I'm literally sitting at my desk in a skyscraper in downtown Houston right now. I enjoy living here having lived in other cities as well.
To each their own I suppose. Lived in Houston for 10 years. Have been back once in 20 years. Concrete wasteland with a climate to match.
Yea, I work inside all day... like most normal people.. my car sits in an air conditioned parking garage attached to the building... so the crying about the heat doesn't really bother me that much.. Two hottest summers I ever spent in my life were in Washington D.C. in 2011 and 2012. That sh*t was hot.
Not only is D.C. just stupid hot and humid in the summer, but you end up having to walk around outside a ton when you live/work there. I get the sense that house with a/c > car with a/c > parking garage with a/c > office with a/c is more the rule in places like Houston and Atlanta.
Yeah because how else could you live there!? There were very few major cities in the south before air conditioning. Miami was considered uninhabitable. To the point where one politician actually proposed to just build a wall across south Florida
That's something which sucks about Europe. Many places either don't have AC or the AC system flat out sucks. Europeans seam to enjoy sweating their asses off indoors and smelling like BO.
Officially on the Schalke II squad right now, still recovering from his injuries and building up his fitness.
Historically, being on the Schalke II team has been a very bad sign. I looked. Since 2013, 6 "classes" of 107 players total have graduated from Schalke U19; 13 went to the 1st team squad. Of those 13, 6 went on loan and one was immediately bought. The other 6 are all either in the Bundesliga or the EPL (Sane and Kolasinac). The 7 are all at 2.Bundesliga level or lower, save for a GK in the Eredivisie. Phil Neumann technically went to the first team from the U19 squad, but spent almost all his time with Schalke II so I'm including him in the following: 46 players moved to Schalke II. Of those, 2 are in the Bundesliga: Philipp Max of Augsburg and Marcel Sobottka of Fortuna Dusseldorf. 5 are in 1st division squads in smaller leagues; (Poland, Iceland, Turkey, Switzerland, Sweden). 6 are between the 2.Bl and the 3.BL, or in a 2nd division in a different league. 3 are still with Schalke II and 3 are with other reserve squads. The other 30 are 4th level BL or lower, or out of football entirely. Of the remaining 48, 1 is on a Serie A team, 1 is on a J League team, and the rest are completely unremarkable. The way I see it, there are 4 clear tiers to Schalke Academy graduates. I do believe this translates roughly across Bundesliga teams. Best is to go straight to first team, like McKennie. That is extremely promising and basically a 80%+ chance of being a top player. 2nd best is to go out on loan from the first team, like Wright. That said, at that point 2.Bundesliga is the ceiling for most players in this tier. Next is to go to reserves. To generalize, you have a 5ish % chance of making the Bundesliga from the reserves and most likely that won't even be on the team you came up with. 12-15% chance of playing top flight football somewhere even if it's not a top squad. Finally is to not continue with your team. Outside of remarkable cases this is the end of the road for most players. What does that mean for Nick? I'm not sure. Since 0 of the academy graduates this season seem to be gearing up for the first team, I'm holding out hope that Schalke is going to have their reserves make a promotion push this season.
Nice work. I'd imagine you'd see similar trends at other Bundesliga clubs. There are always late bloomers, but the fact of the matter is that if you aren't good enough to make the jump to the Bundesliga at age 19/20 even as a backup, you're probably never going to be good enough. The hope for Taitague is that his injury issues have artificially depressed his career trajectory and he'll be able to catch up to a Bundesliga trajectory when he (again, hopefully) puts his injury woes behind him. If nothing else, Taitague seems like he'd be in the upper echelon of the "Schalke II" crowd and eventually find a solid home somewhere, even if it's below Bundesliga level.
will miss the Schalke II opening game this weekend due to training deficit. https://schalke04.de/knappenschmied...3-mit-besonderem-auftakt-bei-westfalia-herne/
What does “training deficit” mean? Sorry if that’s a dumb question I just feel like that could mean a lot of things and my mobile browser can’t translate that.
yeah, not sure what to say..... Schalke II play tomorrow their 2nd game of the season. "Nick Taitague, who was back in training, suffered a blow during the week." https://schalke04.de/knappenschmiede/oberliga-westfalen/u23-mutig-spielen-und-sich-weiterentwickeln/
Nick seems to have become an injury prone player.. hopefully he can stay healthy cuz it’s really hurting his progress. Bummer