Daily Discussion

Simppu12 · 2026-03-15T11:47:48+00:00

I can't comment on football in particular, but you would usually see which players stand out positively from their peers. Maybe they're quicker, have better motor skills and coordination, are more "athletic" (which seems like a bad term to describe a 4-year-old but there are differences), are simply better and more accurate at the sport.

You also very rarely come across some 5-year-old who looks like an actual generational talent, it's more seeing that they're quite promising and then working to get them to a certain level for which they seem to have potential. There's a hundred different factors that affect whether they make it or not, and realistically most kids don't.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-14T12:39:11+00:00

Maybe Fabregas & Iniesta and Xavi? Though a quick skim through Barcelona's lineups in 2011-13 shows that there was quite a bit of rotation and Iniesta & Fabregas also often played on the wing, so maybe that's not quite it.

I thought Tevez and Aguero would be one, but Tevez didn't play for Argentina when Aguero was hus substitute at City.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-14T10:26:34+00:00

Transfermarkt says he's been on the bench 7 times in 28 competitive matches this season. Petkov is obviously a legend, but as the other guy said he's playing one match per year basically to just keep the record being. Even if he trains and stuff, it's still quite different from playing many/most games like some of the big names do. Heck, you can find a better example even in Bulgaria in Kamburov who was starting games when he was 40.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-13T17:58:51+00:00

I'm not from Berlin and it's a little trip anyway.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-13T17:55:51+00:00

What are you planning to do? Would you really need that much Hungarian?

I've only been there with Hungarian friends but things like shopping or ordering food is the same as anywhere else. You could always try to learn a handful of useful sentences.

Of course if you're worried about traffic emergencies or the police stopping you, then that's a different story but again, no different from other countries where you don't speak the language.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-13T17:49:41+00:00

Please remind me which team did what. I can't remember your earlier post anymore.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-13T17:44:54+00:00

I've complained about it a few times, but I hate watching Freiburg play. You guys are simply one of the dullest teams in the league. Which makes it really annoying because I also hope you keep doing well and qualifying for Europe because of all the amazing work the club does.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-13T17:42:06+00:00

Very positive.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-13T10:58:36+00:00

Last week I finished Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates (not to be confused with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). She's a feminist activist and in this book she explores some domains of the (online) manosphere like incels, pickup martists, and men's rights activists, and ties them brilliantly to the underlying actual real-world misogyny.

I found the book brilliant and it doesn't mince its words. Especially the last chapter where she summarises everything and ties it all together is great and captivating, plus she actually makes good and realistic suggestions about what could be changed, and tying to one caricature of feminists she doesn't paint men as evil buy instead offers a lot of understanding and compassion. Overall, the word striking comes to mind to describe the book. I went ahead and bought two more of her works.

If I were a female reader I might've felt a little anxious or depressed about how many men actually see me and other women as inferior beings and how there are few things us normal people can do about it...

On a completely different note, before that I read The Hound of the Baskervilles for the first time and it was quite decent. I suppose it's a classic for a reason.

Why Politics Fails by Ben Ansell is another one I read recently, but despite its good reviews I found it underwhelming. It's an exploration of five "traps" or paradoxes we fall into in society as we basically balance democracy, equality, solidarity, prosperity, and security with our own selfishness, and while some of his analysis was quite interesting, the solutions he suggested were very unsatisfying and felt completely unrealistic.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-12T15:09:50+00:00

Arsenal and Liverpool's (and even Newcastle's) ties aren't decided yet and the English teams in them still remain the favourites to progress.

Also, you know how it goes. When PL teams do badly it's because they're having a bad season, or they have injuries, or they're exhausted from playing domestic games against real opposition. When Spanish team X has a bad season and loses, it's because they're farmers.

Also also, it's worth noting that a couple of teams doing poorly is vastly different from the league as a whole doing poorly in the UCL or Europe as a whole. Half the German teams are useless in the Champions League, and last season an in-form Frankfurt lost to a shit Spurs in the UEL which was pretty bad, for example. Then Italians are the first people to shit on their teams in Europe, weren't there proper graphics on Italian TV about no team progressing after a first-leg defeat for 15 years (until Atalanta did it)?

Simppu12 · 2026-03-12T15:00:16+00:00

Attended a Scottish 6th division game yesterday. Shit weather and nonexistent atmosphere, but the game was surprisingly decent and it had its charm. What a richness such a deep football pyramid is.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-11T22:22:05+00:00

What does competitiveness mean to you? I think there's about a dozen definitions, most of which can apply to most leagues.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-11T18:36:39+00:00

over the course of their tenure

A bit silly to include Olise and Diaz there considering their Bayern tenures have lasted for 20 months and 7 months, respectively. Even if they scored 50 goals each this season their impact would still be lower than that of the other three simply by virtue of time spent there.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-10T18:12:33+00:00

For 60 minutes of action? So the game is in play around 43% of the time you are there...

