We’re in the middle of the greatest international sports summer ever! We have:
- Copa América (COMPLETED! Argentina is your champion.)
- Euro 2020 (COMPLETED! Italy is your champion.)
- Concacaf Gold Cup (IN PROGRESS!)
- Tokyo Olympic Games (START TONIGHT!)
Today, we are previewing the two fútbol tournaments on offer: The Men’s (more even) and The Women’s (USA’s to lose).
As they have been for decades, the Olympic Games are being broadcast by NBC and its vast portfolio of associated cable channels (USA, CNBC, NBCSN, MSNBC, The Olympic Channel, etc.). On the bright side, Telemundo is part of the NBC family, so you will be able to quench your fútbol en español thirst there.
Canadian coverage will be on CBC, CBC News Network, TSN, and Sportsnet. Coverage en español will be through a channel called Telelatino. French coverage will be on Ici-Radio-Canada Télé and RDS.
***
Women’s Tournament
There are 12 teams competing and they are split into three groups:
Group E = Canadá, Chile, Great Britain, Japan
Group F = Brasil, China, Netherlands, Zambia
Group G = Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, USA
Tournament Format
In the Group Stage, each team will play the others in its group once. There are three days in which all teams will play:
- Wednesday, July 21, 2021
- Saturday, July 24, 2021
- Tuesday, July 27, 2021
The top two teams in each group plus the best two third place teams will be placed into the Quarterfinals
The Knockout Round will take place as follows:
- Quarterfinals – Friday, July 30, 2021
- Semifinals – Monday, August 2, 2021
- Bronze Medal Match – Thursday, August 5, 2021
- Gold Medal Match – Friday, August 6, 2021
Tokyo is 16 hours ahead of LA, so I always just subtract 8 hours and add a day. Since the games will be played in the evenings, that means that kickoffs will be in the middle of the night in LA.
As an example, please see below the schedule for last night (all times Pacific) including the final scores:
- 12:30 AM – Great Britain 2 – 0 Chile at the Sapporo Dome
- 1:00 AM – China 0 – 5 Brasil at Mimi Miyagi Stadium
- 1:30 AM – Sweden 3 – 0 USA at Tokyo Stadium
- 3:30 AM – Japan 1- 1 Canadá at the Sapporo Dome
- 4:00 AM – Zambia 3 – 10 Netherlands at Mimi Miyagi Stadium
- 4:30 AM – Australia 2 – 1 New Zealand at Tokyo Stadium
On the bright side for you East Coasters, you should be able to catch some of the games during breakfast! I myself tuned in for the South Pacific Ocean Derby and that was a blast to watch!
Who is good, who is bad, and who is ugly?
The overwhelming favourite is the United States. However, there are several teams that could catch them on a bad day in the Knockout Round and end their Olympic journey early. I count among those teams: Sweden, Brasil, China, Japan, and the Netherlands.
Here are the teams that I think make the Quarterfinals:
- USA
- Sweden
- Australia
- Brasil
- China
- Netherlands
- Canadá
- Japan
Who will win?
Initially, I wrote, “Barring a complete breakdown, the US should win the gold.” Aaaand then Sweden destroyed the USA last night. So Brasil?
***
Men’s Tournament
There are 16 teams competing and they are split into 4 groups:
Group A = France, Japan, México, South Africa
Group B = Honduras, Korea Republic, New Zealand, Romania
Group C = Argentina, Australia, Egypt, Spain
Group D = Brasil, Germany, Côte d’Ivoire, Saudi Arabia
Tournament Format
In the Group Stage, each team will play the others in its group once. There are three days in which all teams will play:
- Thursday, July 22, 2021
- Sunday, July 25, 2021
- Wednesday, July 28, 2021
The top two teams in each group qualify for the Quarterfinals.
