of the people. For a time, the Netherlands was known as Nederduytsch, neder (nether, 0r lower) and people. We English speakers mixed all of this up.
I know some of you were wondering.
In similar vein, Austrians are "Mountain Germans", and Schluchtenscheißer if everyone's had a few. Ravines are pretty deep in them thar Austrian hills.
Swiss are "Mountain Jews". Or were, until they cucked on banking secrecy.Replies: @Veteran Aryan
Although much has been written pertaining to soccer’s intellectual leadership, my analysis shows this leadership to be very derivative. I’ve found it to traffic heavily of the well published and understood teachings of both “Chutes and Ladders” and “Go Fish”
USA player selection is noticably different than 20 years ago. A much shorter and faster team over all, much better on pressure and the midfield. But no offensive capability or creativity, and the atrocious breakdowns on defense were unforgivable.
Didn’t even qualify 4 years ago, USA soccer appears to be going backwards, despite the upgrade in athleticism.
Steve’s soccer takes are hilarious.
Good…
…..and people make fun of me for being a baseball fan.
I missed the match…..we’re there any of these?
And players have gone down from some painful, real injuries. Pulisic ran into a goalie’s knee on his goal last week, limped on for the rest of the half, and had to be hospitalized later with some kind of pelvic injury.
Earlier this year a huge number of Dutch farms were ordered closed for environmental reasons. Dutch farmers are still protesting lockdown madness. But fear not! Now central Europe sees that defeating Putin is as easy as embracing price controls, and government subsidizing of the energy sector! What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-seeks-1-year-ban-on-energy-price-hikes-report/a-63974602
soccer: 89 minutes of boredom,
one minute of “action”. No wonder
the fans go out and riot afterward.
U.S.A., very lucky to get out of the group stage.
I would think that having to split their prize -pots for this tournament half-and-half with the mainly obnoxious members of the U.S. women's team, who weren't involved at all, can't have helped player morale.
I don't care much, Japan and S.K. are still in, I prefer the style of the latter over the former, Japan's team are outrageous foulers and fakers of received fouls, but nice to see them (us if following FIFA illogic) beat both Spain and Germany.
Aus., out to mighty Argentina.
All three much better in the group stage than U.S.A.Replies: @Smith
And football, the World Game, is anything but boring - it's not just about scoring goals. ( A 0-0 scoreline match is often exciting because of the near misses/fast tempo and extraordinary skills displayed).
A big part of the excitement is the continuity of the action (a 90 minute football game lasts approximately that long, with only a few minutes added for stoppages).
Meanwhile, American 'football' (aka NFL), is nominally a 60 min game but somehow manages to last over four hours because there are 101 'time outs', time is wasted bringing on the offensive team, the defensive team, the kicking team and the receiving team.FFS,, why not also add in the swimming team and the 'all weather team' (the former would come in handy during a torrential downpour while the latter would prove useful during blizzards when playing the Green Bay Packers in mid winter).Speaking of 'skills', a football player by the name of Zlatan Ibrahimovic had it in spades in this game featuring Sweden Vs England (1 min video):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMtD1Izmd8Scoring from the 'bicycle kick' , although difficult to execute, is seen from time to time.
But when it occurs, it's almost always from short range and right in front of goal.No one [at the top level] has ever scored from that longer distance coupled to the acute angle.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Guest007
Steve, you’re dead right about the USA not having a great scorer. When the USA had good goal scorers in the recent past, for example Brian McBride, Landon Donovan, and Clint Dempsey, we would do pretty well. Christian Pulisic is a great player, but not a great scorer.
This Dutch team is not as good as previous world cup sides, but they have two great scorers, Gakpo and Depay.
All youth players who come up through any Dutch club typically learn the “Ajax” way, playing a 3-4-3 formation, emphasizing on the ground passing and precise positioning and movements. The first two goals they scored looked like perfect training ground team scoring exercises, while ours was a crazy scramble. And Dutch players are schooled to do man marking, not zonal, and to crowd the penalty box on defense to obstruct central scoring lanes. Virtually every time we threatened they had a least 5 or more players in front of goal.
The Dutch coach, Louis Van Gaal, 71, who lost a fortune investing with Bernie Madoff, has been coaching in the game for years at very high levels and is known as a smart tactician and a stern taskmaster. Except for Denmark, most Western European clubs are no longer almost totally white, and its the same with the Dutch. But if anybody looks like like a true Dutchman, it’s van Gaal.
test
I have nothing against soccer and generally don’t want a US team to lose, but I’m always relieved and glad when the US soccer team bows out early simply because of the incessant and annoying promotion of soccer by liberals and the media.
All those bug men and fakely-overly-excited women pretending that a bunch of American-hating dykes and a handful of likeable athletic women playing a game worse than high school boys can are somehow thrilling viewing. Its pathetic, tryhard, and laughable.
I had the misfortune a few years ago to duck into a large hipster bar on a Sunday afternoon to use the bathroom, and the entire bar was tensely quiet, acting like a bomb was in the room and they were watching to see if the room was going to explode or the correct wire would be cut. They all (maybe 50 or more folks) looked at me as I walked in and then quickly reverted to the TV screens plastered about --- which was showing the U.S. women's world cup game (I think it was the finals or semi-finals).
Then they all cheered like it was V-E day and downed their IPAs and through their beards and flannel when the purple haired America-hater scored or something in such a clumsy way I'm pretty sure I could have done it better.
These people are so sad.Replies: @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia
Impressive Steve, your exhaustively detailed summary of the action perfectly translated the mind numbing boredom that is induced by watching men run around a field trying to kick a ball.
I’d rather watch beavers construct a dam in time lapse, or anything else, for that matter.
I had not heard about the Dutch Ajax Academy (thanks, Steve), and so I did a bit of research. The quote above is from Wikipedia. My first thought was whether the Ajax TIPS model could be applied to the US men’s 4 x 100 relay team, so as to teach our team how to successfully pass a baton around the track. Regarding the two innates, man, we’ve got the S, but we have a P problem. Maybe Ajax could help our guys with T, and even I. Of course, it would help to select the team earlier than we do now.
Even for the all time scoring greats, scoring a goal is very hard. Goals seem to happen at random, and once you have a lead, you can hunker down on defense and play keep away. Tends to kill the drama of the game.
I don’t mind watching the World Cup highlight clips every 4 years. They can be fun to watch. Most goals seem to involve going down one of the wings, and the centering the ball towards the front of the goal, and then one of the players heading or kicking the centered pass in. But sitting through an entire game just to see 1 or 2 of these plays is pretty boring.
In general, even at the highest levels, it seems like soccer is boring because it’s very hard for a team to control and possess the ball while going on offense. A team that takes the offensive initiative tends to lose the ball quickly/easily and the ball ends up being kicked around randomly. While in order to control and possess the ball and string many passes together, a team basically has to play keep away and not really try to score.
How did that old Monty Python parody of the BBC go –
For those not interested in sport, here’s…sport.
US missed two or three great opportunities and scored with a screwball. With better luck it could have been 2:2 and the end would turn out differently. Two goals were scored from unmarked center shots, somebody was late there.
Yeah, good team without that final inspirational world class striker. The US will be in most last 16 and some final 8 going forward. It’s a solid team.
US population: 335 million
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call “soccer.” To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It’s a bunch of running around.
I love this:
This is what the word “duh” was invented for.
Africa population: 1.4 billion
Or are we really going to keep pretending that a team with 40% blacks is "Dutch"? Of course, foreign blacks are heavily overrepresented in the US team, too.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
The Dutch throw all their eggs into one basket--the soccer basket. Combine that with Dutch organization and ruthlessness, as exemplified by their firing live ammunition at Covid protestors, and you have a potent recipe for success. Where are the Dutch in other sports? With apologies to Rik Smits and Win Remmerswaal, they're invisible. I don't think there's even been one Dutchman on the Euro Ryder Cup team.Replies: @Ron Mexico, @Brutusale, @Jeff, @sb
Apropos of absolutely nothing:
The real story of the day was The Twilight of The Gods. Lionel Messi, genuis of his generation and perhaps greatest to ever play the game, is only missing a World Cup Win from his otherwise stacked trophy case. He’s old and credible people say this World Cup will be the last games he plays. And yet, there was still magic. There’s really no “pride” in beating Australia, it was a given, but we saw just enough Old Messi that his fans think this might, this maybe, this very well could be the moment he lifts the World Cup
Oh, what a time to be alive!
So, a blowout.
This is what the word “duh” was invented for.
Not really. Compare scoring in soccer with basket ball. Soccer is about the lowest scoring team sport there is.
The difference is that in soccer, scoring from the scoring position happens rarely, whereas in basketball it happens often.
Alternately, in gridiron football much of the challenge is getting the ball down the field. Technically speaking, there does not need to be much difference between getting the ball from the 60 yard line to the 40 yard line and getting the ball from the 20 yard line to a touchdown.
Scoring goals is not specifically the challenge. Getting the ball all the way across the field is.
There are actually 2 layers of scoring in gridiron football - points, and yards v. downs. I don't think a play that does not result in a goal in soccer can have the same significance as a play that does not result in a touchdown (but moves the ball a significant number of yards) in gridiron football.
Similarly, baseball has 3 levels of scoring - balls v. strikes, on-base v. outs, and runs.
Hey Steve – sorry to interrupt the thread but there has been an important development on the Do Species Exist front in World War Climate:
https://www.foxnews.com/science/biden-nevada-toad-endangered-hampering-construction-geothermal-plant
Biden admin. names Nevada toad endangered, hampering construction of geothermal plant
Dixie Valley toad at risk of extinction, US Fish and Wildlife Service says
‘The Fish and Wildlife Service cited some of their concerns – including that pumping hot water from beneath the surface to generate carbon-free power would adversely impact levels and temperatures of surface water critical to the toad’s survival and sacred to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe. ”
One would think that using already existing heat to generate carbon-free power would be the veritable holy grail of green energy, but one would be wrong. You should acknowledge reality, and reduce WWG, WWT, WWH, etc. to the level of operations, or at most theaters in the epic conflict that is currently WWW (World War on Whites) and which will eventually be revealed as WWP (World War on People – Billions must die).
Ok, that’s all. As you were, everyone.
We have guys who are creative and who can score, the problem is Berhalter didn’t play them until it was too late.
Seeing a guy who is quite black being referred to as ” Dutch” isn’t great,but I enjoyed much of the game,as I have enjoyed several others.
Argentina was very impressive, they have to be the favorite,tho after seeing Ned,maybe not. I like Messi,and they have a guy named McAllister,who scored a goal, so that’s good.
I found myself surprisingly emotional when USA got knocked out. I thought I didn’t care,but I did.
Still pissed off about those nasty goldigging women getting so much money,money for nothin’.
There’s a vid of Hope Solo getting nicked for DUI,with her kids in the car..
She was drunk,but still,tho quite attractive😎,man she was a nasty son of a gun.
Irrespective of paid attendance, TV rights, sponsorships, etc.
Not counting beauty contests...Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @JR Ewing
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/tim-robbins-and-the-lost-art-of-finding Here’s a great Matt Taibbi interview with Tim Robbins, who appears to have seen the “Light”.
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call "soccer." To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It's a bunch of running around.
I love this:This is what the word "duh" was invented for.Replies: @Anon, @Jonathan Mason, @Anon, @Bragadocious, @Ron Mexico, @Hapalong Cassidy, @Cortes
It’s Soccer. The rest of the world is wrong, as usual.
OT; but this is a howler . . .
“When the stakes are so high . . .” Oh, Meghan!
It was really a victory for American culture.
The first Dutch goal was scored by Memphis (Depay) who once dated the daughter of American TV personality Steve Harvey.
The third goal was scored by Denzel Dumfries, who was named by his family after US actor Denzel Washington, and who currently plays for Milan in Italy.
The second goal was scored by Daley Blind, who previously played for Manchester United, which is owned by the Glazer family that also owns the Tampa Bay Bucs. Memphis has also played for the same American owned club.
Tyler Adams put in some tremendous performances for the US. He is one of the few footballers whose name incorporates the names of three US presidents.
The USMNT could beat any team in the world if it could score goals.
Anyway the US did win the only game that really mattered–against Iran. Or I-Ran, if you like.
Anyway the US has the consolation that it will automatically qualify for the next FIFA World Cup which will be played in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. Since presumably both those countries will also qualify automatically, the US will have an excellent opportunity to win at least one game.
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call "soccer." To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It's a bunch of running around.
I love this:This is what the word "duh" was invented for.Replies: @Anon, @Jonathan Mason, @Anon, @Bragadocious, @Ron Mexico, @Hapalong Cassidy, @Cortes
There is nothing wrong with calling it soccer, but it is a bit unfashionable. When I grew up in England many decades ago, we called football soccer, and rugby rugger. There were advertisements for soccer boots and people usually talked about soccer pitches rather than football fields.
There is a UK magazine founded in 1960 called World Soccer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Soccer_(magazine).
In case anybody doesn’t know, soccer is an abbreviation of AsSOCiation Football. The word Association is the last letter of FIFA.
