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Indian tykes.

They're in Coronation Street too and lesbian to boot.

The US Women's Soccer team is starting to get a lot of attention now that they just won against France and will now face England. I think I'll watch it both on BBC and domestic US coverage and compare the remarks.

I find it interesting that American female soccer teams seem to do very well at the world-class level, but the American male teams seem to be stuck at mid-level. My observation over the past 20 years or so is that every American boy athlete is playing soccer instead of the baseball, football, basketball and hockey we played back in my day. We should be doing much better.

Ben, where is the money?

That probably has a lot to do with it. The professional soccer leagues in the US don't have much of a following compared to the major sports. That's also a conundrum. If so many kids are playing soccer, why is big league soccer a big yawn in the US, particularly when it seems to have a grip on the rest of the world?

Interestingly, I'll be in Mexico for the next ten days, watching from there. In Mexico everywhere you go that has a TV at the bar is showing a soccer game. But I can watch it on BBC or domestic US at home.

Basketball and football have the most money.
Hockey has good money, but as an indication of the athletes, the 'American' St Louis Blues who just won the Stanley Cup have 3 American players, 2 Swedes, 1 Swedish Canadian, and 20 Canadian players, and a Canadian coach, captain, top goalscorer, etc.
It's also a function of what is done at school level. Until the 1990s, a US female student's sports options were mostly cheerleading, or track and field. About 98% of the budget had gone on male football and basketball, so there was only a tiny amount left for female sports (presumably why cheerleaders' uniforms had so little material in them). By 1994 (when I lived in the US), female sports received a huge boost from equality legislation, which obliged educational institutions to spend the same amount on female as male sports. The schools weren't about to give up their top male basketball and football teams, so other male sports got much less funding, and there was a huge amount of money suddenly thrown at female sport. In Arizona, where I was, well over half the new money went on soccer, and there were twice as many female league teams as male. Soccer was perfect. It only needed one coach, no specialist kit, every shape and size of girl could do it, and it could be played on a football pitch with dual-purpose end posts, outside the football season. Plus girls have about zero chance of getting injured, unlike say baseball or football.
Here in Canada, I have never seen boys playing soccer. Every boy plays hockey, football, basketball, some rugby or a bit of baseball. Hockey and baseball are popular with girls, as are volleyball (both kinds) and figure skating, but the majority play soccer, with some rugby. Actually, Canada is still hockey nuts. My village has a population of under 400, but it has an indoor hockey rink. There is a baseball diamond in a poor state of repair. There are no soccer pitches outside school grounds. This would be typical. The hockey season has just finished last week with the Stanley Cup finals. The season doesn't restart until Oct 2nd, but the dates of the first games are already listed on the CBC website. Just one of the training providers has over 100 practice camps (2-7 days) listed for the summer, and there are a lot of providers.

Also, I've always thought soccer was the perfect world sport because essentially the only equipment you need is a ball and a pair of athletic shoes.

BenThere wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 28, 2019 9:36 pm

That probably has a lot to do with it. The professional soccer leagues in the US don't have much of a following compared to the major sports. That's also a conundrum. If so many kids are playing soccer, why is big league soccer a big yawn in the US, particularly when it seems to have a grip on the rest of the world?

Perhaps because of the structure of US sports? Look at the way it's set up in Europe, with multiple leagues and promotion and relegation between leagues. That adds a bit of extra excitement to the season, whereas finishing bottom of MLS table is merely embarrassing. MLS appears to be a single organisation that owns all the player contracts and teams, franchising out the running to various different groups, so it's pretty much a closed shop. Interesting that they didn't stick to the rules until about 2005, with shootouts to resolve draws, and a countdown clock that didn't allow for stoppage time.

I'm obviously commenting from the English perspective, but look at the FA cup as another thing - village teams enter that at the earliest stages, and just occasionally, some really minor team has a run of luck and gets to play against a big name team and there's been a few famous victories where top-level clubs have come unstuck against minnows. Similarly, occasionally a small team has a run of form and gets quite high up the league pyramid. One of my local teams almost made it into the football league (fourth division until they messed up the naming) some years ago, but then their form collapsed and they sunk down a bit in the following years.

MLS, like a lot of US team sports, is contrived and manufactured and doesn't have the quite the atmosphere and excitement as found elsewhere in the world.

Other factors probably include the fact that unlike elsewhere, where football has been a top sport for decades, it's relatively new to the US as a national sport and has to compete with established sports such as baseball, hockey, basketball and American Football for its audience.

