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notahomer
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Back in the eighties I enjoyed the indoor soccer league (MISL). it was a game that had lots of action. You could use the walls etc... and the goals were set up against the back of a hockey arena. In terms of strategy, you really didn't get penalized for taking a shot on net, as long as your shot was not high, it would just hit a wall and might rebound right to you for an easy put away.

Heard from a friend today that Tottenham Hotspur is playing the Seattle Sounders in a friendly just down the road this weekend just in case anyone does want to take in 'the beautiful game' :cool:
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Robbie
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notahomer wrote:Back in the eighties I enjoyed the indoor soccer league (MISL). it was a game that had lots of action. You could use the walls etc... and the goals were set up against the back of a hockey arena. In terms of strategy, you really didn't get penalized for taking a shot on net, as long as your shot was not high, it would just hit a wall and might rebound right to you for an easy put away.
Hey notahamer:

1. Have you seen live Calgary United F.C. or Edmonton Drillers games?
2. Do you intend to see live Seattle Impact games in the Major Arena Soccer League?
3. Have you seen live Burnaby Titans games in the Premier Arena Soccer League?

-------------------------------

Does anybody intend to see the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup Final live?
I certainly will as I see it as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
祝加拿大加式足球聯賽不列颠哥伦比亚卑詩雄獅隊今年贏格雷杯冠軍。此外祝溫哥華加人隊贏總統獎座·卡雲斯·甘保杯·史丹利盃。還每年祝溫哥華白頭浪隊贏美國足球大联盟杯。不要忘記每年祝溫哥華巨人贏西部冰球聯盟冠軍。
改建後的卑詩體育館於二十十一年九月三十日重新對外開放,首場體育活動為同日舉行的加拿大足球聯賽賽事,由主場的卑詩雄獅隊以三十三比二十四擊敗愛民頓愛斯基摩人隊。
祝你龍年行大運。
恭喜西雅图海鹰直到第四十八屆超級盃最終四十三比八大勝曾拿下兩次超級盃冠軍的丹佛野馬拿下隊史第一個超級盃冠軍。
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KnowItAll
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Robbie wrote:
notahomer wrote:Back in the eighties I enjoyed the indoor soccer league (MISL). it was a game that had lots of action. You could use the walls etc... and the goals were set up against the back of a hockey arena. In terms of strategy, you really didn't get penalized for taking a shot on net, as long as your shot was not high, it would just hit a wall and might rebound right to you for an easy put away.
Hey notahamer:

1. Have you seen live Calgary United F.C. or Edmonton Drillers games?
2. Do you intend to see live Seattle Impact games in the Major Arena Soccer League?
3. Have you seen live Burnaby Titans games in the Premier Arena Soccer League?

-------------------------------

Does anybody intend to see the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup Final live?
I certainly will as I see it as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
is your sig Korean??
Every day that passes is one you can't get back
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notahomer
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I might catch the Women's final.

No, I haven't caught any of the pro indoor soccer league games. My spectator sports money will always be spent on CFL football before anything else. NFL would probably be a distant second. Vancouver Giants would be the next bet I guess.....
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Robbie
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FIFA president Sepp Blatter has now resigned amid all the corruption.
祝加拿大加式足球聯賽不列颠哥伦比亚卑詩雄獅隊今年贏格雷杯冠軍。此外祝溫哥華加人隊贏總統獎座·卡雲斯·甘保杯·史丹利盃。還每年祝溫哥華白頭浪隊贏美國足球大联盟杯。不要忘記每年祝溫哥華巨人贏西部冰球聯盟冠軍。
改建後的卑詩體育館於二十十一年九月三十日重新對外開放,首場體育活動為同日舉行的加拿大足球聯賽賽事,由主場的卑詩雄獅隊以三十三比二十四擊敗愛民頓愛斯基摩人隊。
祝你龍年行大運。
恭喜西雅图海鹰直到第四十八屆超級盃最終四十三比八大勝曾拿下兩次超級盃冠軍的丹佛野馬拿下隊史第一個超級盃冠軍。
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BC 1988
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Robbie wrote:FIFA president Sepp Blatter has now resigned amid all the corruption.
Most likely Blatter (the Teflon Don) was told that he was going to be implicated in some of the corruption charges. Why else for the 4 day turnabout after his Coronation?
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sj-roc
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BC 1988 wrote:
Robbie wrote:FIFA president Sepp Blatter has now resigned amid all the corruption.
Most likely Blatter (the Teflon Don) was told that he was going to be implicated in some of the corruption charges. Why else for the 4 day turnabout after his Coronation?
Agreed. Now as long as his successor isn't also engulfed in all the controversy...

