So long as they're trying to catch a pass threaded between bigger men I'm down ;)

on second thought, why disturb other people and interrupt their conversations when trying to offend your prudery and nobody else's.

when you get like this you're best ignored.

I told you, I may be chaste but I'm surely no prude, after all, I'm still friends with Rob aren't I ;)

You're empty threats don't scare me, indeed I'd celebrate with a brew and hardy "hoora!" if you actually followed through sometime ;)

Haha. I didn't see the game but I did see the score. The Dolphins are more just a team I follow very distantly than one that I really support. I don't know much about them at all now compared with when I first got into them in the 80s during the Shula/Marino era, before kind of losing contact with the game altogether in the mid 90s. I watch games whenever I'm in the US, either at friends' homes or in sports bars,, which for a while actually got me liking college football maybe even more than the NFL, but that really is almost impossible to follow here, so NFL it is - but it'll take time to really start caring about it again. I'll need to refamiliarise myself with the new players and the new team names. (That bit drives me nuts, I mean who the fuck are the Carolina Panthers? They didn't even exist when I was watching it. And where have the Oilers gone?) You talk about the arrogant Patriots but that's obviously something that developed after I originally stopped watching it, so I'm also gonna have to get a grip on who the teams to hate are now. In the Prem it's easy, unless you support Man U, you hate them, just because they're Man U. Schadenfreude is a massive part of enjoying football for me but it'll take time before I can get it from the NFL. Who's worth hating in the NFL right now?

buffon in balotelli out

still a 3-5-2

WWCD??

Demonrail.. as we mentioned before with the NFL salary cap destroying team continuity, don't even bother trying to refamiliarize yourself with names and rosters, I've been following the NFL for years and I can't even name the entire roster for my own Baltimore Ravens or my bromance team the Atlanta Falcons because simply put, they cut guys too often and change things up! I don't even try! I just watch the games, read the recaps, and if a particular player or name catches fire, then I take notice then.

After all, for example, during our Superbowl Run I got really into the Ravens' roster, you know what happened? ALL THE GUYS I LIKED MOVED ON IN FREE AGENCY THE NEXT YEAR. Literally, ALL OF THEM! Cary Williams, Paul Kruger,Danelle Ellerbe, Correy Graham.. my favorite legendary Patriot killer Bernard Pollard, we even let Ravens' HOF legend Ed Reed go!!!

Shit. So don't even waste your time, NFL rosters are too fluid to bother with following

italy dominated from the start but didn't strain themselves and kept it a comfortable 2-0 (zaza + bonucci).

zaza was great but a bit unlucky-- scored the first goal for italy (his first international goal as well) but he missed 2 fantastic chances in the 2nd half (one hit the goalpost, another was saved by a norwegian defender from the goal line after zaza chipped it in). good striker instincts though.

very nice, signor conte, very nice…

(on yet-better news, i heard he convinced pirlo to return… which he has… pirlo is nursing a hip injury but should return next month.)

I didn't get to watch, but what the fuck happened to the Oranges?? Did they just mail it in since as folks have mentioned, the new Euro qualifiers are a bit of a cakewalk?

Yeah, I watched it too. Zaza really impressed me. Good win against a not shit Norway team. I really rate Conte. There were too many players out with suspensions or injuries tonight to know exactly what he's gonna do, but he created a 3-5-2 at Juventus that was nigh on impenetrable so you'd expect something similar for Italy. I liked Prandelli but Italy rarely felt like 'Italy' for me while he was in charge. Formation wise Conte's still a way from a traditional Italian defence but going on what he did at Juve, no less effective.

speaking of conte, and juve, pirlo, and all that, i wonder how it's going at juventus with allegri as coach--pretty awkward i bet. i need to catch one of their games-- oh, CL starts next week!!!

That hasn't changed much from when I first watched it then. There were a few Dolphins players I knew, Marino, obviously, Mark Clayton, maybe a couple of others, but most of them were anonymous or gone before I really got to know who they were. Football has a similar problem but there it's about all but the very richest teams constantly having to rebuild as clubs higher up the financial pecking order buy up the best players from teams beneath them.

They won their first game. I didn't see it but reviews said he kept loosely to Conte's previous set up but everyone assumes he'll revert them to a 4-4-2 before long. Allegri's biggest problem will be trying to follow Conte's success.

of course, but given how pirlo left milan to flee allegri's bench… ha ha ha… reportedly they patched things up a couple of months ago, but still… and then conte re-recruits pirlo for italy...

i smell renaissance-level intrigue!



(sforza had the better afro!)

Thats why i prefer international futbol to league futbol, national teams want to field the best rosters so its easier for me to keep track of who is who and where.. also why nba is my favorite sport, teams also have a bit more continuity and even if rosters change its only 12 players per team and around 400 total in the entire league so not only can I know my own teams rosters but also several other teams concurrently. So no one can tell me how the Netherlands lost today?

I already did :)

Oh, I didn't know about all that. Pirlo's probably too old to make another move now and Allegri couldn't afford to alienate fans by letting him go out on loan or anything, anyway, so they're probably just stuck with each other till Pirlo's contract expires. Like you say, awkward.



AOB: Was just checking the zonalmarking site for something and saw this ...

If it wasn’t obvious, ZM is now on a summer break…which might extend past the summer, and into 2014/15…so no season previews, tips for outright betting on the EPL, transfer analysis or analysis of new managers.

The site will return at some point with a different focus – fewer post-match analysis pieces, and more sporadic posts looking at long-term tactical trends, focusing on players, managers and teams – that kind of thing – which seems more popular.

Obviously doing both would be ideal, but time constraints mean that’s not really possible. The WC2014 match analysis might be the end of the old-style site, and from now it might become more of a traditional blog (which, in truth, was the intention at the start). Stay tuned!

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2014/07/28/zm-break/

Hope it does come back and, if it does, that the changes aren't too radical.

^^ I read that and it was a huge disappointment.

Maybe he'll do that kind of analysis for his paid work so one still can find it.

Dude I know, !@$&#! got me hooked on zonalmarking cuz I had been reading michael cox on espnfc for years and I was totally let down to see they arent going to have indepth post match analyses I mean without it whats even the point?