Yes but only 11 are allowed on the field at the same time, which negates the advantage, however it is a pity that nobody wants to immigrate to the US!
Recce is short for reconnaissance. It's pronounced recky but if you don't know that and try to sound it out, many people come up with raitch or retch-ay or something like that.
This is what happens when you let people just make up words. The Academy Frawsezz would never brook such nonsense.Replies: @Bla
When I was in South Africa, the game was commonly called Soccer. Perhaps this is because Rugby was very popular. Interestingly, in SA, to over generalize, Soccer was the black sport and Rugby the game. It may have been the Rugby fans who called it Soccer.
What’s this sport? I played kickball in elementary school, but this doesn’t look like that. Do Europeans play this game? Europe is an American colony. We should teach them to play baseball. They’d be happier and less bored.
Apologies OT, but as we now groove into the holy Advent season, here, as a Christmas treat, is the finest version of the finest Christmas carol of all time (not joking)….
Generally speaking, with the outstanding exception of the remarkable “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” the French kick the crap out of the Anglosphere when it comes to Christmas carols. “O Holy Night” (number one with a bullet) and “Angels We Have Heard On High” (also number one) are both French, in case you didn’t know.
Well, enjoy. Ad maiorem Dei gloriae.
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call "soccer." To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It's a bunch of running around.
I love this:This is what the word "duh" was invented for.Replies: @Anon, @Jonathan Mason, @Anon, @Bragadocious, @Ron Mexico, @Hapalong Cassidy, @Cortes
US population: 335 million
Africa population: 1.4 billion
Or are we really going to keep pretending that a team with 40% blacks is “Dutch”? Of course, foreign blacks are heavily overrepresented in the US team, too.
Fox Broadcast is now feverishly revising its ad campaign for the balance of the ’22 Cup …
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call "soccer." To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It's a bunch of running around.
I love this:This is what the word "duh" was invented for.Replies: @Anon, @Jonathan Mason, @Anon, @Bragadocious, @Ron Mexico, @Hapalong Cassidy, @Cortes
Why is it pathetic?
The Dutch throw all their eggs into one basket–the soccer basket. Combine that with Dutch organization and ruthlessness, as exemplified by their firing live ammunition at Covid protestors, and you have a potent recipe for success. Where are the Dutch in other sports? With apologies to Rik Smits and Win Remmerswaal, they’re invisible. I don’t think there’s even been one Dutchman on the Euro Ryder Cup team.
Rik Aalbert Blijleven came before him, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Blyleven
You'll see that you are much more likely to be an Olympic medallist in the Netherlands than in the US
Americans sometimes forget that their country is the third most populous on the planet as well as (maybe still ) the richest
America never looks that good pro rataReplies: @Bragadocious, @BB753
The Brits used to call it either Soccer or Football. They only got prissy about calling it football when the Americans got into the game and called it soccer.
“When the stakes are so high . . .” Oh, Meghan!
https://youtu.be/t1WJTwy8I7cReplies: @AKAHorace, @Fluesterwitz
She must be really good in bed for Harry to put up with this idiocy.
Gavin Newsom should do the JFK thing and announce that California will lead the way so that in this decade the USA will win the World Cup. Note that with a little fuzzy math this gives the USA the 2026 and the 2030 World Cups to pull this off
Given that American Football is dying in California – USC and UCLA are fleeing the PAC-12 for the Midwest dominated Big Ten – California has the chance to make the state a mecca for world class soccer.
I don’t understand the fascination with a sport that doesn’t require one to use their arms or hands (other than a single player per side of course). Seems very limiting for an athlete.
Soccer is very dull because you can’t use your hands.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Reg Cæsar
As is often the case, The Babylon Bee said it best:
https://babylonbee.com/news/nation-relieved-to-no-longer-have-to-pretend-to-like-soccerReplies: @Achmed E. Newman
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-ccNkksrfls
OT:
Cops- Donut Shops =
https://twitter.com/PeterMoskos/status/1599184615998074881/photo/1
https://www.foxnews.com/science/biden-nevada-toad-endangered-hampering-construction-geothermal-plant
Biden admin. names Nevada toad endangered, hampering construction of geothermal plant
Dixie Valley toad at risk of extinction, US Fish and Wildlife Service says
'The Fish and Wildlife Service cited some of their concerns – including that pumping hot water from beneath the surface to generate carbon-free power would adversely impact levels and temperatures of surface water critical to the toad’s survival and sacred to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe. "
One would think that using already existing heat to generate carbon-free power would be the veritable holy grail of green energy, but one would be wrong. You should acknowledge reality, and reduce WWG, WWT, WWH, etc. to the level of operations, or at most theaters in the epic conflict that is currently WWW (World War on Whites) and which will eventually be revealed as WWP (World War on People - Billions must die).
Ok, that's all. As you were, everyone.Replies: @Yancey Ward
The Dixie Valley Toad is endangered? I though Harry Reid had already shuffled off this mortal coil.
Ok, seriously, is this some April Fools running bit in the month of December?
You really sound genuinely concerned, Steve. Something about the US lost and is out of the World Cup. Even though most Americans couldn’t care less.
More to the point: Is NY going to re-sign AL MVP Aaron Judge? He only broke the AL single season HR record, that’s stood since 1961. I mean, if Sabermetrics and the “Three True Outcomes” of which the HR is one of them has any meaning, then allowing the league’s HR leader to slip through their fingers would be a major catastrophe.
Priorities people, priorities.
Not really. Compare scoring in soccer with basket ball. Soccer is about the lowest scoring team sport there is.Replies: @Glaivester
As I have said, the thing about both soccer and basketball is that they involve the ball going back and forth quite a bit, and lots of the ball being in scoring position.
The difference is that in soccer, scoring from the scoring position happens rarely, whereas in basketball it happens often.
Alternately, in gridiron football much of the challenge is getting the ball down the field. Technically speaking, there does not need to be much difference between getting the ball from the 60 yard line to the 40 yard line and getting the ball from the 20 yard line to a touchdown.
Scoring goals is not specifically the challenge. Getting the ball all the way across the field is.
There are actually 2 layers of scoring in gridiron football – points, and yards v. downs. I don’t think a play that does not result in a goal in soccer can have the same significance as a play that does not result in a touchdown (but moves the ball a significant number of yards) in gridiron football.
Similarly, baseball has 3 levels of scoring – balls v. strikes, on-base v. outs, and runs.
Does anyone remember Landon Donovan pissing on Mexican soil in Guadalajara? Hilarity ensues as Mexicans are pissed off:
Too bad he cucked in the end.
Right. My vague recollection of the 60s is that “soccer” was still often used by the English.
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call "soccer." To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It's a bunch of running around.
I love this:This is what the word "duh" was invented for.Replies: @Anon, @Jonathan Mason, @Anon, @Bragadocious, @Ron Mexico, @Hapalong Cassidy, @Cortes
Only 13 nations have appeared in a World Cup finals. 10 from Europe, 3 from South America. Population doesn’t seem to be relevant here.
They’re nothing at all alike. One is a repulsive, slime-covered, primitive life form with secretions that can cause nausea and vomiting in humans. The other is a toad.
The Dutch throw all their eggs into one basket--the soccer basket. Combine that with Dutch organization and ruthlessness, as exemplified by their firing live ammunition at Covid protestors, and you have a potent recipe for success. Where are the Dutch in other sports? With apologies to Rik Smits and Win Remmerswaal, they're invisible. I don't think there's even been one Dutchman on the Euro Ryder Cup team.Replies: @Ron Mexico, @Brutusale, @Jeff, @sb
The Dutch have won over 100 medals in Olympic speed skating. The Dutch have never won the World Cup.
https://www.schaatshistorie.nl/media/Nederland%20-%20Estland%2025-01-2013%20%20tijdens%20WK%202013%20in%20Vetlanda,%20Zweden.jpg?1470151428300Replies: @Ron Mexico
Actually, it was the Italians, of all people, who retarded the game with their all-defensive catenaccio tactics. That means “chain”, and you can imagine the effect.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenaccio
Note that at least two of those are from the Italian diaspora, i.e., Italian-without-Italy. Only one is European, and… wait, I take that back. Ronaldo is from Madeira, which is 140 miles closer to Africa than to Europe, and lies about halfway between Moscow and Recife, Brazil.
He’s at the far left:
One of the most annoying things about the World Cup coverage is how Lalas and all the other American commentators treat the country team names as plurals instead of singular nouns e.g. they say “England have scored”, “France have won”, etc. It’s apparently the policy to adopt UK style in soccer coverage.
Most crimes against the English language are from the U.S.A., but you are correct, this one is British.
It has spread, one will read 'the government have', 'the Labour Party have' etc. from British reporters.Replies: @David Jones, @David Jones
Brits in America are very unhappy about this, make no mistake. So to me, we should be happy right now.
The Phoenix Suns are 15-7 and the Utah Jazz are 14-12.
The Boston Bruins are 20-3-0 and the Tampa Bay Lightning are 15-8-1.
I LOLed! Ron’s button wouldn’t work …..again!
Rugby or Rugby 7s is really good: full contact and you can use your whole body.
Soccer is very dull because you can’t use your hands.
Goaltending is a career in soccer and other sports; it's a foul in hoops.Then there's chess, in which you can only use your fingers. Once in a blue moon a table gets upended, but not often enough.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Jonathan Mason
Bandy is essentially field hockey on ice with soccer rules. You’d think the Dutch would excel at this, but they’ve never finished higher than 7th in the biennial World Championships. That is almost always won by Russia or Sweden, though Finland did grab the title in 2004.
You realize that these glitzy stadia and the shiny cites around them weren’t built with oil money, which is not that significant in Qatar, but with natural gas proceeds? East Asians get their LNG from Qatar.
Perhaps Qataris blew up Nord Stream? Or their Iranian neighbors and sometimes allies? And the Cup is a distraction from this?
Yes, the North Field is south of the South Field.
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/12/Screen-Shot-2022-12-02-at-3.05.36-AM.png?ssl=1Replies: @Dave Pinsen
Akshually, in this World Cup, the refs have been mostly letting them play. There’ve been hard tackles where one player is on the turf grabbing his shin and the ref just tells them to play on.
And players have gone down from some painful, real injuries. Pulisic ran into a goalie’s knee on his goal last week, limped on for the rest of the half, and had to be hospitalized later with some kind of pelvic injury.
It’s the US team that is boring. Other teams have been playing good games – Argentina, Japan, even Serbia vs Switzerland had a great first half. America should stick to baseball, or to their own version of “football” which is more boring than any other sport, except perhaps for statistics nerds.
It’s doubly worse when women’s World Cup soccer is on.
All those bug men and fakely-overly-excited women pretending that a bunch of American-hating dykes and a handful of likeable athletic women playing a game worse than high school boys can are somehow thrilling viewing. Its pathetic, tryhard, and laughable.
I had the misfortune a few years ago to duck into a large hipster bar on a Sunday afternoon to use the bathroom, and the entire bar was tensely quiet, acting like a bomb was in the room and they were watching to see if the room was going to explode or the correct wire would be cut. They all (maybe 50 or more folks) looked at me as I walked in and then quickly reverted to the TV screens plastered about — which was showing the U.S. women’s world cup game (I think it was the finals or semi-finals).
Then they all cheered like it was V-E day and downed their IPAs and through their beards and flannel when the purple haired America-hater scored or something in such a clumsy way I’m pretty sure I could have done it better.
These people are so sad.
I have a Brazilian acquaintance who like most of his countrymen is a HUGE soccer fan, and his disdain for the women's game in palpable,
And he's right.
Argentina was very impressive, they have to be the favorite,tho after seeing Ned,maybe not. I like Messi,and they have a guy named McAllister,who scored a goal, so that's good.
I found myself surprisingly emotional when USA got knocked out. I thought I didn't care,but I did.
Still pissed off about those nasty goldigging women getting so much money,money for nothin'.
There's a vid of Hope Solo getting nicked for DUI,with her kids in the car..
She was drunk,but still,tho quite attractive😎,man she was a nasty son of a gun.Replies: @Renard, @Muggles
I'd rather watch beavers construct a dam in time lapse, or anything else, for that matter.Replies: @Old Prude, @Buzz Mohawk, @Achmed E. Newman
This is great stuff: The snark is well done and well deserved. I easily skip all the long boring posts about soccer (but I repeat myself) and just read the one-liners. High quality morning entertainment. Thanks, guys!
https://www.schaatshistorie.nl/media/Nederland%20-%20Estland%2025-01-2013%20%20tijdens%20WK%202013%20in%20Vetlanda,%20Zweden.jpg?1470151428300Replies: @Ron Mexico
The Russian Five who helped the Detroit Red Wings to 3 Stanley Cup championships did a lot of kicking the soccer ball around when not on the ice. Why isn’t Russia more successful in international “football”?
“When the stakes are so high . . .” Oh, Meghan!
https://youtu.be/t1WJTwy8I7cReplies: @AKAHorace, @Fluesterwitz
Happy wife, happy life, or so I’ve been told. Before, he had to submit to his family and the court bureaucracy, now just to the whims of his wife.