BenThere wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 28, 2019 9:45 pm

Also, I've always thought soccer was the perfect world sport because essentially the only equipment you need is a ball and a pair of athletic shoes.

Nope, just a ball, or something that will serve, and some stones place at a suitable distance apart.

One up is a set of goal posts chalked on a wall.

No footwear.

You don't even need 22 players for a kick about.

some stones place at a suitable distance apart.

We used our jackets when I was a kid.

unifoxos wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 29, 2019 12:13 pm

some stones place at a suitable distance apart.

We used our jackets when I was a kid.

.........or pullies and caps!

On the beach, we used seaweed.

Seaweed ? We dreamed of having seaweed when I was a child. Dog turds, that's what we had. Big ones.

OFSO wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:38 pm

Seaweed ? We dreamed of having seaweed when I was a child. Dog turds, that's what we had. Big ones.

That's more like it. I was thinking of parts of the world where there wasn't any spare clothing to mark the goal. Liverpool for instance.

Can't move for spare turds in Liverpool, though I think Woody calls them Everton Supporters

Disgusting to see Andrw Marr giving that blustering windbag Len McCluskey about 30 minutes to air his poisonous views this morning.

I see that Boris has decided the BBC are out of order for withdrawing free tv licences.

Perhaps when he gets in power he will take some remedial action to correct the errant path the Corporation is now treading.

Drifting back towards the thread of BBC Bias.

Try this vid, a wonderful conversation with an old established lefty journalist who's finally seen the light and says it like it is with colouful & explicit language!!

Hopefully if we’re back on track this gem concentrates even more on the original thread posting:



Settle down with a glass and hear a fairly comprehensive critique of our esteemed Auntie Beeb! !

I watched the videos, barking mad, and found them strikingly refreshing to consider an interchange between two adults able to eloquently discuss the issues, point out philosophical considerations, and respect each other. Thanks for posting that. That's the Best of Britain.

BBC itself has gone way off track. I get it on cable in the US, and the wife likes to watch the series TV BBC sends us, but when the news comes on I can hardly stomach it, especially when East Enders and the like follows.

I remember long ago, around 1979, on a TDY to Mildenhall, watching a BBC broadcast of a study of migrating butterflies during Prime Time. I thought, what an intellectual country UK is! In America such shows would have been aired at 3 AM, if at all! Not too long ago, BBC was considered the world standard for unvarnished news, partuclarly for those hovering over their clandestine short-wave radios in oppressed or war-torn countries, starving for truth. When I was in GW I in 1990, sitting in Saudi Arabia, our whole crew sat around the short wave we had, listening to BBC to know what was happening. During WWII, BBC was also the beacon. The BBC of today has fallen so far short of that standard and mission, chosing the course of a political bent.

How it came to this point and what to about it I don't understand. What I also don't understand is how journalists, who should have a code of honor, ignore or misreport facts so as to advance a political agenda. They should be neutral as a matter of course. In the US I blame journalism schools that arm their graduates with ideology, and little else, including grammar. To me, the Holy Grail of journalists is to have no ideology, just observe, document, and report facts.

I watch the BBC for some of its wonderful documentaries, for example the David Attenborough series, the Proms (although the modern crap that it mostly is these days is not to my taste), and the investigative programmes, such as tonight's Panorama on the 737Max.

The political commentary programmes generally leave me either uncomprehending, or disgusted. Then there are trivia shows like the One Show with that awful Welsh tart with big teeth who 'interviews' irritating nonentities that I've usually never heard of. It used to be presented by an awful Northern Irish tart with big teeth and and although I love the Narn Iron accent and people, there was something about her that really worked on my nerves. So as soon as the 'news' is finished, off goes the TV. I usually watch the very parochial Channel Islands news as I have family there and go over quite often so I can relate to that more than any other part of UK.

To me, the Holy Grail of journalists is to have no ideology, just observe, document, and report facts.

Likewise, but unfortunately any report, such as history, is only the view of the writer/reporter/presenter and is very fluid.

But the journalist is paid to perceive and report on the salient facts. The overriding mission is to arm the audience with truth, unvarnished truth. I worry that most of us are not getting that these days. We get a massaged message from newsrooms with a political agenda. I don't want that even if it supports my leanings. The newsroom doesn't exist that just reports. I used to think Fox News was honing in on it, but it seems to be going off track recently.