Good morning early risers let’s hope today we are rewarded with some good futbol! It is I, one of the three gentlemen filling in for Hippo as he takes his hiatus from teh futbol. We all four watch the game a bit differently and focus on different countries for the most part. Today will be no different but 1st let’s get England out of the way!
Our 8 am games are as follows.
Everton visits Bournemouth (NBC SPORTS GOLD). This is week 4 of Hippo’s hiatus and they have picked up points in all 4, not that he would notice as his boycott continues with Fat Sam at the helm. I will just leave it at that and move on, kinda like Sam is going to do next season when they are fighting in the relegation zone….
Watford v Swansea (NBC SPORTS GOLD), the swans have a new manager in Carlos Carvahal so they should beat the Moose Hornets as everyone will want to impress.
Huddersfield at Burnley (FIND IT YOURSELF), both teams are very good and Burnley is 6 points clear in 7th. They won’t catch the big clubs but I always love when an underdog plays well and their fans go nuts. Have you seen their stadium? It is very quaint and is not flashy, just like their style.
Newcastle v Brighton (NBC SPORTS GOLD), both cam up last year in automatic promotion and the club I support is still mired in the Championship.
Liverpool v Foxy Footy (NBCSN), I dislike the Reds immensely but they have been fantastic to watch this year. To me they are like a Man City light. Now I do not want them to win the whole thing as their supporters are insufferable but they are a joy to watch. Lester has been in the top 10 most of the season and truly that is where they belong. They still have class from the year they shocked the world so I expected to see them here.
Chelsea v Stoke (CNBC), break all of the legs. ALL OF THEM!
The late one is Man U vs Southampton (NBC) and I will watch because it is -25 C outside and it is the only thing on. Do you miss Ibra? I mean Lukaku is fun to watch but Ibra is the most interesting man in the world. I miss Ibra.
The match that will be getting my attention takes place real early in Glasgow. It is at 5 am my time but I do expect to wake up for it as if I didn’t my late grandfather would scorn me. It is the Old Firm derby tomorrow and it is always a joy to witness the mayhem in the stands even if the class of football is not the highest.
When I arrived to live in Scotland I would say 80% of people that I would meet would ask what part of America I was from and who do I support, Rangers or Celtic? I would respond by asking where in England they were from and that I support Heart of Midlothian. On 80% of the pubs in the country there are signs that no football coloUrs allowed, unless a designated Rangers of Celtic pub (I was not allowed in a pub with a Fulham top, so it is NO COLOURS of any kind). I will spare you the history of Rangers going down to the lowest division for financial issues a few years back and the whole ‘new Gers’ crap. I have been to an old firm derby but not at Celtic Park. That place is a zoo, and the neighboUrhood it is in is insane with their dislike of protestants with funny accents. That being said that was where I had to go to get weed and it is not the safest. At Ibrox it was still pandemonium but the police presence took you from the train station straight to the venue. Celitc have ruled Scotland for the last few years as Rangers has had to work their way back in to the top flight. I still expect Celtic to come out on top but they did just lose to Hearts recently (heh).
Do yourself a favoUr and head over the to the Old Firm wikipedia page. It is really interesting on more than a futbol level. There is a lot of information about Northern Ireland and the importance of the clubs to that country. I can tell you that in Belfast the coloUrs are worn on both sides of the walls and that they have to have 2 ferries over on matchday for each group of supporters to keep them separate. There are signs on the boats and in bars in Northern Ireland that strictly ban sectarian chants. Northern Ireland is awesome and if you get a chance you should really go and definitely take a black taxi tour it is worth it.
If you have read this far I have a book recommendation for you. It is “How Soccer explains the world : An unlikely theory of Globalization” written by Franklin Foer. You will breeze right through it and it is quite eye opening.
Have a great new year folks, it can only get better from here.!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZdFXcA_x0c]
Great stuff. Didn’t know about the Scot – N. Irish connection.
Oh! Didja hear about the letter from a loyalist Ulster paramilitary that MI5 approached to kill the Irish PM in ‘85?
OK OK; the source is RT. But what a quote!
It seems nobody talks about Greg Marshall of Wichita State when the subject of good college basketball coaches comes up.
He’d be glad to talk your ear off about it.
