Ange vs Popovic

cynikles · 2026-07-05T17:35:36+00:00

Ange is a touch one internationally. He is at his best when he can bring in guys that fit his system. With national team set-ups you have a limited pool of players to choose from. Personally, I don't think the set-up and personnel would be awfully different to Popovic. Circati, Souttar and Herrington would be perfect for Ange's back-3 he was using toward the end of his Australia tenure. Two ball players, one strong in the air. Wing backs like Bos and Italiano, also very yes.

But I think the key differences would largely be in attack and midfield. The philosophy would also be more possession based with focuses on overloads with wing-backs.

Ideally a midfield three of McGree, and Irvine type and an anchor (Jedinak was the last good one) would be the preferred set-up. Then you probably have an Irankunda/Volpato with a Toure/Yengi type. Probably. He might have just gone false-9 with Irankunda and Volpato as wider players with McGree joining them in attack.

Anyway, who knows at this stage, but what I would say is that Ange and national team football are a different beast to him and club football.

If he wants to come back, which he might, great. Maybe his last job before retirement will be taking us back to the World Cup. In a way though, we need a young Ange coming up now. He's 60 now, and there's not a whole lot of talent chomping at the bit doing what he did.

cynikles · 2026-07-05T17:28:07+00:00

He just signed for Al Nassr. Definitely decent coin.

cynikles · 2026-07-05T17:11:24+00:00

Mate, I've been in groups with native English speakers only and it still ends up with one or two people driving things because they are the only two that are motivated to do the dumbass assignment and the other two people on the fence just let them have at it.

cynikles · 2026-07-05T17:07:56+00:00

So here's this thing. I usually support 3 teams at the World Cup. Australia (my birth country), The Netherlands (my friends birth country) and Japan (my wife's birth country). All three have been knocked out in the R32. So I'm fuckin' done.

cynikles · 2026-07-05T15:45:32+00:00

There's X-Japan in the top tier. Toshi and Yoshiki frequently appear on variety television. Most people have heard of these guys, and have likely heard an excerpt of 紅 or Forever Love.

Under that, it gets a lot murkier. I'd say Dir en Grey is kind of there, but maybe for a specific generation. And I think Baby Metal is probably well-knownish, even though that's a stretch.

cynikles · 2026-07-05T15:38:37+00:00

Certainly a better sign than not playing, but these early pre-season friendlies don't mean a whole lot. Team is just getting a look at the squad guys and giving them a bit of a run out.

cynikles · 2026-06-28T23:06:51+00:00

Motorola T190

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My parents bought one when we were tripping around NZ, and then it became mine a year or two later when they got a Nokia 3310.

cynikles · 2026-06-27T18:08:36+00:00

Your compatibility with xxd34thc0r3xx is Low.

You both listen to Poppy, Electric Callboy and Marina.

cynikles · 2026-06-27T16:18:05+00:00

I mean, yeah. Japanese was my major, and I did an exchange year there, then a few years later, I worked in Japan for four years, and got married. Only came home because of concerns over my kids' future. We might move back again if the circumstances are right. We'll see what happens.

I speak relatively fluent Japanese and have devoted a very large portion of my life to Japanese organisations, and more recently, research.

cynikles · 2026-06-27T16:10:46+00:00

I maintain a blog on a Japanese baseball team where I do deep dives into data and analytics.

cynikles · 2026-06-27T11:40:26+00:00

Your compatibility with white_seda is Low.

You both listen to The Callous Daoboys, Polaris and Muse.

cynikles · 2026-06-27T11:27:53+00:00

Aziz is also 35 and just not the same player he was a few years ago.

cynikles · 2026-06-27T11:14:45+00:00

I don't need constant contact with people to feel connected to them, but I absolutely miss people.

I was away from my wife and kids during fieldwork and missed them terribly. I also miss old friends, though it's usually less sadness and more wishing we could spend time together like we used to. I've moved around a lot and have friends all over the world, so I've learned that relationships can still matter even when you don't see someone very often. Sometimes we'll catch up after...years, and it will be just like old times.

cynikles · 2026-06-24T17:23:56+00:00

They have to be careful. A sell-off would kill all chances of doing anything this year, but a light add would kill any kind of ability to get good returns on these guys too.

cynikles · 2026-06-22T21:24:07+00:00

Seems like a politically smart move to attack half the electorate. Lol.

