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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, February 01, 2013
Well, it was on time last month!
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It's a play on words.
Yes, that much became obvious after I'd been punked.
I will be wearing THE poseur shirt.
So says the bear.
I think several posters here are between one-quarter and one-third of the way there.
I would say I follow (to various extents) 2, 12, 13, and 14. I think I can be excused #12 what with being a Spurs fan and all.
I like the first picture joke on the Football Hipsters tumblr.
Here's a story about a man with the the paradigmatic football hipster allegiance: Partick Thistle.
The primary football hipster allegiances appear to be Napoli, Borussia Dortmund, and Athletic Bilbao under Bielsa. For fans outside the UK and Ireland, Spurs are pretty clearly the analogue. Football Weekly keeps coming up, too. And especially Inverting the Pyramid and tactics blogging. Whether football hipsters adore the 0-0 and think goals are overrated seems to be in some dispute. Anyone who loves Napoli and Dortmund and fergodsakes Bielsa can't look down on goals that much. Perhaps it is a higher level of hipsterism, once you move past the obvious non-English side support.
Probably because they're a couple of kinds of hipsters; those who want to score tons of goals in a Napoli/Dortmund/Bielsista side and those who hate all offence (I'm the, err, second category). Different kinds of hipsterdom, but still a hipster, I think.
No problem about today RB. Anyone else going? I'm not going to be the weird guy alone at the bar drinking Guinness at 10 in the morning. I'd go if Spurs were playing but I'm not braving the cold alone to watch Stoke-Arsenal.
And both managers have Spurs ties.
Is it really hipster to latch onto a Cinderella story? That seems a universal trait.
Or, he's so hip his hipness has imploded in on itself like a collapsing star and he's emerged as a chav? Huh? Think about it... (I don't even know if I'm using chav right. Would that be the opposite of a hipster?)
Possibly, but...
This is confirmation he is not.
No sign of the plumber, incidentally
Chavs do have their own fashion music and "culture". I would think the opposite of hipsters would be people who don't care about those at all.
Stupid Chelsea.
That's my fault, shouldn't have switched to England - Scotland.
I would have liked Spurs to go in for him. He's quality.
He couldn't sign anywhere else. Newcastle have claiming rights in France.
Of course I stopped watching both. I am jinxing every game I am watching.
Sometimes, you gotta take one for the team.
Napoli is my Italian team, Dortmund is my favorite German club, I thought Spain were boring before they weren't, I buy retro shirts off the Internet, I like Marcelo Bielsa. I am probably going to Hamburg with a friend to take in a Sankt-Pauli game in the next year or two, I listen to Football Weekly and Football Ramble and I subscribe to the Blizzard (and went to a Q&A a couple weeks ago with Jonathan Wilson). I bigged up Lewandowski for the Golden Boot. I think Maradona is the best player ever. I love Ajax and Arsene Wenger and Dennis Bergkamp (dreamboat). I am massively f*cking arrogant about offensive football (while having a mancrush on 80s/early 90s Serie A) and I like lots of European leagues.
About the only things that don't fit into the mold are that I don't have a tactics blog, although I pitched an article to a Dutch football magazine about how tiki-taka is a subconscious reliving of the 20 minutes after Johan Neeskens scored in the 1974 World Cup final when the Dutch were rampant but opted to toy with the Germans rather than go for the second goal that probably would have killed off the game. I also don't like Barcelona very much, primarily due to their masturbatory philosophy that is basically a straight rip-off of Ajax's principles.
I shall now sit in my 1996 Ajax shirt and twirl my mustache.
You needn't have worried. Team defense was as bad as ever today, even with Vlaar back and the two midfielders nominally most capable of controlling play (Westwood, El Ahmadi) on the field. Villa's marking was horrific, their set-piece defense was atrocious, and if it weren't for Brad Guzan this would have been three points dropped late instead of two.
Wish we could have gotten Gylfi back. Spurs doesn't seem to be using him, and the offer sounds like it was around $10 million. What would the Spurs Think Factory crowd have thought about the deal had it gone down?
For this year, Spurs need every bit of goal threat on this roster. One of these times, his beautiful 87th minute strike is going to get past the keeper. (He's been used as a sub 15 times this year in the league, and he could easily have 2-4 goals already.) For the future, Gylfi is still quite young, and if he can just add a little more muscle and improve his possession game, he'll be at least a regular contributor at the top level.
I'm sure that FPH is chuffed, but how the heck did Schalke lose at home to Fuerth?
And the answer to where Sassuolo will play if they are promoted in almost certainly Modena, which is just down the road.
-Atletico host Betis tomorrow, so they have a chance to extend their 2nd place lead to seven points again.
-And Napoli's win puts them just three points off the top in Serie A.
Well, it helps when they score 11 goals on their last 17 shots on target. It's as if the entire team has become early season Michu.
