Troy Queef posted:

Deadspin goes and outdoes itself here: http://screamer.deadspin.com/hope-s...dium=socialflow

Spam posted:

In todays transfer window sterling is worth about 25million if he was playing in Spain and he's Spanish and about 25 yrs old, the fact that he wants out means that value has reduced by 5million so 20m, he's English adds 5m, back to 25, Manchester City is the buyer adds 5m to 40, and if his contract expires he will still be below 24 and a tribunal will have to determine his value which will be between 20 to 25m then to 60m so let's say because he wants out 45m isn't bad for him.YNWA

THATCHER BRAINWASH posted:

wrong thread and get the gently caress out

JFairfax posted:

You can read how Zayn Malik never left One Direction, or how Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart never broke up and are now happily married with kids. You can read how Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have for years been engaging in a kinky relationship in the boarding houses of Victorian London. You can even read a cherishably weird tale about Lukas Podolski giving Miroslav Klose a really nice foot massage. In the fanfic universe, you can read or write pretty much anything you want.

Fan fiction – a genre in which amateur writers take existing characters and work them into their own homespun tales – is nothing new. Long before they wrote Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, the Bronte sisters would make up long fantasy adventures featuring the Duke of Wellington. But, nourished by the growth of the internet, fan fiction has swelled and flourished to the extent that it is probably the single most significant literary movement of the 21st century. The fastest-selling paperback novel of all time, Fifty Shades of Grey, began life as a smutty reworking of the Twilight books.

Meanwhile, a Texan woman called Anna Todd last year received a six-figure advance for After, her series of One Direction fanfic stories, which have been read more than a billion times online.

At the heart of fan fiction’s appeal is a sort of wish fulfilment: a subtle remaking of the world in which one’s wildest fantasies can gush uncontrollably to the surface. And while a good deal of fan fiction is sexual in nature, much of it is just quite sweet: charming teenage reveries that begin with a single pleasant idea – “wouldn’t it be nice if” – and wend their way to a dreamily emotional conclusion. Wouldn’t it be nice if me and Taylor Swift were best mates? Wouldn’t it be nice if Harry Styles walked into the kitchen right now and put some toast on? That sort of thing.
In a fortnight's time we see the opening of the transfer window, and yet despite the two being ostensibly unrelated, it strikes me that there are certain similarities between the millions of stories that teenage girls tell each other on Tumblr, and the millions of stories that football will tell itself over the next three months. For the reopening of the summer window marks the ceremonial point at which football subtly shifts in character: from a real game played on the pitch, to a fantasy enacted largely in the imagination.

To be fair, there is still some actual football happening, but even here the distinction between the physical and the imagined is not entirely clear. The Copa America began in Chile last week, or to give the competition its more web-friendly title, “276 Players Arsène Wenger Should Sign Immediately”. And the suspicion remains that, in this country at least, it is impossible to watch foreign football without wondering whether the swarthy Colombian guy with the bad mullet and the Jesus tattoo could do a job for you in midfield.

For the devoted fan, transfer windows are essentially a giant playground of the imagination, predicated on one of the game’s simple but immutable laws: that every club, no matter how big or small, is just “a couple of signings away” from everlasting greatness. The important thing to remember is that these signings are entirely conceptual, and totally independent of the number of actual signings made.

No matter how many players your club buys, it will still always need a couple more, a phenomenon known as The Redknapp Paradox.

And as such, this is the time of year when imaginations run wild. Log on to any club forum and you will scarcely be able to move for fans scrawling out how they envisage their team lining up on the first day of next season: ADRIAN, DANI ALVES, REID, HUMMELS, CRESSWELL, KOUYATE, POGBA, NOBLE, DOWNING, REUS, CARROLL. “Yeh id be happy with that,” the first reply generally reads.

What is this, if not a particularly niche form of wish fulfilment? And what is the transfer rumour mill, if not a fun game of “wouldn’t it be nice if”? Transfer tales are football’s fan fiction – not because they are necessarily untrue, but because they appeal to the hopeless dreamer in all of us.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go and finish that story about 'Poldi’ and 'Miro’. That foot massage was just getting interesting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/football-transfers/11681197/Summer-transfer-window-allows-fan-fiction-to-run-wild.html

JFairfax posted:

You can read how Zayn Malik never left One Direction, or how Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart never broke up and are now happily married with kids. You can read how Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have for years been engaging in a kinky relationship in the boarding houses of Victorian London. You can even read a cherishably weird tale about Lukas Podolski giving Miroslav Klose a really nice foot massage. In the fanfic universe, you can read or write pretty much anything you want.

