However, we ought to recognise his genius. This 79-year-old understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much.
.. Each western bidding country, I now realise, imagined that Fifa thought much like the country itself did. The English and American bidders, instinctive capitalists, thought they could win because they had big soccer markets. The Spanish-Portuguese bidding team probably thought they could win because they had friends inside Fifa. Australia hired lobbyists with other friends inside Fifa. The Dutch and Belgians believed in their green and compact bid. They even cycled into Zurich to present it.
.. Given waning western power, asks Pielke, “how do you effect global change? It turns out it’s really difficult. If we can’t reform Fifa, my goodness, how can we deal with nuclear proliferation or carbon emissions or trade?”
Palestinians Plan New Tack Against Israel: Soccer Sanctions
Israel, he said, has violated FIFA rules by allowing five teams from West Bank settlements to play in Israeli leagues even though they are in occupied Palestinian territory.
Players, coaches and referees are blocked from traveling between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as in and out of the area for training and tournaments, Mr. Rajoub added, and fans of the notorious Beitar Jerusalem team routinely chant “Death to Arabs” at matches.
Caroline Rotich of Kenya wins the Boston Marathon on April 20th.
“I didn’t even know how much they were paying until I was done.” She added, “The more I think about money [while running], I go backward. You must run with your heart first.”
How Low Can the Philadelphia 76ers Go?
I felt as if I were looking in on a strange social-science experiment: Throw together a group of marginal, overmatched professional athletes and give them a shot at their lifelong dream. The results were both inspiring and heartbreaking. The Sixers dove headlong for loose balls. They habitually fell far behind at the start of games — 15 points, 20 points, more — but kept fighting long after most veteran teams would have quit. They went on long scoring runs, then fell just short of winning. They are one of the youngest teams in the history of the league, almost all of them in their early 20s. When management scheduled family events around the holidays, few of the players brought their wives, girlfriends or children. They brought their mothers.
.. While a basketball box score records the number of times a player steals the ball from the opponents, advanced analytics will also track how many plays he disrupts by deflecting passes or even just getting an offensive player to change directions. The aim is to use large amounts of this kind of data to get a truer picture of a player’s real worth.