if anyone cares

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(where's zizou, kdidit, and/or KR73? someone has to feel my pain!)

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Don't see PSG dumping Cavani unless they get someone even more expensive. Wonder when Arsenal will actually act like the BPL team with the highest real income according to Financial Fair Play.

DISCLAIMER: all figures are in GBP, or great britain pounds. fuck you and your euros, euros!

well i think the talk was that cavani is tired of playing second fiddle to zlatan out on the wing, so he'd be agitating for a move.... now IIRC was cavani the 55mil guy, or was that falcao? i always mix those two up (with the latter going to monaco, who has to be just THRILLED that he blew out an ACL and is of a mind to rush back and get out on the field for colombia in the world cup, especially when it's proven in football that rushing back from those injuries = you play at a lesser level and you have a much higher of reinjury) but yeah IIRC cavani is the one who wants out and thus PSG would just look to at least recoup either the 42 or 55 and move on to buying another world class striker/winger/attacker/etc (cuz really, who needs a midfield or a defense when you've got THAT up front? they got yohan cabaye so they're a-ok now..... i'm sure buyern trembles)

speaking of buyern, see, when you talk about arsenal's war chest (and i've read some articles talking about bond-repayments for emirates stadium and basically TL;DR = yeah the further they get away the less they're paying in bonds and theoretically they've got something like 400mil cash sitting around so if arsenal was, well, arsed enough to do it, they could go on a spending spree for the ages and make city/chelsea look like the chicago rush for a summer.... well if they really wanted to do that) then you start talking about guys like draxler (who's got a 37mil release clause or something like that) who supposedly arsene has a hardon to make rvp 2.0 and convert him from a winger/CAM to a striker..... but with drax you know that eventually buyern will come a-knocking' cuz a summer with merely getting lewandowski = an insult to buyern nation and its supporters, because this is buyern fucking munich (i love the people who try to correct me on that spelling like i'm an idiot) and everyone has come to expect more from them, so naturally they're supposedly in the process of tapping up gundogan from dortmund.

shit, if they're gonna go that route why not get the one kid i absolutely love on dortmund: pierre-whatever aubameyang. that kid could play for my team, as yeah he's a youngin and while he has moments of !!! he's inconsistent.... still he's what, 21-22? yeah dude holy shit, aubameyang can definitely play/strike for my team.

anyways, with arsenal's war chest there's the draxler interest (again, buyern intervention notwithstanding) and then a few months ago some @football_vertex website claimed to have big exclusive/breaking news that was going to signal "a great day for arsenal supporters" ---- and it was that arsenal was interested in making a ~40mil bid for paul pogba. now, in terms of doing that.... HOLY FUCKING SHIT YES PLEASE THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, because while "the pogbeast" isn't quite a finished product and still can do a lot more to become a better player (and he's got pirlo to look at over @ juve, another guy who could play for my team cuz man juve has certainly got that midfield-of-steel locked down) man, that athleticism.... that raw ability that could be finely tuned/guided by someone like arsene....and replacing mikel arteta, who has literally been an offensive nothing this year (methinks he doesn't even have a single assist, despite his centrifugal role making him a stat darling cuz he completes so many (lateral/backwards) passes and is efficient with his dribbles... whatever man. the arteta role needs to be upgraded to something world/class for arsenal to add those 2-3 world/class players to put them over the top nad make them contend for the EPL/CL/etc..... and while striker is obviously the dealbreaker there, yeah still, upgrading that arteta role to someone young and dynamic and not as perennially injured / perennially "he's going to be the future captain of england" as jack wilshere = (in the immortal words of larry the cable guy) GIT-R-DONE.

btw, has anyone at least gotten a postcard from arsenal's january signing kim kallstrom? i know he had a knock when they got him and his original team was going to pay his salary until he's ready to at least get on the training pitch for arsenal.... but good god man, you already had ramsey out.... and you have arteta getting really old really quick and the flim flam isn't exactly a spring chicken, so yeah sure you've got the ox who can go back there in the ramsey/esque attacking-MF role (but ox can't tackle like ramsey can) and i mean this was all assuming that the health of jack wilshere would hold out, which this latest international break did its thing and helped jack out with (tho its not as bad as the usual arsenal international break, where last time i think they lost rosicky for a month, flamini for 2-3 weeks, and shit isnt that where theo walcott had the abdominal problem that caused him to miss the ~2+ months that he was only starting to come back from when he went down in the tottenham FA cup game? for some reason i also wanna say that cazorla caught his knock this year during international duty...... so yeah man leaving with only jack missing ~6 weeks = a good haul for the arsenal)

so AHEM. yes indeed, where is kim kallstrom when you (hopefully don't) need him?

