Tag: sports

This is your weekly NFL open thread. I have to confess that I’m a little disappointed that Philip Rivers broke Dan Fouts’s San Diego record last week; I know the game has changed, but when I think Chargers, I still think first of Air Coryell and Fouts.

Sure, they don’t grasp either sportsmanship or emotional continence, but that doesn’t mean they don’t offer considerable entertainment in their own right:

By the side of the green, Hull could clearly be seen walking towards the next tee in a gesture that golfers the world over will recognize as the tacit concession of a tiny putt. Lee duly scooped her ball up, only to be met by Pettersen’s fiery insistence that no such concession had been made. ‘Europe one up,’ declared the referee, who had no choice but to apply the dictum: rules are rules.

Cue pandemonium. Down the 18th hole the European coterie of captains and assistant captains debated what had happened. Surely one of them could see it drove a coach and horses through the idea that the spirit of the game is a vital part of the integrity of these matches?

Under the rules they had the opportunity to offer a concession of the final hole and make things right. It cried out for strong leadership – or just common sporting decency, for that matter – but sadly none was forthcoming from the captain, Carin Koch.

It says everything about the grotesqueness of it all that Hull had taken her record to four wins out of four – and yet still ended the match in floods of tears.

Awesome. Frankly, I think women’s sports would be a lot more popular if they stopped trying to imitate the men and just embraced the full extent of cattiness and head games that women are capable of bringing to intra-sexual relations.

This will serve as your NFL open thread.

This is your weekly open NFL thread. I’m disappointed the Vikes aren’t playing until tomorrow night, but it will be good to see some football again anyhow, Roger Goodell notwithstanding.

Less politics, more football. How hard is that?

And if you don’t like football, that’s nice. No one asked for your opinion. Go talk about how much you don’t like it somewhere else. We don’t care.

I have to say, I haven’t seen my team this confident since we were the two-time league champions. Our second game was against the other new team in the league, and although they’d lost 4-2 to our arch-rivals, last year’s second-place team, the word was that it was only because they’d played all 19 players and the weaker substitutes let them down in the second half.

Somewhat to my surprise, I started at attacker, although I came out after 20 minutes with us up 1-0. At halftime, we were up 3-0 and in control of the game, so much so that after losing two of their players to injury, they asked if they could borrow a player. Since I’d already played, our captain offered me, and they put me in at left midfield, where I promptly intercepted a pass and very nearly scored against my own team.

To illustrate the gap in talent between the two teams, I am the worst starter on my team, but I was the second-best player on their team. Their only attack was me combining with their center mid, and if I hadn’t been defending on the left side, we would have had at least three more goals. I have no idea what happened to their left defender, but at several points I found myself defending our right defender, our right mid, and a striker by myself. We won 7-1, but it could have easily been 14-1.

The third game was against our neighbors, who are always overmatched but nevertheless play us surprisingly tough. They even beat us at their place 2-1 last year thanks to some poor substitutions on our part combined with a pair of late corner kicks. They are old, fat, and slow, but highly skilled, and their slow pace has tended to disrupt our game the last two years. We had all three of the younger strikers present and our captain elected to start at striker, so I figured I’d play in the second half, but instead I found myself starting at right mid.

(This is why it is important to show that you can play different positions, as you’ll always get plenty of playing time if you are willing and able to play wherever the team needs you. The only four positions I can’t play at this level are the two center mids and the two central defenders; I can play goalie and once even stopped a penalty shot in a game.)

The first 15 minutes were much the same as in previous years. We controlled the ball but couldn’t do anything with it. The right defender was the guy who is usually the substitute and he put us in danger once by charging forward at the wrong time without telling me; a quick reversal would have given their left midfielder a very good chance if the cross hadn’t been too long. But not long after that our captain got a through ball, and for once I remembered to chase after him, knowing that he’s lately shown a tendency to drill the ball directly at the keeper. He did, and the ball rebounded right where I anticipated, but too high to volley. It was also too low to head, so I hit it with my knee just inside the box and somehow managed to put it in the upper right corner. 1-0 and the dam was broken.