The Dutch throw all their eggs into one basket--the soccer basket. Combine that with Dutch organization and ruthlessness, as exemplified by their firing live ammunition at Covid protestors, and you have a potent recipe for success. Where are the Dutch in other sports? With apologies to Rik Smits and Win Remmerswaal, they're invisible. I don't think there's even been one Dutchman on the Euro Ryder Cup team.Replies: @Ron Mexico, @Brutusale, @Jeff, @sb
Win Remmerswaal is an amazing pull. You must be a Red $ox fan.
Rik Aalbert Blijleven came before him, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Blyleven
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call "soccer." To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It's a bunch of running around.
I love this:This is what the word "duh" was invented for.Replies: @Anon, @Jonathan Mason, @Anon, @Bragadocious, @Ron Mexico, @Hapalong Cassidy, @Cortes
The Dutch have been punching above their weight for centuries. Hell, they ruled over Indonesia (current population: 275 million) until the 1950’s.
Someone anime’d Steve
one minute of "action". No wonder
the fans go out and riot afterward.Replies: @Che Guava, @Russ, @Muggles, @Truth Vigilante
I agree. I haven’t watched any of this one so far, but have been following the results.
U.S.A., very lucky to get out of the group stage.
I would think that having to split their prize -pots for this tournament half-and-half with the mainly obnoxious members of the U.S. women’s team, who weren’t involved at all, can’t have helped player morale.
I don’t care much, Japan and S.K. are still in, I prefer the style of the latter over the former, Japan’s team are outrageous foulers and fakers of received fouls, but nice to see them (us if following FIFA illogic) beat both Spain and Germany.
Aus., out to mighty Argentina.
All three much better in the group stage than U.S.A.
In contrast, the koreans play very physical, and their injury time is big (in the S. Korea vs. Ghana, it is 10 mins injury time).
Obviously, playing physical or diving has its advantages since it means more extra time, but Japan's team don't play like that.
The goalkeepers are allowed to use their hands and arms, so it is a contest between skilled players using their heads and feet versus one man who has the superpower of using his hands.
The goalkeepers in this world cup have been astonishingly good and difficult to beat.
However I don’t think most people who are soccer fans pay a lot of attention to the philosophical aspects of the game.
Soccer doesn’t translate very well onto TV, because the cameras are usually high above the stands and provide only a bird’deye view of the play. Being actually present in the stadium at the ground level is much, much more exciting and is an incredible communal experience which is why many people go every week.
Arguably it is better for the soul than going to a church service. (I have done both.)
Soccer is also a lot of fun to play. Globally, probably close to 100% of male soccer fans have played the game at some point at some level, and now an increasing number of female fans.
As people get older, soccer provides a way for them to relive their youth. I certainly recall with total clarity goals that I scored as a 9-year-old, and professional goals that I witnessed as an adolescent.
On the other hand it is sad that many of my youthful soccer heroes died of Covid-19.
Ice hockey is a great game, and entertaining to watch and play video games. Not having enough upraising on ice, also a little too small, only played hockey.
Women's soccer is a joke, women's rugby even worse.
From the point of view of a fan, it makes more sense to say “we won” than “it won”, when referring to your national team.
This Dutch team is not as good as previous world cup sides, but they have two great scorers, Gakpo and Depay.
All youth players who come up through any Dutch club typically learn the "Ajax" way, playing a 3-4-3 formation, emphasizing on the ground passing and precise positioning and movements. The first two goals they scored looked like perfect training ground team scoring exercises, while ours was a crazy scramble. And Dutch players are schooled to do man marking, not zonal, and to crowd the penalty box on defense to obstruct central scoring lanes. Virtually every time we threatened they had a least 5 or more players in front of goal.
The Dutch coach, Louis Van Gaal, 71, who lost a fortune investing with Bernie Madoff, has been coaching in the game for years at very high levels and is known as a smart tactician and a stern taskmaster. Except for Denmark, most Western European clubs are no longer almost totally white, and its the same with the Dutch. But if anybody looks like like a true Dutchman, it's van Gaal.Replies: @Bill Jones, @Dutch Boy
It’s no coincidence the back four is headed up by The Dyke.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjGbWuFWYAI7m7I.jpgReplies: @Bill Jones, @International Jew
Was that “someone” Mrs Steve?
I agree, but simply hitting ‘agree’ would be ambiguous.
Most crimes against the English language are from the U.S.A., but you are correct, this one is British.
It has spread, one will read ‘the government have’, ‘the Labour Party have’ etc. from British reporters.
They won? I was very impressed by our national team beating both Germany and Spain, but I’m not a team member and don’t much like nor play soccer, so to say ‘we won’ seems strange.
Are you sure that most didn’t die of the vaccines?
Did you pass?
...with flying colors!!!
I remember Alexi Lalas from the 90s; not a bad player, a high energy guy with a distinctive look, I thought at the time he would lead a bigger interest in football amongst American youth.
I like local football and attend matches, but in the World Cup, well I just support the Whitest team, passports don’t matter.
My guys are LFC- Liverpool Football Club and the main component of the club are the fans. The team are the representatives of the club so a fan says “We won.” To a large degree the fans who show up to games keep the club afloat, despite the torrent of TV money, so good owners, and Liverpool’s current owner Fenwick Sports Group are very good, take that seriously. An example is that when the covid scam was being rolled out they announced they were laying off a couple of hundred support staff. They learned within a couple of days that that was not acceptable and reversed the decision. Similarly with the proposal for a European Super League. The use of the teams as propaganda organs for the nastiest Petro-States is changing all that of course.
I much prefer hockey, ‘field hockey’ is an oxymoron, it is hockey. Sure more interesting than soccer.
Ice hockey is a great game, and entertaining to watch and play video games. Not having enough upraising on ice, also a little too small, only played hockey.
Women’s soccer is a joke, women’s rugby even worse.
OT:
It’s my reasoned opinion that the Idaho killings are a case of Incel rage. Some introverted Omega, probably a fellow student, couldn’t stand the fact that these three hot young women – they were all solid 8’s or higher – were miles out of his league. How he came to be aware of them is uncertain. Most likely it was some trivial interaction with one or more of them and it was obvious they wouldn’t give him the time of day. So he did something about it. The male victim was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A guy would have to be Quasimodo's uglier brother to be scoreless in Moscow. Yes I live near there.
If the guy was celibate it was voluntary in the sense he was unwilling to do the absolute minimum necessary to hook up with a girl. Like shower, comb his hair,, although that appears to be optional, and wear cleanish clothes.
A guy would have to be trying not to get any.Replies: @prosa123
https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/531/1015/621/the-simpsons-tapped-out-homer-simpson-ned-flanders-bart-simpson-wallpaper-thumb.jpgReplies: @Wokechoke
based on the data we have the game favours Italians and Iberians. It’s a Latin game in a sense.
Yeah. If our priorities were straight, the (MSM) would publish the pay of the (team owners) as well as that of the star players.
And read the various contract negotiations and how they played out in the MSM.Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, DiMaggio, etc. all the way up to 2022.ca.99% of the MSM ALWAYS takes one side of the negotiations (ownership, not players). Why is that?To hear the MSM tell it, the owners are broke, starving, can't afford to rub two dollars together to keep their taxpayer funded ballparks up and running another season, their bank accounts are about to burst at the seams, simply can't afford to pay it. How ungrateful the player is, selfish, greedy. Why doesn't he give the team a hometown discount and take a little bit less? And when the shoes on the other foot, and the player is at end of career, and wants another year in the bigs, the owners change tactics--business is business, kid. And the player gets kicked to the curb.And the MSM is all fine with it, and always vs. the players side.Why is that? They ALWAYS side with ownership. Players come and go, ownership lasts forever.
What was the purpose of awarding the next World Cup to a continent, rather than a country? Is this some show of support for the idea that the borders of the USA have been/should be erased?
That’s the plan. And it may be done by the time the World Cup rolls around.
The World Cup is awarded to federations. Europe and Asia were ruled out because they had the last two World cups.
CONCACAF decided to put forward a three-country consortium. This means those three countries will qualify automatically, and then three more countries from CONCACAF would also qualify.
The only other applicant was Morocco from Africa. A vote was held and the American consortium won by a margin of 2 to 1.
Many people regard winning a World Cup as an economic benefit for the hosts, as it brings many tourists to the country and is great for the hotel, car rental and restaurant businesses. I can understand that this is an anathema to racists, because those tourists will be foreigners.
The process of choosing cities is quite complex, because stadiums have to be a certain size to qualify, playing surfaces must be real grass, and of course stadiums that are used by other sports have to be available.
Apparently there wasn't a suitable stadium in Washington DC, so it had to combine its part of the bid with Baltimore, but I don't think either city was part of the winning bid.
So my guess is that CONCACAF combined three countries so that it could get six teams into the finals.Replies: @Guest007, @Reg Cæsar, @Reg Cæsar
Soccer is very dull because you can’t use your hands.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Reg Cæsar
Basketball is very dull because you can’t use your feet. No sliding tackles, punting, drop-kicking, cleat-slashing, etc. You have all these colored guys, but refuse to let ’em rip. Talk about a “gentleman’s game played by hooligans”!
Goaltending is a career in soccer and other sports; it’s a foul in hoops.
Then there’s chess, in which you can only use your fingers. Once in a blue moon a table gets upended, but not often enough.
It would be fascinating to see contests between teams of lanky American hoopsmen versus tiny Siamese running between their legs.
Possibly some changes to the game need to be made to eliminate any advantage to taller players.
For example have three hoops at each end at different heights and you get an extra point if you can get the ball into the net with your head or foot.Replies: @BB753, @Reg Cæsar, @JR Ewing
And they blame us for lack of sophistication for choosing one of their names for the game, to distinguish it from our sport. Freakin’ Limeys.
Soccer is very dull because you can’t use your hands.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Reg Cæsar
“Thai” basketball might be your thing. Look what they did with boxing.
I want to go with “Nederland,” which is the name of the country and simpler.
Holland is very roughly the equivalent to our New England plus Virginia: the history mostly happened there and now the important offices and museums are there. Still a useful category.
Calling the Netherlands “Holland” is like calling the United Kingdom “England.” Common mistake, but it’s mostly Scottish nationalists who still get excited about it.
And the Pennsylvania Dutch are of German descent. The Dutch of the Netherlands are called Dutch because in the old proto-Germanic language from which both languages evolved, “dutch” meant people, or of the people. For a time, the Netherlands was known as Nederduytsch, neder (nether, 0r lower) and people. We English speakers mixed all of this up.
I know some of you were wondering.
Is this the true etymology? Given that it’s pronounced a-sosh-e-a-shun and not a-sock-e-a-shun, it seems like soccer would have been spelled socer and pronounced sosher.
Recce is short for reconnaissance. It’s pronounced recky but if you don’t know that and try to sound it out, many people come up with raitch or retch-ay or something like that.
This is what happens when you let people just make up words. The Academy Frawsezz would never brook such nonsense.
You have to laugh. The European/UK energy suicide pact is causing huge problems all over Europe, with falling living standards everywhere.
So what do our oligarch media tell us? It’s all because of Brexit. Crops are once more rotting in the fields.
UK workers are striking as their living standards collapse while rents and energy bills soar, and our oligarch government tells them that wanting to be able to pay the bills makes them Russian allies.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/04/striking-uk-workers-playing-into-putins-hands-says-zahawi
I think that’s called “chutzpah”. The high energy prices are entirely a result of EU/UK sanctions plus US/UK pipeline sabotage. EU/UK/US thought that spurning Russian oil and gas would have crashed the Russian economy by now, instead it’s crashed the EU/UK economies and boosted the US/Russian economies.
Physiognomy alert – Mr Zahawi, an Iraqi Kurd and MP for Stratford Upon Avon, has the misfortune of looking like a gigantic crook. I’m surprised he went for a career in politics, where Blair-like “sincerity” is more the norm.
Soccer was originally invented by European women to give them something to do while their husbands cook. But modern soccer has evolved into a sport played by European men to give them something to do while they’re waiting to transition.
Africa population: 1.4 billion
Or are we really going to keep pretending that a team with 40% blacks is "Dutch"? Of course, foreign blacks are heavily overrepresented in the US team, too.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
Good point.
one minute of "action". No wonder
the fans go out and riot afterward.Replies: @Che Guava, @Russ, @Muggles, @Truth Vigilante
Is it of note that Missouri voted to legalize recreational pot last month, just months before the St Louis entry in the inaptly-named “Major League Soccer” debuts?
This Dutch team is not as good as previous world cup sides, but they have two great scorers, Gakpo and Depay.
All youth players who come up through any Dutch club typically learn the "Ajax" way, playing a 3-4-3 formation, emphasizing on the ground passing and precise positioning and movements. The first two goals they scored looked like perfect training ground team scoring exercises, while ours was a crazy scramble. And Dutch players are schooled to do man marking, not zonal, and to crowd the penalty box on defense to obstruct central scoring lanes. Virtually every time we threatened they had a least 5 or more players in front of goal.
