Sharlo

Good stuff here. Baw with the shades had the slowest choke hold take down of all time. Probably easing himself down for a softer landing. :lol:

ETA: I counted 2 pairs of jorts and 1 skort in that video. Florida AF. :rotflmao:

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This tournament was a chance to bring millions of new fans to the sport in this country. Win or lose, in the end people can accept getting beat. What they can’t accept is watching a team that doesn’t look like it’s giving everything it has

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Exactly. For casual viewers like me, the optics of last night were particularly awful. Those guys just looked out classed, both both athletically and mentally. There was no sense of urgency and people in key positions seem to have no idea about what they were doing.

Nobody wants to see their country represented that way.

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Ask Italy if they would rather do what we did or be at home.

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Ok, but Italy has won several WCs. We never get over the hump.

Unrelated question, if you will be so kind as to indulge me: how did we make it all the way to the round of 16 with this goalie?

On that play that will go down in infamy, he looked just totally lost. Is that not strange to see at this level?

Was this guy a backup standing in for the starter?

Like many baws, I played football and baseball and had no interest in soccer. Still don’t, really.

But every four years or so, I get sucked into this World Cup nonsense because it falls in the absolute doldrum of sports that matter in the US.

So tonight I sat down and watched USA soccer get bitch-slapped by a wimpy little country that is slightly smaller than Maryland.

Here’s what I saw:

When they finally had the nation’s attention, USA soccer absolutely caved. Belgium looked better at every position.

They executed coherent offensive and defensive schemes, and at no point did their goalie seem to be high.

All night team USA played soft and tentative. They looked lost and overwhelmed by the moment.

Hopefully, this was enough of an embarrassing arse-kicking that the vast majority of Americans will forget about this silly game played by dramatic little men who shave their legs.

In this country, all of our best athletes will continue to play football, basketball, and baseball because that’s where all the cultural capital and, of course, the money is.

I think there was an opportunity tonight to maybe challenge that some, had this team showed up with a little bit of heart, a little bit of grit, and a little bit of balls.

That did not happen.

Sorry, soccer bros. I guess you’ll have to keep wearing jerseys from professional teams in other countries.

Keep Austin weird!

Isn't that what all the bumper stickers say?

Mission accomplished.

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To be fair, the same thing is happening in every major city in the US. Maybe not in a $135M library, but the homeless issue has national scale.

What's tricky is that so many of these folks are either severely mentally ill, or have permanently cooked their brains with meth, fent, or whatever.

All the potential solutions are distasteful to me....but that doesn't mean that they aren't the only viable options.

Here's what I think it would take to make a dent:

1. National or at least regional scale with multiple connected states cooperating.

2. Some kind of involuntary assessment program. When they encounter LEOs for doing whatever wrong, they need to be professionally assessed and sorted into two categories: Fixable and unfixable.

3. Those who can be helped and want to be helped should be given options and some kind of on-ramp to society. Those who cannot be helped probably need to be institutionalized.

4. 3 strikes rule for the ones who appear fixable.

Two big challenges for me personally:

1. I don't want to pay for that and for a bunch of people's bad choices.

2. Involuntary assessments and institutionalization are creepy as hell to me and would probably be abused by shitbird bureaucrats.

But I honestly don't know what else would work. It will take some extreme measures, or we'll just have to surrender public urban spaces to them.

These people aren't capable of fixing themselves, clearly.

Don't jump, Jenny!

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Reed & Pavia

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those dudes cooked a lot of defenses.

As other have pointed out, our offense's ineptitude kept D on the field way too much, and they often looked winded.

Key injuries hurt, too.

I think D makes a huge leap this year based on talent, third year in the system, and returning starters.

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If you have to hold a convention to remind everyone of how successful your policies are, are they really successful?

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Smells desperate to me. They're seeing the dismal pole numbers and poor sentiment toward the Iran mess and the economy and are looking for a way to influence the narrative.

It may be worth it, but this does not seem like a positive indicator to me.

Wow.

I'm shocked that the Iranians aren't honoring the cease-fire that we spent weeks to get in place.

It's almost like it was a stalling tactic so they could regroup and get all their SoH mischief (ie, leverage) going again.

This will go on for years.

Good thing POTUS promised us no more endless wars in the ME.

/sarcasm

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