no i mean petr chech, the czech keeper. he cleared the ball wrong & caused the american goal, didn't he?

Hahaha.. yes the Czech goalkeeper played like shit, he was lucky it wasn't 2 or 3 nill especially considering how good the US keepers were (well Ramando was good, Guzman didn't really get challenged too much in the 1st half.. On the USA goal it looked to me like Diskerud booted it so hard that really Chech couldn't have stopped it one way or the other, so when he tried he merely deflected it. Sure, had he deflected it to the right there wouldn't have been a wide open Bedoya, but by the force of that kick I don't think Chech had many options.

I never take much from friendlies but England huffed and puffed their way to an unconvincing win. Sterling looked good though. The big one's next week in the Euro 2016 qualifier against Switzerland. I really struggle to give a shit about England's national team. I support them in big tournaments, just because ,but, really, they're a pain to support in any real sense.

His name is Cech, not Chech. Sorry to be an arse, but get your spelling together, please.

A reporter whose posts I follow felt that Falcao going to Man U. wasn't based on money. Not that much.
The big question was: why did he ever go to Monaco (apart from the money)?

There are close to zero taxes in Monaco, so the deal in England will not be that an upgrade if there ever was one.

A reason for his departure might be that he found the French league extremely boring. Playing in Monaco is playing in an empty arena home, and going to tepid places (apart from Marseille, Paris and, had he stayed, Lens, where the people do support their team). So his decision could have been that he wanted to play in a city where football means something, like it was in Spain, Portugal (so they say) and Argentina.

From Man U's point of view... a mystery to me too.

lol it was me who first fucked up--- dont blame suchfriends

he's "chej" to my ears

Hahaha yeah, sorry slavo, no disrespect to yours and my slav ancestors, I was merely using !@#$! Spelling, I didn't even know the guy's name beforehand

¡se escribe "ja ja ja ja"! ¿sí?

Only on el cucy de la mayana ;)

Monaco's owner has apparently reduced his investment in favour of a more grass-roots, academy-driven set up.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...try-rybolovlev

From the article:

'Rybolovlev will not bankroll the recruitment of another Falcao “in the foreseeable future” but he does not accept that any plan to grow Monaco more organically is doomed to failure because of the club’s small fan base.'

Too nobody's surprise, the Seahawks obliterated the Packers and humiliated fanboy QB Aaron Rogers.. maybe that dude should focus on his Discount Double Check commercials yo ;)

I always keep an eye on how the Dolphins are doing but want to watch more games this time around. We get one live game free a week, starting tomorrow with the Colts vs the Broncos. Kind of excited, even though I've no idea what the big teams are these days - although I'm assuming the Dolphins aren't one of them.

Correct assumption ;)

Never sure what I think about how the NFL's transfer system can so dramatically affect a teams fortunes. It obviously stops cash-rich teams dominating year after year but ultimately feels a bit artificial. It's hard to follow a team from season to season given there seems so little long-term continuity compared with in football/soccer.

The salary cap has destroyed continuity in the nfl.. to be sure.dolphins were good and even stolr their division from the patriots in 2009. Dont feel bad, I HATE all the hyped teams and fanboy teams.. the beauty of the NFL is that even crap teams are more or less enjoyable to watch and evrn have their.moments so people can enjoy their teams regardless

mexico-chile friendly in a couple of hours--vidal might sit it out

futbol with its domination by the upper classes, arbitrary decisions by judges, perpetual sufferings for rare moments of fulfillment, endless spells of boredom, mindless displays of tribalism, etc.-- serves as a good metaphor for life, a life that working classes know and understand well.

on the other hand, nfl football (i can't speak for the lower orders of the sport, from high school games all the way down to stuff like games of flag football at family picnics)… nfl football provides the manufactured illusion of permanent excitement and outsized enthusiasm-- loud music, bands, cheerleaders, constant interruption and replays, beer commercials that get more attention than the game itself--in other words, it's so fake and so hyped that only innocent americans who dream that everyone is middle class, life can be fair, and paradise is just around the corner can believe it in their hearts. sort of like the great coke vs. pepsi debate--it doesn't matter. the great enjoyment is fake.

