Tag: sports

I Was Wrong

After considerable review of statistics and video highlights in the aftermath of Argentina winning the World Cup, I have been forced to conclude that my previous opinion was in error. There simply isn’t any question about it.

Lionel Messi is the greatest soccer player of all time.

I’ve always considered Pele to be number one, with Maradona a close number two. But the fact is that Messi’s creative abilities, vision, and generosity make him a more complete, more effective player on the field than either Pele or Maradona. As for modern players, Cristiano Ronaldo is an incredible scorer and an inspirational leader for Portugal, and his speed, size, and aerial abilities are certainly superior to Messi’s, but the fact is that Messi is arguably more valuable as a goal-maker than he is as a goal-scorer.

This is unprecedented at the highest level of scoring even when one removes penalty goals from the equation. In his five-year peak at Barcelona, Messi averaged 1.03 non-penalty goals per game and 0.46 assists per game for a combined average of 1.5 goals per game.

Consider that the consummate midfielder, Zinedine Zidane, universally regarded as one of the ten-greatest to ever play the game, averaged 0.26 assists per game across his entire career. In Zidane’s best-ever season, at Juventus, he averaged 0.46 assists per game. Messi did that for five straight years. And he did that in addition to scoring a goal in every game himself.

His closest rival, Cristiano Ronaldo, scored fewer non-penalty goals and had 25 percent fewer assists during his own five-year peak at Real Madrid. CR7’s combined average of 1.3 goals per game is still historically excellent to the point of being very nearly unprecedented, but across the 170 games played, that 0.2 delta is a difference of 34 goals in five seasons!

Statistically speaking, at their mutual peaks, Messi was worth one more goal every five games than Cristiano Ronaldo. That’s the statistical equivalent of having one additional mediocre striker or one above-average midfielder on the field every single game. And this peak-to-peak comparison is actually favorable to CR7. The career delta between Messi and Ronaldo is 0.32 despite the latter’s Saudi league-inflated numbers. To put that into perspective, 0.32 happens to be the career average of Andrés Iniesta, an excellent Spanish international who was named to the FIFA Pro World XI no less than nine times.

So the cold hard tangibles are perfectly clear. What about the intangibles? All you need to do is to forget about the goals and watch one highlight reel of Messi dribbling, followed by another one of him making assists. Only Maradona can compare to his dribbling and I’ve never seen anyone who creates opportunities for others as well as Messi does. Any lingering doubts about his ability to win the biggest competitions were settled once and for all when Argentina beat Brazil in the 2021 Copa America, then followed that up by winning the 2022 World Cup.

Dennis Bergkamp will always be my favorite player, and I’ll always harbor the utmost respect for Pele, Maradona, and CR7. But the unquestionable fact, the undeniable fact, is that Lionel Messi is the greatest footballer to ever play the game.

And Americans are very fortunate to be able to watch him doing what he does at Inter Miami. Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar took the Saudi money, but what Messi is doing with David Beckham in Miami is more important, as they are building stronger foundations for the beautiful game.

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Spain 1, Lesbianesses 0

Spain won the Women’s World Cup despite its Football Association needing to crush a player revolt by 15 of its top female players by ejecting 12 of them from the national team.

Spain won their first Women’s World Cup final vs. England on Sunday 1-0 but did it without a handful of top players because of an ongoing protest against the Royal Spanish Football Federation.

In September 2022, 15 players sent the federation separate but identical emails asking not to be called up to the national team, citing a lack of professionalism that each player wrote had an “important effect on my emotional state and by extension my health.” They demanded “a clear commitment to a professional project with attention paid to all the aspects needed to get the best performance of this group of players” in the email.

The 15 players were Aitana Bonmati, Mariona Caldentey, Ona Batlle, Patri Guijarro, Mapi Leon, Sandra Panos, Claudia Pina, Lola Gallardo, Ainhoa Moraza, Nerea Eizagirre, Amaiur Sarriegi, Lucia Garcia, Leila Ouahabi, Laia Aleixandri and Andrea Pereira. Three additional players who did not send emails voiced their support for the others: Alexia Putellas, Jennifer Hermoso, and captain Irene Paredes.

According to The Athletic, among the players’ complaints was insufficient preparation for matches, from arriving to host cities too late and traveling by bus when planes would be considered the practical choice. The players also reportedly had issues with several coaches, alleging they were asked them to keep their hotel room doors open until midnight and inspected their bags after they went on excursions during camps. The players never explicitly asked for head coach Jorge Vilda or his coaching staff to be fired, but it was clear the relationship between them was fractured.

Instead of taking the players’ complaints seriously, though, the federation instantly backed Vilda and criticized those who protested. Ana Alvarez, head of women’s soccer at the federation, said that players would need to apologize before they were welcomed back onto the team, and added that “the federation comes first.”

