- 06:37 AM
- 11/22/09
Here's another point of view those of you with an open mind might want to consider:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/ grigg/grigg-w59.html
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the writer, but it is true that these kinds of insider trading regulations are notoriously vulnerable to selective enforcement and politically motivated prosecutions.
Considering the mind-blowingly weird and over-the-top economic shenanigans that have been going on this past year or two, and considering we have a secret bailout of taxpayer money that we aren't allowed to know where our money is going to, controlled by a Treasury Secretary who "just happens" to have come to his job after working for Goldman Sachs (no conflict of interest there, right?), are we really supposed to believe that everything is on the up-and-up here and automatically believe that Mark Cuban is guilty simply because the SEC says so, and that this is the best thing that the SEC can find to do with its time and resources, right now?
A little skepticism is in order here, people.
posted by dave2007 at 05:02 AM on November 21
"Ah, yes dave, I did read the article. Unfortunately, I have read several articles from Wells and they all seem to have the same piss and vinegar quality. Perhaps I just automatically read his work as whiny complaining rather than the exemplary journalism you seem to think it."
curlyelk: Do you read British journalists much? This is fairly typical style. Some people like "piss and vinegar". Just because he is saying something you don't want to hear, and doing so in a manner you don't like, doesn't make him a "whiny complainer".
And I never claimed it was "exemplary journalism", however he makes good points and backs them up with rational thought, which compared to Paolantonio does indeed make him an "exemplary" journalist, relatively speaking.
posted by dave2007 at 02:56 AM on October 08
"I also felt the piss and vinegar quality of Wells' writing, seems to take Paolantonio's views rather personally. Soccer fans seem to always do that when anyone suggests that American football is better in any way."
Maybe he thinks American sports jingos are just obnoxious, ever thought of that?
Speaking for American soccer fans, let me let you: if you were constantly insulted - not just online, BUT TO YOUR FACE IN REAL LIFE - because you liked soccer; if ignorant trolls intruded into your conversations about soccer on a daily basis to mock and insult you because you like soccer, and if you've been putting up with this kind of CRAP for the past FORTY YEARS you'd be be taking-it-f_cking-personally- too!
This is typical bully behavior: constantly attack someone and then when your target responds in anger, throw up your hands and say "oh lawdy! I have no ah-deah why you ah taking this all so personally!" This act gets old really fast.
"I've played both, both have their attributes, however, I got bored playing in 1-0 games, so I'd have to think it might be hard to write a narrative of it. That could be me."
It's you. Thousands of writers have had no trouble writing narratives about soccer matches and they've been doing it for over a hundred years.
Look, you didn't grow up in a soccer-loving culture. Just because you played some soccer does not mean that you actually understand the game on any fundamental level. I've never met anyone who didn't love soccer who really had an intuitive grasp of the game from a fan's perspective. If you don't love it, you'll never make the effort to understand it, and you'll never be able to write about it intelligently.
What the soccer-bashers do is mistake their own cultural blinders and their own prejudices for some kind of universal TRUTH.
And that combination of ignorance and arrogance should piss off any thinking person.
posted by dave2007 at 02:48 AM on October 08
I guess ethnic cleansing is okay when it serves the short term political interests of the President:
http://www.juancole.com/2008/ 07/social-history-of- surge.html
The problem with this debate is that it has few Iraqis in it.
It is also open to charges of logical fallacy. The only evidence presented for the thesis that the "surge" "worked" is that Iraqi deaths from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. (That apocalyptic violence was set off by the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February of 2006, which helped provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war.) What few political achievements are attributed to the troop escalation are too laughable to command real respect.
Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February, 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as John McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra US troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the troop escalation beginning winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.
Aside from defining what proponents mean by the "surge," all kinds of things are claimed for it that are not in evidence. The assertion depends on a possible logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. If event X comes after event Y, it is natural to suspect that Y caused X. But it would often be a false assumption. Thus, actress Sharon Stone alleged that the recent earthquake in China was caused by China's crackdown on Tibetan protesters. That is just superstition, and callous superstition at that. It is a good illustration, however, of the very logical fallacy to which I am referring.
For the first six months of the troop escalation, high rates of violence continued unabated. That is suspicious. What exactly were US troops doing differently last September than they were doing in May, such that there was such a big change? The answer to that question is simply not clear. Note that the troop escalation only brought US force strength up to what it had been in late 2005. In a country of 27 million, 30,000 extra US troops are highly unlikely to have had a really major impact, when they had not before.
As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65% Shiite to at least 75% Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the US inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods. Newsrack was among the first to make this argument, though I was tracking the ethnic cleansing at my blog throughout 2007. See also Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post on this issue.
posted by dave2007 at 02:23 AM on October 08
....sorry to have gone offtopic, however...
dviking,
The "surge" isn't working because the political goals that Bush said were supposed to be achieved have NOT been achieved (ie a stable Iraqi government that actually has legitimacy in the eyes of all Iraqis and that has sovereign power and isn't propped up artificially by US troops), and these goals are no closer to being achieved now than they were before the "surge".
What Bush has done is change the definition of "winning"; ie he's moved the goalposts again. He's made people forget what the surge was suppose to have achieved, and substituted a temporary dip in deaths/fighting, instead, as "winning". And people like you are getting fooled AGAIN. All Bush has done is punted so that the poor fools who have to take over his mess after he's gone (ie starting with the next president) will have to take the blame instead of Bush.
The "surge" wasn't supposed to just reduce deaths, it was supposed to produce a political settlement that will allow us to pull troops out. Where's the political settlement? Where's the troops pullout? That's right: nowhere to be found. That's because the "surge" was actually intended to fool the dumb-f_ck American voters, it was never intended to result in a pullout of US troops from Iraq. McCain knows: we'll be there another 100 years "if necessary".
And the reduction in deaths is hugely misleading, too, and had nothing to do with the "surge". It started BEFORE the surge when Sunnis began to turn against "Al Qaeda in Iraq" (which despite its name has nothing to do with Al Qaeda), and when the USA began to PAY, ie, to bribe, the Sunnis not to fight us. Amazing! We pay them off, fighting goes down. What did that have to do with the "surge"? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
The situation in Baghdad was similarly deceptive. Fighting/deaths went down because there was no one left for the sectarians to kill. Mixed neighborhoods ceased to exist as Sunnis were chased out of Baghdad. Now that the Sunnis and Shia live in segregated communities, there are fewer opportunities for the two communities to kill each other, and so deaths went down. What did this have to do with "the surge"? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Was the goal of the "surge" to put official seal of approval on ethnic cleansing in Iraq? If so, Mission Accomplished. Was the goal of the "surge" to pay off and arm Sunni militias and thus set up a future civil war between Sunnis in the West of Iraq and the Shia government in Baghdad? If so, Mission Accomplished. Was the goal of he "surge" to make the media stop talking about Iraq? If so, Mission Accomplished.
