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World Cup Wednesday:
I've been really happy so far! Many exciting games and for a variety of reasons! With most of the first round over the usual suspects seem to be doing well, although the absence of Italy is a scandal again. The US actually looks good? I feel like I'm seeing a lot of older faces I expected to be gone, which is a treat and sad at the same time.
Some Football Culture War:
The expansion in number of teams has been a point of controversy but I'm liking it. You see some teams with no business holding on and drawing or keeping games tight, at the same time it's obvious who the eventual quarterfinalists are likely to be. On the balance of it I'm happy to let some of these smaller countries get to the stage.
On a less positive note...the hydration breaks. Yikes. Putting aside the American obsession with ads, which is not ideal and against the spirit of the game, I am concerned about the clear momentum changes these breaks seem to be creating.
Real Culture War: (These ones have the possibility to get a little heated, please try and keep it to the spirit of the Wellness thread).
Everyone online and some in the media are criticizing America hard for handling of logistics and immigration, however from what I can tell Canada and Mexico have both caused more serious problems. Putting aside the anti-US sentiment, I do think it is interesting that despite our increasing sclerosis we are actually doing better than our neighbors.
Racism continues to be the "worst thing in the world" one of the new rules is that you can get a straight red for talking near an opponent while covering your mouth. Supposedly this is to prevent racism and other bad-talk. One thing that is not apparently to me is this - growing up in sports in the US homophobia and racism was the default and beloved by all, being close to some of the generations younger than mine they all affirm this. Has this changed now in the US? Was Europe always different? Is it just ethnic tensions?
Don't call them hydration breaks, call them TV Timeouts, which is what they are.
We live in a panopticon, and everyone demands surveillance.
Oddly, some of the Eurosnobs in my life have admitted that...they're actually kind of nice? I'm not enmeshed enough in football to judge myself, but they claim that there's been less time-wasting and fake-cramp-injuries and bullshittery because the players are getting a structured break.
..... but they put in place a bunch of other time wasting rules that seem to have more of an impact????
It's not the break!
Also we are seeing wild momentum swings after the timeout.
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I've heard less of this after the first few days but it was hilarious when the commentators had the talking points and had to be like "yes, it's so hot they need water"
temp: 74
Am I correct in seeing that Miami and Monterrey are probably the hottest outdoor venues? Houston and Dallas both have covered stadiums, but I wouldn't even want to sit around watching at an afternoon outdoor game at either this time of year. Probably just as dangerous to sitting out-of-shape fans as active professional athletes.
It looks like the Monterrey games are very late in the evening.
Climate is weird. I think the stadium formerly known as Metlife was actually the hottest one last weekend (NJ).
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I'm not sure I agree. Even growing up in philthy philly at the Vet, while I still have my "Romo's a Homo/Dallas Sucks T.O. Swallows" t shirt and heckling is a proud city pastime, I never heard anyone use racial slurs against opposing players, and if you had asked me about it at fourteen I would have said "well we all sing about T.O. overdosing on pills, but if you called him a nigger you'd probably get banned from the Vet." The only place I recall hearing racial slurs directed against opposing, and their own, players was in Boston, which is notorious for it, and even Fenway says that any use of racial slurs will result in a permanent stadium ban.
((As an aside, some of the best heckling I remember was the Bleacher Creatures in the Bronx chanting at Adam Jones in centerfield that the batting coach was fucking his wife))
Europe has significantly larger problems with racial abuse hurled at opposing players, it's just a different animal over there. And it seems reasonable to label racist slurs as "fighting words" within the context of a contact sport, you don't want to have players taunting each other into a rage. Some things we understand to be so offensive that we can't blame the taunted player for engaging in physical violence in response. The rules are seeking to cut off escalation at an earlier stage. The "no hiding speech" rule seems eminently reasonable, there's no reason to hide your lips unless you're saying something that you don't want publicized. I actually think the American leagues should police players' on-field speech a lot more heavily, and would if the unions weren't so unreasonable.
I'm amazed at the success of the world cup. I'd bought into a lot of the anti-FIFA, TDS negative reporting on the world cup, and so far it's been a complete success. I do think the efforts to restrict travel for the Iranian team is a little disgusting, the Spartans used to be the enforcers of the Olympic peace, but it's overshadowed by the joy that European travelers are bringing to the country. The saga of Lawrence, Kansas is so good that I have shitlib friends of mine saying that it adjusted their own feelings about the American heartland. Scots are reportedly drinking Boston dry. Selfishly, tickets are staying way too expensive around me, I was kind of hoping that I'd be able to snipe $20 tickets in the nosebleeds, but they haven't appeared yet.
