General Sports Appreciation Topic

Hehe, well, I've got to admit one not very unimportant factor. The Russian World Champion (from 2015) didn't defend his title.
 
Yeah, sorry. We are into other sports our countries are good at (e.g. Handball). And our football teams suck. ;)
 
Handball needs it's rules re-visited in order to gain more popularity. E.g. passive attack, fouls criteria and such. Make handball great again.
 
I'm surprised to see Tero Pitkämäki still fighting for the podium at the IAAF World Championships, years after his Norwegian arch rival retired. Makes me think ... what if Thorkildsen had taken the time for his injury to heal, instead of retiring?

Besides that ... this tournament has now seen the fall of two great champions. Not only Usain Bolt, but also Mo Farah, have now been defeated ...
 
So Alberto Contador goes out on in style. Wins the last mountain stage of this year's Vuelta a España, his last race before he retires.
 
In my opinion it's almost like we won. Slovenia had an American in the team, which is cheating and we had our whole starting lineup out for the tournament. Letting Americans who never stepped foot in your country before you got them to play for you should be outlawed like in football. We never did it and I'm proud of it. (OK we did in female basketball but who cares :P).

Congrats to Slovenia, still :P
 
Night Prowler said:
In my opinion it's almost like we won. Slovenia had an American in the team, which is cheating and we had our whole starting lineup out for the tournament. Letting Americans who never stepped foot in your country before you got them to play for you should be outlawed like in football. We never did it and I'm proud of it. (OK we did in female basketball but who cares :p).

Congrats to Slovenia, still :p
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Just the Americans?
 
Black Wizard said:
Just the Americans?
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Americans are clearly superior to anyone else in basketball, so yeah, converted players on European national teams are almost always Americans.

Night Prowler said:
Slovenia had an American in the team, which is cheating and we had our whole starting lineup out for the tournament. Letting Americans who never stepped foot in your country before you got them to play for you should be outlawed like in football.
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I agree that it's stupid, but it's not like Slovenia is the only team to do it. Almost all European teams do it. I highly doubt Serbia would flatly refuse to do it if they needed to fill a position.
 
It seems like a stupid thing to allow to me. Just giving someone who has no connection to the country a passport so they can play sport for that country undermines the idea of having a national team in my opinion. I'm not at all comfortable with it.
 
Same here. I think playing a guy who acquired citizenship through normal ways (Residence) is fine, but no connection at all? That basically makes the national team a club.
 
Our coach said we won't hire foreigners as long as he's the coach.

Last year some countries even had a tournament where each country brought a couple of Muricans to their squad so that they can test them to see if they'll give them the citizenship or not.
 
Night Prowler said:
Our coach said we won't hire foreigners as long as he's the coach.
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That's certainly easy to say when your national team has such a strong talent pool at every position at the moment. If expectations are high and your talent level is shite, you do get desperate.
 
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