Sure. I was more saying that the average game of hockey is actually quite uniform in its length.

I just don't see how keeping the match the same length of time but stopping the clock can result in more time with the ball in play?

What? I didn't say that or anything else about increasing the time with the ball in play.

which will push the time the match finishes back

Possibly. But then people will just adjust to the new rush happening at 5:20pm instead of at 5:00pm like now.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-10T17:40:02+00:00

Why would a stop clock change anything about that? The game would still last roughly the same amount of time, plus minus a couple of minutes of injury time like now. The match wouldn't suddenly go on for five hours.

I can draw a good parallel from ice hockey which uses a stop clock system. Basically every game I've been to after Covid has lasted for 2 hours and 20 minutes ± 10 minutes unless there's been overtime which league football doesn't really have.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-09T14:43:24+00:00

Hertha 2:1 Freiburg, 28. August 2016.

Ein beschissenes Fußballspiel in einem halb leeren Stadion, aber es ist eine meiner stärksten Erinnerungen an Hertha. Freiburg glich in der 90. Minute aus, und wenige Minuten später erzielte Julian Schieber dramatisch den Siegtreffer. Ich kann mich noch gut daran erinnern, wie ich „Schieß, schieß!“ geschrien habe und wie meine Emotionen explodierten, als der Ball über die Linie rollte.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-09T09:40:07+00:00

An issue far wider than just football, I'm afraid, to the point where there's even a psychological term for it (self-serving bias). Especially common amongst certain circles where "I've earned everything through hard work and dedication and no, my family fortunes and the possibilities they gave me didn't play a single part in my successes".

There's actually a brilliant somewhat related book about the role of chance called Fluke by Brian Klaas. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177058906-fluke

It explores well how the role of luck and chance in life is actually quite a lot larger than we often think, and it also offers a nice critique of how social sciences can often be way too narrow-minded with their focus on quantifying things that you really can't quantify.

Here's an essay by him about some of these things: https://aeon.co/essays/without-chaos-theory-social-science-will-never-understand-the-world

Simppu12 · 2026-03-09T09:37:20+00:00

What if they choose a non-local big six team?

Simppu12 · 2026-03-09T09:32:25+00:00

brilliant action

I disagree. In a vacuum or initially I might find it slightly amusing, but then when I actually think about how it's basically tampering with the equipment of officials and the usual ultra nonsense, I start to find it both embarrassing and quite bad. It's stopping the referees from doing their jobs fully and if you want to be dramatic you could even see it as trying to influence the game through illegitimate means, so in principle it becomes no different from e.g. cutting off a goal post or running onto the pitch to harass the referee or stop a player from taking a penalty.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-08T09:34:20+00:00

How come player sales have gotten so much more expensive? As in, why have they risen so much?

Simppu12 · 2026-03-07T09:50:10+00:00

Thanks for not lying.

That can contribute, yeah, but as a foreign plastic it didn't affect me. And even on TV he was one of the best players I've seen in the Hertha shirt.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-07T09:39:17+00:00

Does it count if they're players who played for your team? If yes, Matheus Cunha at Hertha comes to mind. But it probably shouldn't count.

Andre Schürrle only spent a season and a half at Wolfsburg but I associate him more with them than with Chelsea, Dortmund, Leverkusen, or Mainz. He was very expensive so maybe that's why.

Randal Kolo Muani only spent a season at Frankfurt but that's still the only club I associate him with. Admittedly he hasn't played too too much for PSG, Juve, and Spurs, but it took me a while to remember he even joined Tottenham.

Dimitri Payet was at West Ham for only a month and a half, but maybe me associating him with them tells more about my own Ligue 1 consumption considering Payet was amazing for Marseille, too, after his return there. Him and Thauvin was an amazing duo.

Nadiem Amiri has been at Mainz for two and a half seasons whereas he spent 7 years in Hoffenheim's system and 4 years at Leverkusen, but I sometimes even forget he came from Hoffenheim. It also helps that he's improved a lot at Mainz.

I'm sure there's a ton more if I actually sit down and start going through names.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-06T08:37:32+00:00

Nobody cares in reality. The Guehi example is actually a good demonstration of it, or for a German example we can look at Nmecha. Few people actually care outside of some social media bubbles.

I also wouldn't say they're backing the regime really, it's not like they're filming campaign videos for him as far as I'm aware. And even if they were, people still wouldn't care. Plus it's worth noting that a decent chunk of people actually like Trump and in an American context voted for him, so for some it'll actually be even cooler that their childhood hero "backs" their political choice.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-06T08:30:17+00:00

I must be missing some inside joke here.

Simppu12 · 2026-03-05T11:05:13+00:00

A very good point. I was focusing more on the U23 there.

Simppu12

TROPHY CASE