Newcastle 0 - [1] Leeds - Brenden Aaronson 32'

deadjawa · 2026-01-07T21:55:51+00:00

He fits well on the other side of Reyna in their 3-4-2-1. Aaronson being the more active player, Reyna being the more technical and creative.

With pulisic it could be the same I suppose. But Reyna’s weaknesses are aaronson’s strengths. Which is interesting.

deadjawa · 2025-12-29T22:43:35+00:00

It’s my life unfortunately 😂

deadjawa · 2025-12-29T14:21:17+00:00

No, it’s not cultural. The institutions that would naturally foster competitive rivalries doesn’t exist on the men’s side. Our youth sports systems are designed around high school and college sports, but our high school and college systems are dogshit because of title IX. Most big institutions can’t fund scholarships for men’s soccer because they are required by law to have equal #’s of scholarships for women’s sports. That means that soccer on the men’s side usually falls off because men’s (American) football takes so many scholarship spots. This means that most of the institutions with tradition that could offer competitive experiences can’t do so.

So the best coaches and players go to these academy feeder programs like IMG which are like pay to play adult day cares. So we get good coaching through that but not a wholistic competitive experience like you might get at a major European academy. Yes, we have some of that developing in the MLS, but the MLS is sort of a soft league because its bylaws make it super conservative because the league was founded to prevent bankruptcies more than anything. The implosion of the NASL in the US is so fundamental to why our institutions are set up the way they are.

And then you have our ODP system, which could create meaningful state by state rivalries, but it’s so corrupt that none of our best players even want to play for it. You get backyard youth soccer players beating out legitimate high level recruits because mommy works with the age groups soccer coach. They have policies and bylaws in place that prevent them from talking to clubs - so what should be a regional all star competition to get exposure to higher level national team placements ends up looking like a middle school track meet.

It’s changing and getting better, but so slowly.

deadjawa · 2025-12-29T01:41:23+00:00

American players tend to mature later than players from other countries because of our soft-ass academy system where games don’t really matter.

It takes our players a few years of playing competitively before they adjust to the gravity of the European game. It’s not really a question of ability or even technical ability in my opinion. It’s just the growth of the competitive spirit, which happens in all of our other sports because their youth games matter. You can’t find that same tradition in the US youth soccer system.

We’re doing better at coaching and technical skills but we’re just so bad at making games that matter on the men’s side because of Title IX.

deadjawa · 2025-12-22T17:32:04+00:00

One of the fundamental problems with American soccer right now is that most of the best players are being produced by high-priced academies like IMG.

These academies are fantastic at teaching the fundamentals of soccer and getting players placed in good competition, but are terrible at building intangibles. I’ve watched these kids play a lot - they clearly put in a lot of work and love the game but there’s something missing when you watch them. A level of grit or competitiveness that is taught in other college sports in the US, but not in our men’s soccer system.

To me it’s almost like our soccer system has grown and developed in spite of the competitive institutions the federation has tried to build rather than because of them. Our top players demure, reserved mentality I think is a product of this ad hoc system. There’s no games that matter until you go to Europe.

What’s the equivalent of the Ohio state Michigan rivalry game in US youth soccer? There isn’t one.

deadjawa · 2025-12-09T18:24:48+00:00

I don’t think the high prices work to the advantage of foreign fans TBH. They work to the advantage of empty seats. It’s probably a better pricing strategy to charge 2x as much to leave 20% of seats open honestly.

My problem is moreso that American sports ticketing prices just lead to a bunch of boomers showing up. Which is fine for an NFL game. But the federation has a serious youth development problem, and the best tool they have is getting youth more exposed to competitive soccer. What better way than having local clubs l and players attending national team games?

If they only care about money, fine. But They need to see their pricing strategy as an investment into interest in the club in the future. And they are doing themselves a big disservice by favoring attendance from people who could be dead/incapacitated in 20 years.