The Dutch coach, Louis Van Gaal, 71, who lost a fortune investing with Bernie Madoff, has been coaching in the game for years at very high levels and is known as a smart tactician and a stern taskmaster. Except for Denmark, most Western European clubs are no longer almost totally white, and its the same with the Dutch. But if anybody looks like like a true Dutchman, it's van Gaal.Replies: @Bill Jones, @Dutch Boy
I noticed some very un-Dutchy sounding names on the “Dutch” team. Perhaps it has become like the Olympics, with some strategic grants of citizenship or sketchy family connections getting you on an Olympic team.
I don’t understand the fascination with a sport that doesn’t require one to use their arms or hands (other than a single player per side of course). Seems very limiting for an athlete.
As is often the case, The Babylon Bee said it best:
https://babylonbee.com/news/nation-relieved-to-no-longer-have-to-pretend-to-like-soccer
Soccer is a sport that gets MORE boring as the skill of the teams increases. Amateur youth soccer is more entertaining than pro soccer.
Try to name another sport where as player skill rises, the game play gets more boring to watch as a spectator….??
Iron rule : All sports that advantage the defense get worse to watch as the players get better. Sports that advantage the offense get better to watch as the players get better.
Real superstars can do anything:
Netherlands population: 17 million
That says it all. Americans suck at what they incorrectly call "soccer." To only accomplish what they have done with a pool of 335 million against a pool of 17 million is pathetic. But who cares? It's a bunch of running around.
I love this:This is what the word "duh" was invented for.Replies: @Anon, @Jonathan Mason, @Anon, @Bragadocious, @Ron Mexico, @Hapalong Cassidy, @Cortes
Uruguay – population ?3.5million – has won the World Cup twice, and regularly gets to the nitty-gritty knockout stages of tournaments. The squad in Qatar was pretty old and had three magnificent veterans in their swansong (defender Diego Godin and strikers Edinson Cavani and Luis Suarez) with a couple of younger players just entering their best years (Valverde of Real Madrid and Nuñez of Liverpool). I suspect that there’s no “everybody gets a medal for taking part” ethos in sport down there.
As is often the case, The Babylon Bee said it best:
https://babylonbee.com/news/nation-relieved-to-no-longer-have-to-pretend-to-like-soccerReplies: @Achmed E. Newman
Haha, you beat me to it by half an hour, Mr. K! That sounds like my post from 4 years ago, but funnier.
I hadn’t read any of this post/thread because I don’t care about Communist Kickball. Instapundit steered me toward this “Newspaper of Record” post. Ya gotta appreciate the common sense of Glenn Reynolds.
Given that American Football is dying in California - USC and UCLA are fleeing the PAC-12 for the Midwest dominated Big Ten - California has the chance to make the state a mecca for world class soccer.Replies: @Russ
Apparently, northern California high-school rugby teams are the standard-setter. A nephew’s Jesuit high school’s rugby team makes an annual pre-season trip out there to get pounded by the Calif teams, then returns to play dominant rugby in its league during its season, annually challenging for its state title. Excellent strategy, given how the deep-pocketed parents fund the trip.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjGbWuFWYAI7m7I.jpgReplies: @Bill Jones, @International Jew
Looks more like a middle-aged Haven Monahan.
Goaltending is a career in soccer and other sports; it's a foul in hoops.Then there's chess, in which you can only use your fingers. Once in a blue moon a table gets upended, but not often enough.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Jonathan Mason
We’re not monkeys (anymore), Reg. Hands work better than feet for grasping objects.* Our feet are for getting around. That goes for sports, including chess (yes, chess players will tell you it’s a sport), in which you have to get up and walk to take a piss occasionally.
.
* I mean, that Pinkie Toe, what is it even good for? Absolutely nothin’!
driverhitter", which violates two cardinal rules, playing both offense and defense, and a ban on re-entry once removed. (Yes, that is what happens. Such "platooning" is football, basketball, ice hockey... not baseball.)Two rules which survive in soccer, by the way.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
The stink would be incredible.
“The French team wins, again!”
Let’s take comfort in the knowledge that our women’s team would beat their women’s team.
Legendary hockey announcer Dan Kelly (Canada-born) would do likewise with NHL city names: “Montreal clear their zone” … “Chicago get the puck”… much to the merriment of Kelly’s colleague Jack Buck, who would analyze the practice from the dais of fund-raising dinners Buck was MC’ing.
If there’s one thing we can admire about soccer it’s that it doesn’t reward freaks of nature the way basketball or football do. And that’s mostly because of the no-hands rule.
I'm surprised an old iSteve hand like you would make such a basic error.
Does any sport reward oddities as opposed to right-tailers? Can't think of any.Replies: @International Jew
‘…The next World Cup is in the USA-Mexico-Canada in 2026, with the final probably in New Jersey, Dallas, or, L.A.’
Can we turn the scoring over to the Democrats?
I'd rather watch beavers construct a dam in time lapse, or anything else, for that matter.Replies: @Old Prude, @Buzz Mohawk, @Achmed E. Newman
I completely agree, and I was once fortunate enough to witness beavers building a dam in real time. It was far more interesting and impressive.
[0:46]Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
I'd rather watch beavers construct a dam in time lapse, or anything else, for that matter.Replies: @Old Prude, @Buzz Mohawk, @Achmed E. Newman
I ran out of “Responses”, but this one and Wade Hampton’s win the anti-soccer cup.
You should take your victories where you can find them. Back in 2010, ESPN (which had the World Cup) banished all American commentators to radio and promoted English announcers to do all the games on TV. Including the USMNT games. Jack Bell of the NY Times had this to say:
Indeed. This was about raw political power–and the Brits won in 2010. It’s one of the reasons I dropped cable–to starve the English Suckup Promotion Network of revenue. But on this go-round, the Brits lost. Fox had Americans on all U.S. game calls and Americans in the studio. Yes we’re still subjected to Ian Darke on non-American games, but a lot of those games are on FS1, which I don’t get anyway.
Brits in America are very unhappy about this, make no mistake. So to me, we should be happy right now.
St Louis was once a soccer capital. Yogi and best friend Joe played the game in a vacant lot near their home on the Hill, long before ruining their legs catching in the majors. The core of our 1950 team came from there. (Kearny, NJ supplied others.) The only US reporter at Belo Horizonte, or in Brazil at all, for the Cup was from the St Louis Post-Dispatch, there on his own dime. (Of the upset over England*, he compared it to “if Oxford University sent a baseball team over here and it beat the Yankees.”)
St Louis U’s Billikens still hold the NCAA record for most championship titles, despite not having won since 1973. Their current squad is ⅞ American by FIFA rules.
The city has a genuine soccer history of which to be proud. As does Seattle– and Portland– in hockey. That few today want to take advantage of this is a sign of something.
*The same day, England lost to West Indies in cricket at home for the first time. A dark day in Blighty, it was.
one minute of "action". No wonder
the fans go out and riot afterward.Replies: @Che Guava, @Russ, @Muggles, @Truth Vigilante
On the other hand, American football (per studies) has about 14 minutes of actual play out of an official 60 minutes carefully timed. The rest is shuffling in and out, reset players, referee action, walking up and down, long counts, etc.
If you attend a pro game in person you’ll notice that more as commercials add more obvious down time usually filled with local high school bands or tumblers, etc. Those are not part of the official time but a 60 minute official time ends up at over two hours for TV or major games in person.
Yes, more “scoring” when touchdowns are six points, not one. Or three, or two for other scoring scenarios.
But in pro soccer players have much more difficulty scoring those one point goals. At lower ranks, higher scores since defense usually worse than offense.
Perhaps in the future when American TV matters more, actual kicked soccer goals will be three points and penalty kicks, etc. will remain at one or two. Or they could require goalies to be under six feet tall…
Those tied game “shoot outs” seem very unfair as tie breakers as well. Instead, start removing players from both sides one at a time at five minute intervals, one each side.
But worldwide fans seem to like the game as now played.
Not dominated by squads of athletic freaks of nature like basketball or American football.
American basketball benefits from the superior footwork of non American players who learn that from an early age playing soccer in home nations. Even really big guys.
Soccer may have constant motion, but goals are few and far between, so it's the same effect.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Anonymous
zzzzz. huh?, soccer?, zzzzzz.
They are not freaks, just extremes. As in the right tail of the curve. Actual freaks would perform quite poorly in practice.
I’m surprised an old iSteve hand like you would make such a basic error.
Does any sport reward oddities as opposed to right-tailers? Can’t think of any.
Thanks for the photo of the Nigerian National Soccer team.
Argentina was very impressive, they have to be the favorite,tho after seeing Ned,maybe not. I like Messi,and they have a guy named McAllister,who scored a goal, so that's good.
I found myself surprisingly emotional when USA got knocked out. I thought I didn't care,but I did.
Still pissed off about those nasty goldigging women getting so much money,money for nothin'.
There's a vid of Hope Solo getting nicked for DUI,with her kids in the car..
She was drunk,but still,tho quite attractive😎,man she was a nasty son of a gun.Replies: @Renard, @Muggles
Is there any pro sport played where the professional associations are forced to pay the men players in their league “as much as” the women players in their (more highly paid) league?
Irrespective of paid attendance, TV rights, sponsorships, etc.
Not counting beauty contests…
They, and everyone else, would view it as disgraceful. And rightfully so.
But now Heineken is now buying up the rest of the ad inventory…
Then maybe you can understand our horror at the “designated
driverhitter”, which violates two cardinal rules, playing both offense and defense, and a ban on re-entry once removed. (Yes, that is what happens. Such “platooning” is football, basketball, ice hockey… not baseball.)Two rules which survive in soccer, by the way.
Can you imagine using your feet in chess?
The stink would be incredible.
“The French team wins, again!”
Most crimes against the English language are from the U.S.A., but you are correct, this one is British.
It has spread, one will read 'the government have', 'the Labour Party have' etc. from British reporters.Replies: @David Jones, @David Jones
Am I missing something here? It’s quite normal to refer to an entity made up of many different parts in the singular.
The Dutch throw all their eggs into one basket--the soccer basket. Combine that with Dutch organization and ruthlessness, as exemplified by their firing live ammunition at Covid protestors, and you have a potent recipe for success. Where are the Dutch in other sports? With apologies to Rik Smits and Win Remmerswaal, they're invisible. I don't think there's even been one Dutchman on the Euro Ryder Cup team.Replies: @Ron Mexico, @Brutusale, @Jeff, @sb
The Dutch are big into professional cycling, and more specifically, the cross variety.
Most crimes against the English language are from the U.S.A., but you are correct, this one is British.
It has spread, one will read 'the government have', 'the Labour Party have' etc. from British reporters.Replies: @David Jones, @David Jones
For example, the US Army have left Saigon.
From Churchill's "finest hour" speech:
"The French army has been weakened, the Belgian army has been lost..."
Irrespective of paid attendance, TV rights, sponsorships, etc.
Not counting beauty contests...Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @JR Ewing
Women get more for figure skating and gymnastics due to demand. Can you imagine the men even asking for an equal share?
They, and everyone else, would view it as disgraceful. And rightfully so.
The infrequent movement in gridiron, baseball, golf, chess, etc, is testament to the appeal of anticipation. Cue Carly…
Soccer may have constant motion, but goals are few and far between, so it’s the same effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJu2qSJ9znoReplies: @Wokechoke, @Che Guava
Another thing that hurts soccer as a spectator sport is the lack of rallies. Yes, there are of course come from behind victories in soccer, but because in general goals are so few and far between, there's very little of the rallies that are common in football, baseball, basketball that make them dramatic to watch.
“Is this some show of support for the idea that the borders of the USA have been/should be erased?”
That’s the plan. And it may be done by the time the World Cup rolls around.
driverhitter", which violates two cardinal rules, playing both offense and defense, and a ban on re-entry once removed. (Yes, that is what happens. Such "platooning" is football, basketball, ice hockey... not baseball.)Two rules which survive in soccer, by the way.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
I am not at the level of horrified, exactly, but I thought the Designated Hitter rule was wrong from day one. I like baseball as compared to the other sports you mentioned.
The lack of platooning exists in Ultimate Disc also – I don’t think they have the ban on re-entry, which I also like (the ban, that is). The thing about Ultimate is, you can use the hands and arms that God gave you. Having legs and feet helps too. That makes a whole lot more sense than trying to catch the ball with your chest and head!
Oh, I meant to mention Arclight as having one of the top anti-soccer comments.
Soccer may have constant motion, but goals are few and far between, so it's the same effect.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Anonymous
I suppose I could get that effect, but I’m pretty sure by that time the TV would have been switched to Rockford Files reruns or I’d be in the stadium parking lot already. Here again, The Simpsons covers it well:
The U.S.A. vs. England match being an examplar of the most boring kind of soccer, I don't think there was a conspiracy, but both wanted to go to the next round, and knew that a draw was the best way of increasing the chances that both did. Many other team sports are much more interesting to watch than those three.
Russia did pretty well in the last World Cup, making it to the quarterfinals before losing to Croatia in penalties after a 2-2 draw. And they scored one of the best goals of the tournament.
