I don't need to pretend, 35 goals + assists at the age of 20 speaks for itself. During CP's entire Chelsea career, he had 42. So this is very obviously not a matter of mere "degrees". If it makes you feel any better, Jude is going to take a big production hit this year. But he's still gonna get credit for what he has accomplished. Because having actually done it means something in sports... performance is kind of a crucial component of the enterprise, after all.
Who the ******** doesn't. What are some of these food takes in here? Sunday roast, fish and chips, sausage rolls, roast chicken and smashed potatoes, steak and ale pie, bangers and mash, curries, pasties, scones and jam with tea, sticky toffee pudding, and yes of course a full english... these are somehow things that lack flavor?? You don't have to eat boiled meat, it's not the 1950s.
Steak and kidney pies are something I missed. Also with the exception of Pret à Manger and a few convenience stores, it's difficult to get a decent pre-packed sandwich in the states, plus lumps of cold chicken would be a nice addition. Bellingham is top ten in the world at the moment, Pulisic isn't. Puli is definitely back in the top 100, maybe close to top 50.
It's not that many of these things can't be good, it's that they are all very similar and all very heavy (except maybe scones with tea and roast chicken, which, the last is so vague in terms of calling it specifically English). You've got some good South Asian in the cities and you've got pub-ish food, the latter of which is heavy, very meat and potato heavy and often fried. I mean -- Sunday Roast -- All Meat, usually potatoes. Maybe some carrots. Fish and Chips -- Fried fish and potatoes Sausage Rolls -- Meat with pastry Roast Chicken and Smashed Potatoes - Meat and Potatoes Steak and Ale Pie -- Meat in Pastry with a few vegetables Bangers and Mash -- Meat and Potatoes Curries - Something different! Pasties -- Portable Meat and Potatoes I mean, do we see a trend? When you compare it to Italian food (in every region I've been in) or the nuances of French cooking, or definitely compare it to what I can get where I am -- which is basically almost any food from anywhere in the world done well ... no, it's not a relative great set of choices.
Not really having to do with Pulisic but AC Milan and Inter... Milan police arrest 19 people in operation against football ... Fedez. The alleged crimes include ticket touting; forced “pizzo” payments, or protection money, from the sellers of food and drink outside ...
The last paragraph is coming straight out of your mind, not my own. Performance is kind of a crucial component, indeed. We're witnessing it. A lot of you are reflexively downplaying it. That is indeed my point. That is in fact my ENTIRE point.
Have you been in an American-Italian restaurant at all? My friend is allergic to tomatoes, the only thing she can eat is penne alla vodka. Italian-American food is based on a southern Italian/Sicilian diet and those regions were extremely poor, and the menus reflect that. Pretty much any chain restaurant in the US serves everything with cheese and or spicy sauces. Cheese fills you up, so you feel satiated and the sauce makes up for the shitty taste of the food. In most of Italy pasta is served as a separate course, usually a very small portion, and the meat of fish is a separate course and is pan-fried or grilled to perfection, so you don't need a ton of sauces. Italians pan fry their food, the French steam or cook them in the oven. For some reason the British adopted the French system. If you go to England and eat "British" food in a pub or cheap tourist restaurant you'll get mass produced crap that's often reheated. You have to do your research and may have to pay a little more to get something nice. I think one of the problem wsith British food is the national culture of not complaining. You'll get served slop, complain about it to your fellow diners for 45 minutes then, when the waiter asks how it was, you'll say "very nice thank you". Another reason is school dinners (i.e. the food schools served at lunch time - see Pink Floyd). They used to be meat cooked until it was black, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower beans or peas, cooked to a mush and some sort of potato. After eating that every day anything tastes good. But from what I understand they've got worse, so to today's kids McDonalds tastes like a banquet. Such a shame. The reason pies and pasties are so popular allegedly is that women would cook them in the morning then take them to their man's workplace. Being fully wrapped in pastry would keep them warm until lunch time. This was in the days before factories so the men would be farming or mining. Maybe the British diet didn't agree with Christian. The Italian and Croatian diets aren't dissimilar.
That's sounds better than what I was served. We called it soupy meat and it was some sort of beef with lots of fat and lots of gristle covered up by brown gravy. I started going home for lunch because I couldn't eat it and they insisted everyone clean their plate.
I sold my lunch tickets for half price and spent it on chips and curry sauce at the town's only Chinese takeaway.
England (especially London) has come a long way, but let's not pretend the land of Mushy Peas is that interesting culinarily. It's a great place for comfort food if you like overcooked meat and Indian food and midnight kebabs - and Sticky Toffee Pudding is the best thing ever, but no English person in their right mind brags about their food. It is an excellent source of police and murder mystery procedurals however.
