The Lusophone

People are surprised at the increased rate of injuries, but it's something that's happening irl, with 20% more injuries in the 21/22 season compared to 20/21, and the injury rate is only increasing - there were 4 ACL injuries in the Premier League last season, thus far this season, there's been 5 already.

Managers are always like this. Klopp and Pep banged the drum incredibly hard to be allowed to use 5 subs in the leadup to a Liverpool vs City where they... both used only 1 sub each.

https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/327 This mod gets rid of the party limit if you want to give it another go with more people to potentially make it easier.

Vaguely reminds me of a Spurs-Chelsea game a few years back where one team just completely lost their heads late on.

More inconsistent refereeing again today. The one time holding in the box actually gets called.

Oh hey, two Fury robberies in about as many weeks. And people wonder why boxing is a declining sport.

Just seen how badly the ref got a penalty shout wrong in the Argyle game. Championship refs are fucking garbage.

Football writers everywhere devastated that they can no longer call them "Joey Barton's Bristol Rovers".

Plymouth Argyle will finish above Birmingham City this season.

Ramsdale saves that.

We'll do our best to derail Ipswich for you when we play them next (or after Sheffield Wednesday, can't remember which order it is).

Konate should absolutely have been sent off. Tsimikas lucky with some of his fouls too. Very inconsistent refereeing.

I hate England. Match engine is much improved and largely reflects the tactical reality of today, the game runs much quicker now - processing times are greatly reduced, it feels like a big step up from FM22+23.

Game is so smooth. Also made the libero a player role you can give to a cb in a two cb formation - the positioning is great: We lose the ball here, but instead of counter-pressing, which is the team instruction, Martinez sprints back into joining he CB partner. In attack he forms a double pivot with the more restrained of my two CMs, with the other one essentially becoming an additional AM.

On 1. area control spells like wall of fire are very useful to deal with the enemies coming from the path.

Beta's out @Lineker

Lollujo appears to have de-aged by about a decade.

If either Bosnia or Iceland sneak into the playoffs ahead of them, I'll be a bit sad.

This is the funniest outcome.

Sorry, I'm a Plymouth Argyle fan only now

Just clocked that Jordan Henderson's Saudi Ministry of Sports-owned team is not only behind the four teams owned by PiF, they're also behind two teams not owned by the Saudi state in any way and whose highest profile players are Musa Barrow and Cristian Tello. Why on earth is he in the squad?

Andreas Schelderup would be that guy if he hadn't moved to Benfica in January irl. Probably Mamardashvilli, the GK from Valencia.

Which was, apparently, the only refereeing performance at that World Cup FIFA was happy with. They felt that the World Cup product had been undermined by how strictly (i.e. how good) the refereeing had been at that World Cup, and Sepp Blatter, in a turnaround from his previous support for good refereeing (he once abused his power as a then VP of FIFA to get a ref sent home from Italia 90 after a bad mistake), instituted a committee to look at 'improving' refereeing in major tournaments. That committee ceased to meet after 2013, but essentially they established the way in which almost development in policy with regards to refereeing has happened since then - they're all aimed at improving the spectacle rather than the refereeing. Written post-match referee reports, important for helping refs identify areas to improve, were replaced only with verbal reports. The traditional after-round analysis where all the refs meet up and go over important moments and decisions was abolished in knockout rounds of tournaments. Referees who ref strictly or even just to the letter of the law are not given major games in favour of the vibes based approach that gets called 'game management' by its proponents. We don't really have referees any more. We have professional wrestling referees. They're not really there to enforce the rules.

Canada, Australia and England along with the US make the "traditional 4" leading members of the lacrosse world. In 2018 the Lacrosse World Championships were held outside of those four for the first time, in Israel. That being said, outside of the four the teams that have appeared at most World Championships are Japan and the Haudenosaunee lacrosse team, who are currently ranked third in the world, and likely wouldn't be part of the Olympics. 86 countries are part of the World Lacrosse organisation though. Flag Football appears to be played by an eclectic mix of Latin American and northern and central European countries - and Israel, who hosted the last IFAF Flag Football World Championships. US are the best team but it looks like they get run close by Mexico, Denmark and especially Austria who hosted and won the first World Championship and have won three in total, beating the US in 2012's final.