football thread No11

Well Sepp Blatter's hypocrisy knows no bounds. When he first met Obama, first thing he told him, was not, "Nice to meet you Mr. President" it was "You need to get your league (MLS) on the international schedule." It is also FIFA policy to punish countries and federations when national governments interfere with domestic football activities.

We are infuriated as a country (not just our president) for being screwed out of a World Cup bid, and given to a country smaller than the state of Massachusetts, particularly when FIFA pointed out that the 2002 World Cup needed to be held in two countries because Japan and Korea were too small to hold it individually. We also have state of the art stadiums in place across this continent spanning nation in world class cities EVERYONE recognizes and visits regularly, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Chicago. And the comments that the World Cup organizers said about our cities and stadiums is abhorrent. Qatar is building cities to hold the tournament with essentially slave labor. WTH is that all about?

You don't get to insult one of the greatest countries in world history and get away with it. FIFA are a money grubbing SOBs with a false sense of power, and they will pay for corrupting our beautiful game one way or another.

I wonder how far the investigation will reach. Also will teach FIFA to think twice before screwing the US over again. We had/have been the favorites for the 2026 World Cup [with most people expecting the 2030 World Cup to be in South America for the centennial cup] and this action probably will guarantee that FIFA won't try any funny stuff for the 2026 nomination
 
FIFA Frantically Announces 2015 Summer World Cup In United States

ZURICH—After the Justice Department indicted numerous executives from world soccer’s governing body on charges of corruption and bribery, frantic and visibly nervous officials from FIFA held an impromptu press conference Wednesday to announce that the United States has been selected to host this summer’s 2015 World Cup. “We are thrilled to reveal that, for the first time in 21 years, the World Cup will finally return to America, with matches set to kick off today at 5 p.m. local time in Los Angeles,” said FIFA president Sepp Blatter, smiling broadly before unveiling the tournament’s official logo, a hand-drawn stick figure kicking a soccer ball with “USA 2015!” hastily scribbled in black marker above its head.
 
CONCACAF is a filthy cesspool of corruption, as well as FIFA...I hope they lock them for life and throw away the key...

As for the World Cup biddings, Qatar was always a shady decision to me...I supported a US or Australian bid because those places would be prepared well in advance and has the infrastructure and attractiveness to host such events.
 
Pangur Bán;13837645 said:
Yes, Qatar is an outrageous scandal. All my life they said world cup hostings should bring football to as many people as possible, be in big accessible countries, and then they hand it to a tiny city-state in the desert whose main workforce are slaves and whose temperatures are unsuitable for any kind of sustained athletic activity.

It looks like the US is using anti-Mafia laws to prosecute these guys. Beautiful. I hope it works, and to see Blatter finally brought to justice would be extra beautiful. A scene like the end of the movie Fargo would be especially nice. What good will his petrodollar slush funds be to him as he spends his retirement golden years in a small cell with a large angry tattooed guy called Bubba?


Right on! Hope Blatter ends up like Napoleon, well, in a sense, time to repent for FIFA and it's president. Tiny desert nation of Qatar winning the rights to hold the World Cup, literally winning over bids from (football inventors) England and the enormous and rich US? What a bunch of corrupt crap!
Ps. Canada would be more than happy to help the US hold World Cup (in a couple of cities) if need be.
 
very exciting half of the europa league final. 2-2 at the half.

Ended up Sevilla 3 Dnipro 2, a great match. Perhaps some of the Premier League managers could finally learn that in modern football you win with offence and scoring, not by playing the whole game with 1 striker, pathetic.
 
The MLB, NFL, and NBA are all the best/most competitive leagues in their respective sports. When a team is crowned champion they are effectively the best teams in the world in those sports. Hence: world champions. Particularly in the NBA and MLB, a challenger from a foreign country could play against the champions, but they would be annihilated quite simply. The gap in competition is just that wide. The only time the US doesn't dominate in FIBA and the Olympics is when they struggle to drum up enough interest among their 1st team stars to actually go compete, and the WBC has notoriously failed to pique the interest of the best American baseball players beyond making a token appearance for a couple innings in one or two games.

Yeah, when Hawthorn or Sydney win the AFL Grand Final, nobody seriously calls them the world champions of Australian Rules Football. Despite the pretty-wide gap between the AFL and the USAFL.
 
No, I do not support mid-season friendlies. I have season tickets and the front office offered to give us (season ticket holders) free tickets to this game (in a way) by allowing us to exchange our Canadian championship final tickets (Toronto got eliminated in the semifinal) with a ticket for this game. I did not bite though, instead I'm going to get the cash value of that ticket back, which is actually almost 50% of the value of the Man City game ticket.. I could have easily made the exchange and sold the Man City ticket for profit, but meh..

But yeah, I'm not sure if you watched the game or not, but if you looked at the southern stand (on the right on TV, behind the net), it was completely quiet. No flags, no singing, no chants.. That section is usually filled with loud supporters who sing the entire game. None of them support mid-season friendlies, so that's why the atmosphere in the stadium was so quiet.

I sit in a different section, because from the south you don't really get a great vantage point of the game.. and I love analyzing player movements, positioning, and tactics, and such. But I wouldn't have gone to this game no matter what. It's an insult to our players. They have a game on saturday to play (that I am going to!), there is no need to play a mid season friendly. It can just lead to injuries and players getting tired for no reason.

They're only doing this for $$$ related reasons..

Having said that, if they were playing Chelsea, I would have went. I have never seen Chelsea play in person. So I am against mid-season friendlies, because it negatively impacts our season, but if it was Chelsea I'd cave in and go, just to get a chance to see both of my favourite teams play head to head.

I watched the Man City game on TV mind you, and was surprised.. mainly because TFC started a bunch of TFC II (our farm team) players, and Man City fielded a very strong side and didn't really bring in much youth until the last 20 minutes of the game. Meanwhile TFC subbed off our best player (Giovinco) 25 minutes in or something similar. Good on the coach for doing that.

Either way, it was really good to see our youngsters play in such a composed way against a top Premier League side. I didn't expect it, I would have predicted 4-0 for City, even if TFC fielded the strongest side possible. Jordan Hamilton, who hasn't even started for us yet (I don't think) and has been playing with the farm team (and on loan in Portugal for a while) should have had at least one goal. His movement off the ball was great, but the first touch and final touch let him down a couple times. Too bad we didn't score, but overall I think we looked very good against a top side. Losing 1-0 to City isn't so bad considering a lot of our guys were teenagers and City were fielding such a strong side - Most of our players likely came out of this with their heads held high - probably did a lot of the youngsters a lot of good to see that they can actually compete (to a degree) against such good opposition.
 
Bold prediction, Sepp Blatter wins tomorrow. With one of the votes coming from US Soccer.
 
"Do not let the corruption of the few reflect badly upon those of us who's corruption has not been revealed." - Sepp Blatter
 
I hope that he did not actually say that! :wow:
 
CEOs of major corporations have stepped down from their position for much less. Sepp is such a greedy SOB he refuses to resign, even at the behest of Europeans. Just step down and enjoy your cushy life soccer has given you until the Swiss and the Americans finish connecting all the dots to nail you.
 
But nailing Sepp will put thousands of manservants and slaves out of work!
 
But nailing Sepp will put thousands of manservants and slaves out of work!

no way man! it would create jobs that need to be filled! Obama can then talk about creating jobs once all is said and done! :mischief:
 
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