And fuck it, the USA will probably fall apart in the round of 16, but I BELIEVE
I think I skipped the "as a player" element (my bad). Yeah fans abusing players is more of a problem but as a player the shit we did to each other was heinous and we loved it.
In my mind the issue is that if sometimes you want to hide stuff from the other team, and while it's supposed to be only in confrontation with other plays, well bad rulings happen.
I think this is exaggerated and likely involves stuff we don't know, the Iranians likely try and smuggle in spies all the time under cover of sport and other things. Canada is outright banning players I heard though?
https://thehill.com/policy/sports-gaming/5925843-iran-world-cup-travel-issues/
It seems like it would be elementary to keep eyes on the members of the traveling team while they are in Los Angeles, and attempting to use them to spy on Tehrangeles is a silly conceit to begin with.
Maybe I'm caught up in cold war nostalgia, but the story used to be that when Soviet bloc teams traveled to America it was the commies that locked them up in the hotel to make sure they didn't defect, rather than the Americans that hustled them out ASAP. We should WANT Iranian players to see rich happy free America, full of rich happy Persians, and go home and think about how their home could be less of a shithole if they spent less energy hating Jews.
And I think you need to be more specific re:racism. In my lifetime there is no level of organized American sport where a white player calling a Black player a nigger isn't a major foul. Because we understand that in a contact sport you can't say shit like that and not get violence. We can argue about where on the hyperstitious scale we should fall, or about how slurs are the only real profanity left, but for racial slurs to be accepted in sport in America you're reaching back to Hammerin' Hank or Victory's Glory.
You're right, maybe I'm over indexing on the teammate experience, where we'd drop all kinds of insults and slurs on each other but very rarely say something to the other team.
Oh that I'd absolutely agree with, my apologies if I misinterpreted. We were absolutely racist to eachother all the time. In Scouts we often noted that we made jokes about our one Chinese kid all the time, but when another troop said a word it was fightin' time. I don't think it would have even occurred to us that if you called an opposing player a slur during a game in front of a ref you wouldn't face consequences.
I'm sure World Cup players are free to say all kinds of disgusting things in non-public training, but on the field there should be standards of sportsmanship. That should be understood as part of the deal: we let players be famous and wealthy and praised, and in return they agree to act like role models. But then I'm an old codger who misses the Yankees' appearance rules, and thinks players with visible tattoos should have to pay a fine every match.
No no I think what you are saying makes sense.
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I think that's more than likely the exact situation that's happening here. Note this very important point from the article you linked:
It's all blamed on "officials", not specifying where from. Unless you're quite far gone in the "the US is a fascist state!" propaganda, I think you'll agree that if it was US officials doing it, the coach could have just said so and not suffered any repercussions, which leads me to be about 98% certain the request was from Iran's side. The Hill (and the AP they're sourcing) are just being disingenuous in implying that it could be the US, because they want their readers who already believe the US would do this to come to that conclusion. In fact, if they had any belief it was the US they could have asked and investigated. What seems likely here is that the "multiple members of the team’s traveling party" that did not get visas were the team's IRGC chaperones and Iran is not comfortable with their players being in the US without them.
You know you might be right, I look forward to the classification from DHS that the Iranian team is welcome to stay as long as they please.
The more I look into this story, the more I see tortured journalism.
Here:
"They'll be asked to leave" by whom? Of course, the article is written to imply that it's the US that's having them leave, but... Who gave that order? The whole thing seems to be deliberately written and carefully quoted so that if this arrangement was made and decided between Iran and FIFA it would still be true, and having it be said by an american official is just so that they can imply the order is from him without stating it. About all the articles I find are sourcing the same stuff and are all carefully avoiding stating that the US is forcing the team out, only stating "this was the plan", not stating whose plan. Note that when something IS an order from the US government, the wording is much less weasely and attribution is clear:
Also note that Iran's delegation has clear spooks in it, so to me, the story sounds a lot like: Iranian team has as part of its delegation IRGC elements in it. Probably not to spy on the US but to keep an eye on the players and dissuade defectors. The US and Canada refuse them visas. Iranian team complains to FIFA, they arrange with FIFA that ok, the players are allowed but they play their games and get back to Mexico where they do have handlers. This plan is communicated to the US officials who say "ok, whatever, as long as the obvious IRGC elements are not coming in that's not a problem".
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From what I gather, not players but officials, but this is likely your best indication that it's not petty animosity against Iran from the US. Canada would love nothing more than to showboat about mean ol' americans, so if they do the same, you can be quite sure there's something to it.
Though it could also be Iran doing this on purpose to try and spoil the World Cup good vibes: send people over that you know will be rejected for good cause then complain about it.
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