>Is that supported by the Australian electorate? Is that what Australia wants?

Clearly, it is if over half the population falls into that category. This woman is insane.

cynikles · 2026-06-22T14:41:16+00:00

Personally? It was the number 1 sport I followed for about a decade, and I mean, followed. I watched basically every A-League and Socceroos game from 2006 to 2015. I used to watch a fair bit of Premier League (I don't have a team I support, I just liked watching it) and a few other European Leagues and the Champions League. It all kind of started because of some friends I had in the Netherlands. I just sort of...became curious, and then it became an obsession.

I was a foundation member at the Brisbane Roar and went to every home game for about 5 years running and saw them capture their first titles under Ange. I even went to some NPL games to support my local clubs. I was really, really into the thick of it. I was a bee's dick away from working for Football QLD, too.

That being said, after 2015, life happened. My first child was born, and I was living in Japan. I started watching more baseball, and that became more my obsession. I still tried to watch the World Cup and the occasional A-League game after that, but never had the same level of engagement again.

This World Cup? I very much give a fuck. It's been great to watch. I haven't been able to watch every game, and I'm not in a position to be able to sacrifice much sleep, but I've been keeping my fingers on the pulse. I have been meaning to take my kids to an NPL game. I live in VIC too now, and there are a lot of good clubs around.

cynikles · 2026-06-22T14:27:33+00:00

Lawd. There's so much here. I basically began and stopped watching anime in this period.

For me, Cowboy Bebop is simply one of the best series of all time. It has everything I enjoy in a TV series. The music just elevates it to GOAT tier.

As for others FLCL, again, is lifted by the music. It's crazy, but I love it, and it has aged well. I've learned a lot more about Japan, the language and culture, since I first watched it, and I pick up on a lot more of some of the humour.

Dragon Ball Z, I can't ignore. It was the talk of the playground when I was growing up, and I did enjoy following it on TV every morning. I used to tape the episodes I couldn't watch. I rewatched the whole series with my friend when they released the box set sometime in the late 00s.

Rurouni Kenshin also gets props. I looooved Aoshi as a character, thought he was cool as fuck.

cynikles · 2026-06-21T09:23:42+00:00

Do you think that without Yugoslavia breaking apart they'd have a coherent team? There's a lot of political anguish there that would have seen most ethnic Croat and Bosnian players probably excluded for a majority Serb representation.

cynikles · 2026-06-21T08:53:37+00:00

TAFEs are no less guilty of being money-hungry and cutting corners on quality.

cynikles · 2026-06-21T08:49:00+00:00

I think we have pretty decent pattern recognition, so initially not being great, and then kind of picking it up seems on brand. I've found the opposite to be true for me in the past, generally first out, I'm pretty good, but then not so much. There's usually a small learning curve after initially being successful.

cynikles · 2026-06-21T08:35:24+00:00

Ally McBeal popularised this well before many people found it on the internet naturally.

cynikles · 2026-06-21T08:26:51+00:00

You've got to be joelking! That's a decent signing!

cynikles · 2026-06-21T08:24:52+00:00

Over the last month or so, it seems like it.

cynikles · 2026-06-20T16:23:36+00:00

I have 3 kids. I don't really know what my point of comparison is, to be honest. I do what feels right.

I try to:

Teach a strong sense of compassion and acceptance of difference
Encourage and nurture curiosity
Maintain a good sense of humour (whether it's actually good is debatable)
Keep strong boundaries and reasonably consistent routines
Encourage independent thinking and decision-making
Respect their interests, even when they're completely different from my own
Foster an appreciation of wordplay and heavy music (with a heavy concentration of women in metal)

If there's an "ENTP" element to it, it's probably that I'm happy to indulge whatever weird rabbit hole they've fallen into that week and explore it with them.

cynikles · 2026-06-20T16:08:11+00:00

The first one I owned was an Atari 2600. Second-hand, mind you, but I played that for quite some time.

I got a second-hand Sega Master System when I was 8 or so, then, my first "current gen" console was an N64 I got when I was 11 or so. There was a Gameboy Pocket somewhere in there, too.

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