Football: You can take Poch out of Spurs...or playing Boehly's Billion Bottlers Blues.

[Corvinus85]

6 hours ago, Consigliere said:

The French national teams at various levels have had a fairly large number of Muslim players over the years. It's never been an issue for the FFF before that required banning Muslim players from fasting during Ramadan until now. Reading that article linked above makes the "why now" pretty clear though - seems that the FFF has been taking more and more anti-Muslim stances.

Which is true of the French government as a whole afaik.

[Teng Ai Hui]

Dos a Cero!!!

[Corvinus85]

Pfff, that should have been a penalty. Sure there was no contact, but there is a reason why Robinson calls himself Jedi. The Force was in his foot and Jimenez felt it.

[Corvinus85]

So annoying. Mexican fans continue to be sore losers. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

6 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

The French national teams at various levels have had a fairly large number of Muslim players over the years. It's never been an issue for the FFF before that required banning Muslim players from fasting during Ramadan until now. Reading that article linked above makes the "why now" pretty clear though - seems that the FFF has been taking more and more anti-Muslim stances.

 

6 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Which is true of the French government as a whole afaik.

I guess this is one of the occasions, where I feel it's ok to drag @Rippounet into a thread, he doesn't really seem to be that interested in.

So to spare you the time. FFF rules about muslim players and their Ramadan fasting. Any political links or islamophobia finding its way into the FFF in a more pronounced way.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

‘Lies were told’: João Cancelo blasts Manchester City over his departure

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/24/lies-told-joao-cancelo-blasts-manchester-city

He said: “I remember a time when I was robbed and attacked and the next day I was playing at the Emirates against Arsenal. These are things you don’t forget. I left my wife and daughter alone at home, terrified. People will only remember this because Mr Guardiola has much more strength than me when he says something, and I prefer to keep to myself.”

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

 

I guess this is one of the occasions, where I feel it's ok to drag @Rippounet into a thread, he doesn't really seem to be that interested in.

So to spare you the time. FFF rules about muslim players and their Ramadan fasting. Any political links or islamophobia finding its way into the FFF in a more pronounced way.

How did you make it look that I wrote the post about the FFF? Fake news! 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Didn't mean to cut consi short of credit.

There's one (occasionally) annoying feature in the quote function. When you quote someone quoting someone else, that gets lost. And in this case, I wanted to preserve the quoted bit (without having to go back a page to requote). I get why the forum does that, so that consi is not permanently tagged by getting quoted in a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote etc. So status quo is probably the lesser evil option here (imho).

So what I did was, I manually marked the quote and hit the quote selected button option (rmb).

Thus congratulations, you are now one of many people to whom a quote has been misattributed to. On second thought, I probably should have hit the quote option and then used copy and paste.

[Rippounet]

7 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I guess this is one of the occasions, where I feel it's ok to drag @Rippounet into a thread, he doesn't really seem to be that interested in.

So to spare you the time. FFF rules about muslim players and their Ramadan fasting. Any political links or islamophobia finding its way into the FFF in a more pronounced way.

I know very little about football, but with an election coming up, the government has been very busy taking islamophobic stances (in the name of laïcité) on a lot of topics in the hope that it will peel away voters from the far-right Rassemblement national.
And the government is not above putting pressure on semi-independent organisations like the FFF - there's a lot of precedents here. Also, the new sports minister had to resign from the ministry of education a few weeks ago after a series of minor scandals - she's been in hot waters and needed support from the top.
So I don't know if it answers your question, but yes it's very likely that this is politically motivated. Lots of stuff happening in France right now is to pander to the far-right.

[The Big Stink]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I know very little about football, but with an election coming up, the government has been very busy taking islamophobic stances (in the name of laïcité) on a lot of topics in the hope that it will peel away voters from the far-right Rassemblement national.
And the government is not above putting pressure on semi-independent organisations like the FFF - there's a lot of precedents here. Also, the new sports minister had to resign from the ministry of education a few weeks ago after a series of minor scandals - she's been in hot waters and needed support from the top.
So I don't know if it answers your question, but yes it's very likely that this is politically motivated. Lots of stuff happening in France right now is to pander to the far-right.

Why dont the players jus refuse to play?

 

France doesnt have a team without Muslims.

[Consigliere]

David Squires on … England’s collar and other ‘woke’ things destroying football.

[Rippounet]

22 hours ago, The Big Stink said:

Why dont the players jus refuse to play?

That would be playing right into the far-right's hands.