Are levels of deaths, fighting, terrorism, etc, down? Sure, but they had to go down eventually. It could have not continued upwards forever. The point is, they aren't down all that much, and they are nowhere near close to being anywhere near as far down as they were before we invaded Iraq. Iraq is still "broken".
I'm sorry about your brother, but his job is to follow orders, not think. He doesn't know the big picture and unless he speaks Arabic and makes a real effort to know what is going on, he will be the absolute worst source of information about the real situation in Iraq.
I suggest you try informing yourself from sources who try to see the bigger picture; here's one:
posted by dave2007 at 02:17 AM on October 08
***Owlhouse: "Patriots with high blood pressure please avoid."***
Haha. I initially misread that as "Patriots fans with high blood pressure please avoid."
***curlyelk: "Scathing article by Wells, although it comes off as if his feelings were hurt because Paolantonio doesn't care for soccer. Axe grinding and all that."***
Ah, no. You are way, way wide of the mark there. Nowhere did I get the impression that "his feelings were hurt" because Paolantonio doesn't care for soccer. Did you actually read the article? He wrote a scathing article because Paolantonio is a jingoistic moron who disgraces the name of sports journalist by writing crap like this:
***"Go ahead, you try going to a rugby game and writing about it. Soccer? Ninety minutes of whatever and then maybe one goal scored by accident. Tough to create a coherent narrative out of that."***
This is the kind of ignorant comment I expect to see on anonymous internet message boards, not written by someone who writes about sports for a living. Seriously. The above comment is an open confession of ignorance and inability to do one's job, ie, to actually learn about the subject that one is writing about, which is what all journalists are supposed to do. For some reason, many American sports journalists think that they are exempted from this rule for reasons of "American sports patriotism", ie, stupid xenophobic jingoism. They consider it an unwritten rule of their job that they are not required to learn about something new, ever, especially if it is "foreign".
Read this carefully, and google "fourth generation warfare" if you are not familiar with the concept (I recommend William Lind's writings on the subject, which are easily available online; "The War Nerd" is also a fun read albeit the War Nerd doesn't use "fourth generation warfare" terminology). Read this and you will understand how the political and military equivalents of Paolantonio got us into the mess we are in now in Iraq, ie, Paolantonio is the sports journalist equivalent of neo-con idiots like Victor Hansen or Max Boot, who think they are "experts" but in fact are only good at twisting a bad analogy to support their ingrained prejudices:
***It gets worse. Paolantonio is the sports journalism equivalent of the saloon bar patriot who doesn't actually own a passport.
His errors are legion. He compares American football to the hoplite tactics of the ancient Greeks, and soccer to the Persian cavalry armies the Greeks defeated. In fact American football is more like the territory-hogging "linear second-generation" warfare of WWI; while fluid, flowing soccer is akin to the "non-linear fourth-generation" guerilla warfare US forces faced in Vietnam and Iraq (which is why anybody with a brain in the Pentagon is urging that US soldiers think more like soccer players and less like American footballers, meaning that American football explains nothing about modern warfare except how to lose at it).***
Absolutely f_cking spot-on. No doubt Paolantonio is one of those idiots who think that "the surge worked" and that we are "winning in Iraq". And if you believe that, my friend, I have some real estate I'd like to sell you.
posted by dave2007 at 09:05 AM on October 06
Lagos, Nigeria. Attention: The President/CEO
Dear Sir,
Confidential Business Proposal
Having consulted with my colleagues and based on the information gathered from the Nigerian Chambers Of Commerce And Industry, I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer the sum of $47,500,000.00 (forty seven million, five hundred thousand United States dollars) into your accounts. The above sum resulted from an over-invoiced contract, executed, commissioned and paid for about five years (5) ago by a foreign contractor. This action was however intentional and since then the fund has been in a suspense account at The Central Bank Of Nigeria Apex Bank.
We are now ready to transfer the fund overseas and that is where you come in. It is important to inform you that as civil servants, we are forbidden to operate a foreign account; that is why we require your assistance. The total sum will be shared as follows: 70% for us, 25% for you and 5% for local and international expenses incidental to the transfer.
The transfer is risk free on both sides. I am an accountant with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). If you find this proposal acceptable, we shall require the following documents:
(a) your banker's name, telephone, account and fax numbers.
(b) your private telephone and fax numbers for confidentiality and easy communication.
(c) your letter-headed paper stamped and signed.
Alternatively we will furnish you with the text of what to type into your letter-headed paper, along with a breakdown explaining, comprehensively what we require of you. The business will take us thirty (30) working days to accomplish.
Please reply urgently.
Best regards
Howgul Abul Arhu
posted by dave2007 at 06:38 PM on September 23
"For what it's worth, scrum is a abbreviation of the word scrummage, which is a modification of the word scrimmage, which is a derivitive of skirmish. One definition of skirmish is "a tough fight". Thus, for the announcer to say that there was a tough fight for the ball, really isn't a misuse of the word scrum. It just doesn't exactly fit the vocabulary of a rugby player."
You've got the history of the word "scrum" completely screwed up (for one thing, in football history "scrum" or "scrummage" came first, before Americans modified it to the gridiron "scrimmage" concept), which perfectly illustrates the point that tighthead was making: most Americans use the word "scrum" without having a clue what they are talking about.
Look again: tighthead explained VERY CLEARLY how American sportscasters are misusing the word - a word they clearly think they are using in the rugby sense, not in the absract "skirmish" sense you are using. If you don't understand what tighthead is talking about, again, that proves his point. The fact that you don't understand his point doesn't invalidate it.
posted by dave2007 at 02:10 AM on September 08
"I surely don't see how Cobi Jones, who has all of a half season as an assistant and zero days as head man, will produce any better results, unless he's a placeholder and AEG have written off 2008."
Cobi Jones could hardly do any worse. And AEG have probably written off 2008, although if LAG can get some kind of improvement in defense and/or defensive midfield they have the offense to make a respectable late season run and do something in the playoffs.
