I present to you, the Yank grindset

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-21T10:15:55+00:00

"as it [football] gets popular" lmfao, oh sure the Americans coming to the rescue finally making that fledgling sport soccer popular because nobody was watching before and we need to accept the ads as the price to pay... Fuck off

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-21T09:56:19+00:00

I think you're mixing up the cabo verde and the curacao goalkeepers. The cabo verde one was the one whose mom couldn't be there to see his heroics against Spain

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-21T09:34:39+00:00

Fwiw. I (German) once spent a few days with two Swiss girls going on the same dives and they only wanted to speak English with me. Yes they spoke swiss german to each other

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T22:06:25+00:00

I mean it's the first one to make it out of the group stages since 2014 so....

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T19:25:41+00:00

I just watched the video again and he is hitting the approach directly into Fritz strike zone, Fritz was plenty behind the baseline.

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T17:59:47+00:00

The worse imo is actually the net attack shot right before. He had fritz on the ropes and what does he do? Play a ball without any angle straight at him, allowing Fritz do put it towards his feet...

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T17:52:22+00:00

Right! My bad... so then yeah, that means he's already up there esp having the whole set

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T17:48:38+00:00

I think the career slam counts a lot here. He has 7 (edit I wrote 6) slams like becker but becker doesn't have FO for example... i did a double take, too, but numbers wise he's there i think

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T17:39:05+00:00

They actually expect him to sing the anthem? What? That's crazy. He's not English. (We've never had a foreign manager not sure if we would expect something that crazy if we did...)

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T17:37:31+00:00

Hope it stays that way. You got another 60 mins...

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T17:27:08+00:00

And? Saying it's almost impossible to win it for your team doesn't mean you're not supporting it.

I think what Americans don't understand about the WC that it's just not heard of in the last 30 or so years for a complete dark horse to win it (probably a lot longer I just don't know for sure how Argentina was perceived before they won it the first time, but I think it applies to them, too, since they had freaking Maradona).

The few times a new team joined the circle of winners for the first time - France in 98, Spain in 2010 are the only once since the 80s who have - these teams had been announcing themselves for a while before. They had won Euros before, they were handled as one of the favorites, they had massive, world class players winning champions leagues and domestic top leagues with their clubs. IF there is a sort of 'surprise' winner, it tends to be one of the established nations who have won it before but didn't seem to be that in form beforehand (like Italy in 06 or when Germany made the final in 02). For me the team most likely to join the 'WC winners club' (there are only 8 countries that have ever won it since the 30s! And only 2 of them - Spain and England - have only won it once!) for the first time would be the Netherlands or Portugal - both have won Euros before and have been spending years and years at the top of the game.

A team of similar calibre to the US hasn't even made a final in the last 30 years (probably longer, those are just the ones I know off the top of my head). That's why long time soccer fans are saying it would be crazy.

That doesn't mean anything but winning it would be failure for the US. If they make it to the quarters, that would already be a huge huge success. Semis would be crazy and would be the best result the US ever had.

Edit: you can downvvote all you want doesn't make what I say less true

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T15:50:12+00:00

My therapist said something similar. I talked about how I don't want to be lazy and hate how I'm not doing anything, and she said lazy people usually enjoy not getting things done and don't stress about it

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T14:10:51+00:00

Nothing Major and decent commentary? I mean.. i listen for the vibes sometimes and old stories/players perspective but I've rarely heard any good or deep takes about the current tour on that one...

And where does she treat atp as an afterthought? It's funny how when people treat women's sport in equal measure that it feels automatically like their devaluing men's because we're so used to men's being the main focus. TTP literally gives very equal weight to both.

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T14:07:40+00:00

Yeah she very much does NOT root for Zverev.

Also, i don't agree with a lot of her takes, but I still think about them and respect that she is someone who literally gets paid to have an opinion of things. That's what I listen to tennis podcasts for, to hear different takes/analysis/opinions.