Fan fiction – a genre in which amateur writers take existing characters and work them into their own homespun tales – is nothing new. Long before they wrote Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, the Bronte sisters would make up long fantasy adventures featuring the Duke of Wellington. But, nourished by the growth of the internet, fan fiction has swelled and flourished to the extent that it is probably the single most significant literary movement of the 21st century. The fastest-selling paperback novel of all time, Fifty Shades of Grey, began life as a smutty reworking of the Twilight books.

Meanwhile, a Texan woman called Anna Todd last year received a six-figure advance for After, her series of One Direction fanfic stories, which have been read more than a billion times online.

At the heart of fan fiction’s appeal is a sort of wish fulfilment: a subtle remaking of the world in which one’s wildest fantasies can gush uncontrollably to the surface. And while a good deal of fan fiction is sexual in nature, much of it is just quite sweet: charming teenage reveries that begin with a single pleasant idea – “wouldn’t it be nice if” – and wend their way to a dreamily emotional conclusion. Wouldn’t it be nice if me and Taylor Swift were best mates? Wouldn’t it be nice if Harry Styles walked into the kitchen right now and put some toast on? That sort of thing.
In a fortnight's time we see the opening of the transfer window, and yet despite the two being ostensibly unrelated, it strikes me that there are certain similarities between the millions of stories that teenage girls tell each other on Tumblr, and the millions of stories that football will tell itself over the next three months. For the reopening of the summer window marks the ceremonial point at which football subtly shifts in character: from a real game played on the pitch, to a fantasy enacted largely in the imagination.

To be fair, there is still some actual football happening, but even here the distinction between the physical and the imagined is not entirely clear. The Copa America began in Chile last week, or to give the competition its more web-friendly title, “276 Players Arsène Wenger Should Sign Immediately”. And the suspicion remains that, in this country at least, it is impossible to watch foreign football without wondering whether the swarthy Colombian guy with the bad mullet and the Jesus tattoo could do a job for you in midfield.

For the devoted fan, transfer windows are essentially a giant playground of the imagination, predicated on one of the game’s simple but immutable laws: that every club, no matter how big or small, is just “a couple of signings away” from everlasting greatness. The important thing to remember is that these signings are entirely conceptual, and totally independent of the number of actual signings made.

No matter how many players your club buys, it will still always need a couple more, a phenomenon known as The Redknapp Paradox.

And as such, this is the time of year when imaginations run wild. Log on to any club forum and you will scarcely be able to move for fans scrawling out how they envisage their team lining up on the first day of next season: ADRIAN, DANI ALVES, REID, HUMMELS, CRESSWELL, KOUYATE, POGBA, NOBLE, DOWNING, REUS, CARROLL. “Yeh id be happy with that,” the first reply generally reads.

What is this, if not a particularly niche form of wish fulfilment? And what is the transfer rumour mill, if not a fun game of “wouldn’t it be nice if”? Transfer tales are football’s fan fiction – not because they are necessarily untrue, but because they appeal to the hopeless dreamer in all of us.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go and finish that story about 'Poldi’ and 'Miro’. That foot massage was just getting interesting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/football-transfers/11681197/Summer-transfer-window-allows-fan-fiction-to-run-wild.html

trem_two posted:

This makes absolutely no sense. Why should gender affect the game of soccer? It’s passing and running and kicking. Men may have been playing it in larger numbers for a longer period of time, but the concept is exactly the same and gender plays no role in performance. Most sports are like that. Rarely does women’s lower center of gravity play into how a sport is played. Basketball is notable for the difference, but some people, especially old curmudgeon’s prefer women’s basketball for exactly that reason. The women’s game isn’t played above the rim, it’s played more like it was when only white people played. Figure skating is another. I think women’s figure skating is artistic and beautiful while I think men’s figure skating is brutish and boring. That has to do with the center of gravity. But, women’s golf? I watch women’s golf all day long. What’s the difference? One extra second of hang time on a drive? I’d watch women’s softball if they ever moved back the mound. A fastball in women’s softball comes at a hitter more quickly than a major league fastball. It’s a ridiculous game to watch only because of that. Or, try telling the Colombia women’s soccer team that women’s soccer sucks. I watched their game against France, they were f’ing aggressive as all get out. It was great fun for the viewer.