Really this was all very predictable to anyone following MLS for the past few years. Apparently AEG couldn't figure it out until now, though. No one was making sure the fundamentals were being taken care of; everything was focused on the quick fix and the glamor/publicity (which has also been the problem with US soccer in general).
posted by dave2007 at 11:33 AM on August 13
"Hmm... Doesn't bode well when the top story on the Times section is about cricket...." Dude, it's the first day of August! We'll be up to our eyeballs in footy news soon enough.
posted by dave2007 at 06:42 PM on August 01
They should make use of all that wasted space and play bandy instead of ice hockey. That would make for an even more interesting change of pace, plus get the fans closer to the action: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandy
posted by dave2007 at 05:18 AM on July 18
Yeah, I was going to say the exact same thing, then ended up watching the video anyway. I had no idea that testicles could "fracture". So I guess baseball catchers don't wear protective cups?
posted by dave2007 at 03:36 PM on July 03
"Nothing in that article makes me think that male athletics are being unfairly neglected. So, in schools where women vastly outnumber men, men's athletics are being cut back on. Good. Put that money where it can aid a larger portion of the student body." Just because women make up more than half of the student body does not mean that more than half of the student athletes have to be women. Nor does it mean that female students WANT to participate in athletics in equal numbers as male students. This is quota-based thinking and it's precisely this kind of idiotic political correctness that needs to be stopped. How about we fund student athletics based on how many students actually want to participate instead of assuming that female students MUST participate on equal per capita numbers with male athletes? It's not the end of the world if female students choose not to participate in athletics in equal numbers with male students. Female students don't exist merely to validate the social engineering dreams of frustrated academic Marxists. If we are going to use the brute force of the federal government to meddle in college athletics, I'd much rather it do so to increase support for neglected sports which could use the help to raise the level of USA play in international competition. There are a lot of neglected sports that could use the support and doing so would also increase female participation at the same time - for instance soccer, rugby, cricket, team handball, field hockey, badminton, wrestling, etc, sports that are a big deal internationally but which (with partial exception now of soccer) get little to no help from NCAA or other academic sporting institutions. It would also be nice to get the NCAA to abide by the rules of the governing international bodies of said sports. Look what the Australians have done with their success in international sports (per capita, much more impressive than the USA in international competition). Forget this politically correct crap about getting equal numbers of female to male athletes, and get the government to encourage more amateur and international athletic competition and you'll have more opportunities for female athletes than ever. I don't think the Aussies have an equivalent of Title IX and their female athletes do fine. American amateur sports are a mess and the NCAA is a big part of the problem, but quota based, PC victims rights mentality a la Title IX is not the way to go about fixing things.
posted by dave2007 at 05:53 PM on June 30
Interesting. Of course I was being a bit unfair comparing baseball to cricket since the switch hitting isn't the same in both sports; in baseball the batter has to chose to stand in either the right or left handed batters box before the pitch is made, so there is a little time for the fielding team to adjust fielding positions and a little time for the pitcher to adjust his pitch. The baseball batter can't switch sides in mid-pitch.
posted by dave2007 at 09:05 AM on June 19
I like the Premier League commentators we can hear over in the USA on Fox Soccer Channel; they let the game "breathe" and don't seem to feel the need to talk continuously. Unfortunately American soccer commentators tend to babble too much so some American soccer fans watch the Spanish language broadcasts; somehow I doubt the Spanish commentators are really that much better, it's just that not knowing the language we aren't distracted by them. In American gridiron, the networks seem to like hiring ex-players and ex-coaches from the NFL to commentate NFL games; I won't name names but we have our share of buffoons commentating NFL games. Speaking of cricket, owlhouse, what's all this about cricket suddenly discovering the switch hitter concept? Baseball has had this since the 19th century at least, why has it taken cricket so long to think of this?
posted by dave2007 at 09:18 PM on June 18
NPR's Only a Game had a piece on John Montague a few weeks ago. If you check out the Only a Game website they should have a podcast of that episode.
posted by dave2007 at 07:49 PM on May 31
We've been hearing about southern California becoming an ice hockey hotbed for the past twenty years....it still hasn't happened. It's not gonna happen.
posted by dave2007 at 08:53 PM on May 30
if any professional soccer leagues have ever done anything like this The thing to remember about soccer, unlike most American sports, is that leagues do not set their own rules (as far as officiating the game is concerned): it is called the "world's game" for a reason. Everyone, everywhere, whether it be the Premier League in England or some amateur village league in central Africa, is playing by the exact same rules (ie, the Laws of the Game). Leagues don't set their own rules: FIFA does (or to be technically correct, the International Football Association Board does). The best that the various national football associations and leagues can do is to give their referees guidelines about how to interpret the Laws of the Game. Flopping/diving/simulation has always been against the rules in soccer if it is an attempt to cheat so as to gain an undeserved free kick or penalty kick. The problem is that the game is fast flowing and non-stop and there is no time to watch replays; it is therefore very rare for a ref to penalize a player for flopping; more commonly these attempts to draw a call are simply ignored by the ref unless they are extremely blatant. There have been proposals in soccer to do after-match video analysis to punish floppers, too, but there are similiar objections to this in soccer as there is in basketball. The problem has gotten worse as the game has internationalized; different countries have different cultural tolerances for flopping/diving/simulation. In Britain, North American and parts of northern Europe for instance it is very much frowned on but in Latin America or parts of southern Europe it is more likely to be accepted as "part of the game". That wasn't a big deal when the game was isolated within each country but now that you have players from all over the world playing in top leagues all over the world, you have conflicts over just how much of this sort of thing is tolerable. Soccer and basketball are quite similar in this respect in being international games. Interesting how flopping is allegedly an issue that will ensure that soccer will allegedly "never" be acceptable to Americans, yet flopping isn't an issue with basketball being acceptable to Americans.
posted by dave2007 at 06:59 PM on May 29
This could be interesting, I'm interested to see how this works out in practice. What exactly is the job description of the general manager? I believe it isn't the same at all clubs? Drew Carey is a great guy, a real fan's fan. I'm glad he's involved with the Sounders. I hope he sets some positive precedents for MLS.
posted by dave2007 at 12:50 AM on May 22
Yeah it would help American soccer a lot if more kids would play street soccer and random pick up games when young, and leave the more rigorous coaching in team tactics until they were older. You can teach advanced tactics when they get older, but if they don't learn basic ball skills and positional sense when young, they can't be easily taught later. As for basketball pivoting, true you can't turn the same way in cleats, but besides street soccer, don't forget futsal. This is soccer played with five a side on what is basically a basketball court, with a smaller, heavier ball that doesn't bounce as much so you don't need walls like you have in indoor soccer. Go to YouTube and search for futsal to see what I mean.
