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I don't think it justifies a new topic here and now the seasons are over, it seems the football news for the summer ahead will mostly be the latest scandal in FIFA - With bribery claims and other controversy dominating the headlines at both ends of the papers.

Whilst the fact FIFA is corrupt isn't news, we can hope this at least blows open a big enough hole in that corruption to make some changes - but the downside is, Sepp Blatter, a useless excuse for a man who seemingly has no bloody idea what Football is, remains in charge by default now as surprise surprise -"Fifa president Sepp Blatter was found to have no case to answer".



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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Well, I know I'll be the only one, but summer football this year will be the Women's World Cup starting in a couple weeks, and for a bit, the CONCACAF Gold Cup, which I'll be going to see in person in a couple weeks as well, in theory.

Some people are already rumoring that Qatar will lose the Cup as fallout from all the bribery cluster. That would fall right into the category of "fine by me."

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Sorry for the double post, but I just remembered that since the season is all over, the fantasy league is too. Looks like the top three in our fantasy league were sweetdude, Dragon_Fire, and then me. I'll assign the awards here in a minute, and then we'll regroup at the end of the summer to see if enough people are still interested enough to try it again next season.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 2nd June 2011 15:26

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Seems the FIFA fuss is another whitewash. Oh, sure, they're changing how they vote on World Cups... but the next vote is at least eight years away now.

Qatar will retain the world cup hosting, Blatter will remain ruining the game through allowing idiotic refereeing choices for years to come without the tv replays to try and allow mistakes to be fixed. Nothing will change at all, and FIFA will remain as corrupt as ever.

Anyway, I'd be up for another fantasy league if we had one.



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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Is anyone else watching the Women's World Cup? Yeah, yeah, I know the answer to that. I'm sure someone will be willing to talk about how it's lesser soccer than the men, etc.

If you think that women's soccer has nothing to offer, though, you missed out today. Parity has really arrived to the women's game, and it's actually a lot of fun to watch, and today's two quarterfinals were both really great games to watch.

It saddens me that tomorrow will likely prove that the American women's team is now not much better globally than the men - I feel pretty confident that Brazil is going to give them a bit of a beating, and that makes me sad. I will say, though, that I think I need to get my wife the new US shirt once she doesn't have a gigantic belly - it's a pretty sweet kit.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 10th July 2011 02:09

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I'm watching some of it. I enjoyed watching the English women being knocked out on penalties by France only because one of the commentators was so absurdly biased that it almost ruined the game for me (and the other commentator by the sounds of it). The way she was talking was as if England were 5-0 up and weren't doing anything wrong.

I've watched women's international football before and the first thing that I saw was a free kick. In the men's they focus on the ball and maybe have a few words about what they're going to do. In the women's two of them were standing over the ball chatting away and laughing as if they were gossiping outside a shop. It was nice in some ways.

Yeah it's fine to watch. Some of the goals have been quite good. And some of the players are bloody hot! Brazil v USA and Australia v Sweden tomorrow. High hopes for the day.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Two things. The wimmins final was bloody amazing, I think that's one of the best international final games I've ever seen. All credit to Japan for winning but really for the majority of that game it was the USA's to lose. I can't decide whether Japan deserved to win. They did knock out probably better teams than the US did and they were nicer, if that means anything. However the US were probably the best team in the tournament. As usual I had to listen to 'yeah but England beat Japan earlier in the tournament so there you go' from the pundits after the game. Seriously...

Also I noticed that the Yahoo fantasy EPL is up and running again. http://uk.premiership.fantasysports.yahoo.com/ I thought if we're going to do it we could start early and get a good set of players?

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

I'm very much interested in doing the fantasy league this year.

I don't know how good the Yahoo one is, but the Barclays Fantasy Premier League is also up and running already, so I guess most of the others will be too...

This post has been edited by Stiltzkin on 21st July 2011 07:42

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We apologise for the inconvenience

Quote (Stiltzkin @ 21st July 2011 07:42)

I'm very much interested in doing the fantasy league this year.

I don't know how good the Yahoo one is, but the Barclays Fantasy Premier League is also up and running already, so I guess most of the others will be too...

I was gonna say, do we use the Yahoo one here or would the official one be better?

We used Yahoo last year, but I was actually thinking about using Barclay's if we did it again this year. I think they work probably just about exactly the same from what I've seen so far, and the only real advantage to Yahoo is that most people probably already have Y! accounts and wouldn't have to sign up a new one.

I'm up for either, though, I don't mind getting a new account if the Barclay's one is nicer (and it probably is!).

With regards to the WWC final, if the US had to lose, I'm glad it was to Japan and not someone like Brazil or even Germany. That said, we didn't have to lose. We did an excellent job of not letting Japan own possession the way they did against Germany and Sweden, and we were a vastly superior force up front and in the air in general. The inability to convert chances and a defense that was even worse than usual, though - there's just nothing that can be done for that. You're going to lose games when you play with that lack of quality at both ends, especially when you go into the utter crapshoots that are penalty kicks.

Edit

Actually, the more I look at Barclay's own, the more I like it. I'll set something up there for us, but how do we want to do it? I kind of like the idea of head-to-head, personally, as I think that might create more discussion about the league.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 21st July 2011 14:04

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

We could always do the head to head and the classic league. It wouldn't be redundant as it won't just be the same positions for people in both leagues.

I think there's more features in the Barclays one that people might want to read up on too.

Sure, I'd be in.

Still think an SPL one would be fun and easier for non-football folks because of the smaller league but surprise, Scottish football is twenty years behind the rest of the world

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Quote (Cefca @ 21st July 2011 09:31)

We could always do the head to head and the classic league. It wouldn't be redundant as it won't just be the same positions for people in both leagues.

True enough, I'm just trying to think of how we'd do the forum awards if we did both. I don't think we want to give awards for both head-to-head and classic both, so we'd have to pick which one would get the bragging rights - and whatever prize there is, if we get enough people involved to do one.

For what it's worth, I think I'd pick head-to-head.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I've always thought head-to-head is far better than a total-points system. I might actually pay attention this year if that were the case.

I realise that it does nothing to solve the awards dilemma, but iirc, the Barclays fantasy allows you to play both head to head and league together.

You create the one team, and can then enter that team in as many leagues as you like, head to head or otherwise.

In other words, once the set-up is done, both leagues run simultaneously with no extra effort required.

I personally don't mind which type of league takes precedence.

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We apologise for the inconvenience

I agree that head to head sounds the most fun. I don't really mind though whatever we do count me in.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.