diamond_ace

Haven't seen The Last Wish, enjoyed Shrek 2, but you're both missing the forest for the trees re: animated movies. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is the greatest animated movie of all time.

When Intranquilo hit 989 TPE, that was at the time top 10 for first gens. It's pretty amazing that the record is now more than double that. Next 2 guys were similar (Marcellin 953 but one fewer season, and Brookside fell off a tad at 906) but nowadays that's basically a clicker plus. My first 3 guys (the only ones with anything resembling a chance) all had one weird circumstance or another. Intranquilo was built to be uber defensive before I really understood just how little the sim would show that (had 40 shooting into my 4th or 5th season, despite having multiple 90s in other things). He ended up with a handful of awards but I always remember being really disappointed with him - oddly enough though, maybe things would have been different with 38 more shot blocks, the stat I always used to take the most pride in. There's something visual about HOF cases, and seeing 1000 on the list would have been a lot more eye catching than 962. Marcellin was perhaps the most weird - swapped from center to defense, then retired a season early for team needs. Ended his career on 5 straight triple digit point seasons, makes you think if I could have stuck him out one more season he would likely have had a case, although the position swappers are always so hard to judge. Ultimately GM-me overrode player-me and wanted to get Brookside out there presuming he'd come up behind the final seasons of Rift, but we all know that story. Brookside was probably the most straightforward, but even he ended up falling in a weird pocket of competitiveness - I tried to hang onto the window post-Rift, first a season with Labatte in goal, then one with Satan, but ultimately by the time Brookside was good the team was declining. The late trade to Cologne might have done enough to push me in had I done it a tad earlier. Ironically, none of the three are my highest TPE player - that title goes to one Dagmar Havlova, 1002 in an era where the 1000 mark didn't mean nearly as much, but given I had 3 straight guys in the 900s, I did it to prove to myself I could. She never broke 100 points in a season though (96 and 97 in the final 2 seasons with Warsaw). Best player on the team success front was Evan R. Lawson - 3 cups, an early Calgary one then 2 in Toronto under Devise during omg's Oyorra Arroyo years. Kerkko Hyvarinen was a decent journeyman, Kefka Palazzo was meh 90% of the way then out of nowhere put up 91 points in his last season once he finished taking over the world. Probably the best microcosm of just how much the TPE expectation went up throughout my time here: Tynan Sylvester, my last guy before Eury. His career and Hyvarinen's career look remarkably similar, stats wise. Yet Tynan took nearly twice the TPE to do it, and I don't think it was a build thing. Ultimately, you could build a Frankenstein's monster of a HOF player out of bits and pieces of my guys: Havlova's TPE in Intranquilo's era, with Marcellin's stats but over the course of a full career, with Lawson's team success. None really collected all the infinity stones in the same player though. Brookside was likely the closest, but never quite got over the hump. Happy to be in as a builder though, that's the one thing I have a lot more control over than player success. --------------------------------------------------------------- I can also fairly confidently say Eury is it for me (hell I've basically phoned this one in as well). I only really made Eury to prove to Spartan that I wasn't entirely inactive on the forums (which I wasn't, I'd pop in about once a week or so - still not exactly the near-obsession I had with this place back in the 20s and 30s). Granted, I thought that after Hyvarinen, and it only lasted maybe a little over a year, so who knows? Nowadays I get the interaction with the community through a few of the team discords (I'm still in almost all of them, but only really talk in a handful) so the need to have a player in order to maintain those connections doesn't seem to be there as much - also, a lot of the people I'd connected the most with originally have themselves moved on or at least taken some steps away relative to each of our peaks. I also don't really feel inspired to flex the creative writing chops as much anymore, as life has Dead Poets Society'd that out of me by this age for the most part - not saying I don't do it ever, just that I'm pretty committed to other interests now. I have a whole ass wife now! Who'd have guessed that for the antisocial nerd that spent literal hours on the VHL Skills Competition articles back in the day? I'm in a regular weekly D+D game irl, go on trips (world state permitting), do all sorts of fun shit, living the dink life, or at least as much of it as we can afford. I'm already VHL-old, but in 11 months I'll be actually old (40). I'm already feeling that way, getting excited about such mundane things as *gasp* PTO flexibility and automatic weekends/holidays off work. On the bright side, I have another 11 months of being able to call my wife old, without being there myself (she's 41 now and will be 42 when I hit 40, so it's been a fun little wedge of time being on the other side of the hill from her but we're close enough that it's never been any serious difference). This place is in good hands whether I'm here or not. It's meant a lot to me, it always will, but it's time to fill that space in my heart with so many other things. Wasn't super sure if we'd get here given some of the dark days of the 50s and 60s, where even my mostly drama-avoidant self would hope for a big Boubabi fight to break out so that something would actually be posted somewhere - but we're healthier than ever, and even my beloved VHLM is getting some fans now (thank you E for taking all the animosity that was formerly directed at the M). Seriously there was a while where I genuinely think I cared more about the M than most of the things going on in my actual life, which wasn't perhaps the healthiest thing in the world. Feeling like the meme of old Splinter being carried along by the Turtles. You are all great, and honestly I'd consider at least like 20-30 of you actual friends now, if not more. Love this place, but no longer in love with this place, as the saying goes.

