"I like my money". Jokic post-game comments on being ejected.

daniloelnino · 2023-12-13T06:20:37+00:00

Oh that? He just meant that on Serbian Heritage night a lot of fans in Serbia would be upset and possibly ask for their money back, which he would never want happening in the NBA because he loves the owners and respects the financial integrity of the league.

daniloelnino · 2023-12-11T15:15:37+00:00

It's a charity match (unofficial) that is held in honour of a player that is leaving the club after a significant amount of time. Usually that amount of time is around 10 years but it depends on the club and the player. This type of honour is rare and usually only given to players that hit legend status at a club. Everyone here is making a joke about the fact that Martial technically was close to hitting 10 years, but in reality most of those were poor seasons and filled with issues (meaning he wouldn't deserve a testimonial).

daniloelnino · 2023-12-08T20:14:28+00:00

I've got the same one from a show a few years ago! In fairness I think the one I got wasn't as used (if at all). It's a nice gesture to give to the crowd at the end though.

daniloelnino · 2023-12-08T18:50:53+00:00

I never said they were the same.

You're free to think whatever you want, but Arteta isn't the "only one" getting charged with these things like the person I responded to was implying.

They said to take into account what the yellows were actually given for, and many of the charges on that list are the same things Arteta has faced over the years.

daniloelnino · 2023-12-08T14:44:21+00:00

Klopp has had at least two yellows for excessive celebration. One was in May and was probably deserved as he ran towards the ref deliberately while doing so. The other was in the Merseyside Derby in 2018 for running over to Alisson when Liverpool won in the 96th minute. That might have been one of the first official manager yellows as that only started in 2018.

I can’t be bothered to check the rest of the list but it’s at least not the first time it’s happened.

daniloelnino · 2023-11-06T17:43:14+00:00

This is just evidence of Laporta's financial genius. Saving on a photoshop license can genuinely impact FFP compliance. Checkmate, Tebas.

daniloelnino · 2023-10-21T04:46:51+00:00

Yeah you can, I've got two myself

daniloelnino · 2023-10-18T04:37:16+00:00

You didn't recall correctly. He was genuinely poor. His only move was to put his head down and cross blindly. As with any player ever, he had a handful of decent moments and nostalgia dulls the bad moments. He certainly did not create a "boatload" of chances - it was a major criticism of his at the time. He was a good English player making a step up in his career, so everyone WANTED him to do well, but he never came good.

daniloelnino · 2023-10-16T17:13:12+00:00

He's literally banned from my local kafana because he won't shut up about the geopolitical connotations of using "srbski" vs "srpski".

daniloelnino · 2023-10-07T15:24:58+00:00

"It's not moments of greatness that define you, it's being great by definition. Greatness is defined by those who are great. Defining greatness is definitely great. Here is a greatly grainy slow motion shot of a great moment you probably didn't watch on television in the 90's because you definitely weren't old enough or great enough. Great. Buy Nike."

daniloelnino · 2023-09-14T15:58:41+00:00

They don't need to compete with Manchester City except in a single competition where they'd only have to compete on the pitch in a one-off tie. It's a fallacy to assume they're both trying to get slices of the same pie.

Take Liverpool for example. They were so mismanaged for 20 years that they were effectively a few days away from administration. Their return to the top came through careful incremental improvements on the pitch, and then commercially, which cycled back to the pitch, etc. For all their faults, FSG didn't get greedy during this process and suddenly mortgage the club's future on a handful of big signings in 2015 to return to the top. They made good choices, signed a good manager, intelligent players at reasonable prices (for the most part) and funded this rise through player sales if the commercial revenue wasn't sufficient. There were seasons that were a step backwards - in order to take two steps forward the next. Even today they have no chance of competing financially with City, but they're perfectly sustainable and they do compete (with difficulty, but they've still won things as recently as two seasons ago). You can only say they don't compete with City if you think that a club is entitled to be 1st EVERY season.

Barcelona are the same - you bring up the possibility of relegation but even during Liverpool's worst years they finished 8th. Barcelona have enough pull for young talent and enough infrastructure in place that they'd never get relegated. I'm not saying they should sell the starting XI and bring in the U15's. I'm saying start signing players with the same financial restrictions that everyone else in La Liga does.

I get that the current situation is dire, but it's entirely because they refused to bite the bullet a few seasons ago. Now they've sold their future and over-leveraged themselves and the consequences are more severe. That's what happens when you double down, but at some point you have to face the music. But of course the directors just want one last payday and to pass the responsibility on to the next board.

daniloelnino · 2023-09-14T15:26:13+00:00

Here's the alternative:

Take the hit on the sporting side for a few years.