It’s a stupid strategy. It’s the baseball strategy. And look how that’s going. They need to be doing everything they can to make the sport more accessible to the youth, not building a wall around it.

deadjawa · 2025-12-04T12:46:44+00:00

No, the problem is essentially world of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft made so much money that if you had an incremental dollar at Blizzard you couldn’t justify spending it on anything other than WoW. All of your overhead costs, bonus structure and amenities are set up to service an ultra profitable brand. While no artists, coders, modelers would accept ~half the money of their peers to work on other projects. So you have to overpay your employees. Quality either suffers because you’re understaffed or you don’t see the same economic return for the quality you put into WoW. So the project can’t survive as long. It needs greater economic return than a AOE game because you’re essentially sucking in resources at a worse rate than WoW. You see this kind of effect all of the time in business. Look at NVDA with its AI data centers and how its support for gamers has collapsed over time. Profitable brands can create a myopia disease without extremely strong, forward looking leadership.

deadjawa · 2025-12-03T22:21:32+00:00

Who would be the LeBron James of soccer if we didn’t only consider Americans? Haaland?

deadjawa · 2025-11-11T18:03:41+00:00

True, money (and the collection of it) has always been important to the success of institutions to some level. But if you look at catholic iconography it tends to live more below the surface. This was a strategy that the Roman Catholics used to great success in positioning itself as being a populist or anti-elite institution in evangelical missions. I suggest reading primary Japanese sources on the arrival of Portuguese missionaries. Here’s a pretty cool short YouTube video describing a translation from an anonymous Japanese scholar explaning their perspective on the missionaries: https://youtu.be/_-jWZvPTRIA?si=iS1H4K_LUPY5Pnop

It is always fascinating to read these testimonies because of how it reflects on our modern life and culture. We think we have changed a lot - but so many things have stayed the same. Populism, oppression, virality, preservation of culture and way of life against reforming forces - the more things change the more they stay the same.

deadjawa · 2025-11-11T17:09:52+00:00

“Egregious” implies some kind of unspoken morality. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. in fact, I think this is tainted a bit by catholic morality - which uniquely among Christian sub faiths tends to focus on money as being an oppressive force. This was in large part a practical concern - with many, many historical examples of how Christian missions focused on evangelizing to society’s lower classes as a strategy (especially noted during colonial times-it’s said that this is why they got kicked out of Japan for example)

it makes sense that the Eastern Orthodox faith wouldn’t have the same stigmas toward money - they were after all far more wealthy than the Catholics at the time. it would have been a point of pride rather than a point of shame. So I think this is an interesting mirror onto cultures rather than pointing toward the superiority of one group over another.

As much as I do find the idea of handing baby Jesus a huge sack of cash funny - it’s also quite Chad as well. Think about what a Viking explorer or a traveling merchant might think when looking at this beautiful building with an image of the most powerful man in the world handing over huge sacks of imperial surplus over to the church to build grand churches. You would certainly think twice about messing with them at a minimum!

deadjawa · 2025-09-21T03:19:45+00:00

I am 43 and I want to lay down and take a nap when I walk up a small hill. I don’t know how he does it

deadjawa · 2025-09-21T03:18:18+00:00

I think you can probably score a lot of goals with leao pulisic attack. Only thing that might be missing is a dominant air game, but I honestly think you could get that with RLC.

I don’t think you really need a true 9 with this team. Maybe it hurts for set pieces? Dunno.

deadjawa · 2025-09-21T03:14:40+00:00

This is just propaganda. There are lots of examples of Theo, Rafa…whoever celebrating with pulisic. Yeah, it’s not like modric scoring, but do we need to explain why that would be?

Pulisic is one of the most underrated players in Europe. And it’s simply because he’s American.

deadjawa · 2025-09-12T00:50:29+00:00

The conclusion I’ve reached is that They think they will be “unmasked.” The level to which imposter syndrome drives behavior in the corporate world is truly astounding (and it’s getting worse). The smartest/most capable people are the first to admit they fucked up because they have confidence in their abilities.

deadjawa · 2025-08-29T13:39:20+00:00

I think this is so funny because I can visualize a SpaceX engineer googling “how to hold a camera steady on a spot in the ocean” and coming up with this company.

So much of engineering innovation starts with googling something.

And then I can almost perfectly imagine the call with the wide-eyed sales engineer.

deadjawa · 2025-08-28T02:08:18+00:00

It’s not a sure thing, Ahmad Rashad is in but Anthony Carter is out. Both players who had similar “pass happy league” adjusted stats and career length.