I took myself out about five minutes later, as we had plenty of substitutes and I was winded from controlling the left side. By the time I went back in at striker around the middle of the second half, it was already 5-1. We blew about 10 more opportunities, two of them my fault, as my shots beat the goalie twice but curved wide left of the post. Even so, we ended up winning 7-1, giving us nine points to start the season and a three-game goal difference of 19. We haven’t faced any real tests yet, but our confidence is sky-high and I’m quite looking forward to our game against last year’s champions. We beat them and tied them in our two games last year, so I’ll be very disappointed if we can’t beat them twice this year.

The secret of our success this year appears to be a combination of our strikers being able to capitalize on their chances and our midfielders’ ability to control the wings. I don’t think there has been a single chance created from either the left side or the right so far this season; the biggest change is that we now have four outside midfielders who are capable of attacking, then getting back on defense.

Although I started last season well, scoring six goals in the fall half, I missed nearly half our games in the spring and didn’t score at all, missing far too many good opportunities. Scoring is funny for an attacker; when it comes easily it comes effortlessly, but the more you think about it, the harder it gets. Some of it is bad luck, some of it is nerves, and some of it is poor decision-making.

We started the season this weekend and I figured I’d get less playing time because we’ve got two new attackers in their early thirties who have moved up from the first team due to losing their starting positions to younger, better players. Along with a pair of new midfielders, they are much-needed reinforcements that should see us back in competition for the league title that we used to own. Rather to my surprise, I ended up starting at left wing, although only because the usual starter was arriving late since he was coaching one of the kid’s teams on one of our other fields.

We needed a referee, but our captain turned down Ender when he volunteered because the team we were playing is an all-Albanian team new to the league. Albanians are famous throughout Europe for their volatility, even in comparison with Italians, and it was easy to understand why a teenage referee would be a suboptimal choice. The guys were pretty pessimistic about the game in general, as apparently the Albanians had one former second-league player and at least two former third-league players, which was three more high-level players than we had.

However, I tended to like our chances a little better after the Albanians arrived and five of them turned out to be former teammates, two of whom I particularly like. The atmosphere was the exact opposite of heated, as everyone was visibly glad to see each other, many handshake-hugs were exchanged, and I realized that three of their players were technically skilled players who made our team worse two years ago because they seldom pass the ball and never, ever look outside. Better yet, the really good striker who played two games with us two seasons ago and is a serious scoring machine (5 goals in those two games), was injured and had come only along to watch, so that left the guy who had been my favorite partner up top being the only serious cause for concern among the known quantities.

We got off to a bad start, however, and it was partly my fault. The captain told me to play with a defensive orientation, as Sylvan, the defender behind me, was the weak link in the back four, being short and the only player on the team older than me. (It’s generally not a good sign when the average age of your left side is 47 and their attackers and center mids are all in their early 30s.) But despite our age, both of us are in very good condition, and for the most part, we managed to control the left… except for the one time – the ONE time – I didn’t hang back and attacked.

By that point, I knew I could beat my man, their right wing, whenever I wanted, so when we had the ball in their half and I saw the left defender follow an attacker inside, I waved at our center mid and broke hard. The timing was perfect and I was onside with a clear path to goal, but Sandro mishit the ball and it curved well behind me. Their right wing intercepted it and passed it immediately up the field to Vallon, a former teammate who doesn’t pass, but is strong, fast, and formidable on the ball. Sylvan did his best and fought him the whole way, but was overpowered and outrun, and Vallon beat Giuseppe, our keeper, without any trouble.

Despite being down, we were starting to control the action and just missed on two half-chances. The regular left wing showed up not too long after the second one, so I came out just before we started scoring. Their left wing just couldn’t cope with our right wing, who sent over a pair of crosses that both ended up in the net. Then a missed offsides call gave us a one-on-one break that one of our new attackers finished in a clinical manner, so it was 3-1 at the half.

A penalty kick and another headed cross made it 5-1 before I finally went back in, this time as an attacker. I beat the defenders on the left and had a great chance, but shot the ball a little too high, at waist-level, which let the diving goalie get his arm on it. Our left wing followed me in and should have scored on the rebound, but he tried to play around with it before shooting and was promptly shut down. My second chance was much the same, a weak left-footed shot that was blocked, but it was worse because I somehow missed seeing a wide-open Sandro in the center. (In fairness, he didn’t call for the ball, so I had no idea he was there.)