trem_two posted:

old curmudgeon’s prefer women’s basketball

TheBigAristotle posted:

What?

blue footed boobie posted:

No one likes women's basketball

blue footed boobie posted:

No one likes women's basketball

blue footed boobie posted:

No one likes women's basketball

blue footed boobie posted:

No one likes women's basketball

blue footed boobie posted:

No one likes women's basketball

blue footed boobie posted:

No one likes women's basketball

blue footed boobie posted:

No one likes women's basketball

TheBigAristotle posted:

What?

reformed bad troll posted:

No one likes women's sports.

sassassin posted:

Not content with smashing their own club records for top-flight points totals and swatting aside the pessimists with their eloquent style of football, and consolidation as a Premier League side, Swansea City are now well on their way to becoming the coolest team in England’s highest division.

Garry Monk’s side are favourites of both the football hipsters and the football tipsters for their odds-defying victories, desire to do things their own way, the organic, fan-orientated origins of their modern rise and the first team’s increasingly on-trend squad list of engrossingly cult and fashionably obscure names.

Read more at http://www.squawka.com/news/how-swansea-city-are-building-the-coolest-team-in-the-premier-league/401611#gZK2GeCICdS30gmt.99

ronniegardocki posted:

Reports from South America are suggesting that Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona is planning a run to replace Sepp Blatter, the disgraced president of FIFA, as the head of world soccer’s governing organization. Grantland has obtained an exclusive copy of Maradona’s campaign platform and has reprinted the text below. The title of the document, written in elaborate calligraphy on a sheet of pale orange paper, is “Let’s Fuckin’ Do This!: An Explanation of My Principles.”

I, DIEGO ARMANDO MARADONA FRANCO, do herewith perform and consecrate the following observations, reflecting the nature of the great game of football and how it may be salvaged from these jerks.

1. CONCERNING CHICKENS. The chicken is a noble beast, yet we stand firm in our conviction that the chicken has no place on a football pitch. A chicken that could talk and that ran around all day screaming “I am Diego Maradona, and my hepatitis is much better, thanks!” would be a terror to player and spectator alike. WE SAY NO to talking chickens who impersonate us and shout updates about our hepatitis.

2. CONCERNING MEMORY. Life is a vale of tears, as the poet said, but dwelling on past hurts only prolongs present suffering; therefore, during all football and football-related activities, we STRICTLY FORBID remembering the time your beloved goldfish, Diego Maradona, was poisoned by a chlorine pellet that your children’s nanny dropped in his tank because hoo boy that lady was a junkie.

3. CONCERNING GRENADE CLIPS ON AMMO BELTS. Football is a place of joy and safety for all the world’s children. If you choose to wear live grenades on your ammo belt, it is IMPERATIVE that those grenades not explode during a match. This is ON YOU, ESPECIALLY if you are refereeing.

3a. An exception to the prohibition on live grenades may occur if a talking chicken wanders onto the pitch and begins screaming “I am Diego Maradona” and then anything whatsoever about hepatitis.

3b. Example: You are at the World Cup enjoying a frosty glass of Budweiser when who should appear but Diego Maradona, the talking chicken who loves nothing more than sharing personal Hep-B alerts. You have a chain gun. NOW IS THE TIME TO LIGHT THAT MOTHERFUCKER UP.

3c. I want you pumping that chicken full of a never-ending cascade of hot metal, roaring until your throat burns, making the chicken’s little body dance and twitch under the hail of gunfire until nothing remains but a mangled chicken corpse surrounded by bullet-craters and a foam of blood with little bits of beak and feather in it.

3d. You are now under arrest, for you have murdered Diego Maradona, the president of FIFA, in front of 50,000 witnesses.