It’s two AM in Doha, so we look to LA for excitement. Here it is– Israelis vs coyotes:
Israeli Father in Los Angeles Fights Off Coyote Attacking His Daughter
Is it rainy season there? Or did they just wash the streets? How would Lambo take a coyote?
Poor coyote appears to be starving. This must be some sort of geopolitical parable. Who can help with this?
Expect to read about Trump supporting nativist coyotes in the NYT.
Yes, yes, yes, that’s all well and true. Thing is, who does the MSM (sports department’s local, regional and national) work for? Who’s payroll are they on?
Applying noticing to sports owners, go back a fully century and some change:
And read the various contract negotiations and how they played out in the MSM.
Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, DiMaggio, etc. all the way up to 2022.
ca.99% of the MSM ALWAYS takes one side of the negotiations (ownership, not players). Why is that?
To hear the MSM tell it, the owners are broke, starving, can’t afford to rub two dollars together to keep their taxpayer funded ballparks up and running another season, their bank accounts are about to burst at the seams, simply can’t afford to pay it. How ungrateful the player is, selfish, greedy. Why doesn’t he give the team a hometown discount and take a little bit less? And when the shoes on the other foot, and the player is at end of career, and wants another year in the bigs, the owners change tactics–business is business, kid. And the player gets kicked to the curb.
And the MSM is all fine with it, and always vs. the players side.
Why is that?
They ALWAYS side with ownership. Players come and go, ownership lasts forever.
How would Lambo take a coyote?
Lambo would just give the coyote such a sneer of superior pedigree disdain that the coyote would slink off with tail between its legs in utter humiliation.
A telling sentence from CBS Sports:
Did these subtractions make them marginally more French? Does anyone beat Canada for the blackest team representing a white country?
As some wag put it, “Now we can go back to not caring about soccer.”
I never cared in the first place. It’s a boring no offense game of keep away.
Its one good feature that it only lasts 90 minutes. NFL games are now routinely over 3 hours seemingly half of which are commercials about wonderful black people.
To be fair, the same can be said of hockey. Hockey is soccer on ice, and with a lot more physicality. But its the same sport--keep away & back and forth, back and forth...
Hahahahaha. I guess it’s fitting that a stupid, boring game would have a stupid, boring tournament to crown its champion.
Let me check…hold on…there it is…
…with flying colors!!!
All those bug men and fakely-overly-excited women pretending that a bunch of American-hating dykes and a handful of likeable athletic women playing a game worse than high school boys can are somehow thrilling viewing. Its pathetic, tryhard, and laughable.
I had the misfortune a few years ago to duck into a large hipster bar on a Sunday afternoon to use the bathroom, and the entire bar was tensely quiet, acting like a bomb was in the room and they were watching to see if the room was going to explode or the correct wire would be cut. They all (maybe 50 or more folks) looked at me as I walked in and then quickly reverted to the TV screens plastered about --- which was showing the U.S. women's world cup game (I think it was the finals or semi-finals).
Then they all cheered like it was V-E day and downed their IPAs and through their beards and flannel when the purple haired America-hater scored or something in such a clumsy way I'm pretty sure I could have done it better.
These people are so sad.Replies: @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia
Women’s soccer is hideous, just like women’s basketball.
I have a Brazilian acquaintance who like most of his countrymen is a HUGE soccer fan, and his disdain for the women’s game in palpable,
And he’s right.
Reg Caesar wrote:
Well, the French do have a few players of note with aquiline noses, notable Olivier Giroud and Adrien Rabiot. It’s hard to discern which schnozz is more French, but French they are.
But yeah, a lot them are NOT French, really, though many have grown up in France. Their best player, and arguably the star of the tounament, Kylian Mbappé, was born in Paris, but as the name, and his visage, suggest, he does not come from your standard French lineage.
He got some write in votes in the last presidential election in France. That tells you something, I am not sure what.
Kylian Mbappé ( whose mother BTW is white) is dating a famous transexual model. I can see how it might make him popular among a certain demographic..
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/psg-star-kylian-mbappe-reportedly-dating-transgender-playboy-model-1704743
USA and coach Gregg Berhalter kind of cargo-culted their way through this World Cup.
For the last decade or so high pressing (when you lose the ball, work ferociously to recover the ball quickly instead of falling back to your own goal) has been all the rage. It definitely plays into American themes of hard work, athleticism etc. Unfortunately if you don’t carefully ration it (which top teams do) it’s a great way to blow out your team around the 60 minute mark, which is why the US were hanging on for dear life every second half.
Possession football has also been a major theme over the last decade. Except Netherlands knew perfectly well that their defenders were stronger than the US attackers, so they let the US dominate possession, hung back, waited for them to overcommit numbers to the attack, then ripped them apart on the counter.
[0:46]
Irrespective of paid attendance, TV rights, sponsorships, etc.
Not counting beauty contests...Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @JR Ewing
Whenever the US Women would say, “But we’ve actually won the World Cup!”… the proper response should have been, “And almost no one cares.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/3268594/us-women-soccer-dallas-academy-5-2/
Israeli Father in Los Angeles Fights Off Coyote Attacking His Daughter
https://www.jewishpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/coyote.jpg
Is it rainy season there? Or did they just wash the streets? How would Lambo take a coyote?Replies: @Renard, @AnotherDad
That woman’s screaming is off the hook, even for an Israeli. Note she doesn’t start until the episode is over.
Poor coyote appears to be starving. This must be some sort of geopolitical parable. Who can help with this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_2QaNWQs3s
Generally speaking, with the outstanding exception of the remarkable "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" the French kick the crap out of the Anglosphere when it comes to Christmas carols. "O Holy Night" (number one with a bullet) and "Angels We Have Heard On High" (also number one) are both French, in case you didn't know.
Well, enjoy. Ad maiorem Dei gloriae.Replies: @IreneAthena
Very, very, nice. Merci buckets. But…. I wonder if the Germans perhaps have the English AND the French beaten, wrt Christmas, or more specifically, Advent music?
Reg, your history is accurate, and at best, the STL MLS entity should indeed be leveraging that history much as the NHL Minnesota Wild strives to leverage Minnesota’s “state of hockey” history (the Wild team historian was a remote acquaintance).
That said, I’m not sure that STL ever was a great town for watching soccer. Its NASL team quietly came and went. Someone in this comment thread asserted that the higher the caliber of soccer play, the more difficult it is to watch. If that is accurate, then perhaps MLS has a better chance of entertaining its STL attendees. Still, soccer being soccer, one suspects that in a burg accustomed to the pace of winter hockey, summer baseball, and entering/fleeing downtown safely, boredom will be frequent. I would expect much in-game song-singing … if not also the aforementioned altered states …
Soccer may have constant motion, but goals are few and far between, so it's the same effect.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Anonymous
You do get that anticipation aspect with the penalty kick shootouts in soccer, but that’s kind of a ridiculous way to decide a championship or any major game and you get a feeling of unsatisfaction. Whereas you can appreciate a last second shot, a walk off homer in the bottom of the 9th, a Hail Mary pass to win the game, etc.
Another thing that hurts soccer as a spectator sport is the lack of rallies. Yes, there are of course come from behind victories in soccer, but because in general goals are so few and far between, there’s very little of the rallies that are common in football, baseball, basketball that make them dramatic to watch.
OT:
More real news:
Georgia sheepdog fights off, kills 8 coyotes after pack attacks his sheep
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/georgia-sheepdog-fights-off-kills-8-coyotes-after-pack-attacks-his-sheep/ar-AA14SMEo?OCID=ansmsnnews11
Easiest way to avoid confusion is just to call them Swamp Germans, or Käseköpfe if you’re in mixed company.
In similar vein, Austrians are “Mountain Germans”, and Schluchtenscheißer if everyone’s had a few. Ravines are pretty deep in them thar Austrian hills.
Swiss are “Mountain Jews”. Or were, until they cucked on banking secrecy.
Plural nouns are used for teams, even teams with singular names.
The Phoenix Suns are 15-7 and the Utah Jazz are 14-12.
The Boston Bruins are 20-3-0 and the Tampa Bay Lightning are 15-8-1.
OT — BLM confirmed as an ultimately statist water-muddying, obscuring true police horror stories in favor of retarded nonsense — parents in Missouri terrorized by police as punishment for realizing the same police were raping their kids: federal court says, yeah, too bad; may go to the Supreme Court now.
https://ij.org/press-release/family-asks-supreme-court-to-hold-cps-officer-accountable-for-retaliatory-investigation/
So what do our oligarch media tell us? It's all because of Brexit. Crops are once more rotting in the fields.
UK workers are striking as their living standards collapse while rents and energy bills soar, and our oligarch government tells them that wanting to be able to pay the bills makes them Russian allies.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/04/striking-uk-workers-playing-into-putins-hands-says-zahawiI think that's called "chutzpah". The high energy prices are entirely a result of EU/UK sanctions plus US/UK pipeline sabotage. EU/UK/US thought that spurning Russian oil and gas would have crashed the Russian economy by now, instead it's crashed the EU/UK economies and boosted the US/Russian economies.Physiognomy alert - Mr Zahawi, an Iraqi Kurd and MP for Stratford Upon Avon, has the misfortune of looking like a gigantic crook. I'm surprised he went for a career in politics, where Blair-like "sincerity" is more the norm.
https://www.gateway978.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Portrait-scaled.jpegReplies: @J.Ross, @Rouetheday
To this point there is talk about BASF permanently downsizing.
I never cared in the first place. It's a boring no offense game of keep away.
Its one good feature that it only lasts 90 minutes. NFL games are now routinely over 3 hours seemingly half of which are commercials about wonderful black people.Replies: @Yojimbo/Zatoichi
“It’s a boring no offense game of keep away.”
To be fair, the same can be said of hockey. Hockey is soccer on ice, and with a lot more physicality. But its the same sport–keep away & back and forth, back and forth…
In American English, “Army” has always been singular. It seems that the major UK newspapers (The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian) still adhere to that convention.
From Churchill’s “finest hour” speech:
“The French army has been weakened, the Belgian army has been lost…”
Unlike the importance of the vaunted World Cup, in other news, HOF SF/CLE/TX/SD P Gaylord Perry, passed away (RIP) a few days ago and this wasn’t remarked upon here.
THAT is an actual tragedy, that this fact was not mentioned, as Perry came from the generation of HOF P’s such as Carlton, Ryan, Seaver, Gibson, Kaat, Palmer, Marichal, Drysdale, and Koufax. Mr. Spitball himself, Cy Young winner in both Al and NL.
Come on, Steve. It’s Gaylord Perry.
That’s a very perceptive comment; thanks.
OT — Robert Crumb’s strong-legged wife Aline has died, so Crumb will probably die soon.
To include two countries that can hack it with one that actually cares.
Nah. The last time they did this, it was two island countries that no one since Tojo has ever thought of as one. (Qatar was also effectively an island for a few years there.)
Also, the World Cup shares a dirty little secret with the Olympics:
Tennis, anyone?
So what do our oligarch media tell us? It's all because of Brexit. Crops are once more rotting in the fields.
UK workers are striking as their living standards collapse while rents and energy bills soar, and our oligarch government tells them that wanting to be able to pay the bills makes them Russian allies.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/04/striking-uk-workers-playing-into-putins-hands-says-zahawiI think that's called "chutzpah". The high energy prices are entirely a result of EU/UK sanctions plus US/UK pipeline sabotage. EU/UK/US thought that spurning Russian oil and gas would have crashed the Russian economy by now, instead it's crashed the EU/UK economies and boosted the US/Russian economies.Physiognomy alert - Mr Zahawi, an Iraqi Kurd and MP for Stratford Upon Avon, has the misfortune of looking like a gigantic crook. I'm surprised he went for a career in politics, where Blair-like "sincerity" is more the norm.
https://www.gateway978.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Portrait-scaled.jpegReplies: @J.Ross, @Rouetheday
To quote a late,lamented Stratford-upon-Avoner, “I hate the Moor…”.
I'm surprised an old iSteve hand like you would make such a basic error.
Does any sport reward oddities as opposed to right-tailers? Can't think of any.Replies: @International Jew
Ok, to me a freak is a guy who’s at the extreme tail in just one dimension.
Manute Boll, who didn’t care about basketball and never played basketball but after a bit of coaching became a serviceable NBA center, was a freak.
LeBron James is in the 99th percentile of height but he’s extraordinary in many other ways. Some baseball player somewhere might have 20/5 vision but that alone isn’t what enables him to hit MLB pitching.
“He got some write in votes in the last presidential election in France. That tells you something, I am not sure what.”
Kylian Mbappé ( whose mother BTW is white) is dating a famous transexual model. I can see how it might make him popular among a certain demographic..
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/psg-star-kylian-mbappe-reportedly-dating-transgender-playboy-model-1704743
The Dutch throw all their eggs into one basket--the soccer basket. Combine that with Dutch organization and ruthlessness, as exemplified by their firing live ammunition at Covid protestors, and you have a potent recipe for success. Where are the Dutch in other sports? With apologies to Rik Smits and Win Remmerswaal, they're invisible. I don't think there's even been one Dutchman on the Euro Ryder Cup team.Replies: @Ron Mexico, @Brutusale, @Jeff, @sb
Go away and look up some Olympic medal tables.
