Baseball and soccer are a little different. In soccer, there is a perpetual debate between the “joga bonita” and defensive football. Teams with an attacking style will forever complain when they lose to teams with a defensive style and accuse them of “parking the bus” and uglying up the game.

Giroud excels at (1) set pieces and (2) hold up play. He’s somewhat ineffective on the counter attack because he can’t run at players with the ball and doesn’t have pace to get behind elite defenders, but he is actually pretty good at springing counter attacks with passes to overlapping runners. He always drove me…

I was stunned.  Sure, Brazil have been inconsistent in recent years, but they arguably have, top to bottom, a better player at every position (other than keeper) than Belgium, despite Belgium’s immense talent.  World class attackers, dominant midfielders from Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester City, world class…

I remember watching the first ever back flip in competition at the X Games as a kid.  Wild how far things have come....

Sorry, but this take is just wrong. Which of their players are part of the “bulk of the roster [that] makes do in sub par South American domestic leagues”? Every player in the squad that gets any meaningful playing time hails from the top tier (and top clubs) in Europe. Only player on the pitch today who plays in…

Exactly, I think the lack of barriers to entry and ubiquitous forums for reporting and criticism have made reporting worse.

Other elite attacking players get fouled a lot too, they just try more to fight through the contact because they realize that they are ALWAYS going to get fouled and they learn to deal with it. People don’t get frustrated with Neymar for going down under contact in dangerous areas for a free kick (which is…

Wrong. Delonte West.

Bump

Soccer fans need to watch the All 22 footage if they want to play armchair quarterback and talk about positioning.

It’s not really something that is specifically practiced, but is a general concept that the players have been practicing their entire careers/lives (and are professionals at doing). The general concepts are spacing and overlapping runs - when a team has a numbers advantage on the counter attack, the attacking players…

It isn’t the act of falling down that drives people crazy, it is the act of writhing around and grabbing at a fake-injured body party until the ref makes a decision then getting up with no further issues.  People flop in other sports too - really common in basketball to embellish contact, particularly for shooting…

Uruguay are dangerous. Never underestimate how important continuity from the club level is in international soccer. The teams come together quickly over 1 month of training. Countries that have star players who play together at the club level have a huge advantage, particularly on the defensive side - creative…

Biggest fraud in the World Cup: instant replay.

If you watch the full version he said (1) Lewandowski is going to hell and (2) Lewandowski is a terrible person, followed by saying that he laughs at the absurdity of it and how out of touch Lewandowski is.

Phil did not “openly exploit the rules”. He got frustrated and gave up on the hole. We’ve all been there - as a terrible golfer, I’d say at least 2 holes per round, I end up just giving up, picking up my ball and drinking in the cart while the rest of the group finishes the hole.

Why spoil the fun?

I’m not sure they’ve made Vegas look bad. Hockey is a game of razor thin margins. The series turned on Holtby’s incredible save in Game 2 - up until that game, Vegas had been unbeatable at home in the playoffs. That save was incredible, but it is an intersection of luck and skill - Holtby made a phenomenal play to…

I assumed this was going to have something to do with “jet fuel” and “steel beams”.

It does bother him. He gets into a lot of joking arguments with people on the internet, and his followers will often jump into the fray trying to be funny and make rude comments. He publicly responds to those tweets and tells people to stop (usually “don’t be a asshole”) when he sees that happening, particularly when…