ponsaelius

No. No Brazilians. This is a very different model to some of the naturalization they've tried in the past and have done controversially in handball. Most of the squad is actually homegrown, either born there or moved there at a young age. Some of the star players have heritage from Africa or elsewhere but that's not unsurprising considering the demographic nature of the country. A majority of the population ultimately come from somewhere else. There's one or two players who've been naturalized having played there only as adults/professionals - but even then they've bee

Their players have been playing together for a long time. From the Aspire academy, through youth sides, and then the national team. They've had the same coach throughout as well with Felix Sanchez being at Aspire as early as 2006 and then moving up the age groups. Put together with that a lot of players playing for the same couple of club sides and they have something approaching club level chemistry. Clearly there has been a long term goal in place even before they got awarded the World Cup. They didn't win the Asian Cup by fluke - they absolutely dominated it in a country that w

Oh aye it'll definitely still be a packed schedule. It's just the ability to have loads of different channels/streams that we will miss out on unless you subscribe to Eurosport.

Pulling for the bants of Qatar being champions of two continents going into the World Cup.

There's undoubtedly been some shitty developments - but most of the sites built upon were derelict. As are those proposed for new development. Liverpool lost its raison d'etre to Southampton a century ago - what else do you do with a load of abandoned docklands other than develop them for living, commerce and entertainment?

We're kicking onto 90% of all adults having had the jabby. JCVI aren't letting kids get the jabby. As of 28th June 91% of the adult population have Covid antibodies. Herd immunity ala measles still doesn't appear on the horizon and possibly never will be. So we're looking at an endemic virus that we all will get at some point - probably multiple times - but which will in the vast majority of cases thankfully be mild. The government is using coercive politics that intrude upon citizens' bodily autonomy, that's going to cost billions of pounds of public money, will be a ballache to implemen

Well then I disagree with them if that's the reason behind it. If Rona is going to be endemic rather than eliminable (which it appears likely, and also appears to be the accepted reality reflected in government policy) then the benefit of the vaccines is almost entirely to that of the individual rather than the societal biomass. And the benefit to the individual if you are under 25 is very minimal. If you're wanting to increase vaccine uptake - carrot and stick coercion is a dangerous slope. It is also not doing a very good job at actually reaching those who are genuinely at risk but have

Putting aside the ethical arguments - vaccine passports are pointless. Just yet another way to waste billions of pounds of public money and make life harder for businesses. A double vaxxed person with Covid and mild symptoms (entirely unaware that they have Covid) will waltz into a nightclub, while an anti-vaxxer who is at that point perfectly healthy won't be able to go. If anything, if you're still concerned about spread, they're likely to create overconfidence and undermine common sense assessment of risk and personal ill-health. I'll be double jabbed by early August, so this won

Second the Goldrush documentary on iPlayer. Haven't watched the 3rd episode yet but it has been very interesting. Shows just how much of Olympic sporting success is essentially down to cold hard funding. Also shows just how some sports are basically primed for medal winning. Jason Queally won Olympic Gold in Sydney having only taking up cycling at 25. Imagine trying to become a Premier League footballer having never kicked a ball before?

BBC normally get 3000 hours of coverage but lost the rights to Discovery. Only got 300 hours this time (OFCOM regs mean Discovery were legally obliged to sub-sell them) so it will mainly be the main events and GB centric stuff. Takes a lot out of it because one of the best things about the Olympics is being able to stick random events on red button/iplayer.

To be fair, there's always a chance squad numbers can change right up to the start of the season. Anybody buying a shirt now runs that risk.

It's probably not to do with blending with grass. It's probably more to do with interfering with the augmented adverts on the pitch side green screen... Ridiculous either way. Do wonder if they'll actually enforce it considering Sassuolo's kit is 50% black. You'd hope it's more for entirely green away/third kids.

The joy of the Euros has curtailed a lot of my interest in top flight club football. Going to try following Whitley Bay this season. Never had a local non-league team before (Prudhoe Town doesn't count).

Aye I'm proper sad it's over. I've found it so, so much more enjoyable than club football in recent years.

The thing with yellow + yellow = red is that it basically means players have an option in their locker to do one of those a game and get away with it. You don't really get away with it, because it means a yellow card is against your name for the rest of the match reducing your capacity to make more risky challenges, and of course places you at risk of further suspension for later games. However in the context of the final few minutes of a final there is basically no cost to such a decision in terms of jeopardy for the rest of the match and further suspension. So it makes it an absolute no brai