i'm not blaming americans for this, but i guess the relative newness of the country coupled with the sense that everything is possible is what allows people to believe such states are actually attainable without heavy manufacture.

in spite of all the marketing and machinery and hype surrounding association football, the game itself remains a relatively grim contest that satisfies better just like water quenches thirst where coca cola just makes you thirstier

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anyway if we're going to talk nfl vs association here then i'll rant

==

back to topic, euro qualifiers just started! curious about germany-scotland and italy-norway. wondering what conte is gonna do.

ps- HALLO BUNDESLIGA!!!

https://klowdtv.com/

goltv for $4/mo. ($5 for HD).

AT LAST!!!

what do you mean by this, are spectators in the US mostly upper class? I didn't know that. I thought it had gotten pretty popular all over by now.

Football never really made it here in Europe, they started the Euro league a some years ago and it got really hyped at the start. Now I don't even know if it still exists.
And I never liked it either, I still don't understand the meaning of the game. Heck I've even seen a Super Bowl in a bar in the US when I was there, didn't change it. I love Baseball and Basketball though, but only the US teams. Especially Basketball really sucks over here, small teams players don't make any money. I would love to see more NBA on TV here, even thought about getting ESPN, but then I would be watching it all night long because of the stupid time zones :(

your analysis of nfl vs futbol is flawed by your bias.. while the tv product is highly produced and manufactured the reason most average americans whi are substantial rather than casual fans of nfl is that just like your analysis of futbol, nfl reflects real life ups and downs.. the moral of everygame is that win or lose, teams have to put it all on the field, just like in real life its all or nothing. If you fail and lose you at least hope to put your team in a position to have won fair and square by doing your best on every down. For example my Ravens lost today to our division rivals the Bengals, a team we traditionally dominate like our little brother. Well today like in real life we got cocky, we took it for granted, and we lost.BUT, in the final minute we had a chance to tie it up. We fucked it up, lost the game, but the moral victory for us ravens fans is at least when it really counted we put it all on the field and put our team in a position to tie or ose fairly.. hello.. I love you won't you tell me your name ;)

Also congratz demonrail, those Dolphins HUMILIATED those "arrogant fucks" the Patriotz.. oh yeah !@$#! something you probably dont get to see since youre not an nfl fan is unlike futbol wich uses the tables system, nfl uses divisions, which allows shit teams to still have their moments of revenge sabotaging the seasons of the better, more popular, "elite" teams the way the Dolphins beat down the Patriots today.. Indeed because they are in the same division, even if Dolphins don't make the playoffs this single win against New England very well could ruin Patriots seeding in the playoffs, and if Dolphins play well enough even give them a chance like in 2009 to steal the division crown!

THAT is a huge part of being an nfl fan, those symbolic wins during regular season games where underdogs have their brief moment in the sun, and fans can have their fun celebrating and shit talking to their rival fans. Also geography is huge part of nfl, in England or Spain those are relatively small countries USA is huge.. so people have fun shitting on cities or regions when their teams win and also within their regional divisions when they can gloat over beating a neighboring city. The Bengals (our AFC North rival) beat my Ravens today IN BALTIMORE which needless to say they are enjoying with gusto.. Just like with Pats-Dolphins, this single game could be the deciding factor to the division if Bengals-Ravens have the same win record or worse, if Baltimore is just one game out of the playoffs we can rightfully blame this loss (indeed its how we took the division crown from Bengals in 2012/13 because we had a head-to-head tie breaker for having beat them twice in the regular season even though we both finished the season 10-6)

meanwhile my Falcons got a rare win agaonst those fucking cocky ass New Orleans Saints so we can spend the week shit talking in good fun while claiming regional hegemony. Meanwhile the rest of the country will look at it and choose their own sides as outsiders and enjoy the fun as if they were all in the South

no no no, not at all any of that.

