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Posts tagged with sports

⚽️ Ronaldo to boycott 2nd Al Nassr game in protest of PIF

ESPN

Sources told ESPN that Ronaldo tried to block the transfer of French star Karim Benzema from Al Ittihad to Al Hilal on Monday because he felt the move was unfair and indicated that PIF wanted to pave the way for Al Hilal to win the title.

Who would’ve thought the fake soccer league that controls the purse strings of every team and overpaid a bunch of old players would do things “unfairly?” Not to mention Ronaldo’s team is stacked still with João Felix, Kingsley Coman, and Sadio Mané—plus a couple young Brazilians.

🧊 ICE Agents Will Join Olympics Delegation in Italy. Many Italians are Angry.

NY Times

Mr. Sala [the Mayor of Milan] added: “Bringing to Milan a militia which distinguished itself — this is not my opinion — with criminal acts, which kills, which enters in the homes of American citizens without authorization, I do not think that that is a good idea.”

This is insane. The Olympic Committee and Italian government should ban America from the Olympic Games—and other countries should boycott the World Cup in North America (as should the US team). An untrained and unlawful unit of thugs and murderers shouldn’t be welcome anywhere. And we know they are untrained because they are hiring people based on six-minute interviews and without background checks—not to mention the evidence we can see with our eyes as they escalate situations and are overly trigger happy.

🏈 Trump Says He Will Sign Executive Order Giving Army-Navy Football Game an Exclusive TV Window

THR

It is not clear what the executive order will say, or what legal mechanism there is to enforce an exclusive broadcast window. FCC chairman Brendan Carr reposted Trump on Sunday, which is suggestive of the order being directed at his agency, which regulates broadcast TV stations.

So much for the free market. We already have state run media with Fox and CBS, might as well tell us what we can and can’t watch at this point.

⚽️ America is now the biggest market for international football

The Economist

Football still struggles in America, though. MLS remains a dull watch, despite its sprinkling of foreign mega-stars such as Lionel Messi, who plays for Inter Miami.

Not surprising that a country with one of the highest populations is now the biggest market for the world’s most popular sport. Nor is it surprisingly that MLS is still an awful watch. The only way that ever changes is if they start paying Saudi type money to get players in their prime in an attempt to make MLS a real competitor to the Premier League and La Liga.

💸 Everybody Stand Down: New Yorker Columnist’s Child Doesn’t Care About Sports Gambling

Defector

The people who own and populate the sports discourse have every professional incentive not to “freak out about sports betting,” because the vast majority of them are for all practical purposes employees of sports betting concerns. That, not to put too fine a point on it, is the precise reason why a question like “Is gambling really threatening the integrity of sports?” is still being treated as though it is up for discussion at a time when there are simultaneous active federal bet-fixing investigations against active players in three different highly visible professional sports

I didn’t read the original NYer column, but anyone who makes the points laid out by Albert here is crazy. There is no doubt that the integrity of sports is in trouble. And no, most fans of sports don’t think they are already fixed.

🏀 Billups, Rozier arrested in gambling investigations

ESPN

There are still a lot of unknowns about this, and I’ve seen passing mention that the FBI might be overstating how big of a bust this is and maybe conflating a few different things to make it look bigger to put a black eye on the NBA, but given how early this is, that’s all conjecture.