PS – he stays FOAR the Koch Bros. $$ (yes, one and the same Koch Bros.)
“The more you know” rainbow just passed by.
They’re neutral.
I appreciate this.
That’s a real shocker
/Shows self out
I really hope this Man U vs Southhampton match is good….errrr close. will it be?
It’s booze o’clock! Let’s get rolling.
I think Change.org is my favorite troll site now…
https://www.change.org/p/merriam-webster-dictionary-change-the-plural-of-house-to-hice
hahahaha…oh god.
Beautiful.
up the Cherries!!
Holy shite might have saved our arses with that one.
NBC SPORTS GOLD sounds sarcastic.
Salah is fucking good. It was just a matter of time.
FUCK! I never realized that it cuts off the actual goal shot. Here’s another gif that actually shows BALL GOING IN:
That’s why Indiana Jones always kept him around.
So someone I absolutely hate won one of those 40 under 40 things. As such, I am committed to winning one in 2018. In checking out the criteria, I saw that volunteering etc is one of the things that matter. So I figured I would reach out to a couple local groups I was interested in being a part of (also because I am sort of a horrible person and I should volunteer some time), one of which is a neighborhood/community group in my area. Holy shit, for a place claiming to want help, these people are seriously fucking assholes.
No wonder rich people always volunteer by sitting on boards of directors or whatever.
So is espn going to make a doc about you?
The Hero Who Burned Down Tempe.
While in college, I volunteered through the vets group on campus to be a tutor and adviser. This was on top of being a mechanical engineering student and doing undergrad research/TA work.
It was fucking awful. I would have vets just treating me like shit because they expect their time as a cook or radar technician should instantly equal a degree. Another annoying thing was that I never talked about my background so I think people tended to think I was just some random student that got stab with this role…so i would have these vets trying to impress me with their stories and some would even try to bullshit me. I would be begging these people to apply themselves so they didn’t fuck up their benefits and they could actually transition to a decent civilian job…and it was like pulling fucking teeth from a mule.
It was fucking utterly thankless with the exception of like 5% of the people I helped would make it worth. But the other 95%…it was terrible. Just a waste of time and effort on my part.
I don’t think I want to work with people because I just don’t like people (maybe refugees because we did hire a guy and I really like him so I’ve got kind of a soft spot for them and also because it supports the DEEP STATE). I just meant like, the application process is such a bitch. You’d like I’m applying for this admin chick’s job or something.
I get it, these organizations have a challenging set of variables to deal with and everything — but don’t be a bitch to me when I’m offering to help.
Refugees and immigrants would be great. It’s thankless, but honestly, they are people who genuinely want to be here and want to succeed and achieve that dream. And work their asses off to make it happen while getting shit on by mouthbreathers who, along with most other Americans, would fail so thoroughly if they had to go through the immigration life and process that DHS would shoot them into space.
I know the feeling. That is a good point in that it could be treated like a game where doing X gets you n karma points towards your next certificate of recognition or award or something. Also, a lot of the “volunteering” at the level where you get into these honor rolls (It’s like fucking high school never ends for them) is fundraising by hitting up friends on other boards and charities for donations from them and their friends and their corporate employers – all people who can and will make donations for tax purposes. At that point, you end up on the committees selecting those honorees because it is absolutely a giant circlejerk.
To be even more clear, people like that are “involved” to the extent that you see them at ticketed events and fundraisers, but the people I know who are like this aren’t exactly serving dinner at the homeless mission or even walking dogs for the humane society – which, BTW, is totally a thing.
Speaking of arbitrary hate, ASU/UA is this afternoon.
It’s gonna be hate-filled.
Well Blax, it will be nothing new for us.
Oh, you think hate is your ally. But you merely adopted hate; I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn’t see equality until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but BLINDING!
hey, at least thank my shitty wolves for the hiding we gave Sparky yesterday!
Nothing makes me happier than to know both teams are entering the offseason unhappy.
who won the Old FIrm thingy, Litre?
Thrilling nil nil draw. I went down to the Scottish Club where I was the youngest by 20 years to watch it. (I am 41) Private club meant real early whisky in the coffee. Those old boys are over their hatred but still talk shit to each other.
that all sounds very Scottish Lesser Footy
YES!
