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    #51
    Russia is ‘preparing to slaughter stray dogs en masse before World Cup 2018’

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      #52
      Not going to watch a second. I'm not sure how I feel about international (in the sense of countries playing each other) sporting events at all these days. I know too much now.
      Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 15-05-2018, 23:49.

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        #53
        What do you think we do with stray dogs in Britain? (Clue: Battersea Dog's Home isn't an all-inclusive doggy retirement resort)

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          #54
          Ah, whataboutery.

          I’m well aware that dogs are killed in this country as a last resort (and support charities that work to try and avoid that eventuality) but I’m not aware that we slaughter them en masse for cosmetic reasons prior to major national events.

          Perhaps I missed that part of the Olympic build up?
          Last edited by Ray de Galles; 16-05-2018, 10:13.

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            #55
            Russia did it before the 2014 Winter Games, too, apparently. As did Greece before the 2004 Summer Games:
            https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-Olympics.html

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              #56
              Hi, it's Buzz Killington here again. So now that an international inquiry has confirmed that the Russian military in illegally occupied Ukraine shot down a civilian airliner that killed all 298 people on board in 2014... ah fuck it, I give up. Enjoy your poxy fucking tournament.

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                #57
                Well, the Dutch are boycotting the tournament.

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                  #58
                  I hate to be prejudiced against a whole country but I am prejudiced against Russia as well as any place that doesn’t love dogs. That includes vast swaths of the US too.

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                    #59
                    Originally posted by imp View Post
                    Hi, it's Buzz Killington here again. So now that an international inquiry has confirmed that the Russian military in illegally occupied Ukraine shot down a civilian airliner that killed all 298 people on board in 2014... ah fuck it, I give up. Enjoy your poxy fucking tournament.
                    So far, my boycott is going fine. Not having cable helps and not having any local, or even national, rooting interest helps.

                    I’m ambivalent about 2026. I don’t blame anyone for not wanting anything to do with the US right now. But this bid includes Mexico and Canada and they shouldn’t be punished for our misdeeds. And maybe the US will be a better more open place by 2026. If not, then I probably won’t be here.

                    More importantly, putting it in Morocco is a bad idea. It’s going to end up fleecing that country and they can’t afford it. Have it here and the WC can use facilities that have already been built - with taxpayer funds in many cases, but it’s too late to undo that.

                    Barring some massive change in FIFA, i’ll probably boycott 2026 too, even if the games are in my yard.

                    Increasingly, i’m finding it hard to enjoy sports at all. Money, greed, and stupidity is ruining all the sports at all the levels.

                    If I had a kid, I wouldn’t encourage them to play organized team sports. I’d try to get them into surfing or rockclimbing or skateboarding or something else where the focus is on the experience itself in the moment rather than winning or getting a scholarship or putting something on your CV to get into Brown or whatever. Fuck all that.

                    In my day...

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                      #60
                      Originally posted by Wouter D View Post
                      I am just too excited by the prospect of Uruguay and a Salah-led Egypt condemning Russia to a group stage exit despite being drawn in one of the softest groups imaginable.
                      Yes. That would've been great.

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                        #61
                        Instead, my good friend Pepe is going to do something horrible to Sergio Ramos.

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                          #62
                          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                          If I had a kid, I wouldn’t encourage them to play organized team sports. I’d try to get them into surfing or rockclimbing or skateboarding or something else where the focus is on the experience itself in the moment rather than winning or getting a scholarship or putting something on your CV to get into Brown or whatever. Fuck all that.

                          In my day...
                          I could definitely understand that approach. On the other hand, there is something to be said for the educative benefits of learning to play on a team, if the coach is sane and the parents are not involved. I had two new players on my U7 team on Saturday, and both the dads stood on the touchline, and both had to be asked twice to go and stand behind the fence with the rest of the parents. And I could tell they had no clue why I was asking them to do this, and why they couldn't stand there egging Junior on, kick by kick. It wasn't even, "Oh, sorry, didn't realise!" It was the sullen stare, like I was a pernickety control freak out to ruin their quality parenting time.

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                            #63
                            Yeah, the team dynamic is a great lesson but, for the reasons you mention, it often goes off the rails.

