Soccer, sports and politics (R)

Happens to RSL all the time.

 

I'm in FB jail again because of his haters. They won't beat Oregon, and that'll give conservatives something to jack to over the wknd

 

Italy/Uruguay was looking pretty compelling for awhile. It's a fight in the minnow bucket, but a good match is a good match.

Unlikely this will be one.

 

Speaking of Turkey being the European retirement league, Galatasaray are losing 2-0 at home to Copenhagen!

The once daunting proposition of playing in Istanbul has become anything but.

Edit: Jinxed it. Two quick goals by Galatasaray. 2-2 now. Perfect score for Man Utd in the battle for second place.

 

It's a brief stopover to the Cowboys job. Bet on it.

 

Complete trash heap

André Onana has faced 12 shots on target since the start of the season.

He's conceded 9 goals 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/nIbfsO9Px9

— Mod (@CFCMod_) September 20, 2023

 

Just realized Bayern almost had a front 3 of Mane, Kane, Sane.

 

Alabama so Auria can see him in action

 

There is no way he's stupid enough to do that. At least I don't think he will. And Jerry will not ink that deal.

Coach Sanders' personality can get him recruits at the college level. But the real deal NFL has only a draft.
IMO he's better off in the SEC somewhere. I'd like to see him revitalize The U, but he probably won't do that, either.

 

Since it's Lazio, I would have expected 88 instead of 94.

 

At the risk of being seen as the rain on the parade, that goal came deep into the 95th minute.

 

Now you’re going to tell me that the XXI century started in 2001…

 

It has started pic.twitter.com/ht4Mdpvo7F

— Troll Football (@TrollFootball) September 20, 2023

 

Oh, I think it would.

American sports are built on the premise of "any given Sunday." Every American sport has a draft which equalizes talent across the teams. Kansas City Chiefs get Patrick Mahomes and they've won a pair of Super Bowls. (Given that Mahomes was taken 10th, and that Tom Brady lasted until the 6th round proves that this is not an exact science.) I presume that draft goes away with single table - pro/rel format, because who wants to see the most exciting new players in the second division? I mean, who's going to pick that up, the CW?

Playoffs also increase the chance that random teams will win the whole thing. In a seven-year span, the Giants won 3 World Series titles, while the Cubs and the Royals chipped in for good measure. Playoffs keep more fan bases activated. In baseball with 10 games left, the AL has three teams within a game of each other fighting for two playoff spots. The NL has five teams fighting for three spots. How much fun was the Premiership a couple years back when Liverpool won with 8 games left?

Going single table will stratify teams, consigning most to ping-ponging back and forth between the 1st and 2nd divisions, a la the Norwiches, Aston Villas and Stokes of the world. La Liga is the worst. It's a closed shop. In the past 50 years, Madrid and Barca have won 44 titles. In France, Lyon won 7 in a row to start the millenium. PSG has won 9 of the past 11 titles. Not even the Yankees did that. And Bayern Munich has won 17 of 23 titles since Y2K.

No thanks.

 

Hey, Wojo bugged everybody. Except Duke fans. We all hated him. He was the basketball equivalent of hockey's old enforcers.

As to your question... I think it stuck with me because you are strident and articulate. This is the P&CE forum of a soccer board, but I think I hear your voice the most of anyone here when the talk turns to sport. And I just happen to be on the opposite end of the spectrum of many of the things we've talked about here.

You want to see the creme rise to the top. You want talent to win out. Hey, I appreciate talent too, but I am actually more appreciative of the guys who don't have the talent and make the very most of themselves. My all time favorite Virginia player is Kihei Clark. More so than Ralph or Bryant Stith or Joe Harris or the trio of juniors who won us the natty. And while most UVa fans appreciate his game-saving heroics vs Purdue, most were ready to see him gone. Not me. He was endlessly fascinating. He just couldn't get over being 5'8".

 

I never thought of him that way, but yeah, those guys could ruin a great game of hockey pretty quick. To whatever degree I am a fan of hockey (and I'm the opposite of an expert on the game), I loved the late 70s Habs and Oilers. I remember announcers talking about how well they could skate. I kind of gravitated to the Avs in the late 90s because of how Montreal's coach treated Patrick Roy, and I remember Dallas and Mike Modano and thug Derrian Hatcher playing negative hockey on their slushy ice.

I'm a sports fan in general, yeah, and one of the very few. I think it's weird how college football is ignored here, coffeehouse syndrome, I guess. By that I mean that if you're really, really a fan of any sport, you're going to have at least a passing interest in other sports. I sometimes think posters on this forum are not soccer fans for the sport itself, but being a soccer fan in America kind of serves as a signal that the person is traveled, cultured, whatever. That's beginning to change as more conservatives find their way to the game. I don't have many friends whose TV and radios doesn't stay on some sports station or another. Most of my longtime male friends are sports fanalysts. Sports, music, and politics are the big three of many truly interesting convos.

Not so much the cream because they're the cream (talking soccer only here), but because the owners have displayed interest in winning AND in playing pretty ball when they go after and try to sign the cream. It bothers me when a league has x number of owners whose team is their primary business and don't push things. Those guys who dreamt of owning a team and making that team great (Roman Abramovich fits here, no matter what we think of him as a person), those guys are the ones you want in your league. Enough scrappy teams win, everybody stops making the game better, and we see shit ball every weekend. That's my concern with MLS. They're so focused on making sure fickle, stupid American fans don't abandon the team that they wreck the game by preventing the best run clulbs from becoming the best rosters.

People whine about a spending race like it's their money. If that's what it takes to make my (other leagues than MLS because we're saddled with these ********ing financial limits) club stand out above most of the rest, that's what I want my club's owner to do. Its not MY money. And yeah, you win big, I'll pay more for tickets.

 

What about the SPL? Think Aberdeen won a couple in the mid 80s and that's it outside of Celtic-Rangers

 

I know the history of domestic league winners in Europe. What I actually wrote and the point of my post was that if MLS went to single table/no playoffs (or 2 single tables to reduce travel) it wouldn't automatically mean the same 2-3 teams winning the league every season. In fact, that almost certainly would not happen if MLS eliminated playoffs.

Sure, playoffs increase the changes of an upset. Especially when they are bloated to include 18-20 teams and top seeds get little or no advantage during the playoffs over those that barely got in. But that isn't the whole reason why MLS has a large variety of champions.