It’s interesting to see how the players revolt – so celebrated in the early stages of the tournament when the team lost 4-0 to Japan in the last round of qualifiers – is being minimized here now that Spain, under the much-vilified Vilda, has won the tournament. Leaving 12 internationals out of the national team in a sport that starts 11 is hardly “a handful”. The media made a lot out of the current players turning their backs on their coach and refusing to celebrate a quarterfinal victory with him, but the observable fact is that there is no way the Spanish team, which had never even reached the quarterfinals before, would have won the World Cup without him.

Female teams are particularly fragile and are much given to self-destructive drama. I doubt it is an accident that Vilda didn’t select 12 of the 15 who initially declared themselves unavailable, as they were troublemakers and drama queens. And it was impressive that he didn’t hesitate to sit down the #1 goalkeeper when she wasn’t playing well, and that he left his star player, arguably the best in the world, on the bench for most of the tournament because she wasn’t 100-percent recovered from injury. Whether they like him or not, his players went on to dominate an English team full of the very sort of troublemakers and drama queens that he ejected from the squad.

A lot of NFL players don’t like Bill Belichick either. But there is no denying he gets the most out of them. Or that he wins championships.

It’s a bit amusing to see some of the bigger names who were left out whining about how they didn’t get the chance to win a World Cup. “What saddens me the most is that I really have to miss out on something when I could have earned it and contributed. It’s a shame.” But it’s not a shame, you didn’t earn it, you didn’t have to miss out, and your contributions were obviously unnecessary.

The lesson of the unexpected Spanish triumph at the Woman’s World Cup is this: the players are never bigger than the team.

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How to Fail

Johnny Manziel was given a team iPad where coaches could secretly track the amount of time he spent watching film. But the problem was that Manziel didn’t watch any film. Literally not a minute.

It would probably surprise most of you how few people are capable of performing even the most basic and rudimentary aspects of their jobs. And it’s not as if the solution is necessarily more pay.

Johnny Manziel signed a 4 year, $8,248,596 contract with the Cleveland Browns, including a $4,318,980 signing bonus, $7,998,596 guaranteed, and an average annual salary of $2,062,149.

Note that not even two million dollars per year was enough to get the guy to watch five minutes of game film.

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He Even Lost His Name

Jack Nicklaus’s bid to reclaim his own name from (((a former business partner))) was rejected by (((a Florida judge))).

In a recent federal court decision, Jack Nicklaus suffered a setback in his attempt to regain control of his name and likeness owned by former partner Howard Milstein. On Aug. 1, Judge Robin Rosenberg of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida ruled that due to a prior decision against Nicklaus by the New York County Supreme Court on the exact same property in question in Nicklaus Companies, LLC v. GBI Investors Inc., he lacked the ability to grant Nicklaus any control of the property in question.

I neither know nor care much about the travails of a rich golfer who lost control of his own name in pursuit of even more riches. But it’s a reminder that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is, and that if there is wording in the contract permitting the other party to a) take full control or b) not pay, the other party will usually find a way to make that happen.

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Adios, Bitches

The end of Megan Rapinhoe’s international soccer career was truly glorious. The most annoying athlete in all of sports finished by blowing a golden opportunity to finish off Sweden on penalties in the World Cup by putting the ball five feet over the crossbar; an inept penalty attempt worse than the average high school girl’s. It’s up there with Roberto Baggio’s 1994 catastrophe, only worse, since a) Italy reached the finals, b) Baggio was just trying to keep Italy even, not win the game, and c) four years later, Baggio took and made a penalty in the 1998 World Cup to become the first Italian player to score in three World Cups.

And just to make the moment even sweeter, the outspoken anti-American lesbian-infested SJW squad, which prior to the tournament had been favored to win it, ended up losing the round-of-16 knockout match 5-4 on penalties after future star Sophia Smith put her penalty wide and over, followed by some other player whose name I don’t know hitting the right post.

I used to support the US Women’s National Team back when Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain were playing for it, and while I like Alex Morgan and Sophia Smith as players, the current team as a whole is an obnoxious, overpoliticized, and overrated embarrassment to the country. It’s good to see them lose in such an ignominious manner, especially to a team mostly comprised of pretty European blondes.

As for the winning penalty, it was a close call, but the VAR was conclusive. The US goalie did a nice job of deflecting the ball and quickly recovering to knock the ball out of the goal, and I initially thought she’d saved it, but a different angle and the VAR review showed the ball did fully cross the line.

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A Failure of Leadership

The Pacific-12 conference, first founded in 1915 as the Pacific Coast Conference, is pining for the fjords.

“The Big 12 Board of Directors has voted unanimously to admit Arizona State University, University of Arizona and University of Utah to the Big 12 Conference,” commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement.

The Pac-12 Conference really has no one to blame but themselves.

Former commissioner Larry Scott once had an opportunity to add the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners, but declined. He also had an opportunity to partner with ESPN with the failing Pac-12 Network, but declined.

The windows of opportunity don’t ever remain open for long. Good leadership understands that. Mediocre leadership never does anything because it fears making a mistake, which ironically, often turns out to be a mistake.

