Soccer Tournament Quotes

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as a starfish loves a coral reef and as a kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. i will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and as an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as the taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.

I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world's cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.

And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of all the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

The sounds of gunfire didn't bother Winn any more. It just meant that this was the weekend, or a soccer tournament, or someone had a sale on ammunition.

When I was in London in 2008, I spent a couple hours hanging out at a pub with a couple of blokes who were drinking away the afternoon in preparation for going to that evening's Arsenal game/riot. Take away their Cockney accents, and these working-class guys might as well have been a couple of Bubbas gearing up for the Alabama-Auburn game. They were, in a phrase, British rednecks. And this is who soccer fans are, everywhere in the world except among the college-educated American elite. In Rio or Rome, the soccer fan is a Regular José or a Regular Giuseppe. [...] By contrast, if an American is that kind of Regular Joe, he doesn't watch soccer. He watches the NFL or bass fishing tournaments or Ultimate Fighting. In an American context, avid soccer fandom is almost exclusively located among two groups of people (a) foreigners—God bless 'em—and (b) pretentious yuppie snobs. Which is to say, conservatives don't hate soccer because we hate brown people. We hate soccer because we hate liberals.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.

In three weeks, the women's team had done more for soccer in the United States than any team had ever done. Yet, the United States Soccer Federation was unprepared and unwelcoming in its acerbic response to the women's success. With petty, resentful, chauvinistic behavior, the federation would bungle what should have been its greatest moment as a national governing body. Its leaders would criticize DiCicco instead of congratulating him, they would threaten to sue the women over an indoor victory tour and they would wait an unacceptably long period before entering into contract negotiations with the team. Then, at the end of the year, the federation would offer a deal that the women found insulting. Unwilling to trust that the federation was bargaining in good faith, the women would boycott a trip to a tournament in Australia. They would become champions of the world, embraced by the president, by the largest crowd ever to watch women play and by the largest television audience for soccer in this country, embraced by everyone, it seemed, but the officials who ran the sport with the vision of a student council. Increasingly, it appeared, the only amateurs left in sports were the people running the federations that governed them.

What do men need? #1 need: to be fulfilled (including sexual fulfillment) #2 need: to be respected (your wife’s respect is the highest priority) #3 need: to be needed (what self-respecting guy wants to come home to a wife who is determined to do everything on her own and doesn’t seem to need him?) What do women need? #1 need: affection (cuddling for the sake of closeness) #2 need: communication (she needs words, sentences, and whole paragraphs when you get home from work—not grunts) #3 need: commitment to family (she needs to know you’ll be there at your son’s soccer tournament and your daughter’s ballet recital, and she won’t have to wonder if you forgot)

Once, we were artists. Pure! But we, all of us, we became a distraction, compromised for the sake of fame, comfort, the approval of strangers. We spend our lives pursuing something as empty as `relevance' and they use our fear of losing it to corral us. Dirty Malaysian money. Saudi money. We'll take it all. What went wrong? We sing and dance not to entertain but to distract people from the crushing gears of a capitalist machine that has no ideals save for greed and violence. And let's not kid ourselves, Hollywood is the best PR firm the gunmakers ever had. What a sick culture." "But what about artistic beauty?" asked Cameron Diaz. "When you can perceive beauty there's no excuse for serving ugliness. For aiding cons, inflaming desires, promising everything and delivering nothing. It doesn't matter what you put on TV because people are so frightened and lonely they'll watch it just to hear human voices and feel like they're not alone. They're so beaten down all they need is a soccer tournament every four years and they stay in their place. This is not a society. This is a system of soul-murder. And history will not be kind to us for our complicity, because we know better. The executives"—he nodded Maoishly to the Disney team —"they can say they were serving their god Mammon, but we artists can't. We're all East German playwrights now, complicit with the regime! And there will come a time of judgment. We're destroying the planet. This cannot last.

Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince's daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright — that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

How is she already asleep?” Sully whispers. “At home she stays up until like two a.m.” “She probably was tired,” Church whispers back. “What, from climbing a hill?” Church doesn’t respond. They get into their sleeping bags and whisper for half an hour about the outdoor soccer season about to start. I hadn’t even realized the indoor season was over—Mom and Dad just told me when I needed to take them to practice or pick them up. I didn’t know how they’d done. Were there any tournaments? Trophies? After a long stretch of silence, Sully says, “So did you really try out for the spring musical?” Church doesn’t respond for a second. “Yes. Why?” “Just wondering. Why didn’t you tell me?” “Because you would have made it about Macy Garrison.” “It—it’s not?” “No.” “Oh. But you’re not going to try out forchoir?” “Maybe.” “Why?” Just the smallest bit of mocking enters Sully’s tone. “Because I like it,” Church snaps back. “We don’t have to do all the same things. Try out for mathletes or something. You like math. You’d be good at it.” “Mathletes is for nerds.” “Sull, there’s something you should know.” “Don’t say it.” “You are a nerd.” “I’m not a nerd. Eliza’s a nerd.” “Actually, I think Eliza’s a geek. I’ve seen her grades. Compared to us, she’s horrible at school.” “You’re a nerd for knowing the difference.” “That’s fine.” Sully makes no sound, but I can feel him fuming in the darkness. I didn’t know Church could get under Sully’s skin so easily. I didn’t know Sully liked math. I didn’t know either of them were that good at school. I didn’t know Church already knew he was good at singing . . . or that he was interested in musical theater. I’ve been living with them their whole lives, but until right now, they’ve felt like strangers

And it occurred to me then that you would not escape, that there were awful men who’d laid plans for you, and I could not stop them. Prince Jones was the superlative of all my fears.And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

1. Linus Malthus "Winning is just the snow that came down yesterday"   Founder of total football. Tactical revolutionary who created the foundation of modern football  저희는 7가지 철칙을 바탕으로 거래를 합니다. 고객들과 지키지못할약속은 하지않습니다 1.정품보장 2.총알배송 3.투명한 가격 4.편한 상담 5.끝내주는 서비스 6.고객님 정보 보호 7.깔끔한 거래 [경영항목] 엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,떨,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜등많은제품판매하고있습니다 믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다. 제품효과 못보실 그럴일은 없지만 만의하나 효과못보시면 저희가 1차재발송과 2차 환불까지 약속합니다 텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】 The only winner in the international major tournament, Holland, the best soccer line of football 2. Sir Alex Ferguson Mr.Man Utd   The Red Boss The best director in soccer history (most of the past soccer coach rankings are the top picks) It is the most obvious that shows how important the director is in football.   Manchester United's 27-year-old championship, the spiritual stake of all United players and fans, Manchester United itself 3. Theme Mourinho "I do not pretend to be arrogant, because I'm all true, I am a European champion, I am not one of the cunning bosses around, I think I am Special One." The Special One The cost of counterattack after a player Charming world with charisma and poetry The director who has the most violent career of soccer directors 4. Pep Guardiola A man who achieved the world's first and only six treasures beyond treble. Make a team with a page of football history 5. Ottmar Hitzfeld Borussia Dortmund and Bayern are the best directors in Munich history. Legendary former football manager of Germany Sir Alex Ferguson's rival

The viewing figures we saw earlier in this book suggest that sport is the most important communal activity in many people’s lives. Nearly a third of Americans watch the Super Bowl. However, European soccer is even more popular. In the Netherlands, possibly the European country that follows its national team most eagerly, three-quarters of the population watch Holland’s biggest soccer games. In many European countries, World Cups may now be the greatest shared events of any kind. To cap it all, World Cups mostly take place in June, the peak month for suicides in the Northern Hemisphere. How many Exleys have been saved from jumping off apartment buildings by international soccer tournaments, the world’s biggest sporting events?

Sports Soccer, or football, is the most popular sport in Italy. Children play soccer in squares, on streets, and in fields. Almost every community has a soccer team, and when local teams play on Sunday afternoon, everything else stops. The Italian League, which has existed since 1898, is regarded as one of the toughest in the world. Rivalries between towns can be bitter and raucous, and sometimes even violent. In Rome, the two main competing teams--Roma and Lazio--play their home games in the same stadium, Stadio Olimpico, which holds more than eighty-two thousand spectators. Every four years, national soccer teams from around the globe compete in the World Cup, the world’s biggest soccer tournament. Italy has won the World Cup four times, in 1934, 1938, 1982, and 2006, making the country’s team second only to Brazil’s in number of wins.