This will sound a lot more arrogant hipster-ish than I intend it to, but...
Just so you know, that lack of attacking skill isn't exactly a feature of African football that's unique to this year's tournament. Not that African national teams are alone in that regard, of course. Genuine class in the final third is, as far as I can tell, the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place for pretty well any club or nation anywhere ever.
Probably too late at this point, but I would say only the second half of Ghana - Cape Verde is really worth watching.
Just so you know, that lack of attacking skill isn't exactly a feature of African football that's unique to this year's tournament. Not that African national teams are alone in that regard, of course. Genuine class in the final third is, as far as I can tell, the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place for pretty well any club or nation anywhere ever.
Fair enough. I feel like there were more goals in tournaments past, though. Which, admittedly, doesn't necessarily mean there was any more attacking skill.
The SPURS THINK FACTORY klaxon went off here at my house, but I was preparing dinner for my folks and haven't had time to respond until now!
Like MCoA, I would have been firmly opposed to the sale of Sigurdsson. He is the equivalent of a bit of BABIP luck away from a major breakthrough, I feel. He's had a tough go of it results-wise thusfar, but it's greatly to his credit that he's never let his head drop. He's kept working hard every time he's featured; not blessed with superior pace but really busts his hump in the pressing game. He continues to make great runs--and is constantly let down by a lack of vision from his teammates on that score. I am hopeful he'll get some time on the pitch with Holtby, who looks like the sort of player who will spot those runs (ditto Adebayor). Sigurdsson often looks to play teammates in for an easier chance when he's in the danger area instead of automatically taking the shot, which is kinda nice. *cough*Defoe*cough* *cough*Bale*cough*
I think Sigurdsson's quality will shine through before too long. He's a subtle sort of player with truly excellent instincts. Tottenham's success this season has mostly come from the team's ability to counterattack and be very direct with pace and power. That's not Sigurdsson's cup of cake, but I think he will flourish if he's afforded the opportunity to play with other "football smart" players like Adebayor and Holtby (and, increasingly, Aaron Lennon!).
What's your take on the defending in this tournament? I haven't been able to watch more than a couple of the games, but I felt that in years past much of the attacking play was a result of disorganized defending*. That's slowly begun to improve in the last couple cycles. My hypothesis is that, for clubs/teams that have yet to reach the upper echelons of their league or the biggest international tourneys, defending evolves/improves a lot more rapidly than attacking and technical skill. I suspect that's the main reason for fewer goals this time around (if your perception is indeed correct - I haven't checked the numbers myself). ACN games could/can be extremely exciting, but more often than not that's due to some really poor play by the defense, rather than really good play by the attack, generating a scoring opportunity.
* Historically, I think Egypt's ability to maintain a sound shape without the ball has been the biggest single factor in their dominance of the ACN. It really set them apart from just about every other African national side.
2013: 2.04 goals/match
2012: 2.38 goals/match
2010: 2.45 goals/match
It's nice when a perception is correct since they're so often misleading. Your point about goals in the past being due to disorganized defending is well-taken, though.
Fürth's winner in the 92nd minute was well offside. Not that I am complaining.
Indeed. It would be nice if they didn't have to rely on him, but it sure doesn't hurt to have him.
Oh man, that's way better than the ARSENAL THINK FACTORY signal, which is like the Bat Signal but it's a silhouette of a puffy jacket.
That was nice to see. I thought the starting team looked pretty decent with Bale in "trequartista" role behind Defoe and Dempsey out left. It was less effective when Defoe had to come off because Dempsey doesn't scare anyone with his pace so the West Brom back four were able to push up and compress the space that Holtby wanted to work in because Dempsey was dropping in there as well.
Once they got themselves sorted out and Bale, Holtby, and Dempsey were more or less running a classic midfield triangle at the top of Spurs' shape instead of in the middle, that opened things up because when Bale and Holtby were taking their turns as the furthest forward player they are quick enough to get in behind and cause problems so West Brom had to drop deeper.
Popov's sending off didn't hurt either, although I was disappointed Spurs didn't attack him more often after Lennon skinned him effortlessly a couple times early on.
I really liked seeing Bale dominating the center of the pitch. Dempsey was useless. Once Ade is back, I'd like to see the same 1st half formation, but with Adebayor as the #9 and Holtby as a wide creative midfielder in the Silva/Mata role.
Liverpool's recent form suggests something of a triumph for the advanced metrics. They are playing like the top club that their underlying stats suggested they were a month or two ago.
Kind of like the phrase football.
And torrid, more than simply hot is more associated with arid, scorched, lifeless, and fruitless. Which supports the use similar to that of a drought imo.
Neither is exactly wrong, since the word has a quite different sense depending on which form of English you're speaking. But it's funny that the phrase got imported without any changes except that it had its meaning totally inverted.
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