LDOG

African play-offs v v v v v

[hide] Knockout Round January 23rd - February 6th, 2022 16 Nations, the Winners of each Round of 16-matches qualify for the Quarterfinals Round of 16 Date & Time (GMT +1) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 January 23rd 2022, h. 17:00 Burkina Faso 1 1 Gabon January 23rd 2022, h. 20:00 Nigeria 3 0 Tunisia January 24th 2022, h. 17:00 Guinea 0 1 Gambia January 24th 2022, h. 20:00 Cameroon 4 0 Comoros January 25th 2022, h. 17:00 Senegal 2 1 Cape Verde January 25th 2022, h. 20:00 Morocco 2 0 Malawi January 26th 2022, h. 17:00 Ivory Coast 3 1 Egypt January 26th 2022, h. 20:00 Mali 1 0 Equatorial Guinea [/hide]

30 consecutive matches beating Djibouti was spectacular from Algeria but bumping into a powerhouse like and keep on winning was asking too much from them I think.

Any particular reason the bet contest was abandoned? If it was time I could have helped but eh

Dude, there is literally 0 chance of any non-democratic form of government to take over in modern Chile. The system and institutions there are too strong and established. Communist parties in Argentina and Brazil were part of coalitions in recent governments, and no, nothing anywhere close as a "full-scale takeover" took place. Much less would it happen in Chile.

Olympic athletics team? Olympic shooting team? With that criteria every sport is a team sport lol

I fear Chile, Peru and Bolivia will be punching bags in their respective divisions more often than not but, nonetheless, this is great news

Olimpia Awards ceremony took place yesterday (most notorious sport award in the country, voted by journalists). Winner of the Olimpia de Oro ("golden Olimpia") and thus chosen argentine sportperson of the year was... Lionel Messi Extremely predictable winner must I say. This award historically has tried to stay away from footballers (this is "only" the 7th golden olimpia for a footballer in 67 years of the award and Messi's second) but this year there wasn't really any option. Also, tennis player Diego Schwartzman was retroactively given the same award but for 2020 (the ceremony couldn't take place last year). Here is a list with the previous winners.

You guys know the car does 90% of the job these days, right? To me this is as exciting as scripted "professional" wrestling Real F1 ended 15-20 years ago.

Huh people still watch auto racing in 2021?

It should have been 2 teams and not 3 advancing from the first stage. If you wanted to have same amount of games then maybe make the teams coming from the same group play again instead of carrying the result. Another alternative with this same format I propose could have been making the round 2 groups composed of 4 teams all from different round 1 groups (eg. One group with: E1+F2+G1+H2). This way both the main round and the president cup become more exciting.

Diplomatic boycott? what is this? Grow some balls and do a real full boycott if you care that much about human rights. Typical duplicity of anglophone international relations.

You add a bunch more non olympic sports + hockey/rugby (absent here) + larger water sports presence + more serious competition in things like Cycling and the result is Colombia probably below Argentina again in Santiago (which won't mean our sport is great, far from it...).

Bronze 1-3 Final 2-4 World junior champions for the second time

Fifa finally dismissed the protest yesterday, DR Congo is through. 4th official incompetence blamed instead.

Semis (1) 0-0 (3) 2-4

We'll have a mildly surprising semifinal in the men's junior WC with v Looks like France will be combining two great junior generations for 2024 (the other being the silver juniors from 2013, players who are around 28/29 now). The other will be between the host and Unfortunately, the women's junior WC was postponed (and probably will be cancelled) because of covid. Our team is so unfortunate, again affected by pandemic circumstances just before a tournament (they were already flying to south africa when the announcement was made).

I said it's a balance between titles and individual performance, not that x title is decisive. In 2011 Messi won UCL scoring a million goals in the year, of course he was going to win it over Suárez. Same for Cristiano in 2016. Anyway, it's not a problem that you think Lewandowski should have won. The problem is that you said Messi shouldn't be even top 5

1) it's often a balance between individual stats and team achievements to decide the winner I believe. Jorginho won the 2 most important trophies but he wasn't the most pivotal player in either team, especially not in Chelsea who has way more important players. 2) Winning Bundesliga is good, but Bayern wins every year literally. Copa del Rey is not amazing but winning the Copa America for Argentina in Brazil is. 3) The 8 goals from Bayern were in 2020 so it's not relevant. Messi scored both of Barcelona's goals against PSG, what else can he do if that team doesn't defend and had no one other than him producing in attack? 4) About the start of this season: the voting closed in October so I don't believe that it's a very important factor. Plus, unlike Lewandowski, he didn't do preseason and has travelled 3 times to south america in 3 months. His scoring+assist stats from January to July are huge. 5) Yes, the scoring stats of Lewandowski are crazy and far away from the rest this year but (something that everyone always forgets) Messi is NOT a striker, he's a playmaker. His scoring stats should be better compared to players like Bernardo Silva, Griezmann, Muller, Neymar, not to Lewandowski lol. Thing is, Messi has scored so many goals in his career that everyone forgets about this when comparing him to others and judges him with a completely different bar.

Arguments?

Slovakia will play exotic teams... in the classification rounds

Where do you even get news about 13 year old argentinian gymnasts?

So, Argentina won the gold in the K1-1000 men and that kid qualifies for Santiago 2023 meaning we can have two competitors in that event?

My very personal predictions: Europe Path A: Ukraine. Austria is garbage, Scotland is vastly overrated with their average premier league players, Wales is very limited and who knows if Bale will even play. Ukraine on their day play really good football and also are surprisingly very good visitors. Path B: Doubt Russia or Poland will qualify (they play poorly). Sweden/Czech is a 51/49 in my view. I'm backing the swedes since they play at home. Path C: Italy and Portugal will win their semis easily. Hosting the final is a huge factor, so I'm betting Portugal despite the coach. That being said... I want Italy to win SO BAD just so there won't be the slightest chance of Ronaldo winning a WC before retiring. Intercontinental: AFC-CONMEBOL: Unless it's Japan that gets involved the Conmebol team will beat whoever. CONCACAF-OFC: If it's Panama I think New Zealand has a solid chance. Any other opponent (MEX, USA, CAN) and they lose. Would not write Jamaica out yet, they have good new english players, but they have to make too much ground after their slow start.