4. CONCERNING YOUR MURDER TRIAL. You will be provided with a lawyer at FIFA’s expense. If you need more lawyers, take all you want. FIFA will fund and create a special “lawyer closet,” where hundreds of lawyers will be kept night and day to defend anyone who kills the president of FIFA with a chain gun. The new motto of FIFA is “accidents will happen [shrug].” A special team of lawyers will also be assigned to arrange bail for FIFA’s most notorious serial criminal, the master jewel thief Diego Maradona (get this: He’s a panda bear).

5. CONCERNING YOUR ROLE IN THE URANIUM MINES. Should your 2,735 lawyers fail to exculpate you, you will be sent many miles underground to the great caverns of FIFA, where you will mine for uranium for the rest of your natural days. Here, great stone men called Towering Armandos will act as your jailers, whipping you with bullwhips when you misbehave. Do not misbehave. Our stance is clear: It is time to end corruption within FIFA.

6. CONCERNING YOUR DARING ESCAPE. What’s this? Your cellmate is a talking panda bear? And he happens to have in his pouch a tiny plastic baggie with a goldfish in it? DIEGO MARADONA, YOU SURVIVED??? At first you don’t get along, but soon, soon you are a team. Now it is time to outwit the Towering Armandos and make your run to the sweet milky daylight of freedom!

7. CONCERNING THE HELICOPTER CRASH AND YOUR SUBSEQUENT WRIST SURGERY. The first lesson of football is teamwork. But teamwork is impossible when the pilot of your escape chopper is a goldfish who has no hands. Like, think about it! Ha! How could he even steer! Fortunately you crash into the side of an orphanage, which cushions the blow somewhat.

8. CONCERNING YOUR GROWING SUSPICION THAT THE GOLDFISH DIEGO MARADONA IS IN FACT NOT DIEGO MARADONA AT ALL BUT A DEMON INHABITING THE BODY OF THAT MAGNIFICENT PISCINE PET. At this point, you are working as an assassin, or “cleaner,” for a fascist guerrilla troupe in the mountains. This makes it easy for you and the panda bear Diego Maradona to take the goldfish Diego Maradona to a small village where there is an exorcist, a bison working under the assumed name of Diego Maradona.

9. CONCERNING LARGE AMOUNTS OF COCAINE. There is NO PLACE for cocaine within football. Away from football? Sure. In the locker room? Go for it. If you are a bison exorcist tasked with removing the demon from a strangely reanimated goldfish? Friend, you’d be crazy NOT to do a few lines.

10. CONCERNING THE FINAL CHICKEN OF FIRE. Out of the flopping, gasping form of your friend, the goldfish Diego Maradona, there rises and swirls a mystical flame, which coalesces slowly, above the campfire, into the form of a great fiery chicken with eyes of doom. It stares down upon you with glittering malice. “I am Diego Maradona,” it squawks. “I had … hepatitis. BUT I AM BETTER.”

“Dieeeeeeeeeeee,” you wail, unsheathing from your hip scabbard your sacred dagger, Sir Bobby Robson. (NOTE: You have a sacred dagger called Sir Bobby Robson.) Holding Sir Bobby Robson by the blade, you draw back your surgically repaired wrist and fling it forward as hard as your arm muscles will allow, sending Sir Bobby Robson spinning through the air, blade over hilt, toward the savage face of the chicken-demon. The chicken emits a scream as the dagger pierces its eye. There is a roar like a helicopter colliding with the side of a children’s dormitory. All the stars in the heavens flare out, then the sky goes dark. In the light of the campfire there remains only you, the panda Diego Maradona, the pseudonymous bison Diego Maradona, and the goldfish Diego Maradona, who can breathe air like a person now.

You have done it. You have triumphed over evil. Breathe deep in this moment, my friend.

You are under arrest, for you have once again murdered the president of FIFA, Diego Maradona.

Thank you for your vote.

Yours severely,

Diego Maradona (Human)

TheBigAristotle posted:

I only just stumbled on this excellent meltdown from the Copa America thread, in response to a post that said none of the players care about the tournament:




Because a team is 11 players not 9 or 8?

Only 3 of Colombia's current team start for their club. 4 today because Arias played instead of Zuniga.

You guys really don't know loving football. You can't analyze matches tactically at all. Colombia was all over Peru until Valencia got injured because we had a functional midfielder who can actually pass the Ball.