The Knockout Stage will run as follows:
- Quarterfinals – Saturday, July 31, 2021
- Semifinals – Tuesday, August 3, 2021
- Bronze Medal Match – Friday, August 6, 2021
- Gold Medal Match – Saturday, August 7, 2021
Here is tonight’s schedule (all times Pacific):
- 12:30 AM – Egypt v Spain
- 1:00 AM – México v France
- 1:00 AM – New Zealand v Korea Republic
- 1:30 AM – Côte d’Ivoire v Saudi Arabia
- 3:30 AM – Argentina v Australia
- 4:00 AM – Japan v South Africa
- 4:00 AM – Honduras v Romania
- 4:30 AM – Brasil v Germany
Who is good, who is bad, and who is ugly?
Unlike the women’s tournament, there are a lot of good teams in this competition and quite a few have a good chance of winning. I see the contenders being Brasil, México, Spain, Germany, France, and Argentina.
These are the teams I see making it to the Quarterfinals:
- France
- México
- Korea
- Romania
- Argentina
- Spain
- Brasil
- Germany
Who will win?
I honestly have no idea but I know that the games will be awesome to watch as the games among the top teams will be super close.
México won gold in London in 2012. Don’t see why they can’t do it again, but I’m biased.
Evening. I heard the women were more disappointing than most men usually are. What else did I miss?
The men aren’t disappointing, because we don’t expect anything from them. The men are like watching the closing credits of Benny Hill: running in circles, accomplishing nothing, but oh so hilarious.
Not USMNT, men generally
Japan wins on a swinging bunt squeeze play type thing.
I switched from the game to catching up on The Bad Batch. Damn you, Star Wars addiction!
Bunt squeeze is an actual popular category of Japanese porn.
From what I’ve heard anyway.
Extra innings in this softball game! O’Toole still hanging strong.
Gumby and I had to pretend we weren’t high at his dad’s house tonight. Made us feel like teenagers again!
I’ve spent way too much time on the internet today. Time to give my eyes some rest.
Found a funny:
give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, push a man into a volcano and the sun god will ensure a bountiful harvest this season
I am slightly disappointed that no one has said anything about Mimi Miyagi Stadium…
I may have posted this before but I’ll post it again. I think this is comedy genius. That’s David Lynch behind the desk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlEJbs02wAM
The Letterman arc was so, so, so good. And the Grodin stuff was amazing too. I can’t believe Louie had to fuck it all up by cornering women and jerking off at them.
Thinking about how it resolved, and how all of that shit was just a *negotiating tool* – it’s so accurate and poignant and awful. As awful as cornering women and jerking off at them, really.
And now the game everyone has been waiting for!
México v Japan in Women’s softball on NBCSN!
0-0 in the bottom of the first.
The Mexican pitcher is named O’toole.
I repeat: O’toole.
So this is hilarious to me:
Only one of the girls on the Mexican softball team was born in México.
Everyone else is from the US.
Oh, and the one girl born in México went to San Diego State…
Viva La Raza!
Damn straight.
Grubhub screwed us out of dessert. No cannoli for the Gumby’s! Verrry disappoint!
File a complaint. Free food for yoy and the driver loses pay and future work.
Win, win!
Not a Karen.
We’ve all gone full Karen at some point
I did get righteously pissed at the dog groomer once. They had my dog all afternoon,never let him outside to pee, and then expected me to clean it up when he didn’t make it to the door. Um, no.
I used to work for the postal service. I have seen some Karens. I tend to just not give people return business if they do me wrong. I don’t give a lot of second chances.
My Karen time: 3 trips in a row to the same McDonalds. Each time, they mess up the order. The last one was so bad I wound up calling the 800 number on the receipt. The store manager calls me back the next day and I am still pissed. They send me a gift certificate in the mail and I tell the family we are not going back to the particular McDs ever again. Well, you know that didn’t last, and I now am the person who won’t move the car until I check my entire order in true Karen fashion.
He didn’t leave the gun.
I’ve been putting off working out all afternoon because it was too hot, and am now approaching the point where I will put it off until tomorrow because it has gotten too late.
