Is it so hard for you to believe that maybe - just maybe - Mathis did his share to bring this unto himself?

_________________
Konjugation eines unregelmäßigen Verbs

Ich bin fest.
Du bist eigensinnig.
Er ist ein dickköpfiger, unbelehrbarer Hornochse.
(Bertrand Russell)

keith wrote

man... you can't be this stupid... my guess is you have a bet with someone for how long you can continue a meaningless thread. the point has nothing to do with clint/ nothing to do with lienen vs their old coach... it has to do with calling people krauts, putting them down, running the same thing over & over. i've made my views on mathis clear- done... you made yours clear a long time ago- should be done but it continues... people who are nice enough to come on the board are chased off as they don't want to be called names & insulted.

When i was still in school i had a friend from germany named jurgen who was in california as a exchange student- i had a good time calling him every foul word i could think of- he was a friend. he understood & he replied replied as best he could-(while he admited that he didn't have my gift for the insult he hit me with what i thought was a good one saying "whatever american"... when i replied "is that the best you can do?call me american?" he said "what could be worse".. i thought it was funny- again- he was a friend & it was a mutual slagging)

I don't get the impression that any of these people on the board are your friends & want to be insulted. i'm not a moderator- i don't set the rules saying who can/can not post here so i can't stop you from posting whatever you want to post- i just wish you'd either change your tune- or go somewhere else...

madrat for moderator :!:

You got my vote!

_________________
Konjugation eines unregelmäßigen Verbs

Ich bin fest.
Du bist eigensinnig.
Er ist ein dickköpfiger, unbelehrbarer Hornochse.
(Bertrand Russell)

viktoria wrote

viktoria- don't think i could handle the responsibility but thanks for the vote!!!
the winter break is hard for me to understand (once american sports leagues start- they don't stop) so i'm having a pretty hard time right now. i can't wait until the january 21st game against bayer l. after christmas i'll be away from a computer for a couple of weeks- but hopefully you will come back & post here again.


der rote wrote

visions of power swirling in madrats head......

I'm not big on the winter break, either. Although the players can use a few weeks off, I guess. But the main reason - the cold winter - is gone. It doesn't really get that cold anymore and most clubs have heating for the fields anyway...

_________________
Konjugation eines unregelmäßigen Verbs

Ich bin fest.
Du bist eigensinnig.
Er ist ein dickköpfiger, unbelehrbarer Hornochse.
(Bertrand Russell)

Yes, I would like to do this, but never my english was perfect and now until some years I did'nt practice, it's more worse than before.

Sorry for this but I think, I am ony good for some short statements like before. But have a nice time without soccer!

viktoria wrote

i said before in a post that i think it is funny when germans(or other non-english speakers) come on here & appologize for their poor english(in their words-not mine)... when my german is as good as your english- i'll be very happy indeed.

viktoria also wrote
i will be in ireland for the next 2 weeks- with the english league i'll have plenty of soccer- but i will miss the bundesliga & hanover in particular.

Geeze, the term Kraut is hardly "insulting", its a term of endearment. One doesnt have to be a rocket scientist to come up with something which IS insulting. Another example, references to the French as Frogs is hardly insulting. I dont think the English feel "insulted" when they are called Limeys. At the risk of repeating myslef, nicknames are a form of endearment.

_________________
Strider

hmm.. think the joke is over. if i thought you seriously didn't understand- my response would be "i don't think it's words that insult people- it's attitude & lack of respect... & by calling french people frog's(ect ect) you are insulting them---- if you have a french buddy who enjoys a good slagging- then go ahead & call him a frog- he can reply you are a uncultured/american trailer trash/jerry springer guest wanna be and it would all be in good fun- but the people who come on this board aren't your friends- & don't like being insulted (at least not by you)"


but you do understand. you understand & just don't care if you chase people away from this site & thats just very uncool. i'd like it very much if you either stop being a ass- or go to a different site & try to ruin that one. I like this site & think if people aren't chased off- it could be a lot of fun follwing hanover here. who knows- maybe you might realize it's more fun to interact with people & learn something instead of just being insulting.

you have a picture of aragon on your profile... if aragon acted like you the hobbits would have ganged up & kicked his a*s. hey- it's your choice how you behave-

work is almost over- i'm outta here,

Let me off from the ballgame
By Elaine Monaghan, Times Online special correspondent.

Please, please, can somebody tell me, what is the deal with baseball?

When Washington Mayor Anthony Williams announced last week that the "dream" of bringing baseball to the capital was on its deathbed, I felt a bit like Teresa Heinz Kerry probably felt when her husband lost the election – secretly relieved.

I may have been the only Washingtonian who rejoiced. Until now, I had chosen not to publicise my thoughts, for example, by planting a "no to baseball" sign in our front yard. (The pro-baseball posse on my front lawn would have dwarfed the crowd at the "World" Series. And for "world" read the US and Canada, bearing in mind that our northern friends only have two teams.)