You’ll see that you are much more likely to be an Olympic medallist in the Netherlands than in the US
Americans sometimes forget that their country is the third most populous on the planet as well as (maybe still ) the richest
America never looks that good pro rata
Let me put it this way, so you'll understand. How many non-soccer Dutch athletes would be recognized in public in any European capital, to say nothing of the U.S. or Asia?Replies: @Kim, @Matra
America never looks that good pro rata"It looks even worse if you consider that America has a very large pool of Africans, supposedly an athletic race. Which suggests that America's Blacks as a whole aren't in very good physical shape.
I don’t think it has anything to do with that, though no doubt there will be complications with visas for traveling fans.
The World Cup is awarded to federations. Europe and Asia were ruled out because they had the last two World cups.
CONCACAF decided to put forward a three-country consortium. This means those three countries will qualify automatically, and then three more countries from CONCACAF would also qualify.
The only other applicant was Morocco from Africa. A vote was held and the American consortium won by a margin of 2 to 1.
Many people regard winning a World Cup as an economic benefit for the hosts, as it brings many tourists to the country and is great for the hotel, car rental and restaurant businesses. I can understand that this is an anathema to racists, because those tourists will be foreigners.
The process of choosing cities is quite complex, because stadiums have to be a certain size to qualify, playing surfaces must be real grass, and of course stadiums that are used by other sports have to be available.
Apparently there wasn’t a suitable stadium in Washington DC, so it had to combine its part of the bid with Baltimore, but I don’t think either city was part of the winning bid.
So my guess is that CONCACAF combined three countries so that it could get six teams into the finals.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Marrakech%2C_Bab_Agnaou.JPG
one minute of "action". No wonder
the fans go out and riot afterward.Replies: @Che Guava, @Russ, @Muggles, @Truth Vigilante
What you Yanks call ‘soccer’ is referred to as football the world over.
And football, the World Game, is anything but boring – it’s not just about scoring goals. ( A 0-0 scoreline match is often exciting because of the near misses/fast tempo and extraordinary skills displayed).
A big part of the excitement is the continuity of the action (a 90 minute football game lasts approximately that long, with only a few minutes added for stoppages).
Meanwhile, American ‘football’ (aka NFL), is nominally a 60 min game but somehow manages to last over four hours because there are 101 ‘time outs’, time is wasted bringing on the offensive team, the defensive team, the kicking team and the receiving team.
FFS,, why not also add in the swimming team and the ‘all weather team’ (the former would come in handy during a torrential downpour while the latter would prove useful during blizzards when playing the Green Bay Packers in mid winter).
Speaking of ‘skills’, a football player by the name of Zlatan Ibrahimovic had it in spades in this game featuring Sweden Vs England (1 min video):
Scoring from the ‘bicycle kick’ , although difficult to execute, is seen from time to time.
But when it occurs, it’s almost always from short range and right in front of goal.
No one [at the top level] has ever scored from that longer distance coupled to the acute angle.
The term soccer originated in England, as explained above.Half the world lives within this circle, and you'd be hard-pressed to find even a minor association football power within it:
https://i0.wp.com/scenarieconomici.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Yuxi-Circle-The-Worlds-Most-Densely-Populated-Area-Hanoi.png?resize=500%2C279&ssl=1
Stick-and-ball games, without clocks, are more popular in several of those countries.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
It is a bit of a shame that the US soccer team men have to share their prize money with the women’s team, but then again the World Cup prize money won by the men is peanuts compared to what they earn playing for their clubs.
For example US skipper Tyler Adams is on a 5-year $25 million contract at his club in England, and also has a multi-million dollar endorsement contract with Nike.
As a result of his performances at this World Cup, he will almost certainly get a healthy pay raise and new contract, plus a better endorsement contract.
Alternatively, big clubs may come in with multi-million dollar offers to buy his services, giving him a substantial windfall and future higher salary.
Had the US men’s team actually won the World Cup, the prize money would be insignificant compared to the riches that would accumulate to many of the players. Probably some of them would be able to run for Congress or the Senate, where they would find even more money-making opportunities.
Don’t you think our global strategic thermonuclear superiority makes these international sporting competitions seem pretty trivial?
IIRC, this was to distinguish the game from the upstart football offshoot using the Rugby rules. One played either the Association rules or the Rugby rules game.
When I was in South Africa, the game was commonly called Soccer. Perhaps this is because Rugby was very popular. Interestingly, in SA, to over generalize, Soccer was the black sport and Rugby the game. It may have been the Rugby fans who called it Soccer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJu2qSJ9znoReplies: @Wokechoke, @Che Guava
In Scotland the most famous fighting between fans is a a product of racial and ethnic conflict. Either sectarian/religious stuff or actual national hatreds.
The World Cup is awarded to federations. Europe and Asia were ruled out because they had the last two World cups.
CONCACAF decided to put forward a three-country consortium. This means those three countries will qualify automatically, and then three more countries from CONCACAF would also qualify.
The only other applicant was Morocco from Africa. A vote was held and the American consortium won by a margin of 2 to 1.
Many people regard winning a World Cup as an economic benefit for the hosts, as it brings many tourists to the country and is great for the hotel, car rental and restaurant businesses. I can understand that this is an anathema to racists, because those tourists will be foreigners.
The process of choosing cities is quite complex, because stadiums have to be a certain size to qualify, playing surfaces must be real grass, and of course stadiums that are used by other sports have to be available.
Apparently there wasn't a suitable stadium in Washington DC, so it had to combine its part of the bid with Baltimore, but I don't think either city was part of the winning bid.
So my guess is that CONCACAF combined three countries so that it could get six teams into the finals.Replies: @Guest007, @Reg Cæsar, @Reg Cæsar
The economic impact is minimal since conventions and tourist will clear out of any city scheduled to have an event. The amount of money spent on security will be more than any economic impact.
OT — Random anon on 4chan, perfect snapshot of the current entertainment situation:
Goaltending is a career in soccer and other sports; it's a foul in hoops.Then there's chess, in which you can only use your fingers. Once in a blue moon a table gets upended, but not often enough.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Jonathan Mason
Basketball is okay, but why is there no World Cup of basketball?
It would be fascinating to see contests between teams of lanky American hoopsmen versus tiny Siamese running between their legs.
Possibly some changes to the game need to be made to eliminate any advantage to taller players.
For example have three hoops at each end at different heights and you get an extra point if you can get the ball into the net with your head or foot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIBA_Basketball_World_Cup
There's also the Olympics. In the old days, USA and the USSR would always meet in the finals.
https://roninathletics.com/photos/1/compressed/Muay-Thai-Kickboxing.jpg
Basketball is quite popular in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, but you can guess why those places have never produced a star. PR has given us many players in baseball, a sport that, like soccer, is friendly to those of average build.
As for hoops, elsewhere on (non-iSteve) Unz it was reported that 60% of NBA owners are Jewish. That means an individual Jew is 48 times as likely as any another random American to own a team. Only one of the thirty owners, Michael Jordan, is black. So a Jew is several hundred times as likely to own a team as a black.
However, the top half-dozen or so richest owners are mostly goyim. It's the run-of-the-mill owners that are Jewish. That just reinforces the clubbish optics. A Steve Ballmer or Walton heiress can break on through to the other side.Replies: @kaganovitch
https://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2023
It used to be called the "FIBA World Championship" but they changed the name about 10 years ago and also made the tournament structure more similar as well. I assume to try and get more media coverage and sponsorship money, especially in the USA.
One very big difference is that the Olympic title is considered more prestigious in international basketball, so the world tournament doesn't get as much attention as the Olympics tournament does. In fact, FIBA has always used its world tournament as a means of qualification to the Olympics.
The USA is perennially competitive, for obvious reasons, especially since they started allowing the pros to start paying (ie the Dream Teams) in the mid-90's.
(FWIW, men's soccer at the Olympics has never been particularly prestigious. FIFA runs it as a U23 youth tournament - with a handful of roster exceptions - so that it cannot overshadow the World Cup and FIFA can keep all of that attention and money for itself.)
You don’t even know how to differentiate between singular and plural constructions, as your next reply to me demonstrates.
It would be fascinating to see contests between teams of lanky American hoopsmen versus tiny Siamese running between their legs.
Possibly some changes to the game need to be made to eliminate any advantage to taller players.
For example have three hoops at each end at different heights and you get an extra point if you can get the ball into the net with your head or foot.Replies: @BB753, @Reg Cæsar, @JR Ewing
Oh, but it does exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIBA_Basketball_World_Cup
There’s also the Olympics. In the old days, USA and the USSR would always meet in the finals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJu2qSJ9znoReplies: @Wokechoke, @Che Guava
Yes, when the people I work for were still sponsoring an Amerian Football team, I enjoyed seeing the games live, but so much of the time was recorded music, and/or the cheerleaders prancing around.
Baseball is similar. Also, like soccer, win-or-lose is often close to random.
The U.S.A. vs. England match being an examplar of the most boring kind of soccer, I don’t think there was a conspiracy, but both wanted to go to the next round, and knew that a draw was the best way of increasing the chances that both did.
Many other team sports are much more interesting to watch than those three.
It's my reasoned opinion that the Idaho killings are a case of Incel rage. Some introverted Omega, probably a fellow student, couldn't stand the fact that these three hot young women - they were all solid 8's or higher - were miles out of his league. How he came to be aware of them is uncertain. Most likely it was some trivial interaction with one or more of them and it was obvious they wouldn't give him the time of day. So he did something about it. The male victim was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.Replies: @TWS
FFS Moscow is a college town. A prostitute would die of starvation because there’s always a woman willing to give it away.
A guy would have to be Quasimodo’s uglier brother to be scoreless in Moscow. Yes I live near there.
If the guy was celibate it was voluntary in the sense he was unwilling to do the absolute minimum necessary to hook up with a girl. Like shower, comb his hair,, although that appears to be optional, and wear cleanish clothes.
A guy would have to be trying not to get any.
Israeli Father in Los Angeles Fights Off Coyote Attacking His Daughter
https://www.jewishpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/coyote.jpg
Is it rainy season there? Or did they just wash the streets? How would Lambo take a coyote?Replies: @Renard, @AnotherDad
Finally, some actual “rising anti-Semitism!” These good folks should return to the safety of Israel.
Expect to read about Trump supporting nativist coyotes in the NYT.
The World Cup is awarded to federations. Europe and Asia were ruled out because they had the last two World cups.
CONCACAF decided to put forward a three-country consortium. This means those three countries will qualify automatically, and then three more countries from CONCACAF would also qualify.
The only other applicant was Morocco from Africa. A vote was held and the American consortium won by a margin of 2 to 1.
Many people regard winning a World Cup as an economic benefit for the hosts, as it brings many tourists to the country and is great for the hotel, car rental and restaurant businesses. I can understand that this is an anathema to racists, because those tourists will be foreigners.
The process of choosing cities is quite complex, because stadiums have to be a certain size to qualify, playing surfaces must be real grass, and of course stadiums that are used by other sports have to be available.
Apparently there wasn't a suitable stadium in Washington DC, so it had to combine its part of the bid with Baltimore, but I don't think either city was part of the winning bid.
So my guess is that CONCACAF combined three countries so that it could get six teams into the finals.Replies: @Guest007, @Reg Cæsar, @Reg Cæsar
Nobody wanted to ride on the Marrakech Express. Note the potential World Cup mascots atop the building:
More real news:
Georgia sheepdog fights off, kills 8 coyotes after pack attacks his sheep
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/georgia-sheepdog-fights-off-kills-8-coyotes-after-pack-attacks-his-sheep/ar-AA14SMEo?OCID=ansmsnnews11https://dab57h0r8ahff.cloudfront.net/594926/uploads/8cd72e50-73c4-11ed-b90f-6bb3ae5326e7_800_420.pngReplies: @TWS, @Old Prude
Thanks. We used to have a couple great Pyrenees when I was a kid. They were hell on coyotes. One of them chased off a black bear until granddad whistled him back. I think he would have chased him to Canada.
It would be fascinating to see contests between teams of lanky American hoopsmen versus tiny Siamese running between their legs.
Possibly some changes to the game need to be made to eliminate any advantage to taller players.
For example have three hoops at each end at different heights and you get an extra point if you can get the ball into the net with your head or foot.Replies: @BB753, @Reg Cæsar, @JR Ewing
The Thai reference was to this, which isn’t even allowed in ice hockey:
Basketball is quite popular in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, but you can guess why those places have never produced a star. PR has given us many players in baseball, a sport that, like soccer, is friendly to those of average build.
As for hoops, elsewhere on (non-iSteve) Unz it was reported that 60% of NBA owners are Jewish. That means an individual Jew is 48 times as likely as any another random American to own a team. Only one of the thirty owners, Michael Jordan, is black. So a Jew is several hundred times as likely to own a team as a black.
However, the top half-dozen or so richest owners are mostly goyim. It’s the run-of-the-mill owners that are Jewish. That just reinforces the clubbish optics. A Steve Ballmer or Walton heiress can break on through to the other side.
