Monzanator

vs has kicked off. Probierz picked his U-21 buddy Patryk Peda from Serie C for the starting line-up

The next deadline is the US President elections in 2024. If USA pulls the military & economic support from Ukraine then the war will take a massive shift in Russian favor and that's what Putin is counting on right now. Then you might expect all the sporting suspensions lifted en masse in 2025.

The major of Alkmaar Anja Schouten has blocked her twitter account and appears to pretend nothing has happened. Good luck in hiding behind protected status on social media

Another question is if the Legia fans are all to blame why none of them were arrested? The only people arrested were the two Legia players.

Polish media are staying hot on this topic and it appears the Dutch police chief of match security was a completely new guy and this was the first match he supervized in this role.

Rangers swept the Orioles, Astros won 3-1 vs Twins and Diamondbacks are pouring it on the Dodgers, four home runs in one inning and they lead the series 2-0 already.

The next Russian talent I mentioned before - Alina Korneeva - has won her first WTA Main Draw match - in Hong Kong R1 vs Savinykh. She plays another teenager Linda Fruhvirtova in Round 2.

2 hours ago, Olympian1010 said:

Yeah, it’s interesting to see all the Europeans complaining about diversity when the program was shaped by their interests and strengths for basically a century.

Good luck in selling cricket in USA. You could hardly accept soccer which is the most popular sport in the world. And now you want cricket in Los Angeles? Some of these US fans would be more interested in hot dog eating competition than cricket IMO   Cricket is fine for Commonwealth Games to celebrate centuries of colonialism but there's a reason why countries outside of the British rule never found any interest in that.

The bottom line is cricket only has like 5-6 countries that can play this sport at elite level. And West Indies wouldn't qualify for OG anyway. What's the point of having blow out games at this level? All this talk about diversity @ Olympics and they choose one of the least diverse sport there is. Other than former British Empire colonies this sport has gained zero traction across the world. Even baseball is more diverse despite the all too-predictable USA vs Japan WBC final almost each time.

None of these new sports have any depth. I mean even cricket World Cup has 10 teams playing and they make it an Olympic sport? How they will include West Indies anyway? Another change for a change chasing the mythical new fans? Good luck in explaining the tiktok generation the overs and runs scored

One week later and Pariots lost 0-34 to New Orleans Saints at home

Meanwhile Nathaniel Hackett got his revenge on Denver Broncos and Sean Payton who called him out before the season. Guess Hackett the scapegoat wasn't the only reason the Wilson contract looks utterly terrible?

Rally Poland returns to the WRC calendar for 2024  

It will be the 7th time the rally will be a part of WRC schedule (previously 1973, 2009, 2014-2017).

Rangers won both games in Baltimore

Pablo Lopez start gave Twins one win in Houston.

That should do it for

5 hours ago, heywoodu said:

One of those questions with an answer probably everyone knows in the back of their minds.

Everyone knows the answer is "no" - until as long as Palestine doesn't have it's own state IMO.

Overall looks like a total fuck-up from the Israeli intelligence if they allowed this attack to happen.

4 hours ago, heywoodu said:

Whoever they arrested already makes it quite clear this has nothing to do with some 'anti-Poland' thing. It is really easy: said players, whatever their nationality may be, would not have been arrested if they had behaved themselves somewhat normally.

 

But yeah, narratives must be set, and of course 'it is the fault of the police' is always a lot easier to sell to the masses than football players and hooligans acting like....well, hooligans. Maybe the players took a page out of the book of their 'fans' (hooligans, one should say), who violently stormed the gates already before the match. Good thing there was a lot of police present, these problems were....expected, to say the least.

 

Dutch media isn't going to spin much though. It's a day ago and already almost nobody cares anymore, this will be forgotten before the weekend is over now that the aggressively acting players have been released.