posted by dave2007 at 12:31 AM on May 22
@bender: it was in Australia, where the seasons are reversed, so they must have played through the New Years holiday, 1960-61.
posted by dave2007 at 09:24 AM on May 14
Also I answered my own question about USA World Cup qualifying: http://content-www.cricinfo.com/usa/content/story/347233.html "More than a year since they were suspended from international cricket, the USA have named their side for their comeback in the ICC World Cricket League Division Five which takes place in Jersey next month. The side will be captained by Steve Messiah, who led them during their last outing in August 2006. The USA were, at that time, in the World Cricket League Division One, and were it not for the suspension imposed by the ICC they would almost certainly have been in the mix at the ICC World Cup Qualifiers next year. As it stands, they will need to win promotion from Division Five and Four and then win the Division Three event next January to be invited to the qualifying tournament for the 2011 World Cup. The event in Jersey will also feature Afghanistan, Bahamas, Botswana, Germany, Japan, Jersey, Mozambique, Nepal, Norway, Singapore and Vanuatu. The top two sides will be promoted to Division Four which will be held in September."
posted by dave2007 at 09:22 AM on May 14
Canada vs. USA: http://content-www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/141170.html
posted by dave2007 at 09:16 AM on May 14
@owlhouse: The USA has to have played some kind of qualification matches besides those, though, for the ICC World Cup? Also, is it not also possible to have drawn matches in four day county matches? I was wondering why the level below international test matches was four days instead of five... And then there's the little matter of "declaring" if I am remembering the right term, to avoid a draw?
posted by dave2007 at 08:56 AM on May 14
I was thinking about mentioning the distinction in cricket between a tie and a draw, but decided that would be too much information. My fellow Americans probably think I'm weird enough for knowing this stuff as is.
posted by dave2007 at 08:52 AM on May 14
By forcing tie breakers where they are NOT needed, that is. Youtube video of Lauderhill cricket stadium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ohPFFzdnaU
posted by dave2007 at 04:36 AM on May 14
@Chargdres: the US national cricket team isn't that bad, what with the influx of Caribbean and Indian immigrants. The first international cricket match was between the USA and Canada in the 1840s, but the growth of baseball pretty much killed the development of North American cricket, although cricket held on in many American cities during the 19th century, and in Philadelphia it lasted a bit longer until the 1920s after which cricket was pretty much dead in the USA. IIRC, the US cricket team has come close to qualifying for the World Cup in recent years, so that's not too bad. We are probably many many decades from becoming a test playing nation, though, which won't happen at all without a much bigger growth in people playing the sport. The real problem right now, apparently, is that the governing body, USACA, is a bit of a mess, with lots of political, monetary, and organizational problems, or so I have read. Making cricket a varsity sport is a huge step, though. Gives it a chance to expand beyond its current ethnic enclaves. @Mr Bismarck: we need to blow more circuits, frankly. American sports fans could do with a few mind expanding exercises. And the length of test matches isn't really that long if you think of it like a World Series, or like a major golf tournament. Five days is not that long if you think of it in those terms. American soccer fans don't have a problem with tie games, and fans of other sports used to accept tie games, too; frankly it is nice to be a fan of a sport which does not pander to lowest common denominator ideas about "entertainment value" by forcing tie breakers where they are needed. BTW, they have built a cricket stadium in Lauderhill, Florida, recently, which is intended to hold international matches.
posted by dave2007 at 04:28 AM on May 14
I wish people would learn some basic facts before spouting off. These sorts of articles seem to exist to reinforce certain preconceived notions and they draw the negative nellies like honey draws flys. It's a freaking reserve division match. It is not at all surprising that they had to improvise to make up a full squad, for a match that simply doesn't mean anything except as a chance to give the reserve players a chance to play. MLS did not even have a reserve division a little more than three years ago! Most of the guys playing these matches are making an absurdly small amount of money. The wonder is that we have this reserve system at all; you really expect this thing to be huge in its third or fourth year? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLS_Reserve_Division Some people simply have no patience. If it can't be the best in the world starting yesterday, it's "crap". I've been watching the soccer scene here in North America over the part thirty or forty years and the changes and improvements we have seen over this period of time have been simply amazing. In spite of this, we have to put up with this constant bitching that it's "crap" and not good enough. Screw that - we're making progress and we continue to make progress. I can remember back in NASL days when we were told that it would never be financially viable to have a reserve system and there weren't enough good American players to form a full team anyway. Now we regularly qualify for the World Cup every four years and we've got hundreds of American players playing overseas, including some in the top leagues. Twenty years ago that would have been considered impossible. MLS has also improved a lot in the past three or four years. If you are judging MLS quality by a match that you watched back in 1996 or 2000, you aren't giving the league a fair assessment of where it is at the moment. If you want soccer to succeed in this country, putting your money where your mouth is by supporting your local MLS (or USL) club is the thing to do. People support "crap" lower division, minor league or college teams all over the USA and all over the world, because there's more to being a supporter than jumping on the biggest bandwagon.
posted by dave2007 at 03:30 AM on May 04
John Barton King would have been a world famous cricketer if he had not been an American.
posted by dave2007 at 12:15 AM on May 02
Laws of cricket, not rules of cricket. Cricket isn't really that hard to understand; I'm an American and I've never played it and have only had a few chances to watch it but I'm learning. Mostly you have to unlearn your baseball assumptions and learn the strange vocabulary. The laws of cricket are arcane but are not really all that complicated. Historical note: the cricket ball is traditionally red. Two hemispheres of red leather joined at the equator by a seam of stitching. IIRC, the white cricket ball came along recently (ie, last 20-30 years) for One Day Internationals and night matches, to have a ball that was more visible under lights. Up until recently (ie, within my lifetime) cricket wasn't played at night. In fact, cricket players traditionally wore white and colored uniforms didn't come along until the same time as white balls and ODI and night matches. Cricket has changed a lot in the past several decades. Someone more conversant in cricket can correct me if I've erred on the details above.
posted by dave2007 at 07:09 PM on April 24
“To get kids moving and out there playing in an era of obesity and diabetes is really important,” he said. “A lot of these kids would not otherwise be involved in sports.” The Department of Education is financing the teams through its marketing contract with Snapple. Oh, the irony.
