Donathan

I do agree that if Bale plays like he did last week, we are toast, however I don’t think Austria have the man power to take him out of the game like we do. I’d have Kieran Tierney just man marking him all day long.

Surely the main issue is that “soccer” is about halfway down the top 10 in terms of popular sports in the US whereas it’s entrenched as the number 1 sport almost everywhere else, meaning that the top athletes in the US generally turn in to point guards and wide receivers rather than central midfielders?

If anything, the appetite from clubs to play in national level leagues has increased in recent years rather than decreased. In the earliest days of the pyramid playoff there didn't seem to be a huge appetite from the top HL/LL clubs to come up to L2, but now you've got a number of teams being taken over by sugar daddies and coming up through the leagues. Not only that, but clubs who have been in the junior for literally a century have finally packed it in and joined the SFA. I think we are probably heading towards a position where we can either look at introducing a new conference tier, or expanding league 2. The English lower leagues play 46 game seasons. Obviously this wouldn't be possible for EPL/Scottish Premiership teams because they're more likely to have cup runs and a handful are in Europe, but I see little reason why the Championship can't expand to 12 teams with no need for a split (44 game season)

You mean it creates a situation where cisgender athletes are considered the norm and trans athletes are outliers? Doesnt the Paralympics do the same thing to disabled athletes?

Technically you could just run a single instance of each sporting event and see who wins, right? The issue with that is that in most sports, it means that women and disabled men would never have a chance of winning anything. So we sub-categorise people into men and women (and further sub-categorise by able-bodied/disabled status) to increase the fairness of competitions and ensure that members of each category have a fair chance at success. I fear that introducing transgender women into women’s sport risks removing this fair chance at success from cisgender women. On the contrary, a category is needed for trans men to give them that fair chance, because biologically they’re unlikely to be able to compete with cis men. Literally this entire issue can be solved by giving transgender people their own separate category to compete with one another. Outside of the sports debate, I see little need for a debate at all. The entire faux-outrage about assaults in the women’s toilet is just thinly veiled transphobia for me and while I have very little understanding and experience of the issues affecting trans people, I generally am of the belief that society should stay out of people’s private lives and allow them to live and express themselves in the way that they feel most comfortable with. For that reason, I think reducing the bureaucratic barriers associated with legally changing gender is a good thing so I support the self-identification principle that the SNP are looking to bring in.

What about a completely separate category for transgender athletes? That way, women’s athletes aren’t disadvantaged by having to compete against biological males, and trans women aren’t unfairly misgendered by lumping them in with the men. Win-win situation.

My crystal ball says GROUP A: QATAR USA SERBIA ECUADOR GROUP B ENGLAND URUGUAY JAPAN GHANA GROUP C ARGENTINA MEXICO SOUTH KOREA WALES/SCOTLAND/UKRAINE GROUP D BELGIUM GERMANY TUNISIA AUSTRALIA/PERU GROUP E PORTUGAL CROATIA MOROCCO CANADA GROUP F BRAZIL DENMARK POLAND NEW ZEALAND/COSTA RICA GROUP G SPAIN SWITZERLAND IRAN CAMEROON GROUP H FRANCE NETHERLANDS SENEGAL SAUDI ARABIA

It’s correct that they now advise against covid certification, but masks are still explicitly advised in the guidance.

Also, by not wearing a mask in a church in England (which is guidance but not law), Stugeon has confirmed that guidance means f**k all

Canada were beaten so they’ll be in pot 4. Tunisia in pot 3. Costa Rica did beat USA 2-0, but not nearly enough to overturn the goal difference deficit. So Canada, USA and Mexico are your CONCACAF qualifiers, with Costa Rica to play New Zealand in the playoffs.

Just have separate categories for trans men and trans women, that would solve a lot of problems.

The academy have now put out a statement saying that Smith was asked to leave after the incident, but refused. In light of that it’s very surprising to me that the award he won wasn’t pulled and that he was allowed to get up and make his speech.

