JF

Shocker. But I stopped caring about him since his Villa move.

very fun to parse the replies and just say "lawyer" to myself when people chime in with "these two things theoretically have nothing to do with each other, ignore how anything actually functions in reality"

look, if you want owners to make more money at the expense of the guys who actually make the sports you love happen, that's your business. but take a pause to wonder why all the default solutions you have to creating "competitive balance" also manage to shift money from players to owners

not that you can trust nomenclature (competitive balance tax, for example) all the time, but one way you know a salary cap's purpose isn't to level the playing field is because it's called a salary cap. it's purpose is to cap salaries.

Regardless of tactics, Associazione Calcio Milan will go as far as Rafael Alexandre da Conceição Leão can take them.

While he created the winning goal last night, he was also partially responsible for the team’s inability to add on.

If there’s one actual fuckup this FO is guilty of, it’s marrying themselves to a regressing player who doesn't even have any intangibles to plausibly make up for his flaws.

Broke: Milan failed Rafa in that they don't know how to properly build a team around him and that’s why he’ll want out soon

Woke: Rafa has always been a difficult player to build a team around and he hasn't made that task any easier over the last few years with his volatility and lack of leadership

Ishigaki Genki is Lotte’s Cooper Flagg.

I've never seen Chiba Lotte Marines Twitter meltdown like this before after Ogino parted ways with the team.

Bad news for Teruaki and Morishita, who are both college products with MLB aspirations, although they are different archetypes of hitters.

Yoshida not playing up to expectations has made me skeptical of Japanese college hitters coming to MLB, because they are posting-eligible at a later point of their careers than their high school counterparts.

I don't respect Arsenal fans much more than United fans these days.

If Raleigh finishes the year with 1 fWAR within Judge and wins MVP, Judge won’t be “robbed” of the award at all.

They are the lesser evil amid the North London clubs, though.

In an alternate timeline, Spurs would be the PL club I respect (not the same as me outright supporting it but it still means something) the most. But the way their club and fanbase disrespected and disgraced Gattuso during their head coaching search years ago closed this door for good.

Neither Kvyat, nor Gasly, nor Albon fans were spiteful like that. And probably not even LL fans either.

One major reason I have next to no respect for SP11 fans is their propensity for making the struggles of RBR’s #2 drivers about themselves for the sake of point-scoring at other people’s expense, even if said other drivers were part of the Red Bull family for a longer period of time than their guy.

Milanisti that talk about Maldini (the executive) and Ancelotti as if they are Greek gods remind me of - I'm gonna say it - MAGA in a way.

Both groups are yearning for a romanticized version of the past that actually never existed and will never be realistically recreated.

Everyone is clowning Jonathan Lucroy for his take but he raised some very valid points in his follow-up tweets.

Failure *is* inevitable for everyone and talent alone isn't enough as an answer. It’s how you respond to it which requires a combination of mental strength and attitude.

I have pretty mixed feelings watching Roki pitch pretty much like shit in his debut, and the mix is fairly dominated by "lol"

Relying on the good grace of MLB owners to maintain a healthy relationship and dynamics between American and Japanese/Korean baseball is like asking Neville Chamberlain to stop a world war.

Here's a controversial take: Japanese and Korean baseball are both much closer to baseball in Puerto Rico than they are to MLB, and the farce that is the Roki saga has accelerated this trend.

I just read Evan Drellich's article about the posting system and I don't know how you feel about this, but I find it alarming that neither side feels a need to completely revamp the current framework, or to ramp up efforts to retain premier talent in NPB.

Perfect time for Twitter to stop working eh

João Félix Sequeira is the best Portuguese forward at Milan.

@jafarvcf.bsky.social If you despise the CFG clubs because of their UAE-linked ownership, are you also willing to call out the clubs owned by American billionaires who are donors to one of the two war-mongering parties?

Being dismissive of any possibility that *he* could be a disappointment or even an outright bust is just as, if not more ridiculous as belittling the level of play in NPB.

Both are giveaways that you do not follow the league, let alone Lotte or his stint there.

To be fair, a "better" or more "entertaining" product is not the same thing as being "unhinged" the way the NBA is.

Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that this (half) measure is great or sustainable.

I wonder if teams could collectively decide to blackball prospects who insist on early posting, to avoid the same loss of face and money that Lotte suffers, before a solution to the dilemmas of contract structure and posting system is found.