i mean that in association football the big teams (man u, bayern, real madrid, etc) tend to dominate mercilessly and pillage the little teams whenever they need new personnel.

you know, like in real life, the rich fuck the poor.

most americans don't believe that social classes exist.


of course duh, that's the main point-- to express bias

======

germany 2 scotland 1 today. it wasn't great but it was entertaining. gotze as false 9, muller as a big pain in scotland's ass (he even got himself yellow carded at the end), schurrle getting better every day, some of the younger guys a bit lost (e.g. howedes). scotland clearly less but not as terrible as i expected-- their goal was nice and they have some talent. though germany missed some big opportunities and the difference could have been bigger.

That is the best part of the NFL vs futbol.. in the NFL on "any given Sunday" even a total shit team can humiliatingly upset the primadonna favorites, much like the way the Dolphins manhandled the pretty boy Patriots (my bias is showing, I HATE the fucking Patriots) and again, because of the Divisional format even the most elite teams can have their seeding or even playoff hopes totally FUCKED by a single game against a division rival underdog

^^ yeah that's a fantasy. the illuminati decide each week's winners and assign mcjobs.

We've mentioned this before talking about MLS..


..that is why personally I prefer Divisional format over the Table System.. Table System rewards the better teams, sure, but it really fucks out the small dogs. In Divisional format, not only do otherwise meaningless games between lesser teams and their better division rivals have more significance, but as I mentioned, the lesser team can even do some serious damage to the better team even if the lesser team fails to make the playoffs. Its happened before where shit teams have shitted on the elite team's seeding in the playoffs by beating them in a single game in the regular season which has dropped the elite teams from 1st seed overall to 3rd or 4th seed.. Also interestingly sometimes three teams can advance from a single division because of Wild Card statuses, or even worse, only a the Division winner can advance because teams from other divisions swooped on the Wild Cards..

Another example of division games having added meaning to otherwise meaningless games, and maybe _tunic_ can add to this since he mentioned be a baseball fan, I was at the LA Dodgers game last night at Dodger Stadium against our division rival the Arizona Diamondbacks.. It was my first ever game at Dodger stadium and so even though I don't even like or really follow baseball I was really into it and had a LOT OF FUN.. What was even better, the D-backs are the Dodgers rival, two years ago we didn't even make the playoffs because we lost 12 games to those dudes, since then we've beat them 13 of 17 times, they are punching bag. So what was I yelling all night at the game every time one of the D-backs got struck out?

"Hey Arizona, y'all better just go home early tonight and watch the WNBA (Women's B-Ball) Finals.. that is the only way Phoenix will ever win a championship!"

Needless to say it added to the good times ;)

in real life small dogs get fucked out

witnessing this helps create awareness of social classes.

the nfl keeps americans asleep. here's their broadcast when you put on the glasses

If only there was a seperate thread for all this NFL talk currently clogging up this thread...

Oh wait!

Although I think they're totally different games (NFL is obviously closer to rugby than it is football) I do like comparisons between them, if only cos it confirms that football leaves American football in the dust on just about every level.

ha ha ha ha-- yes! (to both)

anyway are you ingleses excited about tonight's qualifier game vs. switzerland? i think it should be good…

I'll watch it but without much enthusiasm. They've expanded qualification, so even if we lose the chances of us not getting through is minimal, even with this England team.

i see. i'm not so much concerned about qualification (heh, my country is elsewhere) but about how managers are shaping their teams at this point. i think that's where the fun is right now (e.g., what will conte do?).

low fielded a bunch of newbs against scotland: howedes (ok he's now a "world cup veteran" but still he's not so great), sturm and drang… ha ha no, not those… rudy and durm, as fullbacks. one is from hoffenheim and the other from dortmund-- i've never seen/noticed them but there they are. lahm retired is such a weird absence, and with hummels injured, holes everywhere. scotland gave them some worries for sure.

