the_eristic

Well its not really their game. I used to work in the states and played alot of football when i was there. One thing i noticed was that in general the girls technically were alot better than the boys when we played. That's surprising. Why is that? I think its because the girls all play soccer when they are able to walk and they play all through school. Guys have baseball, basketball and american football to name a few. Soccer is way down the pecking order. American football I can understand but I don't see why girls wouldn't pick baseball and basketball over the other sports. Many do pick basketball and baseball (well, softball, usually) and volleyball.They are comparatively free to choose what they want to play, and many, having played soccer since childhood, and there having been strong role models in the women's game for some time now, stay with the sport. Boys, on the other hand, very rarely get to choose. Their sporting activities are on the whole taken MUCH more seriously by the adults around them, so the instant they show some kind of athletic inclination, they're quite literally dragged out of whatever sport they might be playing and thrown into whichever of the school's programs is the money/prestige-maker, which is essentially never soccer. They will often face pretty significant social repercussions if they do stick with soccer (or other non-mainstream sport), especially if they're seen as talented. Coaching tends to be abysmal-to-non-existent, too. "Hey, the PE Teacher's assistant isn't busy Saturday, get him to handle it." It's pretty stupid.

Guardian has just posted some clearly "let's pull names and numbers out of a hat and put them into another hat with some glue and pull them back out and publish them however they've stuck" top 50 Summer transfer targets, in which our dear Christian is said to want a move away and is "valued" at a mere 10.5M. It would be funny, were it not for the inevitability of a noteworthy percentage of the brainless masses (and brainless pundits and managers, too) taking it as gospel, declaring our valuation too high and using it to publicly try to beat us down when we hold out, at which point I will just remind them that we got 20M for Stewart Downing.

I'm assuming you're talking about the US. I can't figure why we can produce such great keepers and very determined, aggressive (if typically lacking technical ability and craft) players elsewhere on the pitch, but consistently produce central defenders with the attention span and decision making of a fruit fly. For as long as I can remember, even our very best defenders have always been full of stupid self-inflicted and completely avoidable mistakes.

He'd be sent off in Spain every other week. Don't think he would suit their football terribly well, either, unless Diego is planning on making some changes.

Regardless of how well he actually plays (that is, assuming he most likely won't go and score 40 goals in his first season), I get the feeling that the insurmountable hype and the inescapable comparisons to Messi will lead to him being considered a bit of a flop, at which point he'll be sold/traded to the likes of Milan or Juve in some incredibly convoluted deal, will do rather well for them, then be brought back to Spain by Madrid.

I'm born'd and bred 'mmuuuurkin and I wanted the Dutch to win. Spain was and is soooooo freaking dull to watch. It says a lot about that final that the best and most exciting chances were Dutch counterattacks that Robben flubbed and/or Casillas thwarted. Also, people spouting off about how the Dutch approached that game (anit-football, etc) is somewhat bemusing, given how on the occasions Chelsea has played Barcelona over the past few seasons (especially away), they've employed a physical stifle-and-counter game, same as the Dutch used v. Spain, only to be lauded as tactically brilliant. "That's how you beat teams that can keep the ball better than you, you tackle hard, stop them from playing, catch 'em on the break" ad infinitum from pundit and punter alike

If only Robben had shown that composure in South Africa, Netherlands finally would've had their World Cup.

Everyone looked pretty lazy today. Half-assed touches, fullbacks not even attempting to close down most of the time, et cetera.

Too many lazy touches and passes out there.

Er, last time he played we got nailed 8-0 I meant the season prior. I would like to forget that thrashing. Bennett actually came on for him in the 56th minute at 3-0. We let in the first of their remaining five in the 58th minute. Terrible, terrible game.

Two can play the diving game!

Have not our recent struggles sufficed? I'm not one for superstition, but claret shorts and socks is dooming us from the off.