posted by dave2007 at 01:10 AM on April 06
It's not true that no Americans understand football. It's also not true that all American owners are greed-heads. And yet, it is a generalization that is true more often than not, unfortunately. Some Americans do get it, though. The new owner of the USL Portland Timbers appears to understand footy fandom and what a football club is all about, from what I have read. He actually went on record stating (and I paraphrase from memory here) that owning a sports club is not like any other business, the owner is a temporary custodian of a tradition that truly belongs to the community and to the fans. If only more American sports owners "got it". Unfortunately, American sports did not develop that way, and this sort of owner is the rare exception that proves the rule. I'm an American fan of the game, and if, in the unlikely event that I suddenly became a billionaire, I was going to buy an English football club, I wouldn't do as the existing American owners have done and spend an enormous amount of money on one of the really big Premier League clubs. I'd buy one of the smaller clubs that have a "big club" mentality/tradition/history/reputation/desire but which have fallen on hard times, like a Leeds United or a Nottingham Forest, and I'd buy that club at a much cheaper price and pour my money into the club and earn promotion back up to the Premier League. That's the proper way to do things.
posted by dave2007 at 05:07 AM on March 30
I guess "swish" must mean something different in Limey English than what it means in Yank English. Oh, and more proof that all goalkeepers are at least a bit odd.
posted by dave2007 at 08:19 PM on February 20
Coming in January, this proposal runs smack dab up against the FIFA Club World Cup, does it not, more or less? FIFA is never going to approve this, especially now that they are trying to make the World Club Cup a truly global championship that (IIRC) will start moving around the world every year, ie, won't just be held in Japan as it has been done up to now.
posted by dave2007 at 06:38 PM on February 14
@worldcup2002: ***Matt Scott at the Guardian claims that, ironically, poor EPL uptake in China (against other pro leagues such as the NBA) is driving the global move.*** What does the EPL expect when they sell the TV rights to their games to a Chinese TV network that most Chinese are unable to watch?
posted by dave2007 at 08:13 PM on February 08
@salmacis: ***TBH, I really don't have a problem with this. It would be hypocritical otherwise, given how I tried to get tickets for the NFL Wembley game last year. The only potential downside is in unbalancing the schedule, but I see that as pretty minor compared to the potential upsides.*** It's not minor, it's HUGE. It breaks 120+ years of tradition of balanced schedules, in order to copy the monstrosity of completely arbitrary league scheduling that plagues North American sports leagues. If they do this it will indeed be the "slippery slope" or the "thin edge of the knife". Do you want your club to be the one fighting relegation and forced to play a THIRD game against ManU or Liverpool or Arsenal or Chelsea, etc., while another relegation zone club gets an easy 3rd game against another relegation zone club? This part of the proposal is the most outlandish, though, and was probably put out there in order to make the rest of the proposal (ie, playing regular season EPL games overseas) seem less extreme by contrast. It's probably a trial balloon, the 39th game idea being a throwaway idea. Fans will be relieved when the EPL backs down on that idea, and will be "relieved" that instead they "only" lose one home game a year to overseas games but get to keep balanced schedules. IMO the 39th game idea is a PR tactic and not a serious proposal - but God help us if it is a serious proposal. ***rcade: Were any of the locals really aware of the difference between rugby union and rugby league? My understanding is that union has a small niche but league is totally unknown.*** Rugby union is the form of the game that most Americans know and play; yes it is a very small niche sport. Rugby league does have a small following in the USA though, check out American National Rugby League: http://www.amnrl.com/ Most Americans are barely aware that rugby exists, so the union/league distinction is completely lost on them. I've met rugby union fans/players in the USA who were completely unaware of the existence of league as well. Either code is almost completely lacking in any kind of media coverage in the USA. You can catch both union and league on Setanta, but that is only available on the satellite provider DirecTV, and you have to pay extra for it. The average American sports fan has never watched either code of rugby. But rugby union is the overwhelmingly dominant code in the USA amongst actual rugby players and fans.
posted by dave2007 at 08:10 PM on February 08
@elijahin24: ***First off, they are called amendments because they do what?...amend, yes thats right. they change or add to the original law.*** Please do some reading on Constitutional history before making statements like that. You do realize, don't you, that the Constitution would never have been ratified in the first place without a promise that a Bill of Rights would be immediately enacted in order to amend the Constitution to prevent it from becoming an enabler of federal tyranny? No Bill of Rights, no Constitution. The 2nd Amendment is part of that Bill of Rights. If you don't like the 2nd Amendment, repeal it. Until then, all your arguments about what it "really" means, ie, all your attempts to reinterpret it to mean the exact opposite of what it actually says, is unconstitutional and dangerous. ***"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." In other words due to the necessity of a militia to national security you can have a gun. Look at a calender it is 2008. We have the strongest national military in the world. I know, because i'm part of it. a "well regulated militia" is no longer necessary, hence the right to bear arms is no longer necessary.*** You have it completely backwards. The fact that we have the strongest national military in the world is EXACTLY why we need the 2nd Amendment more than ever. Go read the actual writings of the men who wrote the Constitution and who wrote the Bill of Rights and the 2nd Amendment. Your type of thinking is exactly the kind of thinking that the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights in order to guard against. You think that the 2nd Amendment is only about national security? A militia is the armed citizenry, plain and simple. "Well regulated" in 18th century English does not mean what you think it means, nor does it invalidate the fact that the 2nd Amendment is a protection of an individual's right to bear arms, regardless of the usefulness of that right in maintaining militias. The US Army, Navy and Air Force are not the militia, and the writers of the 2nd Amendment intended the militia to be a counter to and completely independent of the federal government. The militia clause could be completely removed from the 2nd Amendment without changing the plain meaning of the Amendment. You think that our military is really being used to defend the USA? Really? In Iraq? We have US military bases in over 130 countries around the world - how is that "defending" the USA? Is that really what the Founding Fathers had in mind by "national defense"? That's pretty a pretty bizarre perspective. Even if the 2nd Amendment was only about "national security" (which it is not) the fact remains that it is part of the Constitution and the only way you can legally get rid of it is to repeal it. Until then, no dice. Any judge (or judges) who invalidates the 2nd Amendment on his own authority is in violation of his oath of office. You cannot repeal the plain meaning of the Constitution, and it is clear what the 2nd Amendment means, the men who wrote it explicitly said it was an individual right, a right which helps to not only defend the country from foreign enemies, but to defend it from domestic enemies as well, including if necessary, the US Army itself. If you don't know this stuff, it means you are horrendously poorly educated on this issue. Go read real history - not the tripe they serve up in the popular mass media.