i think it was zizou who i talked to in a PM conversation where he told me his feelings about arsenal and that aloof "ivory tower" that he sees arsene managing from, which hearkens a usage of the phrase "the arsenal way" which seems to be biting its thumb @ the establishment saying "spending those countless millions on transfers is stupid....we can do without that poaching young talent from other systems (i.e. how cesc was poached from barca back in the day, ramsey from cardiff, jack/ox from sunderland and/or southampton) and develop it here and then even if we have to sell our top top quality players (if not team captains, cuz what arsenal had a 2-3 year run where they sold off their captain every offseason?) ---- well yeah, this is where "the arsenal way" shows up and does its thing with the schism in fandom.... cuz i'm newschool arsenal and cant speak for the older/crustier guys, but to a man it seems like everyone wants to support arsene.... but then there's that contingent of #WOB (wenger out brigade, offset by #AKB massive, or arsene knows best) who says that arsene has beyond gone out and proven who and what he is and that he's just going to not have a ~125mil summer to shock the world and load up this deliciously young core of talent on the up and up with those 2-3 world/class players arsenal needs to truly be a domestic/european menace.

i mean hey i dig giroud's team game and yeah, a lot of the time having another veritable attacking midfielder out there can lead to unselfish play which sets up the occasional beautiful goal (look for jack wilshere's goal @ norwich city earlier this year for the execution of the arsenal way, or well i can link it to you here>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXfEhRnk7rI) and hey yeah that's all fine and good, but most times that ISN'T gonna happen and you're gonna end up trying to make 1-3 extra/unnecessary cutesy passes in the box, where defenses know to spam #s down there and arsenal will try to outdo itself going for a tap in as opposed to going for a brute/force scoring chance and then they're that much easier to defend (ask stoke city, who likely crushed anyone's lingering dreams of an arsenal premiership this year. now they'll have to get 12/12 points in that ides-of-march hell run @spurs/@chelsea/city/@everton ---- yeah good luck with that, i mean, technically yeah it's absolutely no less than 9 points out of those 4 fixtures, ideally you need double digits.... but if you wanna win the fucking prem get 12/12 there and then you've got the easiest home stretch out of the "big 4" contending (city/chelsea/arsenal/scousers) especially when you consider that both city and chelsea have to play liverpool in their last 5 games while arsenal has the tomato cans.

AHEM. but yeah man, the only time this season i've really seen giroud get the ball make a football move and KICK THE BALL AT THE FUCKING NET was @ the end of the vs-everton game where stoppage time was literally in its last 10 seconds and he got the ball turned and belted it towards the goal.... hitting the post (cuz if you remember that was the game where arsenal finally broke through circa ~60' to go up 1-0 and it was like HELL YEAH!!! but then right at 63' gerard fucking "barcelona property for a reason" deulofeu took advantage of some shit marking to smash in a rather nice goal in the upper-far/left corner of the arsenal goal. c'est la vie.

and hey you know honestly you could do a lot worse than giroud.... i mean imagine instead of having a facilitator like olivier you've got someone like bendtner getting the ball at the edge of the box and saying "fuck it, my turn" ~15+ times per game.... i mean i get why arsenal ppl sometimes love giroud cuz his style of play seems to mesh in perfectly with "the arsenal way" ---- but then when you're up against europe's best and you're having trouble scoring goals, welp, go figure that having a tap in specialist as your primary and really only striker (tho i saw some positive stuff from yaya sanogo in his first few apps after returning from injury. still not a goal, literally/figuratively/etc) i mean there comes a point where you have to realize "holy shit we're trying to go out and win europe with olivier fucking giroud as our striker" --- and even if you love the guy, there comes that #comeonson point where it's like "yeah dude, you gotta pay the piper and likely spend 25-50mil on a gamechanger..." cuz can you imagine how it would have worked out if they got luis suarez? that was the right damn idea.... and then of course that turned into 40mil+1quid-gate and the whole heaping helping of pedantic hooey from rodgers and henry..... and now it turns out that LOLSORRYLUIS, yeah you DID have a release clause in your contract....whoopsie daisy. our bad. but go figure the FA won't even bother looking at that cuz they're too busy worrying about anelka's anti-semetic quenelle goal celebration or the new OMFG STOP THE PRESSES SUPER INCIDENT: alen pardew's recent adventure in headbutting.

