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Comments: This game has a PK for Morocco.
Comments: I think the real reason, he wants to switch from the proposed format is that if groups only had three teams this time around, some very big names including Argentina would have been eliminated right there.
Comments: Are the referees of this game from Qatar? Doesn't this open the door to conflict of interest?
Comments: Shahryar jAn, don't kill me, but I just noticed that the order of games changed in my message for Sam, Nach, and RNG! This is the same issue that I think Rashti also ran into!
Comments: Just trying the same message over and over five times until it worked! I posted something else in between and that may have changed things. Just in case anyone runs into this!
Comments: Hey it worked! ![[smile]](https://cdn.websitetoolbox.com/images/boards/smilies/smile.gif "Smile - :)")
Comments: I thought Fernando Santos actually did very well. I think with ronaldo Portugal would have been eliminated one game earlier. Even in Europe, it was obvious that Portugal plays better as a team without Ronaldo!
Comments: It is one of those days again. anything I type, the website says it is spam. ![[confused]](https://cdn.websitetoolbox.com/images/boards/smilies/confused.gif "Confused - :confused:") I do not have any links in my message. Let's see if this one goes through.
Comments: I prefer 8 groups of 6. That way each team will play 5 games.
Comments: FIFA president Gianni Infantino admits that the 2022 World Cup’s immensely-entertaining group stage has made soccer’s governing body reconsider its planned changes for 2026. The tournament will grow to 48 teams and a new Round of 32 in four years time, and nothing’s set to change there. Infantino, however, says that the planned implementation of 16 groups of three could switch to 12 groups of four.
Comments: I think this is the best game of this world cup and may be even after the final. Both teams are quality teams and the game is end to end. Very entertaining. I remember a game like this between Germany and Poland several world cups ago in the group stage because both needed to win!
Comments: What a game this one is! Two very good teams.
Comments: Fernando Santos fired by Portugal after Cristiano Ronaldo World Cup drama
Comments: Popular anti-regime protests in Iran have reawakened expectations in the United States of a pro-American, ‘postmodern’ future in the Middle East. In an article published by Bloomberg December 15, headlined ‘A Democratic Iran is Coming and it will lead the Middle East,’ Robert Kaplan suggests that “nothing has the potential to change the region as much as a more liberal regime” in Iran. Named by Foreign Policy magazine in 2011 and 2012 as ‘one of the top 100 global thinkers,’ Kaplan supported the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion on the basis that it would unleash what he told NPR in October 2002 was a “secular, urbanized developed tradition”. However, he was not alone in that optimistic assessment. Most of the US Congress and media were also believers in removing Saddam Hussein from power. Unlike many Arab countries, Kaplan argues, Iran’s borders are not “artificial…drawn by Europeans.” This, he claims, Iran shares with the Persian Gulf emirates and kingdoms – although Saudi Arabia dates only to 1932. Whatever his views about ‘democracy’ or ‘liberalism,’ Kaplan is firmly a realist. He notes “Saudi Arabia may understandably offend Western humanitarians” and expects the US to broker a future Iranian ‘normalization’ with Israel. Noting Iran’s rich energy reserves, currently hemmed in by US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Kaplan admires the doyen of the realist school, the US Secretary of State who saw Iran’s Pahlavi shah as a US ally against adversaries Iraq and the Soviet Union. “Henry Kissinger told me that had the Pahlavi dynasty remained in power, Iran, given its strong state and civilizational richness,” Kaplan writes, “would have evolved into a constitutional monarchy with an economy comparable to South Korea’s.” Kaplan’s commitment to real politic rather than ‘humanitarianism’ opens him to the possibility of a “post-clerical” Iran asserting itself regionally, perhaps “developing even stronger ties” with China than “Germany now has.” And Kaplan is also aware that a “somewhat chaotic, less centrally controlled” Iran might grapple with “large Kurdish, Azeri, Turkoman and Baluch minorities.” A century of politics The priority of Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, writing in the Wall Street Journal December 12, is disputing the assessment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that current unrest in Iran “poses no threat to the regime.” Gerecht, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former ‘Iranian-targets’ CIA officer, championed, like Kaplan, the Iraqi and Afghan interventions. In March 2003, he signed a statement that US intervention in Iraq would help the “democratization of the wider Middle East.” The problem was that most optimists on Iraq were simplifying the environment in the Middle East and not considering the Islamic Republic’s long-held policy of exporting its Shia ideology and playing the role of a spoiler. WithTakeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Gerecht argues that the CIA has been misled by the “disappointing results of the Arab Spring and of Western military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Iran differs from the Arab world in its history since the 1905-11 Constitutional Revolution, Gerecht and Takeyh write, with a century of Iranians’ “involvement in politics” under both Shahs and since 1979 the Islamic Revolution. Iranians’ “critiques of authoritarianism,” they continue, have increased with the “massive expansion” or Iran’s “educational infrastructure” since 1979 with now “nearly six million university students, almost 60% of whom are women.” Hence Iranians “are unlikely to fall victim again to the allure of a secular strongman or militant mullah, having seen the damage such leaders cause. The Arabs who revolted against tyranny a decade ago didn’t have the advantage of decades of trial and error. Self-criticism isn’t a Middle Eastern forte, but Iranians have come far in placing the blame for their own predicament on themselves.” Gerecht and Takeyh rule out dangers of ethnic fragmentation and look forward to a “post-Islamic Iran…[with] a far bigger Western fan club that did the elected Islamists of North Africa.” Presumably evoking the Egyptian military regime that receives the second biggest chunk of US foreign aid after Israel, the pair cite Samuel Huntington – he of the ‘clash of civilizations’ – to note that US support for “nascent democracies increases the chance of their survival.”
Comments:
Comments: Nach's predictions:
Sam's predictions:
RNG's predictions:
Comments: I prefer it the way it is now. It provides for conversation for months to come, if you and Parviz tie at the top but you win. I really would like to rub that in Parviz's face. ![[biggrin]](https://cdn.websitetoolbox.com/images/boards/smilies/biggrin.gif "Big Grin - :D")
Comments: There are 20 more points at stake, doostan; make sure you do not miss this opportunity to catch up with Daryuish and Zinsky.
Comments: I still need predictions from the following people: - LOL - RNG - Nach - Sam
Comments: Zinsky and Faramarz, That is a good observation, actually. I just ran the data again and got the same result. I only have one criteria for soring, which is the highest score first. For the rest of it, it keeps the same order as before. This must mean that my score was higher and above Parviz's at one point, and later when we had the same score, it just kept the order. I will change it now and add a secondary criterion to go by alphabet. Again, great observation by people with keen eyes :)) |
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