Of course you will defend whatever the Dutch police does. And the case will be quickly swept under the rug. After all those big bad Poles are always the worst and Netherlands is the land of progress. Plus it's yesterday's news alright. If this was other way around EU would be all over to prove how outdated and xenophobic Poland is.

It's clear there's anti-Polish bias in Netherlands for a long while and actually the Legia owner Mioduski is a staunch critic of Law & Justice. He's associated with Civic Platform. There is a major shitshow in the Polish media and most sports journalists want our government to act and bring the EU or whatever hammer they can find. If this happened the other way around - Dutch players arrested in Poland - you would see van der Leyen and other big wig politicians jump all over the Polish government. But since it's the Dutch making the arrests I suppose EU would try to sweep this case under the rug - unless maybe UEFA steps in to investigate.

The other problem is that Dutch police arrested non-Poles, Josue from Portugal (EU nation) who was released earlier and Pankov from Serbia (so non-EU country) who was released later. So they didn't keep it strictly against Poles but managed to get other nations involved. Moreover our media remind everyone about Alkmaar vs West Ham unrest and back then UEFA still swept it under the rug so let's see what happens when players and not hooligans are involved.

Either way the narrative in Polish media is set, Netherlands is as xenophobic as many other alleged anti-democratic countries. This goes beyond the usual anti-Law & Justice tone in the Western media. Mioduski was also harrassed and stuck by the police and he's literally the last person who would support Law & Justice so there's little chance the Dutch media & police can spin that narrative. They chose the wrong person to attack and he's an executive in the European Club Association so not your rich club owner with zero ties to football governing bodies.

Yeah, Sakkari is out of YEC. She needed to make that Beijing SF. And I'm unsure she'd be getting 250 WC since Top 10 players can only play two 250 during a season so she'd be over the limit.

AZ Alkmaar beat Legia Warsaw 1-0 but two Legia players (Josue & Pankov) were arrested after the game since they allegedly caused bodily harm to one of the stadium stewards In return Legia owner claims he was hit by the Dutch police when he tried to intervene and find out what's going on.

The wild card sweep is on, Twins snapped their 18-game playoff losing streak and duly won two in a row vs Blue Jays while Diamondbacks took down Brewers.

And the Marlins are getting spanked by the Phillies which is no surprise whatsoever.

So much for the Rays. They were long removed from the hot start in April and mustered a total of ONE run in two WC games vs Rangers

Orioles vs Rangers in the first ALDS.

51 minutes ago, Roamingrover86 said:

When does Infantino term ends? Looks like he has already started planning on winning the next elections unopposed.
 

As soon as media release was made by FIFA a number of FA’s in Asia released statements supporting the Saudi Bid. 2034 is a done deal . Another winter World cup! 

He was only elected in March and that counts as only the second full term so he can continue until 2031

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1131712/infantino-term-limits

49 minutes ago, NMQ said:

It's only the first match for Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, then all the matches are played between Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Not that big of a mess. 

 

Infantino is pleasing everyone, USA in 2026, Europe in 2030, South America gets a symbolic host too, and likely Saudi Arabia in 2034. Everybody happy.

Except the teams that have to play that one game in South America and travel for the other two to Europe/Africa (FIFA got rid of the 3-team group nonsense so it will be 4-team groups again). Actually it's not that easy for the hosting teams either especially Paraguay who are far removed from their football prime. It's impossible to please everybody anyway.

Ridiculous nonsense. Good luck to teams having to travel between CONTINENTS after group stage when there's literally 4-5 days before the knockout phase. Jet lag will kill them. Expect a complete shitshow in that tournament.

WTA has returned to China since Peng Shuai is ancient history at this stage.

Over in Japan Veronika Kudermetova won the Tokyo 500 and Ons Jabeur won the Ningbo 250 (that's in China) last week.

The mandatory Beijing 1000 takes place this week and Iga Świątek easily beat Magda Linette 6-1 6-1 in the derby

This is not where the big politics is made though. Even Joe Biden knows that