On the Eve of the new Season...

hutch wrote:
now that I finally got my soccer channels sorted out on my cable they switch up again.. what a mess..

DirecTV will have this sorted in no time.  Cable co's will take months if not years….thankfully the Prem has another season with ESPN and Fox giving the cable co's plenty of time to screw this up.

Watching the last day in America was a lot better than watching it in England, so we're still better off.

yes, this will likely be at least a short term win for directv subscribers. 5 live european channels

Collars up for The King today!

the days go by and I'm still waiting for Vansmack to admit he was wrong about Tevez not winning anything with City….


;D

hutch wrote:
the days go by and I'm still waiting for Vansmack to admit he was wrong about Tevez not winning anything with City….

I'm not talking about it yet.  And it has nothing to do with Tevez.

vansmack wrote:

hutch wrote:
the days go by and I'm still waiting for Vansmack to admit he was wrong about Tevez not winning anything with City….

I'm not talking about it yet.  And it has nothing to do with Tevez.

oops..raw nerve …sorry..take all the time you need…

pretty classless of tevez to hold up the rip fergie sign at the parade. especially from a guy that refused to play

godsshoeshine wrote:
pretty classless of tevez to hold up the rip fergie sign at the parade. especially from a guy that refused to play

aaahhh

This has to be the worst opening game of the Euros ever.

vansmack wrote:
This has to be the worst opening game of the Euros ever.

I stand corrected.  The matchup was awful, but the match itself was highly entertaining…

vansmack wrote:

vansmack wrote:
This has to be the worst opening game of the Euros ever.

I stand corrected.  The matchup was awful, but the match itself was highly entertaining…

Officiating was questionable. 

Shemp wrote:
Officiating was questionable. 

Oh, it was awful.  But since I had no dog in the fight, I found that entertaining too…

thought poland would at least be fun to watch with the dortmund players

czechs were overmatched. going to be a short tournament for them

godsshoeshine wrote:
czechs were overmatched. going to be a short tournament for them

Brother in law: Keller needed more work in the booth before this major tournament
Smackie: So did the Czech defense…


I used to root for the Czech's.  Then I shared a camp with them in Gelsenkirchen in 2006…

ole mankie used to have a saying about a goalie being a teams best player

it wasn't a good thing

If I don't have familial attachments or bloodline attachments to a country, I usually root for nations in tournaments in the following order:

(1) If in attendance, always root for the home team.  The after-party is always better when the home team wins.

Then I employ the following rules:

(1) Where were you in World War II?
(2) Which country has the hotter women?
(3) Which team plays the more entertaining football?

If none of those rules produce a clear winner, I get into the weeds:

(1) Which team has more Manchester United players?
(2) Geo-politically, which country is better for the world?
(3) Which team doesn't have a player named Andre on it? 

I don't care how you spell it, you can't trust anybody named Andre. #fact

All that being said, I was touched/moved/impressed by Andriy Shechenko's performance in front of his home fans today.  I was also surprised he was still alive.

One other quick thought.  It was weird seeing Sweden in black and not seeing the team in yellow as Sweden.  I was worried that the similar colors would make it difficult to tell the Swedish women apart from the Ukrainian women - turns out it's not that hard to tell the difference between Scandanvian women and Developing country women….   

vansmack wrote:
All that being said, I was touched/moved/impressed by Andriy Shechenko's performance in front of his home fans today.    

the man was already an national hero.  today, he became a legend.

i can't say that i was particularly impressed by ukraine's game and without a whole lot of luck they aren't going to make it far, certainly not in the elimination round (then again, a whole lot of luck is exactly what they had in 2006 so who knows).  the last 5-6 minutes of defense were painful to watch.  i'm still shocked that the vikings didn't score.

vansmack wrote:
I was worried that the similar colors would make it difficult to tell the Swedish women apart from the Ukrainian women - turns out it's not that hard to tell the difference between Scandanvian women and Developing country women….   

they showed some absolute stunners during the game.  the vast majority of them, IMO, were ukie.

since we're on the topic of the Euro:
- could portugal/italy have been any more of a disappointment? zzzzzzzz.
- i enjoyed france/england more than i should have.
- i hereby ask that we retire the expression "luck of the irish", unless it's meaning is sarcastic.

so US soccer qualifier against Guatemala unavailable on TV but Mexico available.. WTF?

hutch wrote:
so US soccer qualifier against Guatemala unavailable on TV but Mexico available.. WTF?

It's free at my local soccer bar:

https://www.facebook.com/dannycoyles

Otherwise, yep.  Pay per view only because US networks deemed the asking price too high for the market share.

vansmack wrote:

hutch wrote:
so US soccer qualifier against Guatemala unavailable on TV but Mexico available.. WTF?

It's free at my local soccer bar:

https://www.facebook.com/dannycoyles

Otherwise, yep.  Pay per view only because US networks deemed the asking price too high for the market share.

awesome bout your bar.. the two local bars here i'm sure are charging covers..although you never know.. its a pain though… here on the east coast its 10 pm start.