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ESPN Goes Full Feminist

On Thursday night, ESPN will present an all-female version of SportsCenter focusing only on women’s sports. Indeed, the virtue signaling to the left will go all in on the women-only concept because not only will the on-air staff be all female broadcasters, but all the producers, camera people, and other off-air staff will also be an all-female affair, according to Variety. That isn’t all. During commercial breaks and between reports, ESPN will air ads and segments to flog the financial-services firm Ally, which has entered into a sponsorship deal with ESPN owner Disney which calls for 90 percent of its spending on the network to benefit women’s sports reporting.

However, the more exposure to women’s sports one actually has, the less inclined one is to support them, let alone permit one’s daughters to participate in them. It amounts to signing them up for knee surgeries and sexual inversion. It would be interesting to see which path produces statistically worse results on average, women’s team sports or the stripper’s pole.

Regardless, a good father will keep his daughters away from both.

UPDATE: We are reliably informed that ESPN will be following Elon Musk’s lead and rebranding as the Ladies Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

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Whatever Could it Be?

The 18-year-old son of NBA star LeBron James suffered a heart attack during basketball practice at USC.

Bronny James, incoming USC freshman basketball player and son of Lakers star LeBron James, suffered a cardiac arrest during a practice with the team Monday. According to a statement from the James family via The Athletic’s Shams Charania, Bronny collapsed on the court and was taken to the hospital. He is in stable condition and no longer in the ICU after being tended to by the team’s medical staff.

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Everything is Fake

And it has been for a long time. Miles Mathis explains why he’s pretty sure that Wimbledon and other tennis championships have been scripted from time to time over the last 50 years, including Arthur Ashe’s 1973 title and Andy Murray’s 2013 defeat of Djokovic at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

I believe Connors was paid to throw Wimbledon to Arthur Ashe. See here for how staged it all was. Or you can watch highlights here, where I think it is blindingly obvious. Remember, Ashe was nine years older and had only been playing 3-set matches since 1973. So it is convenient he beat Connors 6-1, 6-1 in the first two sets at Wimbledon, in ludicrously short points. Watching that film will show you Connors didn’t disguise it very well. He is grinning like a naughty child the whole time. At several points, you can see that Connors is throwing it so clumsily, Ashe gets mad and hits the ball out on purpose himself. It is the sloppiest professional match of all time, and Connors has an ugly unforced error on almost every point. Looking back, it is difficult to believe the crowd didn’t riot or boo them off the court. Even the announcers are stunned into silence. How do you comment on someone throwing a Wimbledon final in such outlandish fashion? I have to believe someone pulled Connors to the side after the first two sets and ordered him to quit hitting every ball out.

They said, “C’mon, man, we are paying you to make this look real. This is just pathetic!” The misdirection on this match is awful to this day, with many people hired to misdirect, saying Connors choked, Ashe played him for a fool, etc. Some criminally miscount unforced errors. One guy claims Connors had 13 unforced errors in the match. You have to laugh. He had more unforced errors than that in the first three games. You can see more unforced errors than that in the brief highlights reel I linked to above at Youtube. As you study that highlights reel, I encourage you to also study the crowd. It just proves once again that people are zombies. They sit there quietly clapping on cue as this transparent crime against reality unfolds in front of them.

It’s not hard to imagine Jimmy Connors deciding to make it obvious for everyone, given his puckish personality. And I don’t think it’s an accident that these “stunning historic upsets” so often feature something like “the first Black champion” or “the first British champion in a billion years”. Remember, sports are first and foremost an entertainment business, so making money and producing memorable storylines are their priorities, not “providing all competitors with a level playing field”.

The fact that the International Olympic Committee is not inviting Russia and Belarus to participate in the Paris Olympics only underlines the fact that sports are subservient to the Narrative.

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Taking the N Out

N stands for national. As in National Football League and National Basketball Association. Of course, NFL also stands for Not For Long.

In the wake of the effort by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund to basically take over the PGA Tour, the Qatar Investment Authority could soon have an ownership stake in the NBA’s Washington Wizards.

Via Mike Vorkunov of TheAthletic.com, the group will buy a piece of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns among other things the Wizards.

The reportedly “small stake” values the company at $4 billion. It also requires approval of the NBA’s Board of Governors. Although foreign ownership of an NBA team is unprecedented, the league has opened the door to it.

“In November 2022, the NBA Board of Governors decided to permit passive, non-controlling, minority investments in NBA teams by institutional investors, including university endowments, foreign and domestic pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds, subject to a set of policy guidelines adopted at that time,” an NBA spokesman told TheAthletic.com. “All such investments require league review, NBA Board approval and compliance with the policy.”

The NFL currently allows individual ownership only, but there has been talk of expanding the universe of potential ownership interests to counter the struggles associated with finding individuals having enough cash to buy at least 30 percent of a team from the get-go.

There can be no doubt about it any longer. The money owners, as opposed to the sports owners, are ruining every sport they have invaded. Jerry Jones has proved to be a cancer.

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