Verbal

And here he is actually saying it. Rogan buys it hook line and sinker of course. Absolute worthless piece of shit.

Genuinely unsure whether these repeated outbreaks of punnery are the result of summer boredom or mad cow disease.

Made of Lego

As pissed off as UEFA are, I'm not sure they really want to go nuclear on this. But they could conceivably clip Infantino's wings by insisting on some rule changes to remove any ambiguity about outside interference on in-game decisions, including from Infantino himself. As to Infantino's majority, is it as secure as all that? African FAs are not best pleased with the way they've been marginalised and defunded in favour of gulf states who have no use for football except as a means of sportswashing.

Ah but that's the point. like a lot of exotic birds, they behave recklessly and pointlessly to demonstrate their fitness. As the evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond has clearly shown, birds like eg the bowerbird look odd and do odd things to demonstrate their fitness to their potential mates, as if to say (because in Ducky's world they do apparently speak): if I can do this, looking like this, and survive I must be BRILLIANT. BTW all fit birds are male.

This would be a contender as fittest bird overall, the long wattled umbrellabird - although not entirely sure it isn't a Ducky selfie

WTF is a "fit bird" - a pigeon with abs?

Trump/Infantino baiting at its finest

It gets worse. Having heard nothing from FIFA, the Belgian FA wrote for an explanation. FIFA - or their Qatari representative Salman al-Ansari - wrote back saying that Belgium's request constituted an appeal against the suspension. So they'd have to make a full case for an appeal, but in any case there was no time to hear it. It's not just that FIFA are quisling shitbags to Trump and are happy to gaslight a UEFA member; we really need to get petrostate money out of football. https://www.rbfa.be/en/news/update-rbfa-statement-regarding-folarin-balogun

Well done Belgium, and well done Trump for proving with 100% certainty that everything he touches turns to shit.

The biggest fattest lie is in the third paragraph. How many calls has he ever had from heads of state about lifting a sanction on a player just before a crucial world cup finals match? And hiding behind a "legal process" that wouldn't have existed were it not from that call is not giving him the cover he thinks it does. Everyone can see what he's doing, and he's only looking more ridiculous because Trump doesn't bother to hide his corruption, and he doesn't care that Infantino is the fall guy for it. He's toast.

Now that Trump heads FIFA anything's possible.

It has - and for this world cup. Ronaldo was let off a 3-match ban during the qualifiers for elbowing an Ireland player in the face.

Now confirmed by CBS that the red card suspension followed an intervention from the White House to FIFA.

It was a red card, however controversial, and it hasn't been overturned but suspended for one year.

*Immediately followed by a post that gives an update regarding the FA investigation.* Honestly think Saintsweb is a den of fate-tempters.

Is it also net of agents' fees? That can take a huge chunk out too. (Eg of Tonali's £100m transfer to Tottenham, the agent collects 23%, which my complicated calculator tells me is £23m.)

Yes I agree, it would be unusual if there were not plenty of mitigations being put in place, although it's possible that what Tuchel means is that high-altitude adaptation is not the best prep for sea-level games. I think an England win would be especially great in that environment, but It still is a hell of an ask physiologically.

A sports scientist I know quantified the advantage like this: England will start the game and within a few minutes will feel like they've already played an hour of football. There are probably a few things you can do to mitigate: early subs, oxygen during hydration breaks (?). But the advantage Mexican players already acclimatised will have will be huge.

Personally I'd be amazed, but then I'm not Dr Doolittle.

Oh boy

When in my youth (2018) I went to Mexico City for the first time I'd forgotten about that little altitude thing. My body realised the problem with the first breath on the jetway. You breathe in, get half-way through it, and then it's as if someone cut the oxygen supply. The Mexican team will have a huge advantage.

No they won't and I'm not the least bit nervous about it because there just isn't enough time to acclimatise.

I've seen it up close and the Azteca is glorious. And nothing quite irritates me more about this World Cup (aside from the scandalous, vindictive abuse by the Trump regime of the Iran team) than the common American claim that their stadiums outshine European ones. They are bigger, yes, but most are utter shit for football. They're built not just for different sports but for a different sporting culture. The vast and numerous parking lots that surround them are designed for American football and baseball fans who can never stop eating, with "tailgate parties" starting hours before the game. This eating frenzy then continues in the stadiums with food hawkers going up and down the extra-wide, extra-numerous aisles passing blobs of fat burger to ever fatter people. In American sports, attention paid to what's going on on the pitch is slight. Sport is experienced as an individual - it isn't a collective, communal thing at all. Hence, among other things, no real actual noise other than when a goal is scored, no edge, and no humour (oh god how I'd miss this if stuck there). My son went to the England Panama game, played at the MetLife in a New Jersey wasteland. This is the venue for the final. Whoever designed it thought that as an East Coast venue of a winter sport, the stadium didn't need a roof of any kind. The downpour before and during the match meant there wasn't a dry seat, or person, in the stadium. Unfettered commercialism makes the pitch-side parts of the stadium - weirdly devoid of fans and consisting, seemingly, of air ducts, ad screens and scaffolding - a cluttered, ugly mess. It's also not designed to have well built-up ends (because: see above) - the one in Foxborough is even worse, with one end taken up with the largest screen you've ever seen along with what appears to be a vast abandoned greenhouse. Oh, and the pitch at MetLife is worse than anything you'd see in League 2 - swampy and weirdly uneven. It seems FIFA has applied no quality to control at all to pitch preparation and devoted their attention to dynamic pricing instead. Great football (often) but shit major US venues.

I do find it interesting how you can carbon-date posters on here by the jokes they tell. Did not know, e.g., that GS was a grandad.