diamond_ace

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

I care, but I am notably not a single person, so this doesn't actually prove Cow wrong. It does, however, speak to a strange target demographic - not sure why the Commie Cup would appeal more strongly to those in relationships, but I can't reasonably prove otherwise.

young whippersnappers making me actually do work. i miss the days when an old man could walk into a sim league and all the kind younger folk would help him walk out to the car with all the bags - er, do the pt and earn the points for it...

I'm super in favor of having a bunch of people represent a country that's a bit more obscure - Tynan was listed as being from Belize, for example. It just has to be a country.

Oh, and one additional rule - international teams must be countries, or groups of countries. You can't make an international team out of a non-country that is an overseas territory of a country. AKA Team "Greenland" is actually Team Denmark (or some larger place that contains Denmark, such as Europe). Having a team "Greenland" is essentially the same thing as having a team "New Caledonia" or a team "Guam" or a team "Nagorno-Karabakh" - these are not countries. EDIT: I'd actually just have the techie people add a word filter that changes the word Greenland to Denmark, similarly to the word filter for snubbed

So we as the members of the VHL have been given a challenge for Theme Week, which is to suppose we were to be given full commie powers for 1 day and state what our grand designs might be for such a thing. As someone who has been a mini commie (VHLM) for two separate runs, I have a glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak. No one, not even the bluest of blues, can unilaterally change a rule. There's so much discussion that goes on behind the scenes for nearly everything that gets rolled out as a feature (and even the things that would later turn out to be bugs) and on the rare occasion something is decided relatively unilaterally, those are often the things that end up later reversed or modified *cough no help on trivia cough* so it's just not really done that way. This, unfortunately, makes this whole exercise rather pointless. A single day of blue would enable none of us to do any of the things we'll be proposing. However, for the sake of the exercise, I have a few things I'd do (in an incredibly non-serious way). 1. We stop caring about pesky little things like "real life teams" and revert back to the Ottawa Ice Dogs. Furthermore, as an addendum, all Lynx championships, records, and accomplishments are said to have been Ice Dogs accomplishments. We use either the old logo with the cute little dog, or a new logo with an even cuter little dog. 2. We create a 4th league, full of only inactives, just in case they happen to come back. This league is called the VHLF, and is comprised of only teams in Finland. Kolari comes back. Turku comes back. Oulu, Joensuu, Espoo, Kuopio, Vantaa, Tampere, Jyvaskyla, and Rovaniemi each get teams, divided into the Vowels Conference (for the teams with more vowels than consonants: Oulu, Joensuu, Espoo, Kuopio, and Rovaniemi) and the Consonants Conference (for the teams who have at least as many consonants as vowels: Kolari, Turku, Vantaa, Tampere, and Jyvaskyla). 3. The Helsinki Titans remain in the VHL, despite now having an entire league in their country, but just for confusion's sake, the Titans would now play in Mariehamn and would be closer geographically to Sweden than Finland despite being technically still in Finland. Despite playing in Mariehamn, they would still be called the Helsinki Titans. Anyone who questions this will be asked to point out the existence of the East Rutherford Jets and/or Giants. 4. The VHL will add an entire additional conference, but this conference will be entirely in Africa. The inaugural winner of this conference will be the Abidjan Elephants, who will have a history of regular season success and underwhelming playoff experiences. This is similar to their now-defunct IHL counterparts. Their minor league franchise, the Nairobi Rhinos, will also have a team in this conference, and the Ouagadougou Kudu will be a team name simply to twist people's tongues. The other 5 African teams are free to go where they please. 519 words

i like that "online articles" were part of the first option - might balance out the two numbers a bit

Ottawa Ice Dogs. That is all.

Yes, but is Sax Justice CFO of Hank Med?

Are these still available? Sorry I know this is much later

Not entirely sure, but if I'm going to compare it to people who've already posted in this thread who joined near the time I did, I'm going like late 2010 early 2011? Later than Adv, later than Mubble's initial joining date, but earlier than his first commitment