Argentina still has to qualify despite being the defending champions? Anyway from your list, only Brazil and Argentina looks certain to me. Competition is extremely strong in CONMEBOL qualifiers. Upsets can always happen and last time it was Uruguay and Ecuador who managed to qualify apart from the two top teams. Colombia lost out and later tried their best to get Ecuador disqualified. Chile and Paraguay lost out as well, and they were also not too happy about it. Peru had a golden chance of qualifying, but they lost to Australia in the playoffs.

I have seen people taking out loans and then wasting them in gambling. The numbers are huge. Entire families are destroyed as a result of addiction to gambling. And it results in gambling getting generalized and those who gamble in a responsible way getting demonized. I am against government oversight and overreach in gambling domain. But at the same time, we need to device a mechanism to prevent people from taking out loans to gamble. Gambling should be done only by those who can afford to lose. The online casinos need to come up with a mechanism to implement this rule.

Agreed. Right now we are sitting back and enjoying the Threads vs Twitter battle as it unfolds before our own eyes. My first impression is that it Threads can't replace Twitter. The biggest positive for Twitter is anonymity and fair censorship rules. These factors are not applicable to Threads. And adding micro-blogging capabilities to Instagram profiles may not work well. The target demographic is much different. The mainstream media will try to over-hype Threads, since they are unhappy with Twitter kicking out the far-left loonies who managed it earlier.

There is a clause created by the ICC that counties should release associate players when the national team is participating in any of the major tournaments. But in reality, it is seldom practiced. The counties indirectly makes it clear to the players that if they want to stay with them, then they should represent their national team only outside the county championship season. An example is that of Boyd Rankin. He was the no.1 bowler for Ireland. His county coach asked him to retire from international cricket, since he was missing some of the county matches. Rankin got the county contract after a lot of effort, and therefore he had to obey and retire. He resumed playing for Ireland a 5-6 years later, but by then his peak was over.

If a player is eligible to represent a team as per FIFA rules, then nothing else should matter. This tournament is quite important for Indonesia. They are getting an opportunity to participate in one of the major FIFA tournaments after a long interval. Performance by the U-17 team will be closely monitored. And in order to get good results, it is important to have a good team bonding and proper communication system. Descended players agreed to represent Indonesia as per the request from the management. If they are treated poorly, then that will tarnish the reputation of the national football association.

Pogba took a salary cut back in 2022, so that he can move back to Juventus. He was getting around £15,000,000 per year with Manchester United, but was not happy with the club and wanted to move. Given this, I don't think that he will be swayed by the offer of €100,000,000 (£85.6m) offered by Al-Ittihad (around €33 million per year). Also, as many of the users pointed out, injury has been a big concern for Pogba. BTW, his current salary with Juve is £6.8 million. But tax is factored in, and Juventus ends up paying a total of £8.9 million in salary per year.

Making predictions based on friendlies will be risky. These matches are not being given a lot of importance and players who are not released by their clubs may not take part in them. From what I can see, there were a few upsets, the most important of them being the loss suffered by Germany. Irrespective of whether it is the men's game or the women's, German football has been in decline for quite some time. Their loss to Zambia just reaffirms the general trend. Also, it shows the rapid improvement being made by the CAF and AFC teams.

That is surprising. I thought that the Cuban community in Florida was declining due to low birth rates and most of the Hispanic community now originates from Puerto Rico (especially in Tampa and Orlando) and Mexico. IMO, Cuban population is more or less stagnant, while the increase is coming from other Hispanic communities. Also, Cubans and Venezuelans have always supported the GOP. Therefore the increase in support for GOP among the Floridan Hispanics can't be attributed to them. Also, there are sizable populations of Colombians and Dominicans.

He maybe doing a fair job and I agree with that. But if you are going to treat him like a legend, then I would disagree. Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan were legends, but Lyon doesn't come anyway near them. He has taken a total of 496 wickets in test cricket, but that came with an average of more than 30. If he was a pacer, then with such an average he wouldn't have got selected for the national team. For comparison, Pat Cummins have a bowling average of 22.07, while for Mitchell Starc it is 27.47.

Agreed on Woakes. Not only did he took crucial wickets, but also managed to score crucial runs towards the end. And regarding Murphy I would agree. IMO, they should have included Matthew Kuhnemann instead of Todd Murphy. Anyway, Australia never had a quality spinner after the retirement of Shane Warne. Lyon is being held in high regard by the Australians, but for me he is quite ordinary. But the Australians don't have any other choice, as he is their only experienced spinner. They never tried to groom anyone for the last 10 years or so.