The HBO programme Last Week Tonight With John Oliver has gone after FIFA a couple of times.

There was this piece that aired in June of last year just before the start of the World Cup:

[video][/video]

Then there was this follow-up that aired just this past Sunday — after the arrests and after Blatter had been re-elected, but before his resignation:

[video][/video]

BC Place gets a brief couple seconds of airtime in the latter video.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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WestCoastJoe
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Not a big soccer fan. Some Premier League. World Cup of course.

I can understand bribes to be selected as host nation = big bucks. I have not heard if this involved bribing players to throw games. Or referees. Nowadays you are going to get caught.

In pro sports, as we know, there have been many fixes with top players doing just enough to lose the game. Or just manipulating the final score without losing --> "Shaving points in basketball."

Refs are relatively underpaid. Guys like Messi and Ronaldo make millions. They would seem to be less susceptible to bribery.

That referee that cost the Canadian women a loss to the Americans in Olympic play is very suspect, I would say.
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
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Toppy Vann
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BC 1988 wrote:
Robbie wrote:FIFA president Sepp Blatter has now resigned amid all the corruption.
Most likely Blatter (the Teflon Don) was told that he was going to be implicated in some of the corruption charges. Why else for the 4 day turnabout after his Coronation?
BC 88 - My sentiments exactly.

I suspect that investigators either found something out from the arrests last week and informed him that he's next.

Possibly some gov'ts have contacted FIFA about actual WC boycotts especially as its in Russia in 2018 (but I doubt any country would dare to do that).

Soccer globally is rife with corruption. The Singapore fixer has fixed national games of teams from Africa. If your federation is offered huge dollars to lose a friendly tournament and you have no money to run your soccer fed, they think why not.

Blatter is definitely giving his own counsel as he could have done a more graceful exit that didn't make him look this bad but prosecutorial threats could be driving this.
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
TheLionKing
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Toppy Vann wrote: Russia in 2018 (but I doubt any country would dare to do that).

Soccer globally is rife with corruption. The Singapore fixer has fixed national games of teams from Africa. If your federation is offered huge dollars to lose a friendly tournament and you have no money to run your soccer fed, they think why not.

You can add the International Olympic Committee to the group that is rife with corruption.
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Robbie
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Who will be attending a live 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup game?

I will be attending the final on July 5. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Adding a poll and I'm fairly confident that the winner will be among the 10 poll selections.
祝加拿大加式足球聯賽不列颠哥伦比亚卑詩雄獅隊今年贏格雷杯冠軍。此外祝溫哥華加人隊贏總統獎座·卡雲斯·甘保杯·史丹利盃。還每年祝溫哥華白頭浪隊贏美國足球大联盟杯。不要忘記每年祝溫哥華巨人贏西部冰球聯盟冠軍。
改建後的卑詩體育館於二十十一年九月三十日重新對外開放,首場體育活動為同日舉行的加拿大足球聯賽賽事,由主場的卑詩雄獅隊以三十三比二十四擊敗愛民頓愛斯基摩人隊。
祝你龍年行大運。
恭喜西雅图海鹰直到第四十八屆超級盃最終四十三比八大勝曾拿下兩次超級盃冠軍的丹佛野馬拿下隊史第一個超級盃冠軍。
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Toppy Vann
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Robbie wrote:Who will be attending a live 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup game?

I will be attending the final on July 5. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Adding a poll and I'm fairly confident that the winner will be among the 10 poll selections.
Curious. I'm in HK and can't attend but why are you only going to the Final?

Not that interested?
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
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Robbie
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Toppy Vann wrote:
Robbie wrote:Who will be attending a live 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup game?

I will be attending the final on July 5. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Adding a poll and I'm fairly confident that the winner will be among the 10 poll selections.
Curious. I'm in HK and can't attend but why are you only going to the Final?