so yeah TL;DR = theoretically, yes, arsenal should be in arguably the best position in the EPL to go and spend big (especially if/when you take FFP into consideration, which clearly city/chelsea/PSG/RM/untied/etc doon't.....i mean especially chelsea/city/PSG.....chelsea can go sell players off for 7mil and buy them back 2+ years later for 21mil (matic) and it's some knock that dirt off ya shoulders stuff.... PSG knows platini is french and UEFA wont come down really hard on them..... and city has yet to meet the player they couldn't buy(plus they'll just cook up the books with tangential/offshoot companies like the one that's spearheading NYCFC, who btw wanted a logo.... fuck i started making one and need to get back to it. what's the latin translation for "fuck you we have money" ??? that should be their official slogan on the crest =) and rah rah rah c'est la vie. but yeah theoretically arsenal should at least be in the best position to spend massive $$$ in the EPL without even having to exert one bead of sweat re FFP..... but will they? i mean it was almost fucking beyond obtuse/egregious/flagrant/etc that they let higuain go.... and of course the AKB/arsenal-asslickers will tell you "IF WE GOT HIGUAIN THERES NO WAY WE GET OZIL" and even tho ozil's been a dog in the eyes of fandom lately (amazing how the daily mail will write articles about "the magician ozil" when he's able to set up an assist to mario goetze, which highlights the difference between passing to ronaldo/benzema/di maria/goetze/muller/whoever and..... olivier giroud. or even santi cazorla/rosicky/sanogo/bendtner/etc) but yeah man, i think early returns on higuain is that he wasn't an 100% product of "the RM system" with that gaudy ~90something goals in ~160something appearances or whatever, or was it as flagrant as ~90/120? idk. it was !!! tho and yeap) and just imagiine if ozil had the rightful quality striker to pass to instead of a guy who's going to play AM unlless he gets a perfect tap in?

i swear to god a game or two or three ago giroud had an opportunity where he had a lush little dump off ball set up to him PERFECTLY ~3 steps into the box where you're watching it like "SEND IT HOME GIROUD" but nope, instead he freaks out, hesitates, and then quickly looks for the most prudent pass that went out wide and then a failed difficult cross in and yeah man it's like i'm watching 13-14 manchester freaking united in terms of the failed crosses. i mean, when you've got a STRIKER who gets a perfect little ball set up to him in space because cazorla/ozil/whoever was able to draw 2-3 defenders to his immediate area and because it was ~10-15ft out of the box he doesnt even humor the idea of getting a nice little 2-3 step head start to lay down a vicious laserbeam of a strike? yeah that's a problem man....arsenal aint gonna threaten for any serious silverware unless they can get somebody who, oh i dont know whats the term i'm looking for.... KICKS THE BALL AT/IN THE FUCKING NET. HARD.

i go back and watch all of these vintage 98-06 arsenal highlights with thierry henry and i see the funniest thing.... he gets the ball in space, makes a couple'a football moves, and kicks the fucking ball in the net. i'm like "whoa holy fuck what is this because this is not arsenal football.... dude stop hogging the ball thierry, you have to hold up and wait for 2-3 more people to arrive with ~5-6 more defenders and try to thread the perfect pass into traffic... this whole thing where you get teh ball (admittedly usually because his pace > EPL defenders) shimmy shimmy yo shimmy y'all and shimmy yay give me the ball so i can kick it away.... yeah i have no idea what the fuck i'm witnessing, but that's not what i've been conditioned to believe is the optimal way to play football. if they had players capable of doing that nowadays i shudder to think just how terrible the team would be if it started scoring 3-4 goals per game and then only had a defense giving up 0-1 goals most of the time.... i mean that's just patently wrong and not supposed to happen, especially since the british media as a whole coronated manchester city as champions when they got a 1-2pt lead in teh EPL, what, 30-45 days ago? yeah who can forget that man.... it's like "welp city is finally here so * claps hands * it's been a fun season and now we just have to wait for them to formally be handed their title" except that they turned around and dropped 2-3 points at sunderland the next time out and then arsenal came back and took the lead, and then chelsea got it..... and then they were 1:30 from going 2pts clear of chelsea a couple'a matches ago b4 that terry-to-howard-own-goal thing and then yeap, c'est la fucking vie and we finally got our "....on a cold day in stoke" moment last week, with the only unabashed positivity being "...well chelsea dropped 3 points here earlier in the year too!"

