Ed Rae

@charlescerb So what? This time around you get tiny Norway upsetting Brazil. And if it wasn’t for questionable refereeing decisions, Argentina and perhaps England would be at home by now.

Looking at the World Cup in Qatar, for instance, when Japan shocked the world by topping a group with Germany & Spain. In a 48-team WC, we don't get Spain vs Germany until the Round of 16 at least. With 64 teams, all 3 of those teams would be in different groups. #FIFAWorldCup

@Bairdric1 Will never understand club over country guys. Love seeing Rangers do well. But how excited can you get competing in a 2-team league when neither team has a chance to become European champions anymore?

Will never understand country over club fans. Love watching Scotland. Would loved to have finally made it past the group stages. But I’ve cheered Rangers getting a corner more than I’ve cheered some Scotland goals.

@FenianOcatholic Alexis MacAllister and his family claim to have Irish lineage. … Although if you go back far enough it’s likely Scottish.

Patagonia has the largest non English speaking Scottish diaspora in the world, the first organized group of European immigrants to independent Argentina were Scottish. Glasgow-born Alexander Hutton is nicknamed ‘the father of Argentinian football’ after founding the AFA and the Argentinian football league. One of the best current players in the Argentinian national team has Scottish lineage. So why would Scottish people support England over Argentina?

@ThatCroatianGuy @NobletStrength In North America since salary caps and revenue sharing have come in you never get a situation like in Spain where the same 3 teams win every year, or Scotland or Croatia where the same two teams win the league every year, or Germany or France where the same team wins every year.

@NobletStrength Saying something is largely unproven without providing facts is pretty weak. However, you (mistakenly, I think) made a good point regarding no reason to invest without incentives.

Can someone tell me the downside of promotion and relegation in the United States? Be specific. Bring facts.

@ThatCroatianGuy A small market hockey team (in the bottom 5 or 10 in value in a 32-team league) was sold for $950 million in 2023. You don’t get anywhere near that kind of value if there’s relegation

@ThatCroatianGuy Relegation is a non-starter as with the partial exception of baseball, the North American sports structure is built around parity, salary caps, revenue sharing and limiting the number of teams. Players are drafted (with the worst team getting the first pick) and not free agents.

@NSC_Guru Most European soccer leagues are garbage with most teams having no realistic chance of becoming champions.

Americans who currently support local teams whether it be MLS, USL, etc… are likely the first generation of fans to be supporting those teams. When you hear Europeans talking about their grandad supporting a team & that’s why they support them, you are that grandad currently.

@_DIGB Seeding absolutely should happen. Bad officiating is a different story.

FIFA using seeds to purposefully construct the groups to ensure that France, Spain, England and Argentina can’t meet until the SF stage at the earliest will now all meet at the SF stage with varying degrees of help from officials It all feels very manufactured Stinking

@kkfla737 It’s simply having a couple of stars. Wales made the Euros with Garreth Bale and Aaron Ramsey.

Norway has only qualified for four World Cups and only one Euro. Yet, they have become an elite football nation. If you have the right discipline, introspection and set up, it can be done. In the US we don’t have that and I’ll just leave it at that.

@BritishLedger @IngridHeyerdahl Does the “British Ledger” not realize that the vast majority of Scottish fans will be going hoarse cheering for Norway? And likely the Welsh as well. And Haaland is better than Kane at acceleration, penalty box movement, aerial ability and goals per minute.

@IngridHeyerdahl We will complain about our players even if we win the World Cup… We’re not the same. Tell me something individually that Haaland can do, that Kane cannot… I’ll wait.

England is shaking. Norway has nothing to lose. If Norway loses, our men still come home as heroes. If England loses, they will be shamed by their own. #NorwayVsEngland

@BarberShreds Largely because of uneducated English fans who conveniently forget that the name “soccer” was coined in England in the 1880s and it was used by World Soccer Magazine and Match of the Day without issue up to the 1980s. It’s soccer in the U.S., Canada, Australia, NZ & South Africa.

why does the word 'soccer' make ppl so angry ? There are countries where their name is different in places Germany → Deutschland, Finland → Suomi, Hungary → Magyarország, Albania → Shqipëria ... so whats wrong with futball being called soccer in USA ?

@sgevans Soccer is arguably second to hockey in Sweden and Czechia and the U.S. is at most marginally better than them. And hockey is a close second in Switzerland, with the U.S. nowhere near competitive with them. Of former British colonies, Canada has been beating the U.S. lately.

If you look at countries where soccer is not the number one sport and the game has to compete with other, more established, sports - the USA is actually leading the way in that cohort.