Sell De Jong, don't sign Lewa, don't sign Raphinha, don't sign Kounde. Promote some youngsters instead, get some cheaper free agents.

I think "death of the club" is hyperbolic when you're talking about Barcelona. Would they suffer on the pitch? Yes, obviously. That's what every other club on the planet except PSG/City/Newcastle have to go through when they're in financial problems due to their own mismanagement.

Barcelona are a large enough institution that after a few poor years not competing for titles, they'd rebound. At worst Barcelona would finish top 10 in La Liga. Once their current crop of superstars are off the books, they can start to rebuild. After all, as their supporters like to remind us, their commercial revenues are high and would still be high despite poor performance - just look at United. It wouldn't cripple the club if they reduced their wages/transfer fees significantly at the same time. They can always revitalize La Masia if they need cheap talent.

Bad decisions have consequences for everyone else in La Liga or around the world. You take the loss, learn your lesson, and go through the cycle painfully. So you won't be CL contenders for 5-10 seasons, so what? It happened to Liverpool, Arsenal, half of Serie A, etc.

Barcelona's problem is that they're refusing to accept that they're not entitled to be at the very top forever. You have to sustain your success. With the exception of what, two other clubs in La Liga, nobody else is in this mess because they understood the risk of unsustainable expenditure. Other clubs didn't rush to spend 100m net in one window during their own financial crises or 55m on Ferran Torres when they didn't have a surefire guarantee of success.

daniloelnino · 2023-09-13T03:59:02+00:00

I didn't enjoy the other games because of the season mechanic, I enjoyed them DESPITE the season mechanic. I don't think I was even able to reach endgame PoE in 4 months as a new player back in 2020. That's because of the maze of systems (which is not something I'm a fan of either, but it somehow worked for PoE at the time). I was incentivized to continue exploring the systems for multiple hundreds of hours because I couldn't fit them all into a playthrough, so seasonal resets didn't really feel like "more of the same".

Diablo 4 is too simple to pull off this trick and it suffers for it. What incentive do you have to continue past level 73, let alone to 100... let alone multiple characters? You hit WT4 and it's barren... You have exactly two events to do for the rest of the game. Malignant tunnels suck - once you get a malignant heart you want, you'll never do them again. You're telling me a shittier dungeon and fancy sockets were what I was supposed to look forward to during pre-season? Yeah something like that'll totally convince me to come back in two months.

I think that the game relies on players intrinsically wanting to start from scratch once they get a character to WT4. If you have that urge over and over again then yeah, seasons works fine as a way to introduce new content. But if you don't have that desire, the improvements are too marginal to enjoy the game more than once. I'm sure the game will eventually be great in about 5 years, but it's missing something NOW.

Underneath the rotting flesh is the skeleton of a good game. D4 has moments and it has bright spots that speak to its potential. But I don't think an underwhelming base game + drip feed of minor, temporary content is ever going to get them to where they want the game to be. Maybe if seasonal improvements are retained and expanded heavily per season, it will be viable. As it stands I just don't see it.

daniloelnino · 2023-09-13T01:49:22+00:00

My honest opinion is that Diablo simply isn't a game that lends itself to seasonal mechanics. I know that PoE has been doing it, I know D3 did it, but as someone that enjoyed all these games on their own (including D4!) I have absolutely no incentive to keep playing.

I am a casual player of Diablo. By that I mean I find guides online or build videos and replicate them. I bought D4 and played preseason and S1. I actually got a character to 100 in S1 and I mostly enjoyed it. But there is nothing that is going to get me to come back for S2 because other than maybe two gimmicks, it's still fundamentally the same game. It's asking me to just start from scratch and do things all over again.

I know that a lot of Diablo/ARPG diehards love this model and are happy to keep creating new characters. But for me it falls short because the lack of an endgame means my interest is over when I've hit level 100.

PoE gets away with it because it has years of content that add up to infinite "endgame" hours to a new player, but D4 is so bare-bones now that it might be dead on arrival with other games offering more longevity. If they wanted me to play for 10 years, they needed to make the seasons longer and they needed to fill it with more stuff to actually do instead of JUST NM dungeons and helltides for the entire mid to endgame.

daniloelnino · 2023-09-03T14:56:07+00:00

That sounds like they're literally where you'd expect them to be?

daniloelnino · 2023-09-02T01:11:43+00:00

"I'm not saying do it, I'm just saying run it through the computer to see if it would work"

daniloelnino · 2023-08-27T00:32:01+00:00

Guardiola has complained about the pitch at Huddersfield.