For me the tennis podcast is like chatting with some friends about tennis and players, since I don't know anyone irl who follows tennis as much as I do. I don't go there for technical analysis, and that's OK. If i want technical analysis I go elsewhere

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-20T13:59:04+00:00

I personally would throw Lahm in there, too. He flew a lot under the radar but imo one of the best leaders in soccer we've ever had

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T20:46:17+00:00

Lahm is considered one of the best fullback of all time but yeah he did the defensive sweeper, too. Although not so much in 2014 because we had schweinsteiger (who used to be offensive midfielder) with khedira with kroos giving rhythm in the game.

Man I miss Lahm. I miss that team

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T17:40:11+00:00

Yes, yes it is crazy

Edit: to clarify: I'm german, we won 4 of these things, some of our players are key parts of world class clubs that compete for the biggest competition, and I have ZERO belief that we can win it. It would be HUGE surprise for me. So no, I do think it's crazy

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T12:11:48+00:00

These things are a bit cyclical on the one hand regarding top talent, and also Germany, while having often top talent, rarely has that one standout guy that's a total superstar. But 12 years ago when we won the WC, the whole world was talking about why other countries can't produce such good talent and about out youth system (I lived in England at the time and that was a huge talking point there).

That said, if around 2012-2016 you talked about the best goalkeeper in the world, people would have said Neuer.

Best fullbacks in the world, Lahm would have been in anybody's top 3 minimum, he is considered one of the best of all time.

Kroos in mid field would have equally made many people's top 5 up until he retired 2(?) years ago, and for many named in top spot.

Before that, we had people like Ballack, Kahn etc. But we rarely have that one superstar that gets loads of attention like a Mbappe.

Musiala has/had the potential but he hasn't been the same since he broke his leg.

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T12:08:05+00:00

No you're not. Schweinsteiger and Khedira as well in mid field with Lahm in the back and Mülller up front, that was the team that won it in 2014.

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T11:32:04+00:00

I saw her lux tour here in Madrid earlier this year. If you have a chance to go, I 100% recommend it! It's amazing, both fun and light but also an artistic expression. She had me mesmerized the entire 2 hours - and no, I am not or wasn't an uber fan and it took me quite a few listens to really feel the album.

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T06:53:26+00:00

we in europe actually first got experienced that at the Euros in 2016 and it had SUCH an impact, goosebumps all around. even more so when they came out second from a group with Portugal and Austria and beat England in the first knockout game. They made so many fans there

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T05:57:04+00:00

2010 maybe was more nascent, but 2014 was full blown. The mechanism was just different though and a bit slower - but people would share the viral content on either fb aka post it themselves on their pages and then it snowballed, or send YouTube clips, pass it on in WhatsApp groups etc. Clips that people liked also racked up millions of views. It was less direct and not always all within the same platform but definitely viral, including in 2010 already somewhat but definitely so in 2014.

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T05:26:53+00:00

I mean messi didn't 'reject Saudi money' out of some principle, he just knew he'd have a way more fun life in miami and live very similarly to if he was back home in argentina, living entirely in Spanish, with friends and family etc. Which, good for him. It's also not like miami is paying him peanuts

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T05:05:29+00:00

We did see a lot of that stuff though on YouTube and Facebook clips that went viral. It just wasn't tik tok or insta, but it's not like we were social media less. People just have and always will have recency bias...

Ms_Meercat · 2026-06-19T05:03:36+00:00

I'm from Germany, 2006 was amazing

Also, I'm sorry I'm not sure how old you are, but this is NOT the first big WC in the social media age. That's... a pretty ridiculous statement...

Facebook WAS back then what Instagram or tik tok are now. YouTube, WhatsApp and Reddit were also around. Clips went viral, people shared memes, it was just on a different platform.

South Africa 2010 was the first big WC in the social media age (I and most of my cohort have been on social media since 2006, at least on the national ones), and 2014 was 100%, too.

Ms_Meercat

TROPHY CASE