PEDRO with the killer! 3-0 and its still the first half!
late to the Chelsea match. they up 2-0. YES!
Someone needs to explain to me how fans of both clubs still hold onto the bullshit sectarian violence and shit considering that both teams are mostly overseas players.
At this point, it makes as much sense as two group of Chinese people in Beijing beating the shit out of each other over the Manchester Derby…
Well as both fan bases are predominantly poor in Scotland and in Northern Ireland it offers them escapism from their day to day living in their housing estates. It gives them the feeling of being “the best” at something in their own country. That is just my view from living there and I could be way off.
That’s usually the way it is. Soccer clubs, more than any other sport, tend to align themselves with certain parts of the society they exist in. This happens in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, France, England, etc.
People within the society hate others for multiple reasons. Soccer is a way for those tensions to be brought out into the light. Usually in a nonviolent way, but sometimes the hate boils over.
I’LL KILL YOU!
THIS GUY GETS IT!
When I was in Madrid, in 2000, a couple of Leeds fans got killed in Istanbul for being English soccer hooligans by Galatasaray fans before a UEFA match between Galatasaray and Leeds. I remember because for some reason the news showed one of the guys who’d been trying to get away in a taxi. He didn’t, and they almost cut his head off from behind. I was told there would be tits on TV in Europe, not half-decapitated corpses.
There were still plenty of tits, though. This was an outlier.
I also can’t believe I can still spell Galatasaray correctly without looking.
I guess the easiest way to think about it from an American point of view is to consider it like high school football. You have rivalries based on stuff like rich HS vs poor HS, blacks vs whites vs Mexicans, etc. People consider themselves superior to others around them for the flimsiest reasons. A win in a game becomes more than just a win in a game.
It’s stupid, but it’s life.
The thing that bothers the fuck out of me are the US soccer fans that want MLS to have “fanatics” like they do overseas.
What a lot of these idiots don’t realize is that many of these teams, and this is especially true in Eastern Europe and South America, are utterly held hostage by violent criminal organizations that pretend they are fan clubs.
I don’t know why anyone would look at the insane violence that happens at many soccer events world wide and think “this is just what we need in the US”.
The lack of regular violence and the ability to drink alcohol at US sporting events is pretty fucking unique. And I got no desire to lose that shit.
To be clear, I am not stupid. There is violence at US sporting events from time to time, but its extremely isolated and dealt with rapidly.
From what I’ve seen, the Cascadia Cup rivalries (Vancouver, BC; Seattle; Portland) stems from the genuine dislike of the other cities by the fans as well as the teams. But it’s not violent, though I blame that on Pacific Northwesterners being pussies.
Also, even the non-violent fans have such lovely traditions as throwing bananas at African players and setting off flares that blind and choke half the stadium. But Europeans are so cultured, you see.
Sometimes I wonder if Seahawks and Sounders fans’ intensity in the last ten years isn’t in some way a response to losing the Sonics, even though that was entirely because everyone involved in the sale and eventual move to OKC are scumbags and actual popularity had nothing to do with the sale and move.
Honestly, it’s not like that at all. It’s the geographic rival, mixed with history of the club’s that goes back decades.
With that said, we all get along outside of the stadium and there’s a lot of bi-ultras dating. We get eachother because we all feel like we’re not apart of the national conversation, no matter how good our teams are.
The most hilarious, or I guess disgusting depending on your perspective, aspect of the Time of Troubles in Northern Ireland is that for all their bullshit the protestant and catholic violent groups used to justify their actions, the majority of them just switched over almost immediately to drug dealing, prostitution, and protection rackets.
Really, the only different between the two is that the British Government was funding and protecting the protestant groups.
You are absolutely correct. Funny enough though in visiting the Catholic side of the wall was much more well off and the protestant estates were really run down.
That’s a great book! It really is must reading.
When I was 6 years old, I remember waking up early to get ready for my soccer game and a Glasgow Rangers match would usually be on the TV. Since I have Scottish heritage and they seemed to always curb stomp teams (back then), they became my first favorite soccer team.
So, Lets go Rangers! *clap clap, clap clap clap*
/would sing Billy Boys, but doesn’t want DFO to get car bombed