posted by dave2007 at 07:36 PM on February 08
Rugby is actually quite popular in areas outside the former British empire: France, Italy, Romania, Argentina, Uruguay, etc. and it is growing in Asia and Africa. Even cricket is expanding outside its former areas of popularity; the recent cricket world cup even had teams from Ireland and the Netherlands, countries not usually associated with the sport in the popular mind. Globalization is going to spread sports all over without regard to what is considered traditional sporting territorial boundaries. One thing that the "British" sports have going for them which the "American" sports do not is that they are truly international sports run by international bodies with true international competitions; American sports in contrast are still dominated by American professional leagues who play by different rules from the rest of the world and who have monetary and other conflicts of interest that work against true international competition. Thus soccer, rugby, cricket get a boost in international interest due to international competition. Basketball comes close to this but the interests of the NBA and the interests of FIBA often work against each other. Same thing with baseball; look how difficult it has been to set up a baseball equivalent to the world cup, and look how difficult it has been to make MLB take it seriously. Baseball and cricket are about equivalent in worldwide popularity, but cricket is better organized to spread the game internationally than baseball is. There is no cricket equivalent of MLB, and that is actually a good thing for cricket. Basketball is certainly more popular than rugby; basketball is an easier game to play in the sense of requiring less space, etc. Nevertheless rugby's international competitions give the sport a lot more visibility internationally than people realize and the sport is growing in lots of places that you wouldn't expect. The real comparison should be not to basketball but to (American) gridiron football; rugby is comparable in many ways to gridiron but doesn't require all that expensive plastic armor. The expansion of gridiron is going to be blocked in a lot of countries by rugby for that reason alone.
posted by dave2007 at 10:42 AM on February 06
@catfish: I don't get it. If I were an "unidentified American consortium" I wouldn't be buying clubs like Derby County, I'd be buying clubs like Nottingham Forest or Leeds United. Do any American sports investors understand that you can buy a lower division club, put money into it, and work your way up to the Premier League? Do they understand that there are formerly "big" clubs now languishing in the lower divisions that have lots of history and a large fan base, and that it might be more cost effective to go after these sorts of clubs, rather than buying a club that is already in the Premiership (albeit not for long) and thus will have an overly inflated "value"? I'm guessing not many American billionaires understand the way the game is organized on the other side of the pond. And yes, I'm an American too. But not, unfortunately, a billionaire.
posted by dave2007 at 07:41 PM on January 25
I'm guessing the people who don't get the Buffalo Wings reference aren't Americans! Or maybe the humor filter is busted.
posted by dave2007 at 08:05 PM on January 23
The British press will cover North American and other non-British sports because they are, you know, sports journalists, and not just paid hacks. Sure they are also paid hacks but they are expected to actually cover the world of sports, and not just cover the sports that they care about. Someday maybe the American sports media will be more like that, but I'm not holding my breathe.
posted by dave2007 at 04:51 AM on December 18
If you look at some of the classic examples of rival start-up leagues AL / NL, NFL / AFL, NFL / USFL the more organized and well-funded (and historically older) league usually wins. Yes but in those examples, the leagues were competing in the same markets/countries, etc. In this case, they are in completely different markets and in completely different countries, not to mention being on two completely different continents as well. The only competition would be for signing players.
posted by dave2007 at 08:52 PM on December 15
The USWNT head coach job is a lot more high profile now then when Tony DiCicco got the job, though.
posted by dave2007 at 08:38 PM on November 24
Although to be fair I think his low opinion of sports journalists isn't far from the mark. But I don't think turning sports journalism into another branch of political writing would really improve matters.
posted by dave2007 at 12:28 AM on November 13
"Zirin is not your average stats-dribbling, advertiser cowed, editorially hobbled, rose-tinted-blinker-wearing American sports hack. He's founded a pressure group called Jocks for Justice that recently gathered together several sports professionals to speak out about the Jenna 6 case in Louisiana (where, after several racist incidents, six black high-school athletes were threatened life imprisonment for fighting in the playground)." Uh, wow. Just wow. That's where I stopped reading. I can't take this guy (Steven Wells) seriously after reading that.
posted by dave2007 at 12:14 AM on November 13
Pele's description of the MLS makes it sound like he thinks MLS is still operating like it did in 1996, with the league controlling player selection and allocating all players to the clubs without much regard for what the clubs/coaches want. MLS is still single entity and pays all players salaries, but the individual clubs/coaches now have the power to recruit as they please, within the restrictions of the salary cap. The DP or "Beckham rule" is in fact the first step away from the salary cap, so Pele sounds like he's a bit behind the curve about where the MLS is heading. Ideally we'll end up with something that is in the happy medium between the extremes of the NASL circa 1984 and MLS circa 1996.
posted by dave2007 at 10:40 PM on November 08
Biggest problem for club football in Brazil is that any player good enough to attract notice goes to play in Europe. Nearly 1,000 went last year alone, which doesn't leave too many for the local teams. Yeah, IIRC Sepp Blatter was urging Brazil to keep more of their players at home in future, right before he announced Brazil as winner of the 2014 WC. A bit of a silly request really, considering the globalization of the game in the past 20 years. Nice thing about this location is the kickoff times will be much friendlier for America; Germany wasn't terrible but Japan/Korea was pretty much Tivo-only (PST in the house). Strongly agree. Looking forward to prime-time WC matches in 2014 (for us here in North America). What with increased USA TV audiences in 2006, and probably more growth of that TV audience in 2010, 2014 could be a very big year indeed for American soccer fans. Hopefully our USMNT will live up to that challenge. Not counting tourneys held outside SA and Europe, other than Brazil doing it once, no Cup has been won by a team from outside the host confederation so 2014 looks like another Brazil or Argentina trophy. Or maybe (wishful thinking) Uruguay comes out of nowhere and beats Brazil in the final. Just for old time's sake.