                            I learned far more about how to get along with people and make society functional by playing pick-up touch football and street hockey with friends than I ever did in any of the proper organized sports I played as a kid. And I'd say my experience with organized sports was better than most in my generation. I didn't have any outright psychos and my parents, if anything, didn't push me hard enough in sports. But there were lots of other psycho parents around and I saw the kind of nonsense you describe (though usually in baseball and hockey, not so much in soccer. In my day, soccer wasn't taken as seriously. That's all changed now).

                            A lot of people, in the US at least, bemoan the advent of "participation trophies" and the reported coddling of kids in sports. Their solution is to make kids' sports even more insane, cutthroat and competitive so the kids don't become "soft." This is all anti-social right wing bullshit of course and will just push kids away from sports.

                            The problem isn't that kids are "soft," it's that they don't have the experience and specific *social skills* necessary to function in demanding interpersonal situations because they're used to adults handling it for them. For example, if a kid isn't getting playing time or is struggling with some aspect of the game (or in school), the current MO is for them to whine to their parents who then pressure the school or the coach to favor the kid. Or, as the Jordan Peterson/"kids are too soft"-brigade would have it, the kid just sits down and shuts up and does whatever their coach demands. Indeed, there are coaches who will bench or kick kids off a team for even asking what they can do to get more PT.

                            Neither of these contributes to making the game enjoyable, or make the kids into better players, and it's not a good lesson for the kid. In "real life" - in college or a job - one has to be able to go to one's teacher or boss, without mom or dad threatening to sue, and have a civil adult conversation about how he can improve his position. I, along with most functional adults, have been on both sides of lots of these conversations in my lifetime - though probably not as many as I should. I learned how to do that as a kid. Whenever I was having an issue with a teacher or coach, my parents would help me devise a strategy for how to discuss it, but then I was on my own to have the meeting.

                            Likewise, playing pick-up games without refs really forces one to learn how to respect other people and "respect the game." For example, the pick-up street hockey games I've played in have far less cheating than games I've played with refs. Because with the latter, assholes are just trying to see what they can get away with (and rec league street hockey doesn't attract the cream of the officiating crop) while in self-officiated games, anyone who plays like that in a pick-up game won't be invited back and/or will be known around school/town as a psychopath that shouldn't be allowed to join one's game. That's a much better model of how society ought to work than trying to get away with as much cheating as possible and then bitching at the underpaid ref.

                            And, at least in the pick-up games we played, everyone played their hardest. Because playing and trying to get better and make a good play was its own reward. It didn't have to lead to any honors or awards later. We might keep score, but then we'd forget about it and pick new teams when the game was over. Again, a good lesson for life - living in the moment, focusing on the task at hand, etc.

                            But kids today hardly ever play sports on their own. Everything is organized with coaches and refs and screaming parents trying to "protect their investment" or they play video games online, which at least gets them away from screaming adults but require no organizational skills or effort at all.

                            Ultimate frisbee (or just ultimate, as players insist calling it) is played with this "spirit of the game" self-officiated system. I liked that a lot in the one semester I played for W&M's club, but I didn't really like playing ultimate all that much. I'm too slow and I never really understood the tactics.

                            There are many benefits of having a good adult coach, if one can be found. Of course, that they can teach skills that kids couldn't learn very well on their own, and dispassionately identify bad habits and correct them, etc. That's why in basketball, for example, there are street ball legends who can do amazing things with the ball but can't play defense for shit. I'm sure there are equivalents in soccer. And, of course, having somebody designated as coach to decide the strategy for the team is helpful. Even if they're bad at it, it's usually better to have one plan than everyone improvising all the time. And it can be helpful to have somebody in charge who is detached from the internal social dynamics and politics of the team. The worst "coaching" situation I encountered was in college club lacrosse where the leadership of the club was more-or-less self-appointed by a small group of guys who belonged to the same asshole frat. Perhaps needless to say, the club fell apart. And has reformed and fallen apart a few times in the 23 years since I graduated.

                            As I understand it, one of the reasons why youth sports has become increasingly professionalized and expensive isn't just because parents are psycho, but because the parents and the kids were sick of parent-coaches who favored their own kids and, very often, didn't really know how to coach the sport they were coaching. The downside of that is, of course, the cost and when parents are paying a lot of money for their kid to play on a team, they naturally see the "stakes" as higher than they really ought to be and that just feeds on itself. Then, of course, coaching became a for-profit enterprise with all the abuses and problems that come with any capitalist venture. Having a formal licensing system makes sense, but then those courses are expensive and maybe create an unnecessarily high barrier to entry for volunteers. It's a tough balance.


