oldtype

I suspect the reason Spurs are emerging as suitors is because the better teams don't want him at that price. The "bidding war" has already happened.

Judging by the Van Hecke signing it looks like Tottenham is willing to pay above the odds for their targets. I wouldn't mind cashing in at that price.

Two weeks ago a colleague asked if I wanted to buy center fifth row tickets for a significant discount off face value. "Nah, it's Iran v. New Zealand, it's going to be shit"

Really mad at myself for deciding not to buy a ticket to this

I don't think he'll actually go to Spurs but definitely getting the feeling that he wants a move and his agent is trying to get some bigger clubs to bite.

No AFC team has lost yet at the World Cup crazy stuff

By the standards of the wider internet in 2026 this place is unreasonably reasonable. I'll never even attempt to discuss NUFC anywhere else

I hear a large group of fans chanting from outside of my office window in Los Angeles. Can’t really tell if they’re from New Zealand or Iran because I’m twenty stories up, but class regardless.

The expanded format creates life-changing memories for fans who previously would never have had the opportunity to participate. From a selfish perspective, it's also a lot more fun for fans from places that were previously the 20th-32nd best countries at the tournament, because they get to play more/go into more games with the chance of winning. I think that's a perfectly fine trade off in exchange for the best teams having to trudge their way through some "meaningless" matches before the knockouts start. And as Spain has shown us, those matches may not be quite as meaningless as you think...

Spain

I think this is fair. We don't actually know how important he is to the setup at this point. Could be that he's been somewhat marginalized for a while now and that's why he wants out.

The whole point of having a "backroom staff" instead of the old "manager runs everything" or even the "DOF runs everything" model is to ensure institutional continuity when folks leave. So I'm sure we'll be perfectly fine despite this because we have other people who've been around for ages who... oh, I'm sorry, what was that? ...Oh.

Not hard to look sharp against this shitshow

Tunisia's defense

I DIDN'T ACTUALLY MEAN IT FOR FUCKS SAKE