@HockeyVice_ The guy who was so obviously not the best defenceman in Canada that he was left completely off the Canadian Olympic team. But I suppose it’s not just journalists (many of whom admittedly don’t know the game), but Canadian hockey people who don’t know the game???

Who is the most UNDERRATED player in the NHL? It has to be Evan Bouchard. The clear Norris winner gets outvoted because people don't know his game.

@binaryfootball @zilzal89 The Brazil and Argentina comment is spot on, but the rest is a huge stretch. The Round of 16 wasn’t introduced at the World Cup until 1986 and it’s been in the Euros since 2016, when little Portugal won it. At the World Cup, Netherlands have been finalists 3 times and Croatia 1.

@zilzal89 Fewer games, less expectation. No Argentina or Brazil (which is typically a third of the overall power base at any given tournament). Just one fewer round with two fewer powerhouses is hugely significant when fatigue starts to compound at the back end of a tournament.

There's a reason why the World Cup is rotated around the same 5-6 nations over and over again. A nation's ability to be crowned world champion is largely dependent on the available talent pool, which is mostly determined by population size, GDP and federation or government investment into the grass roots game. I'm a veteran of 11 World Cups, and only twice have I witnessed a first-time winner. When France became host winners in 1998, it was overdue. It was also overdue for Spain when they lifted the trophy in 2010. The surprise shouldn't have been that they put a new name on the trophy, rather that they had taken so long to make the most of their abundant natural resources. Belgium, meanwhile, are a great example of the distinction between quality and depth. Like the Netherlands, they exist between the power bases of England, France and Germany. Only 12 million people, but they benefit from proximity to new ideas and easy access to those stronger domestic leagues. A FIFA ranking or Elo rating measures quality and there's no doubt Belgium had a golden generation — a starting 11 that screamed 'potential World Cup winners' by any objective measure. A team that, on paper, wasn't just capable of beating any major nation on any given day but should back themselves to. However, the quarters, semis and final of a World Cup isn't any given day. A World Cup introduces the layer of depth through the accumulation of high-stakes 'away' matches in a short period of time. Each round gets harder by orders of magnitude for nations who might end up with a square peg in a round hole somewhere or lack equivalent substitutes to rotate without an alarming drop in standard. That's just the technical layer. Mentally and emotionally, the stakes of these matches are also asymmetric. Whereas history means France approach a quarter final like it's a walk in the park, others are constantly reminded that they stand on the brink of something unprecedented and what it would mean to the people back home. That's a heavy weight to carry, even for an underdog. Try telling them they've got nothing to lose. It's always good to catch interviews like this when a team exits the tournament, if only as a reminder to not fall for any other trap at the next World Cup. Courtois is an elite goalkeeper by any measure. He's won the lot with Real Madrid over the past eight years. And for the past four weeks, he'll have been saying all the right things. Yet now it's all over, he can finally relax and say what he really thinks. He can share the inescapable truth.

@binaryfootball Arguably the Netherlands have outperformed England at the World Cup despite England’s fluke win. And if you add the Euros, we’ve seen Denmark, Greece and Portugal win it. The World Cup has had a lot of small European nations make the finals, but oddly has not had one win it yet.

@Larry_Ligar If it helps, thinking Culloden was England vs Scotland is a myth. There were more Scots fighting for the government against Bonnie Prince Charlie than there were fighting for him at Culloden.

@dwzweser @CllrSMcCabe That looks more like a Celtic fan and a Terrorist, to be honest.

England are not our rivals. They play at a whole different level. They are our neighbours and she is half English. I don't have any English blood to my knowledge but I would rather see England win the World Cup than any other team left in the tournament.

@Jacksonmeasor12 @VihaanNESPN It’s a projected opening lineup for Boston, not for Providence.

@VihaanNESPN Why are we putting an X over Hagens?

Last remaining RFA for the #Bruins is FWD Matt Poitras Peterka - Zacha - Pastrnak Mittelstadt - Lindholm - Geekie Khusnutdinov - Minten - (x) Jeannot - Kuraly - Kastelic It is a big make or break year for the young forward. Does he crack the top 9 for the Boston Bruins?

@theawayfans Disrespectful? He didn’t point out that the U.S. world champion women’s soccer team lost 5-2 to an under-15 boys team in 2017, did he???

Harry Kane has said in an interview that: "England hasn't won anything as a nation for a long, long time." Which is 100% true. Then a follower said: "As the women came second in the last World Cup and won the previous two Euros tournaments, this isn't only false but extremely disrespectful to what the women's team have achieved for this nation." Not sure I agree, because we know exactly what Kane meant... 🤔🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

@BayernAusBoston Is Alphonso Davies “world class”? He’s on FC Hollywood, but that doesn’t automatically make him world class.

MLS has produced 1 world class player ever and he doesn't even play for USA 😭