Not that interested?
Well with possible time, money, and resource limitations and constraints, if one is going to attend just one game it might as well be the final.
祝加拿大加式足球聯賽不列颠哥伦比亚卑詩雄獅隊今年贏格雷杯冠軍。此外祝溫哥華加人隊贏總統獎座·卡雲斯·甘保杯·史丹利盃。還每年祝溫哥華白頭浪隊贏美國足球大联盟杯。不要忘記每年祝溫哥華巨人贏西部冰球聯盟冠軍。
改建後的卑詩體育館於二十十一年九月三十日重新對外開放,首場體育活動為同日舉行的加拿大足球聯賽賽事,由主場的卑詩雄獅隊以三十三比二十四擊敗愛民頓愛斯基摩人隊。
祝你龍年行大運。
恭喜西雅图海鹰直到第四十八屆超級盃最終四十三比八大勝曾拿下兩次超級盃冠軍的丹佛野馬拿下隊史第一個超級盃冠軍。
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Toppy Vann
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Robbie wrote:
Toppy Vann wrote:
Robbie wrote:Who will be attending a live 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup game?

I will be attending the final on July 5. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Adding a poll and I'm fairly confident that the winner will be among the 10 poll selections.
Curious. I'm in HK and can't attend but why are you only going to the Final?

Not that interested?
Well with possible time, money, and resource limitations and constraints, if one is going to attend just one game it might as well be the final.
Makes sense.

Women's and girl's soccer has come a long, long way from the days I'd not watch much of a game as it was so mechanical. Now even my granddaughter's 13 year olds ( a very good team) play very smoothly and it looks natural.
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
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sj-roc
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I was just browsing the G&M's website when I happened upon this gem. Good to see that Canada's so-called National Newspaper is helping Toronto shed its image for myopia, entitlement and western condescension.
Kelly: Kicking off the World Cup anywhere but Toronto is a mistake
CATHAL KELLY
EDMONTON — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jun. 04, 2015 10:23PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Jun. 05, 2015 12:30PM EDT


Four years ago, they opened the Women’s World Cup in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, the place in which Jesse Owens took the arc of sports and history and tilted it toward decency.

Inside one of the globe’s most recognizable gathering places, that occasion was a spectacle – 74,000 in attendance, sold out weeks beforehand, a frenzied atmosphere. It was a priceless advertisement for Germany, which is the only sane reason anyone goes to the trouble and expense of hosting one of these things.

On Saturday, they’ll open the next one in Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium.

The arena is not famous, or suited to soccer, or attractive. Scratch that. It’s actively ugly. The field is circled by a track – the purrfect bush-league touch that says “high school.”

In order to maintain the televised illusion of grass – the surface is artificial turf – they’ve haphazardly laid long, near-green carpets on the sidelines. Like your weirdo cousins do in their paved-over backyard.

The global audience is used to seeing this level of event played on landscape architecture so pristine it makes Versailles look like urban farmland. Canada’s version is going to look like the house that gets cleaned by piling all the junk behind the couch.

Maybe the enthusiasm of the crowd can make up for the aesthetic shortcomings. Or maybe not. The locals don’t seem all that interested. As of Thursday, the game was 5,000 seats short of a sellout according to organizers.

As an ad for the country, then, the marketing tag line of the opening match of the 2015 World Cup goes something like, “Canada: Well, you know.”

What we know is where this game should be played, and why it isn’t.

It should be in Toronto, where there is a very expensive, purpose-designed structure of which its proper name is the National Soccer Stadium (BMO Field).

You and I paid for it to be built. Why did we do that if it’s not going to be used for the most important national soccer game that has ever been played in this country? Taxpayers got talked into buying a fridge, and now the bureaucrats want to use it as a bookshelf.

Also, there is the small matter of Edmonton. This requires some delicacy.

Edmonton, God love you. In some ways you are the romantic home of soccer in Canada. But when the whole country has to stand up in front of the rest of the world, you can’t be the first one talking. We just need you to stand there quietly, looking supportive.

No, no, not in front. They’ll see you. Stand behind Vancouver. No, on the other side of Montreal. All right, why don’t you just crouch down behind Halifax and we’ll hope everyone thinks you’re Ottawa.

When England has to make a good impression, they don’t spend hours debating if it should be highlighting Sunderland or Liverpool. You know, for the sake of fairness.

They go to London, straight off and every time, because that’s what the world wants.

The world is going to tune in on Saturday expecting Toronto because that’s the city that matters. It may hurt to hear it, but it doesn’t make it less true.

This might be marginally palatable if any games of the Women’s World Cup were slated to be played in the city. But there are none. Not a single element of the most important summer-sports tournament played here since the 1976 Olympics will take place in the country’s largest, most cosmopolitan, most soccer-loving city.

