https://x.com/MenInBlazers/status/2067783532944982456
https://x.com/NancyH_60/status/2067759584714838048
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I wouldn’t be at all surprised it drunk Brits actually had a substantialy better grasp of geography than your average American 
‘War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.’
- Ambrose Bierce
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The same people who have turned every game from two halves into four quarters.
Just saw the Kone injury, gutting for him especially as he was a real bright spark in this Canada team.
Because they haven’t denied an obvious goal scoring opportunity as they now have a penalty, which is an obvious goal scoring opportunity!
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With all these smaller nations taking part, I don’t remember/recall China ever being in a World Cup tournament.
It is such a massive country and a huge population, you see China at the Olympics and World championship in a in almost every sporting category. I wonder why they haven’t produced a decent qualifying World Cup team? It is strange.
The Chinese do watch football and are football fans.
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It’s huge, but they have only qualified in 2002. It’s the same with India, an enormous population but they don’t qualify.
There was a BBC article about this the other day:
Edit: You could include Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ethiopia in with the underperforming-compared-to-population braket.
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If you recall about 15 years ago, the Chinese league was throwing around a lot of money to buy the aging stars of the day, sort of the way the Saudis have been more recently. That was part of a national strategy to become a football powerhouse. The idea was that by developing one of the top leagues in the world, Chinese players would develop to the appropriate level.
However, they realized that fundamentally all they were doing is blowing a helluva lot of money on overweight Brazilians and their own players weren’t really good enough to support an elite league. After the failure to qualify for 2018, the government slapped a 100% transfer tax on foreign players and that more or less stopped the merry-go-round. The Chinese Super League subsequently was hit very hard by covid, the most successful club actually went bankrupt and lost pro status.
As a result, Chinese football is in a bit of a trough and trying to go back to basics to some degree - a reset of their strategy back to where they were about 20 years ago. The kids they started training under their new development approach are probably about two WC cycles away from becoming relevant to qualification.
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The stadium was cool enough to have a cup of tea to be honest 
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That seems about 30 minutes too generous a reading on the performance
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Once again my mind drifts to Asterix in Britain
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Part time in a Part time league. I did expect Messi to drop but he plays most games for Miami and MLS is somewhat competitive, I read Ronaldo had a 3 month rest at one point didn’t he?
CR7 starting and playing significant minutes is another reason to show how shit a manager Martinez is.
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