Sandro didn’t hold it against me, though, when later he dribbled around both defenders on the right, drew the goalie out to meet him, then slipped the ball backwards to me as I trailed. I probably should have driven hard to the left to clear the keeper then passed the ball into the empty net, but instead I hit it on the first touch from outside the box, putting it in a nice high arc that cleared the goalie before abruptly dipping down into the upper right corner. Thus was the duck broken. Our captain put in one more to close out the game, and we ended up winning 7-1 against the team everyone had expected to beat us.

The lesson: a team that runs and plays well together will easily beat better players who don’t run well. Losing both wings killed them, because for all their ball skills, that meant they were forced to attack straight down the clogged center, then deal with our wings and outside defenders collapsing on them if they managed to break through the two center mids and the two central defenders. At times, their wings were 20 or 30 meters behind ours, so they were consistently reduced to trying to attack 3 or 4 on 8 in limited space. It was a testimony to their skill that they managed any pressure on us at all.

Tactics + athletics beat skill. The two least-skilled starters of the 22 men on the field were our right-wing and me, and the normal starter who replaced me on the left wing isn’t much better, although at least he is left-footed. But all three of us can run, and it doesn’t matter how good your ball skills are when you’re consistently 15 meters behind the ball. And if your worst players can contribute two assists and one goal, plus control both sides of the field between them, then your team is probably in pretty good shape.

The guy who had been their keeper in the second half was my former attacking partner; he’d gone into the net at halftime. He came up to me after the game and gave me a hard time about getting stuffed on the two easier chances, then hitting on the difficult shot. I explained that I am a football artist and scoring in easy and obvious ways only bores me. He laughed, but I don’t think he bought it.

The kids wanted to go to the track today and do a speed workout. With the soccer season over, I didn’t have a good excuse to avoid doing it, so we ran a few laps followed by some 100-meter sprints, then finished with another two laps.

The good news: I can still run a 12.2 and beat Ender. I might be able to get below 12 again if I work at it this summer. My sub-11 days are clearly a long-distant memory. And despite some initial tightness, my hamstrings held up.

The bad news: I’m pretty sure I can’t hold him off at the 200 any longer. Also, I think it may take me about a week to recover.

The kids were all amused at how easily they outran me after the sprints. Apparently they were previously unfamiliar with the concept of the famous “sprinter’s jog”, which is roughly as fast as a geriatric man hobbling with a cane when he is not particularly in a hurry to get where he is going.

And in totally unrelated news, I have an absolutely shocking bit of investigative reporting to reveal to the Dread Ilk:

GLOCK Inc.@GLOCKInc
The OFFICIAL Twitter for #GLOCK.
Followed by Dave W., Adam Baldwin, Nate and Aquila Aquilonis.

What’s next for Nate, will he be endorsing Keynesian economics and changing his name to Naitlyn?

The prima squadra needed two wins in their last three games to secure promotion this season, and after scoring a 3-0 upset away last weekend, it was looking pretty good with one away game followed by a home game to end the season. But they were shut out in the penultimate game during the week, a game they had half-expected to win, which put the pressure on.

Half the village turned out for the game and it seemed to fire up the players as they came out and heavily dominated the game for the first 10 minutes. The ball barely made it into our half of the field. Then our captain got the ball halfway through midfield and the box, and despite not having position on the sweeper, he simply challenged the big guy’s speed, blew past him, and slipped a nice left-footed shot past the keeper. 1-0.

Not even five minutes later, one of our players was taken down just inside the box. The crowd was screaming for a penalty, but the referee reasonably gave us a free kick right on the line. No matter, our star striker stepped up and hit a soft, but perfectly positioned shot right in the upper corner. The keeper didn’t even move. 2-0.

The game was sealed within the first half-hour when a midfielder headed a half-cleared ball past the defense, the star striker jumped on it, pushed it past the keeper who had come out to try to get it, then casually passed the ball into the empty net. He was right in front of our group of veterans, so he dropped to one knee and threw his arms up theatrically as if accepting accolades while the crowd went wild. It was pretty funny.

Two crossbars in the second half was as close as we got to scoring again, so the game ended up 3-0, but perhaps the funniest moment was when the older striker who sometimes plays with us (and is joining us full-time this fall) went in as a substitute, got the ball, and couldn’t beat the two men on him or find anyone to pass to. He finally put it down the line and out of bounds, prompting one of my teammates to yell, “see, that’s why you’re playing with us next year!” It was a great game from a fan’s perspective, the guys were entirely in control throughout, and there were at least three genuinely spectacular exhibitions of skill that I can’t even properly describe.