There seems to be a war of words going on between organizers of the Major League Cricket (MLC) from the United States and the ECB. The league is about to get started from 13th July onwards, and a number of overseas players are taking part in the first season. However, due to issues with the ECB Jason Roy is the only player who will be featuring in the first season from England. The organizers are not happy about it and have accused the ECB of creating obstacles. ECB has refused to provide no-objection certificates (NOCs) to those under its contract.

Whitewash is avoided, but I really don't think that this consolation win would do anything to improve their reputation. Bangladesh did well during the ODI Super League by finishing at the 3rd position. They won a total of 15 matches out of 24 (although many of the wins were achieved at home, under helpful pitch conditions). Whatever they achieved during the ODI Super League is under the threat of getting erased. The upcoming Asia Cup and ODI World Cup will be crucial for Bangladesh to showcase the improvement they made in the ODI format.

I have the same opinion as well. During the last 15 years, I have attended sports events only 4-5 times. Indian public are more or less tolerant to being treated like shit inside the stadiums. I had a couple of bad experiences in the past and after that I decided to watch the matches on TV rather than doing so in the stadiums. To get an experience, it is OK. You will be in a crowd of tens of thousands of people and you get a chance to watch your favorite players in front of you. Apart from that, it is not worth the time and energy.

In the end, the funding from FIFA depends on the performance by the national team. Naturalized and descended players with experience of playing in European leagues can completely change the overall structure of the team and make it more competitive. And Indonesia is not the only country that is following this approach. Alexander Merkel and Heinrich Schmidtgal represented Kazakhstan, despite being German citizens (both of them were born in Kazakhstan). So there's nothing wrong IMO.

Argentina will survive without Messi. They have good depth in player pool. But I can't say whether they will be able to defend the trophy in 2026 without Messi. They have a very well balanced team with youngsters like Julián Álvarez, Nicolás González, Alexis Mac Allister and Enzo Fernández providing enough support to veteran players like Ángel Di María, Rodrigo De Paul and Messi. France also have a similar setup, but then the ci-ordination between different payers is not that great. Argentina on the other hand has excellent team cohesion.

It would be very surprising if he lands a deal with some of the rivals of Al Nassr in the Saudi Professional League, such as Al Hilal or Al Ahli. And will be even more interesting if Cristiano Ronaldo comes face to face with Juan Cuadrado in any of the SPL matches. But the chances are that he will stay in Europe. SPL clubs are not ready to pay huge sums for Cuadrado, and without a hefty package he doesn't want to book a ticket to Riyadh. But the issue is that European clubs also don't have much interest in him. Juventus kicked him out last month.

I neither prefer Ivanka Trump nor Michelle Obama for the POTUS 2024 elections. Apart from their family connections, these two doesn't have anything in them to become the POTUS. But in case Trump gets disqualified to run in 2024, then there is a good chance that he will ask some of his family members (can be Ivanka or Donald Jr.) to stand in the election. GOP has become a laughing stock over the years. They used to say that they are the only mainstream party with internal democracy in the United States. Look at their state now.

India may be having the upper hand, but it's not like they are invincible. And Bangladesh do have some very good players (Nigar Sultana, Sobhana Mostary, Fahima Khatun.etc). Also they have the home advantage as the match is being played at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium at Mirpur. But if we talk about momentum, then Bangladesh women have lost 4 of their last 5 matches, while India managed to win 3 out of 5. For India, Assamese player Uma Chetry may make her debut today. She has already represented India A during the Asian Cricket Council Women's Emerging Teams Cup.

Bangladesh has been a test nation for almost 23-24 years now. Afghanistan became a full member in 2019 and they didn't even had associate membership when Bangladesh came a full member. Still the progress has been quite impressive if we talk about Afghanistan. They have achieved a lot at both international level and franchise level (some of their players are in high demand from IPL and other leagues) in such a short duration. Apart from test format, Afghanistan looks superior to Bangladesh in every other version.

The 4th Ashes test is about to start on 19th July. Australia is still leading the series by 2-1, but momentum is with England as they won the last test. What made the difference was the inclusion of Mark Wood for the third test. England bowling attack was looking toothless in the first two tests as James Anderson failed completely to get his line and length right. Only Stuart Broad was looking threatening. But in the third test, the combination of Broad and Wood managed to trouble the Australian batsmen and more importantly the lower order was cleaned up without doing much damage.