The scene where Mercedes starts humming the lullaby at the end of Pan's Labyrinth, and in GDT's earlier film, The Devil's Backbone, the Doctor's soliloquy both get me every time. Also, pretty much the entirety of The Wrestler. Stuff like Hotel Rwanda, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and such always upset me because of the utter incomprehensibility of the human capacity for inhumanity, while on the other side of the coin, 8 1/2 always makes me cry from the sheer joy and beauty of it. You should've seen the looks I got from my friends and family the first time I made them watch it.

Sam Adams is not what I'd call great (it's the definition of mediocre, imo), but it's generally inoffensive. Maybe an infected line?

Goalkeeper... shot stopper... Lincoln... so... many... tasteless... jokes... arrrrrrrrgghhhphbttt...

Playing Dragon's Dogma. It's good, but not too exciting until you either venture out at night, at which point it becomes horrifying, or you're walking down the road and something HUGE and angry plops down on your head out of nowhere. Those fights are seriously fun.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/118/402 Quality. Also picked up some Samichlaus Classic. Splurged, since yesterday was my birthday, $19 US for a 4-pack, but still cheaper than per beer than buying some macro trash at the average bar around here. Only problem with buying a beer so expensive is that it's almost hard to bring myself to actually crack it open! Still contemplating whether I should tonight, or save it.

He also had 7 assists in 16 starts + 12 sub appearances. Not that bad for a teenager in a new league, an awful team, and who had only played something like 10 games over the previous season.

Bent did make a couple threatening moves through the middle, one of which left him essentially with an open goal, but Benteke didn't look up and blasted it into the side netting. Wish Lambert would've handled the subs differently. Essentially brought on the right players out of what was available, but in the wrong order/for the wrong people. Sylla for Bowery to reinforce the midfield, then Bent for N'Zogbia with Weimann staying on to maintain our attacking presence, Holman for whoever was most shattered when/if we'd taken the lead again. The particular way in which our subs were made left nobody to play creator for two forwards who are both on the selfish side and one of which relies entirely on supply.

I've lost 99 Humanity and about 1M souls trying to take down a late game boss at SL25. If you play for a while, losing your bloodstain will become much less upsetting. Games like PES and FM make me much angrier than Dark Souls, because the scripting takes control away from you. When you die in Dark Souls, it's always on you. Just get into that mindset ahead of time, "I'm going to die, it will be my fault, I will learn, I will approach what killed me more thoughtfully next time" and the anger gets replaced by calm focus and a touch of, well, paranoia.

Patience is the name of the game. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. You must wait for your opportunities, take time to understand how the mechanics work. Otherwise, you're gonna have a bad time.

Playing Dishonored. It's so close to being good, but just... just isn't quite there. The difficulty isn't there (except those **** hagfish, most dangerous enemy in the game!), the AI isn't there, the combat isn't there, perhaps most disappointingly, the purported freedom isn't there. The areas aren't really that large and are almost entirely linear, there might be multiple ways to approach them but each of those ways is completely telegraphed. The only thing it nails is atmosphere, via the art direction, writing + voice acting and the "lore" (for instance, the Heart's secrets are my favorite part of the game), but even then, it never really capitalizes on the darkness and intensity promised. It's like a slow burner that never actually catches fire. I think the only way I'm going to get what I want out of it is to go for the "Ghost" playthrough on the highest difficulty with no powers (which completely trivialize everything, as cool as they are), but even then, I now know all the paths and AI mechanics, so I dunno. It had incredible promise. I'm pretty disappointed.

If only Benteke had looked up and found Bent instead of blasting that shot. He had a direct line to Darren standing right in front of goal just yards away.

Just for the sake of accuracy (I have no interest in the argument at hand, whatever it is), Bennett came on for Lichaj shortly after the break, immediately before Chelsea hit us for the remaining five of their goals.

Going back to the first post, Chelsea won 55 out of 67 with Robben starting. That is pretty remarkable. Will be interesting to see how the Cleverly stat compares when/if he gets the same amount of starts for United.