yeah well nimrod the only reason arsenal was hanging around the top of the table wasn't because of their sterling record against the top-6/7 (as i think they only beat liverpool @emirates b4 the scousering (scouser+reckoning) @anfield a few matches ago) it was because they were basically handling the lower-14 with style and class (the only slip ups being the opening day loss @home vs aston villa, a road draw @ WBA, and then i guess if you wanna say drawing on the road @ southampton counts too then that was it..... until "a cold day in stoke") and now with you doing that last week and being 4pts off of the lead and tied with liverpool and thus technically in 3rd cuz you're -14 in GD to them..... yeah man, arsenal's a bunch of mental midgets so i can only hope to god that the international break got them (read: ozil) some confidence going forward because i really want this fucking FA cup (vs everton 6:45am tomorrow morn on fox sports 1, that is if there isn't some camping world truck series practice replay that takes precedence over it. you never know) and yeah they gotta handle their fucking business and then, as it always was gonan be, the season is gonna come down to that @spurs/@chelsea/city/@everton "BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH" run starting @spurs on march 16th.... so yeah have it at arsene/arsenal. go get 12pts out of those 4 if you fancy yourself a premiership.... otherwise just for the love of god PLEASE don't fuck up the FA cup, cuz odds are if you beat everton you'll just have to beat 2 more PL teams that might or might not include manchester city and basically only you can prevent domestic trebles this year.

wow that was a lot of text was it not? but hey fuckall.... soccer's great fun and i really pity those who slag it off like it's utter bullshit because it's awesome to wake up at 6:30am on saturdays and have your sports day go from 6:45am-3pm cuz then it's like 2-3pm and you've got the whole evening ahead of you and you've already consumed a day's worth of sports and you're ready to go. plus once you get past the abstract of a bunch of european/south-american manlets having a kickabout, yeah, there's a reason it's called "the beautiful game" --- go search for a youtube video of zlatan ibrahimovic's best goals and you'll be on the way. DARE TO ZLATAN.

also:

TO BE ZLATAN, YOU HAVE TO BREAK A FEW RULES AND MAKE A FEW ENEMIES.
STRIKE WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT HESITATION.
EMBRACE THE CHAOS, LISTEN TO INSTINCT, AND NEVER PLAY IT SAFE.
YOU HAVE TO LEARN TO BE LOVED, HATED, AND EVERYTHING ELSE IN BETWEEN.
TO BE ZLATAN, YOU MUST SUMMON THE COURAGE TO PUT IT ALL ON THE LINE.
AND DARE TO TAKE THE CHANCES THEY CAN’T ANTICIPATE,
SO YOU CAN BE THE THING THEY NEVER SAW COMING.

----

"those who play it safe shall never know the ways of zlatan" - nike

fucking ace marketing, nike. well done!

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#DareToZlatan

yeah, in his autobiography didn't he talk about his time at barca under pep by saying that "when you have a ferrari you don't keep it in the garage" ?? =D

that dude absolutely loathes guardiola.... and if the story/stories in his book are true then yeah i mean i'd totally get it (also, he'd "take a bullet" for mourinho) but no doubt this guy knows who and what he is and he goes about it. i think wenger was trying to recruit him circa 98-99 (there's even a picture of him in an arsenal kit) but he said that arsene "made [him] feel like a little boy" and therefore he didn't jump at the chance to go to arsenal during their bigtime epoch of 98-06... instead i think he stuck around malmo for one more year and then he was off.... was it juve or inter right away? i forget.

i do remember him talking about seeing his hero, ronaldo ronaldo (you know, "the most complete striker of the last 20-30 years" back when he had two knees.... not the stepover specialist with the fake teeth and the russian girlfriend) at san siro and as a kid he said "i'm going to play here" ---- and i'll be damned if he didn't.

brilliant player. even tho he had that bicycle kick in the swedish friendly last summer, man, for my $$$ i still love that goal from a few weeks ago where the goalie fucked up the hoof and it landed right in front of him ~40 yards away from the net, so he matter of factly kicked it right back at the net and got it past the goalie. that was suitably hilarious/badass/brilliant/BEAUTIFUL/MAGIC/WORLDCLASS/OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH/(ray-hudson) and, i like to think, what the guy's all about. #DareToZlatan.