But I can no longer carry my lonely secret in silence. Clearly, I am somehow inadequate as a human being. So I am outing myself. I am ready for the onslaught.

For months, the talk over every garden fence has been about nothing else. Baseball was coming, just as sure as winter follows fall. While others smiled and nodded enthusiastically, I wanted to shoot myself, or possibly my husband, a chronic baseball fan.

My fellow Brits would find the row that has muddied the tale of baseball coming to Washington almost as mind-numbingly dull as the game itself, so I'll skip the details. But as far as I can tell, it boils down to the fact that Major League Baseball, meaner than Scrooge and richer than your wildest dreams, wants Washington, an elitist city whose public coffers are so ill-managed that it can scarcely field a decent high school, to pay. A few brave city council members imperiled the deal by suggesting that private money should be found. Tough, said baseball. There are plenty of other suckers around, including Las Vegas, who will cough up to host the erstwhile Expos of Montreal.

Then, last night, there was word of a deal. The city's liability for cost overruns was slashed. Private funding is to be sought but not required. Imagine my delight.

It's not cricket. That much I'll admit. Baseball is without a shadow of doubt more exciting than cricket. I have tried - really tried (not hard enough, apparently) – to enjoy the spectacle of men batting a ball across a field which exasperatingly does not even have to be of a uniform size. Centrefield can be 410 feet away from homeplate, or 400 feet, or 420 feet, or however long one of baseball's eccentric, greedy owners decides it should be. If you've got a team full of sluggers, move the fences in. If you've got great pitching, create a death valley in centre field. That's fair, isn't it?

There is no World Cup of baseball, though the Japanese have made serious inroads in recent years and it is now an Olympic sport, since the Americans rammed it down everyone's throat in Los Angeles. Baseball players, a scurvy lot as it is, now can add steroid abuse to a long litany of bad behaviour which already included wife-beating, cocaine use and illegal betting. Baseball players, even their fans will admit, are reputed to have the lowest collective IQ in sport.

It's not that I'm anti-American, or God forbid, un-American. Really, I'm not. After five years, I think I've earned the right not to like the "national pastime". (Mental note; must check whether liking baseball is a requirement of citizenship.) I have sat through several games, live and televised. I have munched the hot dogs, drunk the stale beer and sucked on the salty pretzels. I have tolerated the bottom-numbing plastic seats and reached for a foul ball. I know now that the singular of "innings" is really "inning." I have kept an eye on the jumbotron to see if my face pops up and cheered for the fan of the match, sorry, game. I know most of the vocabulary – stealing a base, hitting a homer, the sacrifice fly. Slugging percentages, earned run average, you name it, I can parrot it. I have sung and swayed, feeling rather silly, doing the seventh inning "stretch" to the words: "Take me out to the ballgame/Take me out to the crowd/Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks/I don't care if I ever get back/ And it's root, root, root for the home team/If they don't win it's a shame/Cause it's one, two, three strikes, you're out/At the old ball game."

Now that I think about it, there was a time when I almost loved baseball, even as I prayed for a decisive ninth inning, torrential rain or some other act of God, and fretted about the traffic jams on the way home.

I remember that first match, sorry, game, in the stifling humidity of Baltimore. I spent hours, gripped, as my American friends explained what was going on miles below us. That speck-like figure on the mound was actually engaged in a mathematical puzzle that would have occupied at least 50 per cent of Einstein's brain. Will he throw a curve ball, a hard slider, a fast ball up and in, or, perhaps, scrambled eggs over easy? Hell, I don't know what these things mean, but the way my husband says them, they sound pretty cool. The guy with the bat was, in fact, feverishly whizzing through all the possibilities. Should he foul it off, or swing for the fences? That overweight guy on the third base line may look like he's picking his nose but he's really sending signals to the runner on first. Should he steal second, stay where he is, or just keep gobbing dollops of tobacco spit on the grass? And as for the manager, that pasty, poker face over the pot belly hides thoughts so deep and infinite that only God could truly grasp them.

But the writing was on the wall on a September day when I refused to go to a Mets game in New York because it was so cold. I dragged my poor spouse and a friend off to a bad Italian dinner instead and ended up shivering in a Czech beer garden a mile from the stadium. You could hear the roars through the din of the passing traffic. My husband has never forgiven me and probably never will and I can't say I blame him.

The thing is, I'm rather comfortable with the current arrangement we have with baseball. The nearest team is 45 miles away in Baltimore – just far enough away and just sufficiently lacking in urban charm that we venture out there only a couple of times a year. The team is named the "Orioles" (like the bird, and not to be confused with the biscuit). That leaves only the World Series to negotiate, and we have two television sets for that.