--------------------Ospina----------------
Arias---Zapata--Murillo--Armero
----------Sanchez--Valencia--------
Cuadrado-------------------James
----------------Falcao--Teo-----------

How the gently caress does the ball get to the wingers, much less the loving forwards if the two midfielders can't pass a ball forward? Mejia certainly loving can't. Pekerman knew he had problems with this position for over a loving YEAR and FLAT OUT REFUSED to try and find another player. Abel Aguilar injured right before the tournament and we have NO MIDFIELDERS meaning NO ONE TO PASS THE BALL FORWARD FROM THE DEFENSE. Which naturally means HOOFBALL AND PRAY.

And it was poo poo.

Learn loving a thing or two about loving tactics you manchild instead of posting in a forum like you think you understand the god drat sport. Having 11 good players (And they're not 11 good players because Falcao, Cuadrado, Valencia, Sanchez, Armero, Zapata and Murillo have all started a total of 3-4 matches each in the past 3 months. ) means jack loving all poo poo. Tactics is what win you a game. Knowing WHERE to play a player WHEN.

Pekerman hosed up. He played too many players only because they were good in the world cup and didn't give chances to new young talent who are actually starting for their teams like Jose Izquierdo, Felipe Pardo, Freddy Montero, Daniel Torres, Carlos Carbonero, Freddy Hinestroza, or Sebastian Perez.

Still this wasn't THAT BAD because last tournament we LOST during this match. Our defense looked good. Murillo is only 22 and getting good experience against some of the best strikers in the world. Unfortunately just like the World Cup our team is not in the best form right now for this tournament.

dex_sda posted:

that dude is really mad about sports

ronniegardocki posted:

Reports from South America are suggesting that Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona is planning a run to replace Sepp Blatter, the disgraced president of FIFA, as the head of world soccer’s governing organization. Grantland has obtained an exclusive copy of Maradona’s campaign platform and has reprinted the text below. The title of the document, written in elaborate calligraphy on a sheet of pale orange paper, is “Let’s Fuckin’ Do This!: An Explanation of My Principles.”

I, DIEGO ARMANDO MARADONA FRANCO, do herewith perform and consecrate the following observations, reflecting the nature of the great game of football and how it may be salvaged from these jerks.

1. CONCERNING CHICKENS. The chicken is a noble beast, yet we stand firm in our conviction that the chicken has no place on a football pitch. A chicken that could talk and that ran around all day screaming “I am Diego Maradona, and my hepatitis is much better, thanks!” would be a terror to player and spectator alike. WE SAY NO to talking chickens who impersonate us and shout updates about our hepatitis.

2. CONCERNING MEMORY. Life is a vale of tears, as the poet said, but dwelling on past hurts only prolongs present suffering; therefore, during all football and football-related activities, we STRICTLY FORBID remembering the time your beloved goldfish, Diego Maradona, was poisoned by a chlorine pellet that your children’s nanny dropped in his tank because hoo boy that lady was a junkie.

3. CONCERNING GRENADE CLIPS ON AMMO BELTS. Football is a place of joy and safety for all the world’s children. If you choose to wear live grenades on your ammo belt, it is IMPERATIVE that those grenades not explode during a match. This is ON YOU, ESPECIALLY if you are refereeing.

3a. An exception to the prohibition on live grenades may occur if a talking chicken wanders onto the pitch and begins screaming “I am Diego Maradona” and then anything whatsoever about hepatitis.

3b. Example: You are at the World Cup enjoying a frosty glass of Budweiser when who should appear but Diego Maradona, the talking chicken who loves nothing more than sharing personal Hep-B alerts. You have a chain gun. NOW IS THE TIME TO LIGHT THAT MOTHERFUCKER UP.

3c. I want you pumping that chicken full of a never-ending cascade of hot metal, roaring until your throat burns, making the chicken’s little body dance and twitch under the hail of gunfire until nothing remains but a mangled chicken corpse surrounded by bullet-craters and a foam of blood with little bits of beak and feather in it.

3d. You are now under arrest, for you have murdered Diego Maradona, the president of FIFA, in front of 50,000 witnesses.