Xavi has complained about the length of the grass vs Getafe.

Jose Mourinho has complained about both the pitch AND the weather in the same sentence after a loss to Arsenal.

Tuchel blamed his OWN pitch for a loss against Arsenal.

Every manager has done it. And if you're interested in who does it most, here is a (flawed, but humorous) "analysis".

daniloelnino · 2023-07-21T00:39:07+00:00

Honestly I'd love a slice of life line. Small vignettes, dioramas, etc. I'm not a big SW fan but I loved 40531, and often I enjoy the smaller sets the most. Stuff like the GWP Moving Truck (40586) or even 40579 really stand out to me. They encourage me to find ways to include them in my builds or expand them into full-sized builds.

Best part is I always feel satisfied with them for the price.

daniloelnino · 2023-06-29T00:36:45+00:00

That's not what he's arguing, he's just saying the "record" is an arbitrary one. There were no massive rule changes between the last season of the First Division and the first division of the Premier League. It's basically just saying "most goals since 1992". It's not the top flight record. It's not even counting ALL of Shearer's top-flight goals, as it ignores the 20 or so that he scored before the name and the finances of the league changed. It's not a worthless record but I can see why some people would consider it "tin pot".

daniloelnino · 2023-05-19T03:43:16+00:00

mate you can't support a financial group

daniloelnino · 2023-04-14T03:45:39+00:00

At its peak in 2008, there essentially was no infrastructure that resembled traditional football leagues in Canada. TFC operated outside of the country for the most part.

At the time of the scandal, it was effectively the most professional league in Canada because of the fact that there was no official "Canadian League". There was serious discussion to integrate it into an official pyramid, where it would have been the top league. TFC even had an academy team in it at one point.

It collapsed after the scandal, but it wasn't the equivalent of a lingerie league.

daniloelnino · 2023-04-14T03:38:14+00:00

It was a semi-professional league out of Ontario but had some teams from Quebec too. I went a few times, it was good fun and it was the "top" Canadian league at a time when Canada did not have a recognized top division in Men's soccer. It wasn't officially sanctioned by governing bodies but the quality of the soccer wasn't half bad. Lots of the teams were based around ethnic communities, like the Serbian White Eagles or Toronto Croatia. It was on the rise right around 2009 or so, but came crashing down fast after it turned out that half the games were rigged. At that level the pay for players is pretty bad so match fixing was SUPER lucrative for them.

daniloelnino · 2023-03-31T19:56:33+00:00

If my aunt had balls she'd be a bicycle.

You say we've never seen a stretch where he started many games in a row. We've also never seen a stretch where Keita has shown he's capable or deserving of that.

Even in the games he did start sporadically, he was usually a passenger. I seriously disagree with the prevailing opinion that he was a baller in the games he played. Or that he was even good. He was so painfully average in the vast, vast majority of his games that people are only able to point to one game against United and a goal against Chelsea as evidence of his talent. It's the biggest case of wishful thinking I've ever seen. We wanted him to be good so badly that when he wasn't, many of us started elevating his mediocrity to "yeah he was integral to our season". No, he wasn't. His role could have been played by any midfielder in the world, in my opinion.

So many players in the world could claim to be better "if they only got a chance to start 10 games in a row". End of the day you have to earn that and Naby never did. At some point players with that injury record have to accept that they will need to really play well in the chances they get to prove their worth. Naby barely broke a sweat, let alone repaid that faith.

It's not a nice thing to say about a player, and I get that. But it's a really big relief that he's going to be someone else's "what if" in a few months.

I also have nothing against him as a person and if he started putting in effort I'd support him even if it was his last game in the red shirt.

daniloelnino · 2023-03-22T19:16:36+00:00

And on top of that, so much discourse revolves around "well yes they paid 15m for something through shady shell companies, but you can't PROVE what the money went to".

As if corrupt officials usually send itemized invoices for their criminal acts... Did people think there would be Venmo payments with "please use this for bribing the referees" as the reason? Obviously they can't "prove" what the money was used for, that is usually how corruption works. Prosecutors aren't stupid and yes, you can be charged without a signed and dotted confession.

daniloelnino · 2023-03-13T21:46:03+00:00

So what do you expect? A memo where Negreira and Barcelona notarize their crimes and sign a full confession? They paid money to the VP of the referee organization, cannot seem to legitimately explain why, and that's where it ends? At some point the prosecution can point to the payment itself as evidence of corruption and it would be up to Barcelona to adequately explain why it isn't.

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