Which brings me back to Mayor Williams and his effort to woo Major League Baseball to Washington. The city has already picked a name for the team – The Nationals. My spouse, like 16,000 others, has already invested $600 in season tickets, and that's just the deposit. Our e-mail inbox is filled with messages saying things like " DC Baseball Needs You". All I know or want to know is that there are 162 baseball games a year and half of them are home games. A typical game lasts three hours. That's 243 hours of my life up in smoke.

So like I said, please, someone, tell me what I'm missing about baseball.

_________________
Strider

http://www.newsmaxstore.com/nmstore/ima ... y04map.gif

County by county map showing Republican or RED counties.

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Strider

http://www.snakeysfreestuff.com/picture ... _cheny.jpg

Please go back to topic.
It`s only a board for hannover 96 and the bundesliga.

_________________
„Kriminelle haben im Fußball nichts zu suchen!"
― Uli Hoeneß

Hint - its Winter Break.

_________________
Strider

Looks like Steve Cherondolo wont be spending time commuting to World Cup qualifyng games......which is good for Hannover - bad for the USA - no more World Cup heroics.


NATIONAL TEAM DISPUTE: Mediation conditions were unacceptable, says union boss.

By Ridge Mahoney 1/14/2005 4:11:00 PM

The U.S. Soccer Federation has followed through on its threat of calling in replacement players after it failed to reach an agreement yesterday to mediate a dispute with the U.S. national team players association.

Attorney Mark Levinstein, who represents the national team players, said the players were unwilling to surrender their right to strike through November as a condition of mediation. He refuted rumors that the two sides had reached an agreement in principle Thursday that would have resulted in national team players reporting for camp in Southern California this weekend.

''They proposed to meet with a mediator but only if we would agree not to strike for the next year and no new terms of an agreement were discussed,''%A0said Levinstein. ''In the meantime, we would agree not to strike, they would agree not to lock us out, and the players would continue to be paid what they were paid in 1999. That's all it was. There was no discussing of changing any of the other terms of their proposal to the players.''

Since 1999, the players have been paid between $2,000 and $6,000 per game for qualifiers. Each side has proposed a new schedule of bonuses.

Levinstein says the players were willing to agree to not strike for some period of time into the spring but wanted something in return from the federation. The players' conditions included:

-- reinstating retroactivity -- which U.S. Soccer made clear through various channels the players knew it was going to do;

-- paying the players for the upcoming qualifiers under the terms of the increased bonus schedule the federation has already proposed;

-- agreeing to a no higher-and-lower clause (ie. the players agreed to not come back with an offer higher than their highest offer, and the federation agreed to offer no lower than what it has previously offered).

Lewinstein said the talks collapsed when the federation rejected his proposal with these conditions of mediation.

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Strider

It would definately be good for Hannover, as these trips through the time zones and subsequent matches are tough on anyone, even professional athletes. So from the club's point of view this isn't too bad. And I certainly don't mind having Steve here and resting between matches.

But I do feel for the US fans. In the end it is always the fans who have to take a backseat to politics and/or financial interests. Which is sorta funny because without the fans and their interest in the sport there would be no politics and no financial interests.

_________________
Konjugation eines unregelmäßigen Verbs

Ich bin fest.
Du bist eigensinnig.
Er ist ein dickköpfiger, unbelehrbarer Hornochse.
(Bertrand Russell)

THE US Soccer Federation dont seem to realise that the success of the professional soccer players and the US World Cup team has been a significant factor in the growth of soccer in the US. It seems incomprehensible that they would be stupid enough to blow up up the success of the last ten years. Prior to this time soccer was a total ZERO, virtually, on the sports landscape over here. The USSF wants professional athletes to continue to play internationals for $2,000 -$6,000 a game while the USSF has made $30 million in the last ten years off the backs of those players - very few of whom are making the big bucks of European leagues.
Its a great shame and the fans seem powerless to do anything about this.

_________________
Strider

pretty mad about the silly situation... the fans get screwed for sure- but both the players & us soccer management lose big time also. - mls is at such a young stage it can't afford the bad publicity of spoiled players & greedy management fighting. and it really needs the positive publicity another successful world cup would bring...

http://www.socceramerica.com/article.as ... =562135524


A secret squad of ex A League players is in training...
The only good news is that T&T lost to some pretty small Caribbeab islands recently:

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO. Playing without their European-based players, the Soca Warriors lost back-to-back games on the road, falling to tiny Caribbean islands Antigua & Barbuda (2-1) and St. Vincent & the Grenadines (1-0). A 3-1 win over St. Vincent a week earlier put T&T through to the semifinals of February's CFU Digicel Cup finals. The Soca Warriors are hoping to obtain T&T citizenship for 30-year-old Brazilian left back Jose Luis Seabra, who has been living in Trinidad for the last five years and plays for W Connection.

http://www.concacaf.com/

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Strider