4. CONCERNING YOUR MURDER TRIAL. You will be provided with a lawyer at FIFA’s expense. If you need more lawyers, take all you want. FIFA will fund and create a special “lawyer closet,” where hundreds of lawyers will be kept night and day to defend anyone who kills the president of FIFA with a chain gun. The new motto of FIFA is “accidents will happen [shrug].” A special team of lawyers will also be assigned to arrange bail for FIFA’s most notorious serial criminal, the master jewel thief Diego Maradona (get this: He’s a panda bear).

5. CONCERNING YOUR ROLE IN THE URANIUM MINES. Should your 2,735 lawyers fail to exculpate you, you will be sent many miles underground to the great caverns of FIFA, where you will mine for uranium for the rest of your natural days. Here, great stone men called Towering Armandos will act as your jailers, whipping you with bullwhips when you misbehave. Do not misbehave. Our stance is clear: It is time to end corruption within FIFA.

6. CONCERNING YOUR DARING ESCAPE. What’s this? Your cellmate is a talking panda bear? And he happens to have in his pouch a tiny plastic baggie with a goldfish in it? DIEGO MARADONA, YOU SURVIVED??? At first you don’t get along, but soon, soon you are a team. Now it is time to outwit the Towering Armandos and make your run to the sweet milky daylight of freedom!

7. CONCERNING THE HELICOPTER CRASH AND YOUR SUBSEQUENT WRIST SURGERY. The first lesson of football is teamwork. But teamwork is impossible when the pilot of your escape chopper is a goldfish who has no hands. Like, think about it! Ha! How could he even steer! Fortunately you crash into the side of an orphanage, which cushions the blow somewhat.

8. CONCERNING YOUR GROWING SUSPICION THAT THE GOLDFISH DIEGO MARADONA IS IN FACT NOT DIEGO MARADONA AT ALL BUT A DEMON INHABITING THE BODY OF THAT MAGNIFICENT PISCINE PET. At this point, you are working as an assassin, or “cleaner,” for a fascist guerrilla troupe in the mountains. This makes it easy for you and the panda bear Diego Maradona to take the goldfish Diego Maradona to a small village where there is an exorcist, a bison working under the assumed name of Diego Maradona.

9. CONCERNING LARGE AMOUNTS OF COCAINE. There is NO PLACE for cocaine within football. Away from football? Sure. In the locker room? Go for it. If you are a bison exorcist tasked with removing the demon from a strangely reanimated goldfish? Friend, you’d be crazy NOT to do a few lines.

10. CONCERNING THE FINAL CHICKEN OF FIRE. Out of the flopping, gasping form of your friend, the goldfish Diego Maradona, there rises and swirls a mystical flame, which coalesces slowly, above the campfire, into the form of a great fiery chicken with eyes of doom. It stares down upon you with glittering malice. “I am Diego Maradona,” it squawks. “I had … hepatitis. BUT I AM BETTER.”

“Dieeeeeeeeeeee,” you wail, unsheathing from your hip scabbard your sacred dagger, Sir Bobby Robson. (NOTE: You have a sacred dagger called Sir Bobby Robson.) Holding Sir Bobby Robson by the blade, you draw back your surgically repaired wrist and fling it forward as hard as your arm muscles will allow, sending Sir Bobby Robson spinning through the air, blade over hilt, toward the savage face of the chicken-demon. The chicken emits a scream as the dagger pierces its eye. There is a roar like a helicopter colliding with the side of a children’s dormitory. All the stars in the heavens flare out, then the sky goes dark. In the light of the campfire there remains only you, the panda Diego Maradona, the pseudonymous bison Diego Maradona, and the goldfish Diego Maradona, who can breathe air like a person now.

You have done it. You have triumphed over evil. Breathe deep in this moment, my friend.

You are under arrest, for you have once again murdered the president of FIFA, Diego Maradona.

Thank you for your vote.

Yours severely,

Diego Maradona (Human)

triple sulk posted:

https://twitter.com/br_uk/status/613081662847610880

triple sulk posted:

https://twitter.com/br_uk/status/613081662847610880

triple sulk posted:

https://twitter.com/br_uk/status/613081662847610880

ephex posted:

ephex posted:

fat gay nonce posted:

That's pretty spectacular he should get it painted on the side of his house

ephex posted:

he should do a breno then imo