posted by dave2007 at 03:54 AM on November 01
"As long as you have revenue sharing, that idea only hurts the good teams as they end up having a significantly harder schedule than crappy teams. It's almost the opposite of teams' incentive to excel during the regular season to play the 8th seed round one." This is a typical reaction from North American sports fans, and it is caused by a number of misconceptions that I'd like to address. Revenue sharing. This concept often gets confused with the concept of parity. The two are completely different things, though they do influence each other and thus get confused. The purpose of revenue sharing originally was to financially stabilize the league in question, by ensuring that clubs having a bad year would still get enough income coming in to be around the next year and have a chance to improve their situation; it was not originally intended to cause parity. Parity on the other hand is the idea that you have to punish successful teams and reward unsuccessful teams in various ways so as to "handicap" or even things out, and this is done in various ways (at least from my understanding of the NFL; NHL may do some of these things differently) such as through college draft picks and jiggering the schedule to give poorly performing teams easier schedules the following season, etc. I don't see how my proposal above conflicts with either revenue sharing or parity. In fact, it's just taking the concept of fiddling with the next season's schedule to give poorly performing teams an easier schedule, to its logical conclusion. In point of fact, the existing parity system, in the way it addresses schedules (at least in the NFL the last time I checked; I'm not as familiar with the NHL scheduling system), already "punishes" the good teams and rewards the bad teams. So this proposal I'm discussing isn't really that radical of a change from the already existing systems used in North American sports, once you get over the initial conceptual hurdles. As for the rest of the objections above, IMO it is looking at things a bit backwards. You seem to be thinking that the good teams get a harder schedule but still have to compete against the bad teams with their easy schedule for Stanley Cup playoff spots; that is not what I am proposing at all! Sure, the better teams get a harder schedule; but really that's a reward, not a punishment, because being in the upper division (or whatever it would be called) means you have a chance to compete for the Stanley Cup that year, and that means a lot of prestige and chance to earn money in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Being in the lower division means you are in competition that year not for the Stanley Cup, but rather for a chance to get back into the upper division and a chance to compete for the Stanley Cup the next year. There could also be a post-season playoffs and cup competition for the top lower division teams so they could get some post season revenue, too. What this means in practice is that the top half of the league are only playing against other top half teams, so sure their schedules are "harder" but by not having all those games against the bottom half of the league, fans get to see better matchups and fewer craptactular mismatches and blowouts. The same goes for the bottom half of the league: you get better, more even matchups, ie, you get "parity" by adjusting the "schedule set" every year by moving the top two or three or four teams up from the lower division, and moving the bottom two or three or four teams down from the upper division. Better matchups, more evenly matched teams, means a better product, as well, for the fans to watch. Yes, this means for the year in question all the lower division teams are "out" of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but they have that year to turn things around and get back into the upper division. That's their motivation, that's their fan's motivation, it works quite well as an incentive for players to play and fans to watch. It may take away the illusion that "any team can win it all" in any given season, but we all know that that is just an illusion. It takes more than one season to turn around a cellar dweller into a championship contender; this system acknowledges that fact and gives the lower teams an easy schedule for a year and a better chance to turn things around, and it gives the upper teams a chance to compete just amongst themselves and thus makes their games that year that much more meaningful than they would have been under the existing system.
posted by dave2007 at 07:06 PM on October 06
As mentioned above, MLS has its Supporters Shield for the team with the best regular season record. This was created, as the name implies, by the fans, and not by the league, because back then the MLS "didn't get the concept". However, things are changing: the MLS Supporters Shield winner now gets an automatic berth in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, along with the MLS Cup winner, and the two top teams from Mexico, two top teams from Central America and two top teams from the Caribbean. So, winning the MLS Supporters Shield, ie, having the best regular season record, really means something now and gives the winning club a chance to earn more money and trophies in the CONCACAF Champions Cup (now if only MLS's regular season schedule coincided better with the CONCACAF Champions Cup schedule, but that's another issue entirely). Also, the MLS Supporters Shield is getting more meaningful because MLS is getting closer to a true balanced schedule/single table concept. Yes, the conferences still exist, for now, but the playoff system is now more based on who has the best record overall rather than who happens to be at or near the top of a weak conference. Once MLS has 16 teams with each team playing everyone else twice, home and away, for a 30 game schedule, the MLS Supporters Shield will reflect accurately who did best overall during the regular season.
posted by dave2007 at 07:39 PM on October 05
You know you could have promotion/relegation within the NHL. Everyone who discusses the promotion/relegation idea in North America always talks about promotion/relegation between leagues, but for a variety of obvious reasons that's not going to happen in the North American sports cartel system (unless the leagues in question do some kind of merger). Don't think of promotion/relegation as demotion to the minor leagues. Think of it as a yearly scheduling readjustment - ie, you have a crappy season, the next year, you get a crappy schedule playing against the other crappy teams. You have a good year, the next year you get a good schedule playing against the other good teams. You're still in the NHL, you still have to meet all of the financial and other requirements of an NHL franchise, the only thing that changes are the names of the teams you are playing against and the name of the trophy you are competing for and/or the name of the division/conference/whatever that you are playing in. Same thing goes for MLS/USL in soccer here in North America. Promotion/relegation can't happen for a lot of economic and political reasons due to the way that the professional game is organized here. But promotion/relegation within a single league, as described above, is entirely doable. It means that you keep reshuffling each team's "schedule set" each year, based on ability, thus, "like plays against like" and you have far fewer mismatches and blowouts. And you double the number of teams that have a realistic chance of having a winning season (assuming a two division pro/rel settup). I don't know if such a system would "save" the NHL, but it would make it a whole lot more fun to watch.
posted by dave2007 at 07:20 PM on October 05
"Dear God, you were being outplayed all over the park. It's a team game." Yes, it is a team game - which is why switching the goalkeeper at the last moment was insane. Hope Solo has had a long time to develop and shape her defense and develop a sense of placement and communication that can't be substituted for at the last minute by putting in a different goalkeeper. The first two goals - the own goal especially - were mostly due to breakdowns in the defense that happen when the goalkeeper and her fullbacks aren't communicating properly. With Hope Solo in goal and a defensive system working properly as it was supposed to, those first two goals don't happen and you give the midfield and forwards time to get their act together and start testing Brasil's defenses. Since, in fact, the USA defensive system was a shambles right from the start, this never happened. "The more this goes on, the more the goalkeeper issue becomes a media-fuelled distraction from what happened on the field." But what happened on the field is what everyone expected to happen after the change in goal was announced a few days ago. Every single commentator thought it was a bad idea and hinted or predicted openly that it would turn out to be a disaster for the USA. And they were right. The only reason it wasn't talked up more before the game was because no one on the USA side wanted to second-guess or jinx the coach before the game. But anyone reading between the lines could figure it out. I'm sorry but this is one area where you can't chalk this up to a "media-fuelled distraction". That's missing the forest for the trees. When they called it a mistake and accurately predicted what would happen, before the fact, that's not a distraction. Maybe without the change in goalkeeper USA would still have lost, but it would not have been a 4-0 blowout.