It’s a good system.
You really don’t need to workout if you’ve been sweating.
He will have to replace fluids, though.
Yes, overhydrate if you’re not sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMFT7SGtltM
Teenage Fanclub is what Mark Sánchez prays to dream about every night before he goes to sleep.
Another question: Why were they sharing forks?!
Awesome, so the 5-hour nap I had this afternoon (sorry about that, clients) gets me some LESSER ALL NITE ACTION? Pretty sweet.
I’ve been drinking and writing extensively lately.
Here’s a short thing I wrote (it’s still very much a work in progress) but I’d like to share it with you. I’m still working on this.
In the submarine service before we went on a 40 day patrol we did a “load out” of food, and every menu had been planned so all provisions were loaded in reverse order, and we had to that by hand through eighteen inch hatches. The submarine service is harsh and shitty duty, but my goodness they fed us well, easily better than any other branch of the military, and probably better than most civilians. We had fresh vegetables and dairy products for the first two weeks, and when that ran out “the cow died” and then everything was frozen food removed from the “reefers” (refrigeration units). However, if a crewman were to die on a patrol, they ain’t stopping the patrol. The corpse would have been stored in one of the “reefers” with all our food until we completed our patrol and returned to port. Also, we didn’t have a doctor on board, we had a single highly trained “Hospital Corpsman” who could sew you up if needed. On a submarine there are only two guys who are required to be qualified to do sutures. The Hospital Corpsman is of course the first one, and then the XO (Executive Officer, second in command) is the second one, in case we needed to sew up the Corpsman.
They called the powdered milk “white death” after the cow died. At least they did on the Thomas Jefferson, don’t know if it was everyone.
We called it “plastic cow” on the James Madison.
That too!
Gumby was on the commissioning crew of the Nebraska, they got regular care packages from Omaha steaks for the sea trials and first patrols. He never bitched about the food
Bottom of the last inning on NBCSN, USA is leading America Juniour 1-0.
The US pitcher is about 6’8″ and 93 pounds.
Olympic softball, to be specific.
Did they win? NBC is showing people talking and ESPN says the game is still in progress.
Yes, 1-0. One solitary hit for Canadia.
I watched the entire Seattle expansion draft despite so their picks leaking earlier going for trades, only to find out they made none and selected more than a few questionable players.
Seattle. What the fuck?
They should have held it at Pike Place & had each pick tossed in on a fish.
They did that for Toronto’s pick
I really wish legit journalism outlets would get rid of opinion sections.
And fire Chris Cillizza out of a cannon into a brick wall.
Hey – that’s Jungle Boy’s dad!
Nick F’n Gage as Labor #2!
I once spent an entire 3 month college internship at a defense contractor exactly as you describe
Yeah, it was a well paid internship, that was a fantastic summer
My best college internship was also with a defense contractor and it was also well paid. I had to put topographical features on a program based on maps of Europe.
I really enjoyed that job.
I’m watching the Biden Town Hall and while its nice we got a President that is less selfish, childish, racist and evil, we still got the old and rambling. Don’t get me wrong, its a great first step, but we need to do better in ’24. There are some bad people in the GOP that are worse than Trump because they are smart and know what they are doing.
Also, fie on Biden for talking about infrastructure but not going up I-71/75 and across the Brent Spence Bridge during rush hour taking 2 hours to go 7 miles with you standing on the brakes because the last two miles are all downhill because whoever designed the route is a rucking fetard, fardon my Prench. If the Presidential Motorcade was subjected to that, the Army Corps of Engineers would be replacing it by tomorrow morning.
So, my new manager has been here for a couple of months now, and as far as I can tell he still doesn’t know what team I’m on
Team Jacob is an option?
It’s too hot today.
Cool!
Went to bed early and missed the PARTY in Milwaukee!!
Looks like it was ROCKINGGGGG!!
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1417696947142545409