                            Sorry this is a major diversion from the point of this thread, but it's one of the things about America that really bothers me right now.
                            Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 29-05-2018, 21:09.

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                              #64
                              No need to apologise, Reed - great post. As a coach I now have the advantage of having none of my own kids on either of the two teams I'm responsible for, although I don't think I was ever open to the accusation of favouritism when my own daughters were under my watch. On the U7 team (about to go up to U9), I'm bringing in the sane parents as my assistants, and trying to keep the others at a safe distance. Of course at some point I'll want to see my coaching translated into good play on the field, but right now I can feel detached from what's happening in front of me. You can argue philosophically about the importance of results in football, but at this level there is literally nothing less important than the game's numerical outcome.

                              You're absolutely right about the importance of street soccer/pick-up games. That was how I played the majority of my football throughout my youth - every break, every lunch-time, every weekend and every summer evening. The only disputes I can remember were about what the score was. "It's 13-11!" "No, it's fucking not, it's 12-12!" In organised school/club games, I can hardly recall any fouls let alone yellow cards - throughout my whole school and club career up until the age of 18 I can not think of a single occasion when anyone was shown a yellow card, or even said anything to the referee, or even complained about him after the match and blamed him for us losing. It's a plausible theory that the two are connected.

                              I actually came on here to mention that another Kremlin critic has been picked off. But don't worry, folks, they won't be shooting any football fans!

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                                #65
                                I'm coming round to this way of thinking.

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                                  #66
                                  Watching a tournament on non-PPV TV isn't economic participation though is it? You can't even argue that you're contributing to viewing figures unless you have a BARB box. It won't make even a token difference to international politics if you watch or not, so why not just enjoy the football?

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                                    #67
                                    Originally posted by diggedy derek View Post
                                    I'm coming round to this way of thinking.
                                    Me too

                                    Though that journalist has just shown up alive

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                                      #68
                                      There seems to be distinctly less World Cup fever in the US compared to the last 3 that have taken place since I moved here. That might change when Mexico make their traditional last 16 cameo but obviously only in places where there's a Mexican heritage. Fox may even regret buying the thing now (but not as much as I regret them buying it. ESPN was bad but Fox is comical, with commentators who do not understand the offside rule, etc).

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                                        #69
                                        Fox is bad. They've got college football now too and it just feels cheap and cheezy. ESPN, by comparison, feels like Masterpiece Theater hosted by Alistair Cooke.

                                        I don't understand what is going to happen to them now that they've sold a big chunk of themselves to Disney/ABC/ESPN/Marvel. My understanding is that the Fox broadcast TV network is going to be "gutted" but, I gather, the garbage cable networks will go on doing what they do.

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                                          #70
                                          The Wiki on the proposed deal is solid

                                          Under the terms of the agreement, which is expected to close by summer 2019, pending regulatory approval, Disney will acquire the Twentieth Century Fox film and TV studios, cable networks such as FX Networks and Fox Sports Regional Networks, stakes in National Geographic Partners, Fox Networks Group, Indian satellite TV group Star India, stakes in Hulu, UK based satellite TV group Sky plc, and other key assets.

                                          21st Century Fox will spin-off Fox News, the Fox Business Network, FS1, FS2, Fox Deportes, the Big Ten Network, the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Television Stations, and MyNetworkTV into the "New Fox" company.

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                                            #71
                                            To all the anti-Fox folks, watch as I have for the last umpteen World Cups, one of the Spanish language channels. This year it is on Telemundo.

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                                              #72
                                              Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                              Though that journalist has just shown up alive
                                              Most of us can only use our posts to jinx football teams, but Imp's powers are on a whole different level.

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                                                #73
                                                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                                I see. I think what that means is that the Fox network will still exist, but it won't be connected to the people who actually make new TV content, so it's going to be mostly sports, pro wrestling, and Fox News garbage. That's based on something I heard from some TV critics that I didn't quite understand.

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                                                  #74
                                                  And content they buy from other studios, presumably.

                                                  I have no idea how much content they produce in house now, but then I never watch “network” television other than for sports.

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                                                    #75
                                                    Russia might be well advised to boycott the world cup. this game against austria isn't going well.

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