capriccioso

KOF was joking, I felt, because he used the emoticons. What he probably meant was he doesn't care and is unhappy at the global attention that such insulated sports get. MLB for example is fairly reasonably followed and yet to be the best you must play in America.

That's exactly what I said, we're comparing apples and oranges. Apple eaters (followers of US sports) will know what you're talking about, orange eaters wont. Tennis is probably only the 6th or even 7th most followed sport in Australia, it is a huge minority sport. We haven't had an individual winner for some time, though I'm pretty sure an all-Aussie double won the mixed doubles 3 or 4 years ago.

We do have world renowned players. Ask a poor street kid in South Asia who he's heard of, Shane Warne, Michael Clarke or Lionel Messi or Kobe Bryant. Warne and Clarke will produce a response, the other two will get blank looks. Nearly 2 billion people are more familiar with them than any US sportsperson. Just because a certain sport is not played much outside former British colonial possessions does not deny the fact that a third of the world follows it more than other sports. Ask someone outside the US to name more than 10 NBA teams, unless they're fans, they won't be able to do it. Ask a former British citizen to name the 10 countries that play test cricket and more often than not they'll get them right. For every cricketer that's not known about in the USA, there is a basketballer or a golfer or a baseballer that isn't known outside of the USA.

The arguement is that you have far, far more to spend on sport than any other country, therefore it's nothing to gloat about that your athletes outearn everybody else.

I'll say this again. 15 trillion dollars to spend on nothing but luxury since your country is already developed. 15 trillion. India have to make do with a shoestring budget which has to cater for nearly 300 million people living in poverty. No one there can afford to pay $50 US to attend a cricket match regularly, except for the richest 10% of the country. Also that list is inaccurate, MS Dhoni should be 4th on that list as a cricketer who earns 43 million a year.

My bad, my Dhoni figures were outdated from 09.

No, no we weren't. I said that we, Australia, place huge importance on sport because thats the only thing we'll ever be known for. The USA meanwhile is a world leader militarily, politically, economically and is amongst the world leaders scientifically. You don't feel that drive for recognition, you don't feel like "if we're no good at sport people will forget we even exist". And none of us were complaining about US sport, this was a thread about motorsport being rubbish which it no doubt is. Stop manufacturing opponents against you when none exist, KOF said something tongue-in-cheek that you've taken way too seriously. I have stepped in because by insulting Australian sport you are insulting the core of our national identity, it would be like someone urinating on the original US Constitution.

Whoa! I didn't know IPL players out-earnt footballers!

I believe the richest cricketer in the world earns 24 million US$ a year purely from representing India in cricket. Throw in the fact that he has a target audience of 2 billion and his endorsements probably bring him up to around 100 million a year.

Yep, says the country with a population of 300 million and a GDP bigger than most of the rest of the world combined. That you are still not 100% dominant in every single sport on the planet despite having such huge advantages is staggering. If you're no good at a sport you can just throw some of those trillions at it until you get better, you can search your huge country for a better pool of players. Small countries like Australia and New Zealand do not have such luxuries, that we get as far as we do is proof enough of our sporting prowess. It's no challenge to be the worlds best when you take the USA's circumstances into account, and yet you're still not at virtually every sport that wasn't invented by you. If you're going to be such an arrogant douche and insist that we have to compete blow-for-blow with you to be better than you, I wheel out Rod Laver. By far the greatest tennis player in history, the only player to have ever won all 4 Grand Slams in one year. I don't know much about New Zealand, I'll hazard a guess that Wynton Rufer is probably the best known sportsperson from N.Z. I'll just throw this out for you: Population of New Zealand: 4 million GDP of New Zealand: US$126 billion Population of Australia: 22 million GDP of Australia: $924 billion Population of USA: 312 million GDP of USA: $15 trillion. Which was beaten by this country in South Africa: Population of Ghana: 24 million GDP of Ghana: $31 billion And you wonder why we can't compete blow-for-blow. Face it, any country in the world had your resources, they would be unstoppable forces in whatever sport they wanted to be. You have probably 50 billion dollars you can put into improving your team; Ghana probably have less than $100 million, New Zealand probably have $500 million and we probably have $1 billion to do the same thing. You get to choose 11 players out of 312,000,000; we have to choose 11 from 4,000,000 and 22,000,000 respectively. And yet you only advance one round more than us? And in 2006 Australia beat the USA in the World Cup in terms of progression, we made it out of our group.