I’m fairly confident Costa Rica and Peru will qualify over the antipodeans (or UAE)

From 10 simulations: Pot 1: Qatar (5), Brazil (2), Argentina/Belgium/Portugal (1) Pot 2: Mexico (4), USA (3), Uruguay (2), Germany (1) Pot 3: Morocco (3), Serbia/Iran (2), Poland/Tunisia/Korea (1)

2-0

Solomon Islands started alright but NZ 1-0 up now

That one’s hit me a bit hard because he’s such a young guy with a young family, and it’d been reported that treatment was working well on his tumour

New Zealand v the mighty Solomon Islands kicks off in 45 minutes

He looks like the drummer from the Foo Fighters who sadly passed away the other day

Pots 1 and 2 have five European teams each. In the unlikely event that five of the groups contain two European teams each and the other three contain some combinations of Qatar/Argentina/Brazil and USA/Mexico/Uruguay, then it’s is guaranteed that Poland, Serbia and the UEFA playoff winner must (a) be drawn separately from one another, and (b) be drawn into the groups without UEFA representation. This scenario has a 1.8% chance of happening in practice, and it would mean that we’d know exactly what group the playoff winner are in before they even draw pot 4, as there would be a group without the required UEFA team. The opposite scenario is that no groups are left without European representation after pot 1 and 2 (i.e., Two groups are all European, and the other six contain one European team and one of Qatar/Argentina/Brazil/Uruguay/USA/Mexico) In this case, Poland and Serbia would be drawn into two of those six groups, leaving four possibilities for the playoff winner. I think the number of possible groups playoff winner can be drawn into = 6 - the number of all-European groups after pot 2. So if we have the maximum of 5 all European groups, there will only be 1 possibility for us. If there are 4, we’ll have 2, etc. If I have time later I’ll run the generator 100 times to get an idea of the likelihood of each opponent

Hang on a minute. Mask wearing in churches isn’t mandated legally in England, but it is still guidance is it not? So Sturgeon is saying that it’s fine to ignore guidance. If that’s the case I don’t want to see her imploring people to wear masks when the guidance does come in. Hopefully he now realises it’s a glorified cold.

Each of the pots ranked from favourite opponent to least favourite: Pot 1 Qatar - Yes please Brazil - Qatar are the only team I think we have a great shot at a result against, but seeing us play Brazil would be cool. Argentina - I’d prefer to avoid the Europeans. Portugal - The preferred European opponent because we haven’t played them in a competitive game in nearly 30 years. England - At this point we are on the meh opponents, but England tend to play down to our level so I’ll take them over the other 3. France - They’ve not had a total implosion of infighting for a while to must be due one. Spain - Ranked over Belgium purely as we’ve not played them in longer. Belgium - Meh Pot 2: USA - They are a bit naff. Artificially high world ranking due to beating up on Caribbean minnows in qualifying. Switzerland - Decent ranking due to their Euros run and they finished above Italy in qualifying, but I’m not convinced they’re world beaters and would fancy us to get a point off them. Denmark - We proved ourselves against them at Hampden. Sure, they outclassed us at home though. I think we’d have a shot at a point off them on a neutral venue, especially given they will be as disadvantaged as we are by the heat. Mexico - The heat point is why I put them below Denmark, but they’re no great shakes either. Croatia - They outclassed us at Hampden but I do think this Croatian team is past its best. They managed to roll back the years last summer but I don’t know if they could again. Uruguay - I have zero desire to watch Grant Hanley v Luis Suarez. Germany - Enough said Netherlands - My dark horse pick to win the world cup Pot 3: Tunisia (?) - Struggling to even sneak in to pot 3 so if they do we should take them with open arms Morocco - They were crap at the last World Cup and little reason to think that’s changed Iran - They were crap at the last World Cup and little reason to think that’s changed Serbia - Boring, but we’ve proved we can beat them Canada (?) - Should be higher but drawing them implies we didn’t get the USA from pot 2, so they get a bump down. South Korea - Son would destroy us. Japan - They’re a really organised team. Better than the sum of their parts. Plus home advantage with the World Cup being in Asia, and drawing them means we couldn’t get Qatar. Senegal - Mane would destroy us Poland - Boring plus Lewandowski would destroy us

He has now said he will continue to present as a man and wants to be known as he/him until further notice

International friendlies are very rare these days because we (rightly) take the nations league very seriously and we aren’t good enough like England/Germany/Spain that we can treat the qualifiers like half of them are friendlies, so SC doesn’t get that many opportunities to involve younger players. From that regard it’s a tad disappointing to see guys like Gordon, Hanley, McGinn and Tierney playing 100% of the minutes in this meaningless double header