can't wait to get one of those shirts and rock it someday so i can get called a soccer hipster, who btw i've gone to amend my definition of as being "people who are brazenly and ostentatiously into the MLS"

also, =(



(of course, seeing that i got into arsenal circa 2012.... yeah, even if he joined arsenal around 98-99 there's no way he stays there past 03-04 or something.... it's just who he is! #DareToZlatan)

edit: aha... it was ajax that he was off to first, but then he went to juve and then inter in that order.... so at least i was right about that part, just how can you forget ajax? i wonder if they had him come back after he x-ferred out of town for a "proper sendoff" like ajax did with christian eriksen a month or two ago? prolly not =)

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Complain again and maybe he'll score 2 again.

yeah as a ~70' sub no less.... but hey what can i say? that was like two different games between the 1-0/1-1 heading up to 68', and then the 3-0 from 68'-end. i really can't complain about today other than i think koscielny has spoiled me a bit because vermaelen gets me a little herpy derpy with all of the space he's prone to leave people in/around the box.

and for my $$$ barkley was prolly offsides, but hey that was still a majestic cross right to his foot to set up lukaku with the easiest goal you'll ever see scored in "the beautiful game."

so since the FA cup draw is rigged they'll get city in the semis, right? =D

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Yeah, what the fuck is with people being really into the Seattle Sounders as if they're a soccer team that matters? Nice scarf, asshole.

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yeah idk... i mean when i got into "soccer" it was through those ian and macca saturday morning at 645am tilts, and then as i started to invest in watching a PL season to figure out who my team was by the end of the season i found myself going for the team that used to have SEGA on their road kits.... go figure.

tho really it was that early season loss @ norwich city where 5head gervinho looked useless and the term "handbrake" was added to my vernacular lexicon, that's where i started to feel the relative-plight of the arsenal (relative to all of the other top ~10 teams in the world anyways) and now i can carry on about an 8yr silverware drought like i was actually there for these 8 years (and presumably the glory b4 that dry spell)

so for me, the big appeal of the euro game is that it starts balls-early on the weekend and it's right there conveniently timed for the gainfully un/der-employed at 1:45pm on weekdays.... so i can get my fix and then turn around and it's ~3-4pm and like "whoa i still have the whole day ahead of me" --- bloody brilliant. and once you get used to a superior product (EPL > MLS if you haven't figured that out) it's hard to go back to caring about some league that plays games later in the day / evening with a bunch of shitty players i've never heard of just because they happen to play their home games within 50 miles of where i live.

i've had long rants b4 where i figure the only way the MLS could really get people to give a flying toss would be if someone like lionel messi comes over at 33-34 (say that injuries are piling up on the guy and he's won everything he can win at barca and he wants "a new challenge" as opposed to just adding la liga #7-8 and CL #4-5 or whatever) and he's still got a prime year or two or 3 left cuz then maybe with the proliferation of the EPL into americana via NBC/SN you can get some people to give a shit about the MLS..... otherwise, why bother?

i mean the USMNT has the occasional moment but it's a joke.... and it doesnt help that all of their top players seem to be pretty much cunty soccer hipsters themselves (landon donovan, come on down! that is if you're not on another sabbitical because you're landon donovan and you feel more/deeper than us peasants) and just.... yeah man. it's like when i want to hear some rap music i dont start listening to british or polish or russian rap.... so when i want some football i dont start watching american soccer, you know what i'm saying?

and if i am truly "the problem" re: american soccer fans and the MLS, well then i'll own that shit and go cop another arsenal kit just to piss you off!

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MLS is inherently doomed as the one North American sports league that doesn't feature the world's best. Bringing over a used-up Messi would just be the sequel to bringing over a used-up Beckham.

I can't bear the MLS diehards who are so obsessed with massaging statistics to prove how up-and-coming their minor league is. They make NHL fans look at peace with themselves. And the worst part is how they try to port over the entire English soccer culture of scarves and singing and all that stuff that happened organically for them, but is contrived here as a way to look sophisticated and to Do What Soccer Fans Do, never mind that being really into pro sports is seen as anything but a mark of sophistication in a country that still has a titled aristocracy.

In short, stop trying to make fetch happen.