Far be it from me to engage in antisemitic conspiracy mongering but 2 of the top 3(Ballmer and Gilbert) are Jewish as well as 5 of the top 10 (six if you count Lasry who is equal partner with Edens).
Neder…Nedder….Never gonna go there anymore anyways
However, the farmers are protesting this takeover. If I remember right, the commeeze in Russia pulled the same stunt on Ukrainian (and some other soviet citizens) farmers (1932/33). They succeeded mightily.
The Dutch government is planning to buy out and close as many as 3,000 farms in the country, exacerbating an already-bitter dispute with growers as leaders attempt to halve the country’s nitrogen emissions by 2030.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/netherlands-buy-out-and-close-farms-meet-climate-goals
It would be fascinating to see contests between teams of lanky American hoopsmen versus tiny Siamese running between their legs.
Possibly some changes to the game need to be made to eliminate any advantage to taller players.
For example have three hoops at each end at different heights and you get an extra point if you can get the ball into the net with your head or foot.Replies: @BB753, @Reg Cæsar, @JR Ewing
There is:
https://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2023
It used to be called the “FIBA World Championship” but they changed the name about 10 years ago and also made the tournament structure more similar as well. I assume to try and get more media coverage and sponsorship money, especially in the USA.
One very big difference is that the Olympic title is considered more prestigious in international basketball, so the world tournament doesn’t get as much attention as the Olympics tournament does. In fact, FIBA has always used its world tournament as a means of qualification to the Olympics.
The USA is perennially competitive, for obvious reasons, especially since they started allowing the pros to start paying (ie the Dream Teams) in the mid-90’s.
(FWIW, men’s soccer at the Olympics has never been particularly prestigious. FIFA runs it as a U23 youth tournament – with a handful of roster exceptions – so that it cannot overshadow the World Cup and FIFA can keep all of that attention and money for itself.)
Didn't even qualify 4 years ago, USA soccer appears to be going backwards, despite the upgrade in athleticism.Replies: @PSR
The pursuit of athleticism may be part of the problem.
For example US skipper Tyler Adams is on a 5-year $25 million contract at his club in England, and also has a multi-million dollar endorsement contract with Nike.
As a result of his performances at this World Cup, he will almost certainly get a healthy pay raise and new contract, plus a better endorsement contract.
Alternatively, big clubs may come in with multi-million dollar offers to buy his services, giving him a substantial windfall and future higher salary.
Had the US men's team actually won the World Cup, the prize money would be insignificant compared to the riches that would accumulate to many of the players. Probably some of them would be able to run for Congress or the Senate, where they would find even more money-making opportunities.Replies: @Jonathan Mason, @Guest007
A bit more calculation.
For getting to the group stages, the USMNT won $13 million in prize money, but the national association takes a cut, so the mens’ and women’s teams get $5.85 million each.
Assuming a squad of 26 players, (which is the maximum size allowed) with the winnings divided equally among players and reserves, that amounts to $225,000 each.
Pretty good money for you or I, but for Tyler Adams on his current club contract, that would represent around 2 weeks pay. (Presumably Adams is also taking paid leave from his club while he is on vacation in Quatar. I don’t know how the liability works out if he is injured playing for USMNT*.)
For the women it might be life-changing money.
* OK, I checked this. FIFA pays over 400 clubs $10,000 per day for each player that is used. Minimum would be 18 days so $180,000. Not bad as long as they don’t break a leg.
https://roninathletics.com/photos/1/compressed/Muay-Thai-Kickboxing.jpg
Basketball is quite popular in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, but you can guess why those places have never produced a star. PR has given us many players in baseball, a sport that, like soccer, is friendly to those of average build.
As for hoops, elsewhere on (non-iSteve) Unz it was reported that 60% of NBA owners are Jewish. That means an individual Jew is 48 times as likely as any another random American to own a team. Only one of the thirty owners, Michael Jordan, is black. So a Jew is several hundred times as likely to own a team as a black.
However, the top half-dozen or so richest owners are mostly goyim. It's the run-of-the-mill owners that are Jewish. That just reinforces the clubbish optics. A Steve Ballmer or Walton heiress can break on through to the other side.Replies: @kaganovitch
However, the top half-dozen or so richest owners are mostly goyim.
Far be it from me to engage in antisemitic conspiracy mongering but 2 of the top 3(Ballmer and Gilbert) are Jewish as well as 5 of the top 10 (six if you count Lasry who is equal partner with Edens).
Is Steve in the hospital? He hasn’t posted in 3+ days
Bottom line: As a spectator sport, soccer is simply not very popular in the US. At least not at present.
We don’t KNOW it was the vaxxx, but…..
The World Cup is awarded to federations. Europe and Asia were ruled out because they had the last two World cups.
CONCACAF decided to put forward a three-country consortium. This means those three countries will qualify automatically, and then three more countries from CONCACAF would also qualify.
The only other applicant was Morocco from Africa. A vote was held and the American consortium won by a margin of 2 to 1.
Many people regard winning a World Cup as an economic benefit for the hosts, as it brings many tourists to the country and is great for the hotel, car rental and restaurant businesses. I can understand that this is an anathema to racists, because those tourists will be foreigners.
The process of choosing cities is quite complex, because stadiums have to be a certain size to qualify, playing surfaces must be real grass, and of course stadiums that are used by other sports have to be available.
Apparently there wasn't a suitable stadium in Washington DC, so it had to combine its part of the bid with Baltimore, but I don't think either city was part of the winning bid.
So my guess is that CONCACAF combined three countries so that it could get six teams into the finals.Replies: @Guest007, @Reg Cæsar, @Reg Cæsar
But not to the cities around them. The benefits are oversold, and often less than the costs.
Spaniards are indeed disgusted by British and other North Sea football hooligans and overweight, naked German bathers. But not because Spaniards are “racist”.
And football, the World Game, is anything but boring - it's not just about scoring goals. ( A 0-0 scoreline match is often exciting because of the near misses/fast tempo and extraordinary skills displayed).
A big part of the excitement is the continuity of the action (a 90 minute football game lasts approximately that long, with only a few minutes added for stoppages).
Meanwhile, American 'football' (aka NFL), is nominally a 60 min game but somehow manages to last over four hours because there are 101 'time outs', time is wasted bringing on the offensive team, the defensive team, the kicking team and the receiving team.FFS,, why not also add in the swimming team and the 'all weather team' (the former would come in handy during a torrential downpour while the latter would prove useful during blizzards when playing the Green Bay Packers in mid winter).Speaking of 'skills', a football player by the name of Zlatan Ibrahimovic had it in spades in this game featuring Sweden Vs England (1 min video):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMtD1Izmd8Scoring from the 'bicycle kick' , although difficult to execute, is seen from time to time.
But when it occurs, it's almost always from short range and right in front of goal.No one [at the top level] has ever scored from that longer distance coupled to the acute angle.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Guest007
No, it isn’t. The rest of the Anglosphere calls it “soccer” because there will always be a more popular variety of football locally. We Anglo-Saxons are inventive.
The term soccer originated in England, as explained above.
Half the world lives within this circle, and you’d be hard-pressed to find even a minor association football power within it:
https://i0.wp.com/scenarieconomici.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Yuxi-Circle-The-Worlds-Most-Densely-Populated-Area-Hanoi.png?resize=500%2C279&ssl=1
Stick-and-ball games, without clocks, are more popular in several of those countries.
https://i0.wp.com/scenarieconomici.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Yuxi-Circle-The-Worlds-Most-Densely-Populated-Area-Hanoi.pngReplies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
Completely OT:
My news feed tells me the US Supremes are going to take up the case of a Christian gal who’s a wedding photographer who does not do homosexual “wedding”, contrary to Colorado diktat.
I think this perfect captures both its thuggish nature and that there simply can be no freedom with minoritarianism.
I believe our Founders did an incredibly impressive job. And they took care of obvious frontline issues of abusive state power–freedom of speech and press, freedom of religion, trial by jury, the right to bear arms, even quartering troops–stuff that was on their minds from dealing with the Britain. But they simply had no conception of the reach and intrusiveness of gargantuan modern super-state, nor anything as upsidedown crazy as minoritarianism. Who could guess the state would be telling you whom you had to hire or rent to or do business with? So they never explicitly protected basic freedom of association.
The other thing worth really wrapping your head around is the minoritarians like to pose as “liberals” and pretend they are the “tolerant” who let everyone “do their own thing”. But nothing could be further from the truth. The very core of minoritarianism is that ordinary people must be kept in check by–i.e. oppressed by the state–lest any minority get hurt feelings, or find themselves having to conform to the majorities norms to get along or in any way be even mildly inconvenienced. In other words, the very core of minoritarianism is using the super-state to abuse normal people trying to live as they wish, according to their own norms. Minoritarians are inherently totalitarians. It is baked in.
Tennis is even worse than soccer for getting players into academies at a young age. That is why the English of the Eastern European tennis players is so good. They have been living at tennis academies in Florida since they were six.
And football, the World Game, is anything but boring - it's not just about scoring goals. ( A 0-0 scoreline match is often exciting because of the near misses/fast tempo and extraordinary skills displayed).
A big part of the excitement is the continuity of the action (a 90 minute football game lasts approximately that long, with only a few minutes added for stoppages).
Meanwhile, American 'football' (aka NFL), is nominally a 60 min game but somehow manages to last over four hours because there are 101 'time outs', time is wasted bringing on the offensive team, the defensive team, the kicking team and the receiving team.FFS,, why not also add in the swimming team and the 'all weather team' (the former would come in handy during a torrential downpour while the latter would prove useful during blizzards when playing the Green Bay Packers in mid winter).Speaking of 'skills', a football player by the name of Zlatan Ibrahimovic had it in spades in this game featuring Sweden Vs England (1 min video):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMtD1Izmd8Scoring from the 'bicycle kick' , although difficult to execute, is seen from time to time.
But when it occurs, it's almost always from short range and right in front of goal.No one [at the top level] has ever scored from that longer distance coupled to the acute angle.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Guest007
What continuity of action. the arguing with the referee? the flops? The incredibly slow exchange of players. The backward passes? the spraying of foam on the ground for a free kick. The time it takes to set up a corner kick. And then, what percentage of close matches are determined by a penalty kick to get to the insurmountable 1 – 0 lead?
If Jewish owners outnumber black owners 18-1, and black players outnumber Jewish ones 403-1, then…
A black is 7,254 times as likely to be employed by a Jew than vice versa. Is my math right?
For example US skipper Tyler Adams is on a 5-year $25 million contract at his club in England, and also has a multi-million dollar endorsement contract with Nike.
As a result of his performances at this World Cup, he will almost certainly get a healthy pay raise and new contract, plus a better endorsement contract.
Alternatively, big clubs may come in with multi-million dollar offers to buy his services, giving him a substantial windfall and future higher salary.
Had the US men's team actually won the World Cup, the prize money would be insignificant compared to the riches that would accumulate to many of the players. Probably some of them would be able to run for Congress or the Senate, where they would find even more money-making opportunities.Replies: @Jonathan Mason, @Guest007
The $24 million was the transfer fee. It seems that the EPL does not publish its contracts unlike American sports leagues.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/04/chinese-security-firm-advertises-ethnicity-recognition-technology-while-facing-uk-ban
I’m glad it wasn’t focused on a single ethnic group. What would be the use of a camera that told you 150 Burmese and 479 “not Burmese”? What we want is a camera that can distinguish Serbs from Croats and Lithuanians from Letts.
Even if I were inclined to watch soccer, it wouldn’t be FIFA soccer. FIFA makes the IOC look ethical.
My news feed tells me the US Supremes are going to take up the case of a Christian gal who's a wedding photographer who does not do homosexual "wedding", contrary to Colorado diktat.
I think this perfect captures both its thuggish nature and that there simply can be no freedom with minoritarianism.
I believe our Founders did an incredibly impressive job. And they took care of obvious frontline issues of abusive state power--freedom of speech and press, freedom of religion, trial by jury, the right to bear arms, even quartering troops--stuff that was on their minds from dealing with the Britain. But they simply had no conception of the reach and intrusiveness of gargantuan modern super-state, nor anything as upsidedown crazy as minoritarianism. Who could guess the state would be telling you whom you had to hire or rent to or do business with? So they never explicitly protected basic freedom of association.
The other thing worth really wrapping your head around is the minoritarians like to pose as "liberals" and pretend they are the "tolerant" who let everyone "do their own thing". But nothing could be further from the truth. The very core of minoritarianism is that ordinary people must be kept in check by--i.e. oppressed by the state--lest any minority get hurt feelings, or find themselves having to conform to the majorities norms to get along or in any way be even mildly inconvenienced. In other words, the very core of minoritarianism is using the super-state to abuse normal people trying to live as they wish, according to their own norms. Minoritarians are inherently totalitarians. It is baked in.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
I appreciate your praise of the Founders, AD. As for this:
No way could they have imagined how complicated, crazy, and sick society could possibly be. They were mostly a rural people with lots of room and with the postal service being the quickest means of communication.
