baxus

Serbia's won Women's Eurobasket and an Olympic bronze in recent years, so it's fair to say they don't suck. At least when compared to other women playing basketball.

Yeah, dismissing "the other side" as trolls from the get go is another great way to have a debate.

Yeah, let's compare numbers on this: [quote]The report found that viewership for all rounds of women’s March Madness ballooned by 81% compared to 18% growth for the men’s NCAA tourney.[/quote] Would you rather have men's or women's March Madness numbers? While we're on topic of men's vs women's basketball, currently Women's Eurobasket is ongoing and I've watched Serbia's game against Hungary. The difference in the level of quality is staggering. Serbia's point guard was being praised for 4/12 FGs made. Come on, Russell Westbrook would be embarrassed about that. P.S. Sorry about the thread derail, everyone.

Yeah, saying "the other side" doesn't believe their arguments and that their arguments are trivially stupid is a great way to have a debate.

Believe it or not, it is offseason. All major leagues are finished, international club football is done (the qualifiers for UEFA club competitions will start soon, though)... three games per day are nothing, during the season you get literally hundreds of matches per week just in top 5 leagues and European club competitions. To be honest, no one cares about Women's WC. When I say "no one", I'm comparing it to men's equivalent.

Now that he had the whole season, what are your thoughts on Antony? From what I've seen of United this season he didn't impress, with his foolish "dribbling" turning around in circle and all that, but I'd like to hear from people who watched him enough to form an educated opinion.

You are aware that we're in the offseason at this point? Or were you talking in general?

We've had shitty spring so far, with A LOT of rain and cold (cold for that period of the year, of course). Yesterday was our first 30ºC day of the year, when usually we'd have almost the whole June and most of May in that temperature range. I hate the heat, but after so much rain this year I welcome it.

"First good Croatia team", as you call it, was filled with players that came through the system during Yugoslavia. Many of them won the U23 World Cup (along with players from other ex-Yugoslavian countries) and were playing in a pretty good league as youngsters. A lot of them also played for Yugoslavia national team that was knocked out on penalties by Maradona's Argentina in Italy World Cup. There were a lot of great players in that group. I mean, Yugoslavia (smaller one, just Serbia and Montenegro) had similar level of player quality (maybe even better) in France '98, but Croatian team stood out on winning mentality (always a problem with "smaller" Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia national teams) and their coach was a master motivator. Croatia hasn't had that kind of system or league for decades now, being basically a one horse race ever since Croatia declared independence, and that's why their success with the current generation is much more impressive.

I think Embiid switched to playing for France.

But we are not talking about distribution of revenue, are we? We're talking about the possibility of an owner saying: "I'm investing this butload of money into the club to sign players we need to stay in the league or win the league/cup/European trophy" that has been there up until some point where the clubs, the leagues and FAs collectively said: "Oh, it's a no-no from now on." I get the need to ensure clubs are run responsibly but the current system does not work, as we can see from the example of Manchester City. They have been doing whatever they pleased for over a decade and we have all known there's something fishy there and now the charges have finally been filed, we are told that the whole process will take 3-4 years to finish. It's stupid. If the rules are enforced in such a ridiculous manner then remove those limitations and let's have a free for all and see what club remains standing in a decade or two. Not sure why YOU needed 2-3 pages to get there. I have been saying that City should be punished and that their actions were against the rules all along. I have zero problems with them being punished, it's this whole moral superiority and pearl clutching bullshit that I find ridiculous. Hopefully, you won't need 2-3 pages more to understand that.

So, not a level playing field is ok when certain clubs come out on top but not when others do? Sure, it's against the rules and they should be punished and I'd like to see them stripped of trophies and knocked to the lowest league possible. That still doesn't mean that "old money" clubs and their supporters have the right to moral outrage. Yeah, there was a whole UEFA investigation that was handled appallingly. And the punishment was laughable. It's nothing more than bullshit posturing. The whole "yeah, we should get the result for these 115 charges of breaking the rules within 3-4 years" story from PL is a bloody disgrace. More bullshit posturing and pearl clutching from assholes who approved the purchase of the clubs by people who we are now saying should not own clubs in the first place. By the way, why is it "Russian gangsters and dictators with license to print money" who are the problem? Why is the American who dumped 600M£ in a single year and "explained" it with extremely dodgy accounting tricks perfectly fine? Might it be because he provided us with laughs throughout the season instead of winning 5 of last 6 titles and a handful of cups?

It would've been much more interesting to see the actual former Yugoslavia playing US, not the players from the countries of today that used to be a part of Yugoslavia. Of the top of my head, that would've been Divac, Radja, Paspalj, Kukoc, Petrovic, plus a bunch who haven't played in the NBA or didn't stick around for long - Djordjevic, Danilovic etc.

So, 1992 is where we draw the line? That is the point at which everyone gathered and said: "Ok, everything that happened up until this point is cool, but from now on owners can no longer invest money to buy success"?

But how did these other big clubs get to the point to earn enough success? By bringing in great managers and great players, building the club infrastructure (training grounds, stadiums etc.), which all meant significant investments at the time. What makes that different from City owners bringing on great managers, signing great players, building the stadium etc.? That they did it in a shorter period of time? Or that the amounts of money in football nowadays are insane compared to those when Liverpool was turning into a successful club? The principle is the same. It's just that nowadays some people have sat down and said it's no longer allowed and brought on some limitations to what can and can't be done and failed miserably in controlling who breaks those restrictions. And now everyone is pretending to be shocked that City broke the rules. What's even worse, the whole process is being dragged on and on and on, and all the while City is allowed to keep competing and winning stuff. They either have broken the rules and need to get booted out of the league or they haven't and this whole thing needs to be put to bed. We don't want to watch them winning trophies for 3-4 more years and wonder if they'll get to keep them or not once the "trial" is over.

