You know what…fuck Lewis Hamilton. He’s the Gerrit Cole of F1. Surprised he didn’t join Ferrari wearing a Team Boras hat.
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Crazy time to be a Liverpool fan. About a month ago, their team was in the thick of the hunt for four trophies. As of today, they have been booted from three of the four, and the Premier League title - the only one left - is already in the bag. Just like that, there is nothing left to play for.
Liverpool could make the title race interesting if they play the remaining 9 games the way they played the Carabao Cup final yesterday. I only hope they are that sluggish and unprepared when they play Palace on the last day of the league season - that game may be meaningful to the Eagles.
Ouch. Spaun, already one down after the first playoff hole, splashes his tee shot on 17, effectively removing all drama from the playoff for The Players Championship.
Those of you who have watched “When Eagles Dare” will know that The Doogs has a habit of dramatic exits as the team is on the up when someone waves a bunch of cash under his nose.
F1 is like London buses: you wait forever for one, and then three come along all at once.
To wit, it’s already time for the Chinese GP and it’s a Sprint Race weekend. So there’s Sprint Qualifying in the early hours of tomorrow morning, the Sprint Race tomorrow night, then GP Quali and the race proper at 2am Sunday morning.
Will this season turn into an extended McLaren victory lap? Or can the field - or a rules change to come mid-season - rain on that parade?
Navin will be happy to know that I ran into Henry once in Newark. He was sitting there on the phone with a cup of milky coffee on the ground between his feet. I walked over and stood in front of him and after a beat he looked up at me, mildly annoyed. I smiled and put out my hand and once he realized I wasn’t on some selfie safari or whatever else he might have been fearing he eased up totally, smiled, shook my hand and gave me an enthusiastic series of thumbs ups as I wandered off.
I saw him play at Highbury. I’m pretty sure he scored. It’s a decent bet either way.
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You can take Pochettino out of Spurs…
That is awesome
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And considering our idiot president, losing to the fighting Canals didn’t really bug me. Although I’m not a fan of Coco C.
Pulisic not getting to do his stupid Trump dance was fine by me.
I, on the other hand, am a big fan of Coco C. He is a far better field general than the last guy who helmed the position, Gavilán G. Witness tonight.
My main issue with Coco was how shitty he was for the Dynamo.
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I don’t follow the Dynamo so I’m unfamiliar with the dynamics there, but he’s a very, very solid player and it confuses me that he wouldn’t immediately make any team better.
I don’t think much of the MLS in general, but it’s historically been a terrible fit for almost all Panamanian legioneros. I don’t know why. Virtually every Panamanian who’s played in the MLS has had their development stopped cold once they got to the US or in a few cases Canada. I can’t think of a single player who has improved while playing in the MLS. Godoy is the only guy I can call to mind who has had a fairly lengthy MLS career and not had his skills and his value to the national team significantly degraded as a result. Of course, I contend that he would be a much better player today had he chosen to play most anywhere else.
On another note, I saw where Dempsey said that losing to Panama (again) was ‘embarrassing.’ He’s welcome to think whatever he likes, but it seems to me that this attitude is at the root of their current problems. Our coach has a measurable amount of common sense, which makes him stand out from the previous crowd. He has these guys playing the game in an intelligent way. They have an obvious plan and are plainly trying to execute it in a collective manner. It is night and day from what I watched for years and years, which was very good to great athletes running around doing I was never sure quite what. But with this guy, I am always sure what they’re trying to do and more importantly, the players are, too. And, crucially, I expect, he’s doing what I have always advocated, and this last point is the reason for this tangent, he’s taking as many players as possible from European leagues, never mind if it’s not first division, and taking almost no one from the local league, which is terrible. (I would want a guy to play in the MLS over the LPF less for tactical development than for nutrition and, I assume, physical training.) I have always said, Man, let’s round up the guys playing in Belgium or Slovakia or Slovenia or wherever the hell and let’s make a team out of those goons because at least they’re getting tactical instruction over there that you just don’t seem to get in the western hemisphere. And that’s what our coach, himself a European, is doing. There are some guys you just have to include that are playing in the MLS or in Latin America somewhere, but he plucks guys out of their jerky ass European leagues wherever he can, and the results speak for themselves. I’m not talking about last night, I refer to what I mentioned before, that these guys are actually playing the game like they have some idea of what they’re doing, and it is very exciting to watch.
Sorry to go full Limey on you guys. Never go full Limey.
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Chinese GP Sprint Qualifying:
So McLaren may not have the ability to fuck off over the horizon as many - including me - had suggested. Qualifying for the Sprint ended with Hamilton putting his Ferrari on pole, ahead of Verstappen (so buckle up for the first corner). Piastri put his McLaren third, but Norris fucked up his “go” lap and ended up 6th, behind the other Ferrari and sandwiched by Mercedeses.
Other notable news is that Albon far out-qualified Sainz in the Williams head-to-head…again…suggesting that Ferrari may have made the right decision to bin Sainz for Hamilton.
Meanwhile Tsunoda and Perez may have to visit a doctor about their 4+ hour boners following Liam Lawson finishing dead last in the car that his teammate put on the front row. Red Bull has long put all its eggs in Verstappen’s basket, but this split may end up being too extreme even for them. But that 2nd seat at Red Bull is such a poisoned chalice these days, who really wants it? Certainly not anyone with prospects (like, say, Yuki Tsunoda who qualified 8th today).
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After all the drama of Melbourne last week, Shanghai decided to deliver not that. Twice.
Both the Sprint and the main GP were absolute processions, with the respective pole-sittas - Hamilton and Piastri - driving off to comfortable wins.
The newly re-surfaced track was murderous towards the softer tire compounds so - particularly in the GP - after the initial jockeying following the start everyone engineered a 2-second gap to the car in front to protect their footing.
The only in-race occurrences that came anywhere close to drama were from Ferrari. Leclerc clipped his teammate early on, losing a piece of his front wing in the process and still being faster than Hamilton, driving to 5th on the road; while Hamilton was the only front- runner to try a 2-stop strategy and proving in the process why nobody else did that.
All the drama was after the race when both Ferraris were disqualified: Hamilton for an undersized skid plate and Leclerc for being underweight. I wonder if that was by the weight of the missing front wing end plate…
Anyway, McLaren got an easy 1-2, Russell 3rd and Verstappen 4th.
The only other notable thing is that Liam Slowson in the other Red Bull qualified last and finished nowhere. The chat is now whether he will still have a drive by the next race in Japan.
Possibly my favorite weekly show on TV.
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It’s quite the juxtaposition to see UK sports - notably the Premier League - work to ween itself off betting money while the US is embracing it and making it an integral part of the sports-watching experience.
Removing gambling from the broadcasts isn’t a panacea for the ills it causes, but there is a reason why you don’t see ads for cigarettes on TV anymore.
While I enjoy wagering on American football, (I give myself an allowance each year and hope it lasts through the Super Bowl), I do not like the way betting references and ads have infiltrated the broadcasts. It must certainly “normalize” this activity to impressionable young viewers.
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Exactly. The issue isn’t so much gambling itself, it’s that the gambling “pushers” are predatory - the same way cigarette manufacturers were - and so they have forfeit their unfettered access to a viewing public made up, in part, of potential victims.
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