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MLS aint' up and coming..... it's youngest kids / lowest paid players are str8up living in poverty. check out this article >> http://www.buzzfeed.com/djpeisner/the-l ... mls-rookie << it talks about how the payscale is so stunted that kids are making like 20-25 grand a year to try and make it in the MLS, meanwhile the "fat cats" aka designated players are making their millions.... i think there's plenty of articles on whether or not the beckham "experiment" worked and pretty much the answer is a resounding no.

and see, messi at ~33 or something would be a much bigger deal than beckham, who was great at FKs and all that but was more of a celebrity/pop-star than, say, "the best footballer in the world" which messi could lay claim to (for my $$$ i'd say messi is the best scorer in the world while ronaldo is probably the best all-around footballer in the world) and if he came here with anything left in the tank (unlike, say, thierry henry who had his best years @ arsenal/barca and then came to pasture here in new york) then maybe you've got some buzz...something. WATCH LIONEL MESSI FIGHT HIS EXISTENTIAL BOREDOM AND SCORE ON *YOUR* CHICAGO FIRE (AND MLS MVP MIKE MCGEE!!!!!!!!!!!!) might work cuz i'm pretty soldier field did big #s for that messi and friends debacle, which you might remember the breakout story from that was the one northwestern soccer guy who scored the bicycle kick goal and wowed the world..... as he kind of subtly begged for a MLS tryout in the 15mins of fame that ensued afterwards. and just think, that guy WANTS to be in the situation that the story up there describes)

so yeah pretty much idk what you can say about MLS other than it's got a double-edged-sword relationship with its big brother / football-daddy, the EPL..... MLS really needs the EPL to catch on over here and start getting people like me to be football-cognizant/savvy and then hope that the game itself becomes ingrained in us and thus our kids so we have a lil more fervor than having them play youth soccer cuz i think that's actually in the american social contract that every middle-class little suburban white kid plays soccer when they're growing up. but then they get old enough to play t-ball/little-leagues and that goes away..... so they really need football-proper to get installed into teh culture to the point where kids start playing pickup soccer games and kicking the ball while saying "RONALDO!" or somethi ng (as opposed to jacking up a long 3pt shot and saying KOBE!!!!) and even then, odds are if the kids are gonna fall in love with the game it's via the high levels and the aforementioned ronaldos and messis..... so short of having more old guys come out to pasture out here in the MLS it's never really gonna work out, and in a way that's sad.... but given the demographic we seem to be in lockstep talking about here in terms of MLS fans, fuck 'em all i say.

btw man, in terms of foreign soccer stars coming to america they were absolutely BALLING in the late 70s / early 80s with the NASL... guys like pele, george best, gerd muller, and countless others retired to america where a lot of teams were in nice sunny warm climates and they all came out here to cash out some $$$ and get all kinds of high/fucked-up-on-drugs and have some kickabouts on the side. now if there's ever a time-traveling-tourist-service that can take you there, going back to ~1978 and watching some NASL might be good fun (remember that's when america had it's first and possibly only "soccer craze" --- well until the women's national team tried doing that +feminism.... and how's that going now btw?) but otherwise, yeah, hey the MLS is cleaning up on guys like jermain defoe and bringing back clint dempsey and you never know, maybe xavi will come to pasture out here and blah blah blah....their only hope is really getting an existentially-bored messi/ronaldo/world-superstar (someone with the game to back up the name, unlike beckham) and then hoping veritable barnstorming tours build up interest..... but yeah if the MLS can survive for ~20 years and this EPL ON NBC keeps on trucking along and there's a cultural installation, maybe.... otherwise hell motherfucking no.

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Both of you guys sound like you just read that Deadspin article by Haisley about the MLS.

MLS is a joke. We all know this. It is our league, though, and as such should merit some kind of support. Just not from me! I might watch the playoffs and the final but, yeah, it's a rough viewing.

Zlatan is an alien. If that guy came over for a career swan song I think it would be a bigger coup than the signing of Beckham. There are infinite ways to describe Zlatan but yet no words can truly do him justice. That's the kind of guy we need in America. Our players have no personality. It's a team of Finfers, McKnights, and Ostrowskis. It doesn't even have to be a Zlatan. I'll take a Rooney-type who fucks old whores. Anything is better than the brodudeguys we have now.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

Oh no, Euro-poseurs don't like MLS. How the league survive. Enjoy your summer friendlies where you slum it vs US teams for that quick payday. Seattle is a fun environment. Pretty sure their average attendance is higher than a lot of BPL teams. Heck, it's surely higher than most Italian teams who only have Nazis come out for the games.

Crystal Palace used to have an affiliate team in Baltimore, but much like English Crystal Palace it sucked and is currently closed up.

That's basically how I feel about the AHL. I really want there to be a robust level of support for Triple-A hockey in the United States (and Hamilton I guess) because it's an important part of growing this wonderful game of ours, but I'm not going to be the one investing time/money/energy in the Rockford IceHogs when I can just devote myself to the Blackhawks.

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Except in MLS the Blackhawks are in England.