Football (Soccer) Thread

[Sheilbh]

He Peter Odemwingied himself

[FunkMonk]

He Peter Odemwingied himself

Bezos rubbing his hands with glee at the Arsenal All or Nothing documentary 

[celedhring]

Odemwingie just had a short drive, dude took a flight to BCN just because 

[crazy canuck]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Canada's going to the next world cup. 

Yeah, and possibly ranked #1 in this zone.  Really hard to get used to all this success the team is having.  But I am sure we will find a way to cope. 

[FunkMonk]

Odemwingie just had a short drive, dude took a flight to BCN just because 

https://twitter.com/OdemwingieP/status/1488179553033932800?t=Rzo8teh4N0ZMRqrClBQCow&s=19

Someone sent me the first picture. 🙄Am I passing the award on ? 😆Aubameyang just make sure you ask Aguero for advice ❤️👍🏽 https://t.co/gZ2jGEbPFM

[The Larch]

Odemwingie just had a short drive, dude took a flight to BCN just because 

https://twitter.com/OdemwingieP/status/1488179553033932800?t=Rzo8teh4N0ZMRqrClBQCow&s=19

Someone sent me the first picture. 🙄Am I passing the award on ? 😆Aubameyang just make sure you ask Aguero for advice ❤️👍🏽 https://t.co/gZ2jGEbPFM

Anti vax propaganda by stealth in the quoted tweet?

[Jacob]

Christian Eriksen starting for Brentford soon. It'll be interesting to see how much of a difference he makes.

[Josquius]

Sunderland lost 6-0 to an inferior team on the weekend. The manager was promptly sacked.
Interestingly just last week he made a comment about a player being out with heart trouble being due to the covid vaccine.
I expect the local anti vaxers are in a crisis over this.

[mongers]

Very satisfy result in the Asian world cup qualifications, Vietnam beat China 3-1. 

[Gups]

Strange how poor China are at football given it's a big sport there with lots of funding.

[Gups]

Sunderland lost 6-0 to an inferior team on the weekend. The manager was promptly sacked.
Interestingly just last week he made a comment about a player being out with heart trouble being due to the covid vaccine.
I expect the local anti vaxers are in a crisis over this.

Obviously a terrible result but from the outside it seemed a bit of a strange sacking given that Sunderland are third with a decent shot at the autos. It's certainly a shit league but really tought to get out of. I hate it.

[mongers]

Strange how poor China are at football given it's a big sport there with lots of funding.

Yes, one would have expected them to emerged as a regional football power by now. 

[The Larch]

Strange how poor China are at football given it's a big sport there with lots of funding.

I remember from an article from years ago (things must have changed since then) that basically said that the Chinese national team was an absolutely corrupt mess, in which coaches would accept bribes from players in order to be selected for games, and things  like that. Add to that the semi-collapse of their national league and things don't look good for them, given that barely any Chinese players play abroad.

Another criticism I read regarding Chinese sports training is that it produces excellent individual performers but is terrible at producing good teams (I read also back in the day about their long term plans regarding how they intended to set up their men's basketball team during Yao Ming's era and it was completely bonkers). Checking their historical performance at the Summer Olympics, for instance, you can see that they barely get medals in team sports (the exception seems to be women's voleyball), while they get them by the bucketload in individual sports, so there might be something to it as well.

[celedhring]

Well, team sports are harder to develop with "just throw a shitload of money at it" methods than individual sports. Imho, you need a really good grassroots traidition and China probably doesn't have that.

[The Larch]

Well, team sports are harder to develop with "just throw a shitload of money at it" methods than individual sports. Imho, you need a really good grassroots traidition and China probably doesn't have that.

I also hope that in footie they have a more modern and sophisticated approach than what I read was their philosophy for basketball back in the day. What I read was that basketball officials would basically tour middle and high schools all over the country, pick up the tallest boys in each school and pull them out from the regular school system and direct them to a special system focused on sports that could only be described as sports themed concentration camps, and there subject the kids to grueling training sessions every single day. This ended up producing bunches of semi-talented lumbering centers and forwards with a paleolitic approach to the game, but could not produce a creative guard if their lives depended on it.