posted by dave2007 at 08:28 PM on September 27
Brasil are a bit brittle on defense. A combination of lousy coaching decisions that upset USA team chemistry, combined with a USA refusal to take advantage of Brasil's weaknesses, and some unfortunate referee decisions, however, masked this weakness and gave us an unrepresentative lopsided result. Anyone who simply looks at this 4-0 result and thinks he knows the relative merits of the USA and Brasil women's teams is a fool. On any other day, with halfway decent USA coaching, this would have been a very close game. The handful of times the USA actually got an attack going, Brasil looked very vulnerable. But trying to come back while 2-0 down and a player short isn't going to make it very easy to attack Brasil. The time to have exposed Brasil's defensive weaknesses was before the two give-away goals and before the red card, not after. All around, a complete meltdown by the USA. It reminded me a bit of the 2006 USMNT game against the Czechs in that the entire team seemed to have been lobotomized somehow. This shouldn't be happening, yet it is. If USSF is serious about their national team program they need to change something in their system that is obviously broken. Bizarre changes to their starting lineup seems to be becoming a USA specialty and that can't help either. We'll see proof of these facts when Brasil has to face Germany. Unlike the USA, German coaches and players are unlikely to play to Brasil's strengths. I expect either a close game or possibly a blowout in favor of Germany. Germans aren't going to have an emotional meltdown like the USA had today.
posted by dave2007 at 08:16 PM on September 27
Oh, dear, GOD! The opinions of 4 billion people don't count because they don't get Comcast cable and can't see the NFL! Well how silly of them to "choose" to be born outside the US of A! In fact, a billion or more people can see the NFL - they just choose not to. It's not like the NFL doesn't trumpet their alleged viewership of the Super Bowl - but that's not numbers of people actually watching, that's just the numbers of people who live in countries where the game is shown and who could theoretically watch if they wanted to do so. A potential audience of a billion, but an actual audience of 100 million - most of whom are Americans. Guess what? Most people in the world don't want to watch the NFL. Even when it is available. The USA is not the world. Most people don't find our sports very interesting to watch, at all. It's time to stop the denial and soccer bashing. Yes, you guys were soccer-bashing. As to this guys wedding - I haven't bothered to read the article, but in a lot of countries weddings are very big deals and planned long, long in advance, and cost a lot of money (well, that's often true in the USA too); they might have even consulted astrological charts (as is done in a lot of traditional cultures) to determine the "ideal date" on which to get married; in which case, changing the date of the wedding at the last minute was not an option.
posted by dave2007 at 07:59 PM on July 26
As long as this does not introduce any delays in the game, fine, why not. What with the radio earpieces the refs wear now, the person monitoring this technology only has to whisper in the ear of the ref to let him know if he is making a mistake. But please, no long delays waiting for the video review like you have for instance in gridiron or rugby.
posted by dave2007 at 08:04 PM on July 12
And before you ask, "you" are "you guys who don't get it". I could add "you know who you are", but, obviously, you don't. Insert simley face here: :-)
posted by dave2007 at 09:16 PM on July 05
"Who is this we you keep speaking of, dave2007?" USSF/USMNT. And fans thereof. It wasn't that difficult to figure out from the context. I don't have the patience to play these games of rhetorical questions.
posted by dave2007 at 09:11 PM on July 05
.....and why is it when non-member nations get invited to play in CONCACAF Gold Cup, and they send their second string teams, it isn't considered an "insult" to CONCACAF? Don't give me that crap about Copa America being a "big, respectable, historical" tourney, because based on that logic, CONMEBOL teams should never be sending their second string teams to Copa America, yet they do that all the time. Does this ever happen in Euro Cup? The double standards here are just ridiculous. If CONMEBOL doesn't want to invite us back in future, that would be fine with me. But I don't want to hear any more hypocritical whining about why we didn't accept CONMEBOL's invivations circa 1996-2006. This is why USSF didn't accept the invites for the past decade; now you know. You didn't believe USSF then. Now you do. Or you should. The USMNT simply does not have the resources to play in three different international tourneys within the space of two months, especially not during the middle of MLS's season. Our national team does not have the depth of talent to pull something like that off. So accept the facts and move on.
posted by dave2007 at 09:10 PM on July 05
If CONMEBOL is really "upset" by the USMNT selection we sent, they are fools. They knew when they invited us that this was going to happen - the USSF made no secret about this. CONMEBOL knew, and invited us anyway. Everyone talks like it is some kind of "insult" not to send our best team, yet this isn't our regional tournament, it is theirs, and CONMEBOL nations send second string squads to Copa America all the time. Not just Argentina and Brazil, either, but the lower quality nations as well. So why is it somehow a duty of the USA to send its very best and to sacrifice its players for a regional tournament that means nothing to us and gains us nothing if we win it? It would be nice if MLS wasn't playing during Copa America, but it is. Two months is too long for an MLS team to lose a top player. Releasing players for Gold Cup was long enough; we needed to win Gold Cup because it is our regional tournament, and winning it gets us a spot in the Confederations Cup in South Africa in 2009, excellent preparation for World Cup in South Africa in 2010. And the European clubs don't have to release US players for Copa America as it is not our regional tournament. The EPL and other leagues in Europe are not in season, but their club training camps are. We have a lot of players who need to earn starting positions on their clubs, sometimes new clubs (ie, Beasley at Rangers). Spending the entire summer playing international tourneys does not help their careers. We cannot overuse our best players that way; better to give the younger and more inexperienced players a chance. Finally there is the U-20 World Cup going on at the same time right now. This Cup is, frankly, much much much much more important for us than Copa America ever will be. We beat Poland 6-1 the other day and Freddy Adu got a hat trick. These players would also have been wasted had we sent them to Copa America instead. Let them have a shot at winning a title that means something. If CONMEBOL is really upset at us, they can go screw. They spent a decade inviting us, we turned them down for the same reasons that we are now being criticized for; we finally accept, with the same restriction in place on the kind of players we could send that we have always had since MLS started. No one in CONMEBOL should act surprised; they knew exactly what kind of team we were going to send. Let them invite Costa Rica or Honduras again instead, if they are so snippy about "respect". See if that really "improves" their tourney. This is one of those deals where we are screwed no matter what we do. Everyone is primed and ready to take "offense" at what USSF does, no one wants to listen to or consider the problems they have to deal with.
posted by dave2007 at 08:29 PM on July 05
Let's Make NFL Extra Points Interesting
Do away with the goal posts and kicking? Sure why not; you've eliminated just about every other element of actual football from American "football" anyway. Please go ahead and change the name of the game to something else, too, while you're at it.