Just as with Reyna, folks are choosing not to acknowledge how 2+ years of injuries hampered pulisic's production and growth as a player. We're finally seeing what he's fully capable of becaise he's finally been healthy for an extended period of time - god I hope I didn't just jinx him. COVID lockdown pulisic was, until now, the best version of pulisic we had ever seen, and then he couldn't stay healthy for over 2 years. As usual, any discussion about "world class" is just silly. Let's come back after 2years of injury-free play.
I honestly can't remember the last time I ate at a "chain restaurant" that didn't involve an airport. I live in the Bay Area. We have plenty of restaurants that don't serve Fettucine Alfredo or whatever. In fact, pretty much every restaurant around me leaves out most of the extra fats, sugars, etc., loading that an Olive Garden does. We have fresh fruits and vegetables. We have a ton of people who know how to cook. I've been to all the countries mentioned here quite a few times. The food at every spot in Italy is amazing, and pretty much true in France as well. But the variation is less than where I'm at, which is fine when a tourist but less so overall. But you will not hear me disparage French or Italian food. I have no doubt there is good British food. I've had some, and I didn't even really have to upscale. But it is all very similar, and very heavy. It's a national preference, I think -- even in the Asian food you have -- probably driven by a lack of good produce. Tons of Americans would agree -- creamier curries over lighter fare, etc. But the actual British food is very similar. Not heavily spiced, which is fine. I like the taste of meat. There does seem to be a tendency to recipes that cook to very done -- again, I'm okay with many of those. I love a good roast and a good pie. But it's not a varied cuisine. Certainly. You've got to have demand. It's been very interesting to see gourmet culture sweep across a number of food and alcohol industries here as well as geographies. Growing up where I did, I would have been happy with places I would not even consider going to now. And even when I do the old "comfort food" recipes, the ingredients are much better. There's lots of shitty food in American and huge swaths of people are addicted to the fat, salt, and sugar content of crappy, processed food. But there's also a ton of us who cook and eat fresh food across literally every culture plus some of our own. They are also delicious. Stylistically, no. I found the menu variety in Croatia to be pretty limited. Again, great for the week I was there, but I lot of the same stuff. We hit three very good restaurants, but even then, it was a lot of grilled protein. The walk-up stuff there was a step down from the walk up stuff in say, Tuscany. I did do an Istrian dinner with friends (we cooked based off recipes) and that was great -- a really interesting blend of northeastern Italian, coastal Mediterranean and actually Austrian -- lots of pastry and such to go with pasta and seafood, etc. Plus some Hungarian influences and obviously Slovene. I didn't get there when I went to Croatia, though. We stopped at Split.
Jude also largely played as an 8 for BVB. Only 12 out of 132 appearances came in positions outside of CM and when they list him as DM he was still more the 8. Jude had a world class trajectory where, on an age adjusted basis, he performed like a world class player but on an absolute basis he probably only hit that level in his last BVB season. Bespoke Ancelloti designed systems aside I think he should really focus on being an 8, a rangy box-to-box player, because that’s where he can provide the most value above the baseline. Like Pulisic, last season he was on a crazy ballgoin variance heater and that along with having to do more grunt work is going to cut into his production. That doesn’t mean he will stop being world class. It’s a function of the role he’s playing.
That's probably where he'll be utilized but I could see him as the heir apparent to casemiro. In his prime I loved watching how he could dominate a game, and I see the same level of ability from Jude.
The Bay Area does have some nice restaurants. But there are large swathes of the US where the choice is the likes of Applebee's, Texas Roadhouse or Outback Steakhouse. There is a lot of protein in bread in Croatia, especially in the touristy areas.
Again, they are not super comparable as 35 goals + assists at 20 for the best team in the world is not "degrees" better performance than what CP has accomplished. Obviously.
Yes, frankly it is. I'm sorry, you're not a dumb guy, but this has to be the stupidest discussion I've had on this site. We're talking about a stupid label, and a lot of you are extremely invested in guarding it for some reason, and, frankly, a lot more vociferously against Pulisic. It's plain.
Most of this is not really about a label. You're free to think whatever you want, but don't expect to not get pushback on obtuse nonsense... and any suggestion that there are "degrees" and not a gulf separating Jude & CP is obviously ridiculous. My last word on the subject, very happy to agree to disagree.
At TM Jude Bellingham is the joint most valuable player in the world at €180m while Pulisic is 175th at €40m. So I believe technically that means he is rated one order of magnitude higher. As far as labels and consistency go I have advocated for a logically consistent textually based application of the honorific, World Class, for as long as I can remember. I think throwing it around, giving it out and then having to take it back, devalues it. Doing that is part and parcel with trends towards hyperbole and the flattening out, the generalization, of a specific term outside the bounds of its meaning. That just tends to make something less useful and more generic, removing the specific denotation of the word/phrase/concept and replacing it with a more generic substitute. I feel that ignoring the meaning of “class” and the temporal element that comes with it ignores the consistency required to achieve true greatness. If someone doesn’t understand the value of consistency then I don’t think they can understand true greatness.