It's not easy to grasp from the outside, but laïcité is very popular. The French conception of citizenship is based on one's duties to the republic before one's religious liberty ; deep down, the very idea of "natural" religious rights is viewed with suspicion, if not ridicule or scorn.
A sportsman refusing to play for their country for religious reasons would be more shocking than shitting on the flag ; it would confirm the far-right argument that Muslims cannot integrate into the French republic and thus should not represent the country in the first place.
The best strategy is not to make waves ; public sympathy will eventually bring the FF around (albeit discretely perhaps), whereas trying to frontly oppose laïcité would only encourage its strengthening.

[The Big Stink]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

That would be playing right into the far-right's hands.

It's not easy to grasp from the outside, but laïcité is very popular. The French conception of citizenship is based on one's duties to the republic before one's religious liberty ; deep down, the very idea of "natural" religious rights is viewed with suspicion, if not ridicule or scorn.
A sportsman refusing to play for their country for religious reasons would be more shocking than shitting on the flag ; it would confirm the far-right argument that Muslims cannot integrate into the French republic and thus should not represent the country in the first place.
The best strategy is not to make waves ; public sympathy will eventually bring the FF around (albeit discretely perhaps), whereas trying to frontly oppose laïcité would only encourage its strengthening.

It's not fair to force people to give up their deeply held beliefs.

 

They should refuse to play and show their enemies what it do.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Personally, I think laicism is great as a general concept. Keep religion out of politics/everyday life (I assume that's one of the things brought by the French revolution to cut the influence of the Catholic church). You can see what happens, when a bunch a lunatics do away with laicism in Turkey. Yes, laicism was one of Turkey's founding principles as proposed by Atatürk. Erdogan disagrees.

Having that said, the weaponization of laicism in France is something I find equally troubling.

[baxus]

On 3/24/2024 at 5:20 PM, Spockydog said:

Fasting during Ramadan just means they can't eat when the sun is in the sky. They're not exactly starving themselves. 

During Ramadan, drinking any liquids is also forbidden between sunrise and sunset, as is taking any medication or dietary supplements etc. If you still think that wouldn't affect world-class athlete's training and performance, then we'll just respectfully disagree and leave it at that.

On 3/25/2024 at 10:12 PM, The Big Stink said:

France doesnt have a team without Muslims.

France definitely has a team without Muslims. Not as good as the one with Muslims, obviously. But they'd still have a team if Muslim players decided to boycott the national team.

19 hours ago, The Big Stink said:

They should refuse to play and show their enemies what it do.

I doubt anyone would be able, even if they were willing, to force anyone to play for the national team. Every single player of every national team in the world can refuse to play. It would probably be good for the game in general, taking some power away from national FAs, UEFA etc. 

Btw, the fact you view FA as "enemies" is laughable. If players shared your view, they definitely should not play for their national teams.

[BigFatCoward]

I'm not a big fan of creepy weirdos, but this is fucking ridiculous. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68679506

[Rippounet]

13 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Having that said, the weaponization of laicism in France is something I find equally troubling.

Exactly. I loathe the weaponization of the principle against Islam for electoral purposes. Laïcité is supposed to be hard on all religions equally ; if it's not, then it loses much of its credibility as a pillar of French citizenship.
Or, in simpler terms, fuck the far-right, these guys turn everything they touch to shit.

[Spockydog]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I'm not a big fan of creepy weirdos, but this is fucking ridiculous. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68679506

Yeah, I thought that was going to be a story about Gareth's Southgate's weird as fuck recent fixation on Benjamin White. Actually, not so weird when you look at his current defensive options and realise the twat is perhaps looking for a scapegoat.

Look, Gareth, everybody knows that this is bad management on your part. You allowed your assistant manager to mock White in front of the rest of the squad, just because he isn't totally obsessed with his fucking job like Kyle Walker. So Ben White then said, you know what, I don't need this shit, and went home.

That's what happened. Literally Everybody in Football knows that's what happened, so stop making yourself look like a tit over this Steve Holland character, who, frankly, sounds like he could have an argument in an empty room.

And this, Gareth, is why you're going into the Euros with the likes of Slabhead and Lewis fucking Dunk, all because you've allowed your mate to alienate one of the best, most versatile defenders in the country. Twat.

Edited March 28 by Spockydog

[Consigliere]

It didn't make much sense to me that Southgate calls up Branthwaite but doesn't give him a single minute of game time across two friendlies. Stones even went off injured early on against Belgium and Dunk was having an absolute 'mare. Could've brought Branthwaite on in the 2nd half at least.

[Heartofice]

12 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I'm not a big fan of creepy weirdos, but this is fucking ridiculous. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68679506

Yeah he’s a dick and he handled the whole thing very very badly. If he got a minute of jail time for that it would be insane. 2.5 years in jail for a slightly inappropriate kiss would make you wonder what world you live on.