All the teams were there, from the younger juniors to the vets, sporting the colors and cheering on the guys. I know all the players pretty well, having played with four of them and practicing twice with the squad, so it was a real pleasure to see them return the club to the highest level at which we’ve ever reached in our history. The players are even better acquainted with Ender, as he is being groomed to be one of their keepers of the future, so I was pleased, if a little surprised, to see him invited to join the team photo they took after the game.

It may be tough to stay up next year, but except in goal, the team is very young and I expect they will continue to improve. But promotion to this level is something that only happens perhaps once every ten or twenty years, so it was exciting to have the chance to be a part of it.

Er, never mind. I have no idea how I ended up on an old article about AD’s contract. I thought they tore up the old one and gave him a new one, but apparently all that has happened is that he’s back for OTAs.

Throughout The Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons writes repeatedly about The Secret, and identifies specific NBA teams like the Bad Boys Pistons, the Russell Celtics or the Duncan Spurs that knew it and gained success by it.

In recent weeks, I’ve seen the same thing on the soccer field with my veterans team. My first two years, we were the champions, I was the number five striker, and we simply overwhelmed our opponents by scoring five or six goals almost every single game. But then age and injury began to strike, and at one point, I ended up the number two striker for an entire season, and when the number one striker went out, found myself trying to carry the scoring load up front on my own.

We brought in a number of new players, but despite them being quite skilled, we found ourselves not only being beaten by the best teams in the league, but unable to defeat lesser teams we should have been able to beat without any trouble.

At the beginning of the spring season, things looked really bad as our second-best player and new captain had to have surgery on his hand that rendered him hors de combat for the entire season. Not only that, but our best player has been injured and we’ve only gotten one-half out of him.

And yet, somehow we managed to not only win our local derby two weeks ago, but trounce them 3-0, with all three goals coming in the first half. Last night, we were playing the league leaders, who feature one former international and a fast-paced, highly skilled attack that has scored twice as many goals as we have this year.

But what is different now is that we have a group of players who don’t quit and who don’t give up on each other. We went down 1-0, then 2-1, and were still down 2-1 when I got in at halftime. Their defense had been stifling our new top striker, who’d recently come up from the first team, but once I scared them with an otherwise useless run or two, they started putting two on me and giving the new guy more room to work. I did very little but pull defenders away from him, but that was enough to help him level the game at 2-2.

In back, the defenders were just about killing themselves as well as the faster, better strikers and midfielders from the other side. They gave up two penalties, but our keeper made brilliant saves on both of them to keep us in the game. I stole a ball from a defender, but then didn’t see a wide-open midfielder to my left, and passed instead to my off-side fellow striker, ruining what should have been an excellent chance. Overall, it was a pretty poor game for me… except on this team, everyone keeps encouraging you to keep running, keep working, keep trying, keep doing your job. My job isn’t to score, or even to make assists, my job is to stretch the field, occupy the defense, and create space for our better players.

So, despite all my screwups, our right wing didn’t hesitate to put a long through ball for me towards the corner with only a minute or two left. And I didn’t give up when the defender tried to obstruct me as I started to go by him, as when he put his arm across my chest, I simply pulled it behind me and fought my way past him. When I broke free, the referee finally blew his whistle and correctly called the defender for the initial foul, which he probably wouldn’t have done if I’d backed down. The right wing stepped up and put a beautiful 25-meter free kick in the upper corner. 3-2. Game over.

There was no way we should have won that game. They were absolutely the better team in at least 8 of the 11 positions. And they play together well too; there were several strings of 10+ passes where no one on our team even touched the ball. But they have too many skilled technicians and not enough petty role players. The secret of sports is that the team where everyone accepts his role and throws himself into it 100 percent is usually going to beat the better team where the pecking order and the responsibilities are not as firmly established.

The NFL drops the hammer on Brady and the Patriots:

The NFL came down hard on its biggest star and its championship team, telling Tom Brady and the Patriots that no one is allowed to mess with the rules of the game. The league suspended the Super Bowl MVP Monday for the first four games of the season, fined the New England Patriots $1 million and took away two draft picks as punishment for deflating footballs used in the AFC title game.

It seems reasonable, or it would if they hadn’t suspended AD for the entire 2014 season and suspended Ray Rice indefinitely for things that didn’t call the competitive balance of the game into question.