Pochettino in! Never in a million years thought that was a realistic option. He's not fantastic but he's miles better than anyone we had in the past. Definitely thought we were going to pull Cherundolo from his MLS side because that's what we do...

I'd definitely be in for this!

This is a standard edition of Copa America, not the Centenario, but I certainly don't mind reusing the thread. Having said that... WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS USMNT DOING? 11 years ago, Berhalter was fired from fucking Hammarby. He had just come from a 5th place finish in the Superettan (yes, that's correct, he couldn't even win a promotion to the Allsvenskan - just upper midtable in the 2nd tier). He went to Columbus Crew from there. He did ok there, playoffs 4 years out of 5 (in a league where most teams get in) and one final appearance, but even then nothing amazing, especially because it's the MLS. Leaves Crew in 2018 and we all know where to from there. Can't get promoted from the Swedish 2nd tier, can't win the MLS or even make more than one final, and what do we do? We decide this is somehow a great candidate to run a national team. He got us back to the WC in 2022, sure, but the round of 16 is something we'd accomplished before. Nothing spectacular. Better players, same result, that usually means worse management. Then his contract was up - with the whole Reynas thing, I can see the rainbow flavoured unicorns of getting rid of him then not being great, as he certainly wasn't in the wrong on that particular issue, but he's just not good enough. Especially considering there was another American manager (Jesse Marsch) between jobs, who had a much stronger resume (Salzburg/Leipzig/Leeds, admittedly without the best run at Leeds, but they're all miles better than Hammarby and Crew). When Berhalter was rehired, Marsch was not managing anywhere. Berhalter gets back in there, wins the Concacaf Nations League (which frankly isn't a great accomplishment), loses to Panama at home on pens in the semis of the Gold Cup after having only scraped through the quarters over Canada also on pens, none of this seems to be a concern for USMNT. We get to host the Copa America again, and on paper we should have been the 5th or 6th best team in the tournament (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, then either Ecuador or us - if you say you saw this Venezuela run coming, you're lying, and yes *on paper* we should be better than Canada, more on that in a minute). We get a slightly tougher than average group, one big team and two teams we should be beating, but look who it is again - our old poisoned chalice Panama. We lose to Panama of course, thanks Tim Weah, and get grouped when we should absolutely not have been grouped. Panama becomes one of two Concacaf teams to get into the knockouts based on that result, and the other one is of course Canada (who I'll admit to enjoying a little, it's definitely a change of pace from the years where it was just US/Mexico). Who is managing Canada? Jesse. Fucking. Marsch. I hope he's enjoying this. I hope he's savoring these results like a steak and a good bottle of wine. I hope he's equally as happy from schadenfreude seeing USMNT lose as he is with his own successes. It's just Copa America, it's not WC qualifying, this result isn't quite on the level of 2018 Trinidad and Tobago, but USMNT brass should be looking at it like it is. This team is packed with more talent than we've ever had, and it's all getting flushed down the drain by some guy named Gregg that couldn't even cut it at fucking Hammarby. I'm sorry to steal the "Fire X" thing from @Fire Tortorella and apply it to a completely different sport, but you know what, no I'm not. Berhalter out, not 2 years from now, not 2 months from now, do it now, USMNT. Berhalter out or we riot.

A few of these I personally think there are better options for, even if we largely work under your existing framework: Would go Buffalo for NY's farm, rather than doubling up on the NYC metro area. Would go Portland for Seattle's farm, if Tacoma happened it would likely be the least relevant place ever used for the league other than when Minot, North Dakota had a team - yes, that was a thing. Like the option you went with in Milwaukee, proves you weren't just 100% going within state lines. Winnipeg seems a bit far from Toronto to make it work as a farm, although I'm not super up on internal Canadian stuff and that might be more reasonable than I think. If I'm right and it's weird, maybe that's where the missing Mississauga could fit. Seconding Ahma's mention of Turku, especially as we had a Turku before. Would go Glasgow for London's farm, just to cover a second "constituent country" of UK rather than double up on England. Would go Vilnius for Riga's farm, since "the Baltics" are a thing and not really Belarus. If we are working *outside* of your framework: I disagree with the idea of removing DC, and not just because I play for them (you know historically my heart is with Prague, and prior to that Calgary, so this isn't bias talking, although all credit to Frosty as I've very much enjoyed DC and couldn't have asked for a better landing spot if I was going to branch out a bit). (Coincidentally, although completely unrelated other than sharing cities/states that get a mention: the Milwaukee Lakefront is one of my expansion teams in my 40-team NHL23 save, as are the Portland Owls, and since you mentioned Alaska briefly in the M section, the Anchorage Narwhal)

Nah the disappointment already happened with another team winning and eliminating us between games 81 and 82...

7 1/2! not bad not bad

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Is that Marie Curie? Can't quite tell - looks similar enough, but not so close that it's definitely a match. If so, you definitely read up on where at least part of the name came from. In any case, the render is fantastic and the card looks great, regardless of who it's supposed to be

Lets get this cup