I love futbol, and its very exciting, but nfl is the one blowing dust. Literally, I bet the seahawks defrnse could physically DESTROY even an english premier allstar team of all the best futolers.. the physicality would literally crush creampuff futbolers.. sure those.dudes.can run aroound about 10 miles a game but can they take a real tackle from rich sherman or chancellor with out dying on the pitch? Also, the falcons win over saints was better than any regular season futbol match ive ever seen and why aren't you gloating about your bum miami dolphins humiliating the messi of nfl?

Ahem.. we were also talking about baseball ;)

Come on, you can do better than that, surely. If that's your basis for NFL's superiority then I'll happily admit defeat, content that there's thankfully a bit more to the likes of Kompany or Ivanovich than an ability to 'crush' and 'destroy'.

Anyway, England beat Switzerland ... blah blah ... nothing much learnt ... blah blah ... decent performance ... blah blah ...

I watch both sports and enjoy both sports, even if not equally. I concede both y'all and my own mutual biases, obviously y'all are going to say futbol is better, and obviously I am going to say football is better. Crush and destroy is a huge aspect of NFL fandom, this is true, but its also truly about the FINESSE plays that sneak in between all that mass violence. When a QB threads the needle on a pass between two scary ass linebackers who we all know hit hard as fuck (e.g. the Sherman-Chancellor combo in Seattle or the Webb-Suggs-Lewis combo of prime Baltimore Ravens) THAT is the skill, that is the magic of NFL. Its not merely the hits, its the ability of these athletes to work finesse plays facing those hits! Simply throwing or catching the ball is 100% guaruntee to result in a hard hit. Yet throwing and catching the ball is the basic element of the game, indeed teams have to do this every 30 seconds or face penalties! I've seen plenty of futbol games where scoring came way to easy, where moving the ball around for 70% possession was to easy, where defense was practically non-existent. And hey, that is fine, but with NFL even if you get an epic offensive beat down like the one Germany put down against Brazil, that shit team that got stomped on at least gave a lot of hard hits in the process so that it wasn't as easy at it looked for the team that wins!

When the Denver Broncos put up 50 point games like candy last year, and were blowing out teams by an average of 3 scores (the equivelant of a 5-2 average in futbol) you can believe that it wasn't as easy as it sounded, dudes were getting HIT to make those points every time.

Again then, its not the hits themselves that is the game, but how beautiful it is to watch a great scoring TD or a long pass, or a crazy rush breaking three tackles through ALL that potential of hits and violence in the NFL.

I mean watch Julio Jones break through FOUR TACKLES sliding in between huge guys trying their damnedest to bring him down and tell me its not finesse at its highest order!!




Me? I think of futbol as something like NFL and Basketball combined, all the players are two-way players like in B-ball and the strategy to score requires constant moving, screening, blocking, passing to move the ball successfully to the goal. Its like NFL in the sense that there are tackles, hits, falls, and low scoring opportunities. Its why I really like it, it seems to combine all of my favorite elements from all my favorite sports, but I must be brutally honest, when I've never had the kind of 20 minute boring scoreless, playless lulls that I've seen in DOZENS of Futbol matches when watching even the shittiest NFL teams hence why in the end I like NFL better. Basketball is my passion, but NFL is something special that I enjoy once a week for a few months with enthusiasm.

The one thing that makes the NFL better TO ME is that when you watch an NFL game that went scoreless and finished something like 6-3 all field goals it was WAY MORE exciting because of all the hits than watching a 0-0 draw in futbol ;)

Also, demonrail, did you not notice the Dolphins not only gave the Patriots their first Game 1 loss in ELEVEN years BUT also thoroughly DOMINATED them finishing not merel 33-10, but outscoring Patriots 23-0 in the second half??



How are you not even mentioning this as a sort-of-Dolphins fan? Shit, I hate those damned arrogant fucks Patriots so much that I'm celebrating the shit out of it and I'm not even remotely a Dolphins fan!

gonna start putting beefcake photos on your american football thread

That is fine since all the fubolers are too small ;)

great. you'll have all teh BIG MEN you want