Wow. We were a Harry Kewell 'handball' away from competing in the round of 16, we were a Francesco Totti 'penalty' away from the Quarter Finals in 2006. England have been rubbish since about 2006, drawing them, that too because of a catastrophic keeping error, is no achievement. Cricket is not anywhere near as lucrative because its followed most strongly in developing countries, where there simply isn't the money to spend on sport. Ad space doesn't cost a lot because of the nature of the viewers, Warnie reckons nearly 1 billion, of those only perhaps 50 million earns what the average person from a developed country earns. Why would you advertise shit that people can't buy even if they wanted to? I would argue that Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and John F. Kennedy are far more well known than any US sportsperson. No one's ever heard of Julia Gillard or John Howard or Kevin Rudd, it's all about the Steve Waugh's and the Christian Vieri's and the Mark Viduka's. First of all, we never said we hated it, we just don't find it interesting. It does not air on Australian television, and not one American athlete is more popular in Australia than an Australian athlete. Also, who is Tebow?

We're better than you at football, the only sport that really counts as a global game. Despite the USA having a population nearly 15 times the size of ours. Excluding football, for nearly all of crickets history (barring a couple of periods of shitness between the 70s and 90s, and 1900s-20s), particularly the last 20 years, we have been untouchable. It's usually ourselves and New Zealand and sometimes South Africa that are the at the top of rugby union. We're by far the best nation at rugby league. We have historically dominated tennis, though that's not the case anymore, with apologies to Rod Laver. We're improving every year at cycling and we regularly punch above our weight in Olympic events. The reason we are the best sporting nation bar none despite half our population being overweight? It is central to our national identity. As a nation we've only existed 111 years, most of the world probably couldn't even find us on the map, no less realise some of the greatest advancements of the last 150 years or so were Australian made (e.g. penicillin as medicine). Few would have heard of us if we weren't good at sport, its why we place such importance on our sporting teams. Whereas everyone on the planet has probably heard of the USA regardless of the nationality of Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods or Andre Agassi.

Brother, cricket is followed religiously by the second largest country in the world. Any time the Indian cricket team is playing Pakistan, the global TV audience is estimated at half a billion viewers, and if you add on those who cannot afford a TV and follow it on radio, the number swells a further 100 million. That's bigger than the FIFA World Cup Final, UEFA Champions League Final and Superbowl audience's combined. So don't come at us like its only an Aussie sport, fact is cricket is bigger than any American sport, or any sport in the world for that matter excluding football. Another of your points that US sports are aired worldwide is true, but that's not a reflection that said sports are actually any good, its that US cultural and geopolitical imperialism is such that its broadcast pretty much everywhere. If, on Superbowl day, in India, there was a cricket match featuring the Indian cricket team, the Superbowl wold get about 5 viewers. The same goes for the rest of the world, in Europe, Superbowl would get lol'd at if there were football matches on, in Australia if we had any of our sports/British sports excluding football competing against the Superbowl, it would be a no contest. Now onto money. As the biggest economy in the world, it makes perfect sense that American elite sportspeople earn more than their foreign counterparts. You have more disposable money to throw around at sports stars than the rest of the world, there's no way the rest of the world can compete, though football makes a pretty good fist of it. And I'm pretty sure courtesy of the large South Asian diaspora in the US, important cricket matches are broadcasted.

Yes, our goals were offside, but we didn't look like conceding 4.

His point is that City will continue being the biggest spenders in England after this because they'll be winning trophies. Basically this means while everyone else has to hire that dodgy accountant from Romania or wherever, City can keep spending money like water. Up to that, I agree with TX, but he assumes that they will dominate a la Barcelona, which I highly doubt due to their manager.

This team lost 4-0 to Wigan. 4-0. We should look to beat them with ease, then.

Your point is valid, but to be fair, that shouldn't affect us until 2013/14, which is the earliest I see us genuinely challenging for the title. By that time shit could have gone wrong for them. Mancini is a bit of a mug, I can't see him upkeeping success unless he has it given to him on a platter by virtue of no title rivals at all, like his time at Inter.

City could still bottle it. And one Premiership doesn't mean they're going to go crazier with their spending, they'll want more trophies in the bag before that happens, I think. Worth noting that if they win it, it'll only be their 2nd trophy since 2008. In our first 4 years under Roman we won everything under the sun except the CL, and we still didn't go onto dominate world football, though I reckon we could have if we didn't sack Jose.

Congratulations to City, now please do us a favour and smash Newcastle!

It's been tried and its failed. Why mess with a proven formula in the 4-2-3-1?

Why don't you rep me then :(/:Goober:

I don't know. Perhaps the artists just like to mess around with people.

I feel the same way about the stadium. Must visit before death.

Though I generally prefer United to the other 'big' clubs in England, I'm hoping for a City win. If they win tonight they get a huge confident boost and hopefully smash 6 past Newcastle.