(Words are too poor a vehicle here. Just imagine me staring at you for a long time, until one eye starts to twitch and you start to get a little afraid.)

Sure, why not? Why the hell not?

Hey, why don’t we move Parliament to a parking lot in Timmins, Ont.? The next time the G8 leaders swing by, we’ll take them to Rimouski, Que., and put them up in a Holiday Inn Express. Maybe the Prime Minister can start doing all televised addresses in a tank top from his garage.

If we don’t care what people think of us, why don’t we just give up altogether?

This outrageous oversight does allow me to write the most unlikely sentence ever printed in this newspaper: The real victim here is Toronto.

Being left out is one thing. But for all its deeds, good and otherwise, Toronto is to be punished with the Pan American Games. What are they? Who’s in them? Why are they here? Good questions. Since no one plans to watch the thing, they’re good questions that will never be answered.

Currently in Toronto, the Pan Ams mean one thing – a commuting apocalypse. City officials are asking people to stay off the roads for a sizable chunk of July. Another great idea.

“If you must leave your home for any reason – including childbirth and house fires – please use public transportation,” they’re saying, which would make sense if they’d bothered to build us any serviceable public transportation.

I suppose we should all call work and tell them we’ll be staying home for those two weeks. No, we’re not sick. We’ll probably spend most of the time lying in a turtle pool, day drinking and alarming the neighbours. But this isn’t about what we want. It’s about the country.

The Pan Ams are the reason Toronto got passed over for the World Cup, a governmental scare job done by an event that didn’t want even a small echo of its inconsiderable thunder stolen by a much more popular sports tournament.

It’s a small national embarrassment so nitwitted, nobody wants to talk about it. But don’t worry. The rest of the world won’t either. They’ll just think we’re charmingly small-town and save their awe for countries that trumpet their biggest and brightest.
Wow.

The writer dumps on Edmonton as the opening venue because the stadium has a "high school" track around it. I wonder if he knows that Berlin's stadium — the one he talked about so breathlessly in the preceding paragraph, "one of the globe's most recognizable gathering places", we're told — also has one of those?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_FIFA_ ... Cup#Venues

Image

FFS, he even referenced Jesse Owens at the same venue in 1936, who was, you know, a *track* star. Or maybe the writer thinks he only played soccer — after all, he never reveals his own imaginings of the particulars of Owens's athletic achievements, rather merely that he "took the arc of sports and history and tilted it toward decency", which I have to admit, makes for a pretty good bluff (perhaps he watched closely and learned a lesson about bluffing from the stumblings of Jonathan Bernier, especially since his incident happened to occur right there in Toronto).

So the writer shoots himself in the foot with the very first point of his argument and it only gets more ridiculous from there.

There's too much nonsense in his article to break it all down in just one post, but he presents a clear implication that hosting the WWC is supposed to be about showcasing your highest-profile cities and he's holding up Germany to make his point. So you figure besides Berlin, other well-known, large cities like Hamburg, Munich, Koln, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Dusseldorf must have hosted the rest of the 2011 tournament, right?

Well, not exactly. Putting aside the Berlin opener, Frankfurt was host to four of the other 31 games (admittedly inculding the gold medal game) but the other aforementioned cities were overlooked while the remaining 27 games were shared among the following seven cities:

Sinsheim
Mönchengladbach
Leverkusen
Wolfsburg
Dresden
Augsburg
Bochum

I don't know about anyone else but the only place on that list I'd ever heard of is Dresden (the largest of them). These other places are kind of like Sunderland or Liverpool, one might imagine. If Germany sees fit to do it this way, there's no reason why we're out of line with the way we're doing it (not that I'm equating Edmonton to these other previous German WWC sites).
It’s a small national embarrassment so nitwitted, nobody wants to talk about it. But don’t worry. The rest of the world won’t either. They’ll just think we’re charmingly small-town and save their awe for countries that trumpet their biggest and brightest.
No. Nobody wants to talk about it because NOBODY GIVES A *frig*. Did anybody care that Germany hosted their WWC games in places like Sinsheim and Leverkusen?

Hmm... this was written by one Cathal Kelly. Didn't he used to dump on the CFL for the Star, too?

One other thought: given a certain fairly recent, widely-reported incident, *cough*FH*cough*RITP*cough*, maybe Toronto, soccer and women don't really go together all that well?
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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