They tried, AD, but I suppose it wasn’t explicit enough:
Now, if California’s Constitution permits it, which I highly doubt, then I suppose California can tell that lady she must take pictures at homo weddings or lose her business. That’s why we have 50 States, as experiments in democracy. You know who seems to understand that the most nowadays (I mean, beside Ron Paul and I): Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Modern Major League Baseball is definitely the most boring form of the game, for anyone who doesn’t think endless 9 pitch at-bats ending in a walk or a non-swinging strikeout, and 6 pitching changes per 45 minute inning is exciting.
The term soccer originated in England, as explained above.Half the world lives within this circle, and you'd be hard-pressed to find even a minor association football power within it:
https://i0.wp.com/scenarieconomici.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Yuxi-Circle-The-Worlds-Most-Densely-Populated-Area-Hanoi.png?resize=500%2C279&ssl=1
Stick-and-ball games, without clocks, are more popular in several of those countries.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
The non-soccer world:
https://i.postimg.cc/y8bbv5Bx/xtzturca8f0a1.pngOverlaps quite a lot with this map,
https://i.postimg.cc/L6gQCDC8/world-population-density-map-1024x512.jpgAs another commenter said: "Chinese may never get good at soccer is that it is not structured enough for them. Too much of what goes on on the pitch requires independent thought and initiative."Another factor is the Japanese team mostly play in the top European leagues,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_national_football_team#Current_squadFor Koreans its about half. The Chinese play entirely in the Chinese Super League, which is actually the highest paid league in the world after the top five European leagues,https://www.olbg.com/insights/global-football-league
That’s a mighty nice purse that dude on the end is carrying. Where can I get one of those for the wife?
And in news that shouldn’t be to anyone here, except maybe Steve
https://expose-news.com/2022/12/03/nz-gov-has-backdoor-access-to-censor/
In similar vein, Austrians are "Mountain Germans", and Schluchtenscheißer if everyone's had a few. Ravines are pretty deep in them thar Austrian hills.
Swiss are "Mountain Jews". Or were, until they cucked on banking secrecy.Replies: @Veteran Aryan
Are they all Packer fans? And wouldn’t Käseköpfe be a more accurate description of the French and their fromage obsession?
A guy would have to be Quasimodo's uglier brother to be scoreless in Moscow. Yes I live near there.
If the guy was celibate it was voluntary in the sense he was unwilling to do the absolute minimum necessary to hook up with a girl. Like shower, comb his hair,, although that appears to be optional, and wear cleanish clothes.
A guy would have to be trying not to get any.Replies: @prosa123
Just because a college town or other community may have a surplus of young women does NOT mean that a low-quality male has decent chances. Women will sooner chase after Alphas, even if there’s heavy competition, than get involved with a male who is fat/pathologically introverted/friendless or simply woefully lacking in social skills. Moreover, such a deficient male is likely to be too downtrodden to approach women at all, yet will still blame them for his lack of success.
You'll see that you are much more likely to be an Olympic medallist in the Netherlands than in the US
Americans sometimes forget that their country is the third most populous on the planet as well as (maybe still ) the richest
America never looks that good pro rataReplies: @Bragadocious, @BB753
Wow, you totally pwned me with the obscure Olympics events takedown. Modern pentathlon ftw, baby.
Let me put it this way, so you’ll understand. How many non-soccer Dutch athletes would be recognized in public in any European capital, to say nothing of the U.S. or Asia?
And Ramon Dekkers might be recognized in Bangkok.
Yes, and sadly, or perhaps fittingly, when people are together for most of their lives, they tend to not long outlive each other.
Yeah, so, that’s what it is. We’re gonna control your speech. But it’s all worth it to be China’s farm.
More real news:
Georgia sheepdog fights off, kills 8 coyotes after pack attacks his sheep
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/georgia-sheepdog-fights-off-kills-8-coyotes-after-pack-attacks-his-sheep/ar-AA14SMEo?OCID=ansmsnnews11https://dab57h0r8ahff.cloudfront.net/594926/uploads/8cd72e50-73c4-11ed-b90f-6bb3ae5326e7_800_420.pngReplies: @TWS, @Old Prude
Is Casper a Maremma? Sheep dogs are awesome. Lammas are said to kick coyote ass as well.
Isn’t anybody gonna mention Kirstie Alley, of Cheers fame? She just died.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/05/kirstie-alley-emmy-winning-cheers-star-dies-at-71.html
No, the proper response is, “But you can’t beat 15-year old boys!”.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/3268594/us-women-soccer-dallas-academy-5-2/
You'll see that you are much more likely to be an Olympic medallist in the Netherlands than in the US
Americans sometimes forget that their country is the third most populous on the planet as well as (maybe still ) the richest
America never looks that good pro rataReplies: @Bragadocious, @BB753
“Americans sometimes forget that their country is the third most populous on the planet as well as (maybe still ) the richest
America never looks that good pro rata”
It looks even worse if you consider that America has a very large pool of Africans, supposedly an athletic race. Which suggests that America’s Blacks as a whole aren’t in very good physical shape.
Oh well, Japan and Sth. Korea now both out. I half-expected S.K. to beat Brazil, the latter had many dud games lately. I suppose ‘World Cup’ is a magic potion for the Brazilians.
Sure expected Japan to beat Croatia, after Germany and Spain, it was a draw, so decided by kicking at the goal and goalkeeper.
I think FIFA should change the rules. Infinite extended time until almost all of the players are exhausted, and someone, still standing, scores.
Though I still think soccer is boring.
Let me put it this way, so you'll understand. How many non-soccer Dutch athletes would be recognized in public in any European capital, to say nothing of the U.S. or Asia?Replies: @Kim, @Matra
Bas Rutten? Certainly in Europe and the USA.
And Ramon Dekkers might be recognized in Bangkok.
Olympic wrestling wins this one.
Iron rule : All sports that advantage the defense get worse to watch as the players get better. Sports that advantage the offense get better to watch as the players get better.
Let me put it this way, so you'll understand. How many non-soccer Dutch athletes would be recognized in public in any European capital, to say nothing of the U.S. or Asia?Replies: @Kim, @Matra
Off the top of my head Max Verstappen, the reigning 2-time Formula One champion, is the only one I can think of. The Dutch don’t play the secondary European sports like rugby, basketball, and ice hockey. Field hockey though is big in the Netherlands but I doubt if it is big enough to be a big time professional sport. Maybe some cyclists?
One would think basketball would be popular as the people tend to be tall.Replies: @Che Guava
[0:46]Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
Thank you. Remarkable, truly, and beautiful.
Yes, it’s ‘soccer’ everywhere except in parts of Europe and Africa, and C and Sth. America.
Though FIFA and the lugenpresse try to push in the opposite direction.
In Ireland, it is soccer, and soccer is an accepted term in England, the land of its development.
They may even have a chance at winning for the first time in almost 70 years, and likely the last time with a mainly English squad.
Every Brit calls it 'FOOTBALL' - and overwhelmingly so in Europe as well. (Called Fussball or Fußball in Germany).
In NL the most popular spectator sports are football, F1, kickboxing and speedskating. In all 4 we do very well.
Tennis would be popular too if we had a top contender, but we don’t. Same for cycling. We sometimes have a decent contender in cycling.
The Dutch men don’t dominate other sports. Minus rowing & speedskating, it’s actually our women who are winning all these gold Olympic medals the past two decades
I am surprised that speed skating (long track; short track is terrible) has never taken off in the US. Great sport and we have had some great athletes over the years.
The only time we see it here is during the Olympics. Then we are surprised to find we have competitive speed skaters. After the Olympics: the sport disappears again.
The American team was all about BLM and “pride” month. They don’t represent anything except leftist elites.
Sure expected Japan to beat Croatia, after Germany and Spain, it was a draw, so decided by kicking at the goal and goalkeeper.
I think FIFA should change the rules. Infinite extended time until almost all of the players are exhausted, and someone, still standing, scores.
Though I still think soccer is boring.Replies: @Ron Mexico
Morocco is the only surprise, beating Spain. Portugal will humble them. Brazil is loaded. I would be shocked if they don’t win it all.
The Dutch don’t play the secondary European sports like rugby, basketball, and ice hockey
One would think basketball would be popular as the people tend to be tall.
https://i0.wp.com/scenarieconomici.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Yuxi-Circle-The-Worlds-Most-Densely-Populated-Area-Hanoi.pngReplies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
Not a issue of height, Japan and SK rank above Argentina
Overlaps quite a lot with this map,
As another commenter said: “Chinese may never get good at soccer is that it is not structured enough for them. Too much of what goes on on the pitch requires independent thought and initiative.”
Another factor is the Japanese team mostly play in the top European leagues,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_national_football_team#Current_squad
For Koreans its about half.
The Chinese play entirely in the Chinese Super League, which is actually the highest paid league in the world after the top five European leagues,
https://www.olbg.com/insights/global-football-league
Tennis would be popular too if we had a top contender, but we don’t. Same for cycling. We sometimes have a decent contender in cycling.
The Dutch men don’t dominate other sports. Minus rowing & speedskating, it’s actually our women who are winning all these gold Olympic medals the past two decadesReplies: @BosTex
Thanks Jimmy.
I am surprised that speed skating (long track; short track is terrible) has never taken off in the US. Great sport and we have had some great athletes over the years.
The only time we see it here is during the Olympics. Then we are surprised to find we have competitive speed skaters. After the Olympics: the sport disappears again.
In Ireland, it is soccer, and soccer is an accepted term in England, the land of its development. They may even have a chance at winning for the first time in almost 70 years, and likely the last time with a mainly English squad.Replies: @Truth Vigilante
No one, and I do mean absolutely NO ONE, in Britain refers to it as ‘soccer’ – other than perhaps some American ex pats.
Every Brit calls it ‘FOOTBALL’ – and overwhelmingly so in Europe as well. (Called Fussball or Fußball in Germany).
One would think basketball would be popular as the people tend to be tall.Replies: @Che Guava
They are strong in hockey.
I did on the movie post. I agree though. You’d think that Steve would have the decency to at least publicly mention it. Cheers was considered a very culturally relevant TV sitcom for the final two decades of the 20th century.
For some reason, for years I assumed Kirstie Alley was Jewish. I was wrong. She was funny and she had very beautiful hair and great bazoongas.
I read (see below) that the govt of Nedderlandz is trying to get 3,000 farmers to close down their farms and they’ll be compensated. This is in aid of global climate change or something, but I suspect they will use the land and infrastructure on those farms to house refugee claimants or maybe immigrants in general. (I can see some use of the barns for certain of those newcomers.) Just repeating gossip, that’s what I’m doing.
However, the farmers are protesting this takeover. If I remember right, the commeeze in Russia pulled the same stunt on Ukrainian (and some other soviet citizens) farmers (1932/33). They succeeded mightily.
The Dutch government is planning to buy out and close as many as 3,000 farms in the country, exacerbating an already-bitter dispute with growers as leaders attempt to halve the country’s nitrogen emissions by 2030.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/netherlands-buy-out-and-close-farms-meet-climate-goals
Recce is short for reconnaissance. It's pronounced recky but if you don't know that and try to sound it out, many people come up with raitch or retch-ay or something like that.
This is what happens when you let people just make up words. The Academy Frawsezz would never brook such nonsense.Replies: @Bla
It is.
U.S.A., very lucky to get out of the group stage.
I would think that having to split their prize -pots for this tournament half-and-half with the mainly obnoxious members of the U.S. women's team, who weren't involved at all, can't have helped player morale.
I don't care much, Japan and S.K. are still in, I prefer the style of the latter over the former, Japan's team are outrageous foulers and fakers of received fouls, but nice to see them (us if following FIFA illogic) beat both Spain and Germany.
Aus., out to mighty Argentina.
All three much better in the group stage than U.S.A.Replies: @Smith
Not sure if you actually watch the matches but that’s the opposite of reality. Japan’s team is one of the most fairplays in the group, they almost avoid physicals and never dive (fake injury), that’s why their injury time is among the shortests in the WC (from 4 mins to 7 mins).
In contrast, the koreans play very physical, and their injury time is big (in the S. Korea vs. Ghana, it is 10 mins injury time).
Obviously, playing physical or diving has its advantages since it means more extra time, but Japan’s team don’t play like that.
Watching Croatia v Brazil.
Famous last words but perhaps Croatia are going to cause an upset.
They have played really well so far anyway.
The White Supremacy of the World Cup brackets strikes again. Brazil model fails in both Brazil and Dutch side. Croatia and Argentina win. One semi final will be entirely white.
Famous last words but perhaps Croatia are going to cause an upset.
They have played really well so far anyway.Replies: @Liza
If you win because of a shootout, that’s really not as wonderful as a win during the game itself. Under such controlled point scoring, it somehow doesn’t seem deserved. Or is it just me who thinks that way.
Neymar scored a great goal but the Brazilians ought to improve their technique.
Man, Japan losing to Croatia now Croatia beats Brazil.
So if Croatia beats Argentina today by penalty shootout again today, we can say Japan = Brazil = Argentina < Croatia.
Let's go Croatia.
But Morocco is good too!