No one is claiming that City would be where they are if they weren't cheating. It's obvious that helped them out a lot. I think it was Whiskeyjack who said that they have 2 starting lineups at their disposal after buying everyone they set their eyes on, that doesn't happen when spending sustainably, considering that they've only sold a few players for relatively big money and only in the last season or two (Sane, Sterling, Zinchenko, anyone else?). But it's quite ironic when complaints like that come from supporters of other big clubs who have basically been in the same position compared to the rest of the league. Also, City's owners investing in their squad is not different from other clubs' owners investing their own money in their squads in the past. I stand corrected, nowadays City owners can't do that without breaking a shitload of arbitrary rules since "big clubs" have set up their shops and are trying to prevent others from doing the same.

Btw, both of you are still to address the fact that United (and Liverpool and Arsenal) are in a privileged position compared to most of the league. Even if we are to say that they are spending within their means, the way they came to the position where their income is sufficient to justify their spending. They used to buy best players, and got to that point by some owners investing money in the past the way these unwanted owners are investing in their own clubs today. It's not as if their success in the past was brought on by kids who grew up within walking distance from their stadiums. Don't let the whole "won the treble with academy players" fool you, that team was filled with more or less expensive signings.

It seems unlikely to me that someone gave Glazers around 790M£ to buy United (that's the number I found, correct me if I'm wrong) and 18 years later they still owe 500M£ on that. I'm not a finance expert by any stretch of the imagination but that seems like pretty poor business.

Glazers became majority shareholders of United in May 2005 (owned 98% of the club by June 2005). It seems fair to say that most of the current debt comes from elsewhere.

Yeah, United spent within their means. That's why they are hundreds of millions of pounds in debt. It's not up to Newcastle fans to influence that takeover. They are loving it at the moment, having the Champions League to look forward to next season. Just like City fans are loving it at the moment, with their team winning a treble. The rest of the clubs (through the League and that "fit and proper owner" bullshit) should've either put a stop to those takeovers or made stricter regulations and enforced them. Yes, by us. Every single time we are rooting for our club to spend 100M on a player while giving City shit about doing the same, we are being hypocrites. That doesn't mean that what City is doing is right, but we do fail to acknowledge that our clubs are also at a massive advantage over most clubs in the league and the world. Let's be honest here, if we're talking about PL clubs, the only ones rooting for underdogs are BFC (up until recently, that is) and Rorschach. The rest of us have "picked" well established, rich clubs who may or may not have hit a rough patch or two in our time. Financial sustainability is a way of keeping big clubs at the top and the rest at arms length. That's it. United, Liverpool and Arsenal have the biggest fanbase, are most recognisable and popular, their revenue is above the rest so they can basically run the league as they see fit. Sure, it seems fair. Or at least they could do that, if only such upstarts as Abramovich and Sheikh whatever hadn't come along, bought clubs of their own and invested heavily in them in order to disrupt the existing order of things. Not saying that clubs should be allowed to spend so much, there does need to be regulation, but let's not pretend that the rest of the clubs' success was without an unfair advantage over the rest. You know that joke that everyone driving slower than you is an idiot and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac?

No one said it was fans who allowed it, but there are structures in place who need to approve new owners and those structures are put in place by clubs who can be quite easily influenced by fans. If you think fans have no say and are powerless to object, I'd like to remind you of the recent Superleague fiasco. You are aware that United is not that far behind City when it comes to spending on signing players or their wages (De Gea, Sancho, Varane and Casemiro all among 10 highest paid players in the league, with Martial and Bruno in top 20)? United have given the likes of Sanchez 400k/week years ago, for god's sake. Regarding debt - Tottenham, Arsenal, Man United and Liverpool are among 10 clubs with highest debt, so this whole "they are spending within their means" is just not true. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend Chelsea, PSG and City. I do think what they're doing is against the sport should stand for, but let's not pretend that the rest of the clubs are these precious little angels.

Well, it's not fair if a club has more money than 1 or maybe 2 rivals out of 19, regardless if we're talking hundreds of thousands or tens of millions. The problem with what City (but not only City) is doing at the moment is that they are spending unsustainable amounts of money. I mean, 70M for Keita or 80M for Maguire is just as bad as what City is doing, though the City is doing that more often and their transfer flops don't affect them too much. City is not worse than other clubs because they're spending a lot of money, but because of their "creative" accounting to hide their unsustainability and pretending to want to clear their name as soon as possible while doing their absolute best to prolong the whole process.

Once Russian gangsters and oppressive dictatorships with a literal license to print money are allowed to buy football clubs and are given freedom to do as they please, complaining about them is nothing more than hypocrisy.

Thinking that Liverpool or United or whoever "back in the day" won on a level playing field is plainly delusional. Amounts of money were not as big as today and the market to sign players from was smaller but there were always clubs with more money, more influence etc.

Man, I'd like to hear what Serbian TV has these good pundits you came across. I've been looking for decades and still haven't found one.