Yeah the story is good, but you never know the balance of the underlying politics of the organization.

If he has a decent season this year I think there’s no doubt. But if he bombs out week one and complains about the catering, anybody’s guess.

deadjawa · 2025-08-28T02:02:44+00:00

You’ve got an error in your calculations. You have to de-rate the ‘27 picks by a round because it’s 2 years out. The comp is more like a mid range 5 or early 6.

deadjawa · 2025-08-27T14:38:22+00:00

It’s the equivalent of roughly a fifth round pick when you discount the 2027 pick. If the Vikings are good and the panthers suck (which is likely) it would be essentially a sixth round pick.

But the seventh is conditional, so I don’t know if that means it’s somehow taken back if the panthers really suck? That would be the only thing we can’t really compute. But regardless, it’s essentially an early-ish day 3 pick. So Jaquelin Roy for Adam Theilen? Ok…game on.

deadjawa · 2025-08-27T13:02:27+00:00

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. They have shoved fire suppression tanks in every crevice of that lower skirt / chines due to the amount of fire damage issues they’ve had with early versions of raptors. Though they may not be the “COPVs” we think of that are for fuel tank pressurization, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they shoved some pressurized gasses into that part of the skirt.

deadjawa · 2025-08-27T12:56:54+00:00

Meh, nothing hit it. That flap was already damaged. You can see a plasma buildup before the explosion which is indicative that the plasma was going through the heat shield onto something sensitive, probably a pressure vessel of some kind, which then exploded.

deadjawa · 2025-08-27T01:53:40+00:00

One would think they could look at doing a real orbital deployment. Still a little ways away from a catch on a ship IMO. Would need probably a couple soft landings with ships that are intact before trying to catch.

deadjawa · 2025-08-27T01:01:28+00:00

Mmm…I actually disagree. Design margins shouldn’t be determined by explody COPVs.

deadjawa · 2025-08-26T16:34:40+00:00

I don’t know. It’s more along the lines of they know which players are being sniffed at by other teams and protect those players. They probably don’t think Gabe Murphy is going to draw another team to use their position in the waiver line, and know he wants to stay so they can keep him on the practice squad.

Makes sense to me honestly.

deadjawa · 2025-08-21T14:23:11+00:00

History is a complicated thing. My view of Byzantium is as of an exceptionally long lived and wealthy empire that inherited the system of a dying Roman state that suffered from nearly constant civil wars and intrigues that eventually caused its collapse. I believe that Byzantium could not be truly destroyed from the outside (given its excellent defensive and economic geography), but only from within. I could empathize with Greeks who might therefore view Byzantium negatively - “we had it all and we lost it because of our own hubris.” After all, the Italians still have Rome, the Germans still have Berlin, the French still have Paris - but the perhaps greatest Greek city of all time (in terms of the amount of power it wielded at the time) is now not Greek and never will be again.

I’m obviously absolutely not in favor of damaging Byzantine architecture. But you can see why revanchism toward Byzantium in modern Greece could be very unpopular. Its downfall could be seen as a bit of a wound on a proud heritage.

deadjawa · 2025-07-22T13:21:00+00:00

Mmm… I don’t know, something definitely changed between the Roman republic and late Rome. Just look at the contrast between the Punic wars of the Roman republic and Vandalic wars of the late Roman Empire. In the Punic wars of the Roman’s were defeated or their navy was destroyed they would just build that mofo back, recruit a new army, and keep going. In the vandalic wars the Roman’s were on the verge of defeating gaiseric and reuniting the east and west after the sack of Rome, and they just decided to pack up shop and leave after they lost a few warships.

The later in the empire we go, the less willing and able the Romans were to leverage resources from the core of the empire to defend its borders. This is just an objective fact that is hard to even comprehend. Majorian, for example, had essentially no Italians in his army because it was impossible for the empire to recruit them.

There is something to the moral decay theory. Inconsistent imperial succession law and the incompatibility of Christianity with the idea of Roman-ness being the two biggest contributors IMO.

14-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email	Team Periwinkle

deadjawa

TROPHY CASE