Nakamura

I think Surf is lame, uncreative. A typical early 1990s team name (or a women's sports name, US women's sports for some reason are full of abstract short team names). If they want to be creative, that's not it.

12 Premiership 20 Championship Regional leagues after this, with juniors in the mix. Automatic promotions slots between Premiership and Championship, no automatic promotion elsewhere. Also, regional clubs can decline promotion. If some club prefers to travel less, stay next to their rivals, in their historic little league, no reason to force them to move up. Lower league champion plays worst team from a higher league at the end of the season, but you can win it and choose to stay in your league.

great point. someone should've thought of doing that on purpose!

Yeah was watching that race, was funny. commentators thought the guy was clowning at first.

Besides Sacramento and San Antonio, San Diego looks like a very legitimate option to make it soon, they have big redevelopment plans and will have public vote. Tampa looks strong as well.

Yep, I also think it's probably mostly the lack of away fans, and time. We'll see what happens with New York clubs 20, 30 years from now. Also I think it doesn't help that most games are not important. No relegation, winners decided in the playoffs. Rivalries are born in games that matter. If you lose a regular season game, so what. In other US sports, great rivalries were formed in the playoffs, but in a league as balanced, unpredictable and big (and growing) as MLS, two clubs could meet in the playoffs, have a tense series and not see each other in the playoffs for another 10 or 20 years. Also, your post reminded me of this old Toronto clip, from when the club was new. Most "hardcore" supporters just standing outside before the game and chanting how the referee is a w****r. But their feelings vs. Montreal were probably much more genuine.

I was rooting for Boonen at the end, only because it would've been a record. But good for Hayman. Boonen allowed himself to get boxed in and had nowhere to go, unusual for a great sprinter. He choked it away. I'm sure he was kicking himself after that.

I didn't see Antonie crash and I probably won't want to, but so terrible, rest in peace. Just last week, I watched an older monument (don't remember which one, I was on a binge of watching many different ones), where two neutral cars crashed into riders in the same race. They must seriously re-think safety. Also, different opera, but was it last year's Giro when a spectator rode a bicycle into the peloton and crashed a bunch of riders. Can this security prevent a terror attack? Peloton just looks like a very vulnerable target.

Well, to be fair, days of Alex Fergusons coaching in the Scottish league are gone, an average muffin by global standards is all you need right now. I wouldn't mind an average one for my club.

She can have a family doctor somewhere on this side. There seems to be a lot of EU medicine and new treatment procedures that aren't approved in the USA. A few years ago we had probably some dozen NBA stars go to Germany to get knee procedures because they weren't approved in the US (Kobe, Pau Gasol, Brandon Roy, don't remember others).

I doubt it, it's fun for people to annoy them, and it's about overspending to win and starting a new company, not about unpaid debts. If it was about unpaid debts, then there are many clubs in a similar boat.

As I understood from tweets, the Green council said that club is only in people's minds, it doesn't exist (or something along those lines), then Rangers council replied to it in his speech much later, after court break, and then it escalated and judge went into it. My impression is that the judge keeps asking both sides 'why is this relevant' more or less, in various forms. But you could be right though, maybe Rangers council made that argument first, in writing before the court, and that's why Green's council went into it.

Replying probably more to the post you quoted, than to you. I think Rangers fans are a very divided group right now, there's a lot of internal conflict right now and insults thrown at each other, maybe not very visible here on this forum. I agree with you that this forum probably inspires a siege mentality. Some very strange dudes here, and I don't mean just Rangers fans.

Why was the club vs. company debate relevant to this case anyway? Judging by this old article, the clause said "Club or the company", so it would seem that Green had all bases covered in this regard. Wish I could listen to the whole argument instead of just those tweets, I wonder why Green's council went into this. The old article with the clause, from November: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-34932541

Not Scottish here, and I don't know Spiers at all. Talking about journalists in general, not knowing the specific guy, nothing would surprise me when it comes to today's 'professional journalists', especially in the field of sports. Sports journalism today is dominated by twitter and sensationalism, everyone is trying to break some story to stay relevant, and since there aren't that many real stories, lots of stuff gets made up. Then people get called out, egos come into play, people end up losing jobs and starting blogs. There aren't many sports journalists who are immune to making stuff up, it's part of staying relevant for most at this point, nothing to do with malice or damaging this club or that. It used to be different before blogs and twitter. I don't know if this guy made it up or not, but he'd be one in a long line of "professional journalists" to be full of shit.