holystove

Actually, you're right . "Caster Semenya, woman who rocked athletics world, 'is hermaphrodite'" "The source, who is said to be close to the IAAF investigation, claimed that the 18-year-old had internal testes and no womb or ovaries." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/athletics/article6829813.ece .

I think you're focusing on the negative here. His composure on the ball is very good. His passing is more than decent. With his impressive body he's a clear target to pass the ball to and gives opponents trouble. He scores goals. The only thing that IMO he clearly needs to work on is his positioning etc when we don't have the ball. Once he learns that, he can gradually move to the DM position where he'll be very useful as a box-to-box midfielder in the near future. He'll be comparable to Moutinho then. It's just that Moutinho would have given Everton a more technical midfielder while Fellaini is a big dude with the advantages that come with it. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth but it seems to me that if Moyes had signed Moutinho you might have focused on how very short he is and doesn't win any headers if what you focus on with Fellaini is his inability to track back.

Just like Germany, Italy, Spain (and France), England can always end up winning a WC or EC without anybody being overly surprised. Top players at every position except in the goal. I'm hoping Spain wins it, but any team from Europe will do.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31999L0044:en:HTML there you go Mike, Europe is behind you .

Arteta. This poll could get embarrassing for the Yak .

My favorite is still "The Blue Planet - a natural history of the oceans" by the BBC .. amazing footage, especially when they go so deep that there is no light anymore, it's amazing how the life down there adapted to such circumstances.

Video works .. fell asleep because of the content though .

Seeing how it doesn't look like this is going to get off the ground, on this site you can pick against the spread each week against Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal and Joe Mead : http://games.espn.go.com/pigskin/en/group?groupID=18212&entryID=259531 .. only NFL though.

not football related but this remains by far the best commercial I have ever seen : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arfNofxBtfY .

Works here. I don't like the commercial though .. If ever there's a guy whose face shouldn't be filmed in close-up, it's Rooney ... Also, it's frustrating to see him shave the hair on his head but completely forget about all the hair on his back and shoulders.

I'm not sure about the MLS, but for MLB and NBA you can easily find what a player gets paid on ESPN in his profile. For example (the most ridiculous wages ever paid to anyone): Alex Rodriguez. Year-By-Year Salary Contract Year Salary Contract Year Salary 2001 $21,000,000 2002 $21,000,000 2003 $22,000,000 2004 $21,726,881 2005 $25,705,118 2006 $25,680,727 2007 $27,708,525 2008 $28,000,000 2009 $33,000,000

Congrats! In the words of George Costanza : "I'd like to have kids.. ofcourse you need to have a date first."

Ooooh I'm a fan! Great initiative Bill. The NBA is also starting up in october and maybe we could do something with the MLB playoffs? GO PATS!

that's easy : not.

taking into account the new signings and also if all fit : ----------howard neville heitinga jags baines pienaar rodwell fellaini billy ----------arteta -----------saha I loved Heitinga as a CB with Ajax .. a bench with Distin, Yakubu, Cahill has veteran players who know how to be immediately ready when called upon to enter the game and make an impact.. Plus they can keep pressure on a team that for the majority is still young.

Hm, "soccer" is really much more popular there now than it was then (they beat the NHL regularly in ratings).. plus the generation of kids that watched the '94 WC are now money spending adults. I think it's a huge market which FIFA will want to sell their product to. Anyway, I prefer the European Championship. Apart from Brazil and Argentina, all the top teams are there, and none of the crappy ones can qualify because there's no easy groups like "North and Central America and Caribbean" or "Oceania".

I wouldn't be surprised to see the USA get it .. football is really getting more popular there and I can imagine FIFA wanting to give it a little push in the back to make it a mainstream sport. At the very least they've got their stadium situation already sorted out with those humongous NFL buildings.

I'm unaware of the rule change but would welcome it. When a country organizes a world cup, it gets invaded by hordes of foreign football fans so I don't think its a necessity to have the organizing country compete in the tournament to fill the stadiums (at least that's what I thought the justification was). (Not that I would ever doubt that a Rodwell-led English team would qualify for the world cup in 2018 obviously ).

Witsel appealed the original 10 game suspension and 2500 Euro fine. On appeal he got 8 games and a 250 Euro fine. I don't mind the fine because to him 2500 is the same as 250, either case I don't know why they imposed it. But the 8 games is absurd. The guy with the broken leg always started for the Polish national team and now misses out on a chance to play in South Africa, he's 29 and was at the top of his abilities. Defour and Witsel both are getting death threats and Witsel's house is under police surveillance.. with a strong judgment the appellate body could have defused the situation .. instead they chose to aggravate it ... ---- a video instead of a .gif : http://www.sporza.be/cm/sporza/videozone/MG_programmas/MG_Extra_Time/2.6923/1.589922

This. And then as Cahill continues to age, he will get replaced by Rodwell .. with Arteta or Fellaini in the more attacking role obviously.

With the rule that the nation that organizes the world cup gets to qualify automatically, I also think it should go to Spain seeing how they would qualify anyway. If England got into the tournament that way, I'd have the same feeling as when both Switzerland and Austria got to play in the European Championship in 2008 (no England there, right? ) .. it's like cheating your way into a tournament. .

I'm missing something .. is it a foregone conclusion that England will get to organize the world cup?

Ruling came down today : Suspended for 10 games and a €2500 fine (I'm guessing that's less than a day's wages) .. Not harsh enough imo.

The judge would be the collective of TT .. If you vote for someone saying "because I said so", all your posts loose credibility.

awesome signing! Stretch of clean sheets coming up! The only thing I haven't seen him to do much in all his years with Ajax is to contribute much to the offense, but to be fair he was mostly playing CB for them. I assume he'll be placed RB. I hope he has a decent cross.