You led Shenzhen Football / You saved Shenzhen Football. " Chinese pro football soccer league (second division) Shenzhen FC recently announced a number of poems like this one. It seems like a tribute to Sven Jerran Eriksson (69, photo), a world-renowned manager who has been assigned to the club this season. But looking back, the story was different. The club said, 'We call the legend again. Let's go on a new trip together. " 믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다. 24시간 문의상담과 서울 경기지방은 퀵으로도 가능합니다 믿고 주문하시면좋은인연으로 vip고객님으로 모시겠습니다. 원하시는제품있으시면 추천상으로 구입문의 도와드릴수있습니다 깔끔한거래,안전거래,총알배송,고객님정보보호,100%정품,편한상담,신용신뢰의 거래,후불거래등 고객님들의 편의를 기본으로 운영하고있는 온라인 판매업체입니다 The poem was a clearing for Eriksson. He was tortured in the club with one side on the 14th. The poem 'You' was not his, but the former director of Wang Baoshan. The Shenzhen team first announced the city verses through its homepage, and then the local media asked whether it was a change of director. ◀경영항목▶텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】 엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜 등많은제품판매하고있습니다 Sweden coach Eriksson is one of the best players in the World Cup finals. In 2001, he became the first foreign coach in England's history. He led Beckham, Owen and others to advance to the quarter-finals in the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup and the 2006 Germany World Cup. At the 2010 South African tournament he was promoted to coach Ivory Coast. Benfica, AS Roma and Manchester City also led the pros. It was in June 2013 that Eriksson, who became a world class soccer player, started his career in Chinese football. He was appointed to the first division of Guangzhou Puri in China with an annual salary of about 3.5 billion won. It was a bad condition for him to spend the last years of his life as a leader. After failing to sign a new contract, he became a manager of the Shanghai Sanggang, subject to an annual salary of 6 billion won by the end of 2014. After two years of hardship, he moved to China 2nd Division League Shenzhen FC. But here, the duration of the bust was shorter. Eriksson's lead has been in fourth place in the league since he lost five consecutive wins in the league in eight consecutive wins (five and three losses). The club, aiming at promoting the first division, has been pushing out Eriksson in six months because of the atmosphere. Early exits such as Eriksson can be found easily in Chinese football world that pours a lot of money into directing shopping. Only Lee Jang Soo (Changchun), Choi Yong Soo (Jangsu) and Hong Myung Bo (Hangzhou) have left the team during the season due to poor performance.

As he came out from behind the counter, he walked with the help of a cane that had the name “Harry” written on its barrel. “I thought your name was Reggie,” said Rio. “It is,” said the man. “Then who’s Harry?” Rio asked, pointing at the name. “Harry’s the cane,” Reggie explained. It took a moment, but Paris was the first to get the joke, and, when he did, he laughed hard. “You named your cane after the footballer?” “Indeed I did!” Reg shot him a wink and smiled. “We’re called the Three Lions for a reason.” The hotel was named after England’s national soccer team, which was nicknamed the Three Lions because of the lions on the crest of King Richard the Lionheart, which they wore on their jerseys. Harry Kane had been the captain of the team during the 2018 World Cup and won the Golden Boot as the tournament’s highest scorer.

I firmly believe in my heart that the U.S. must lead women's soccer and create change on the field and socially.' But, referring to American coaches, he said, 'The whole men's side doesn't respect the women's game,' believing it to be on a level of teenage boys. 'There may be some jealousy,' he said, adding that the men's national team was competing against 200 other countries, most with superior soccer cultures, while the American women were competing 'against five other countries.' This was a frequently made, but entirely specious, argument against the American women. First of all, only seven countries have ever won a men's World Cup, and only 11 have ever reached the finals in 70 years of competition. The power in the men's game is just as concentrated as it is in the women's game. A lack of competition was used to diminish the achievements of the American women, but of course it was a double standard. No one complained about the weak tournament fields when UCLA began its basketball dynasty or when the San Francisco 49ers won a handful of Super Bowls after playing against execrable regular-season competition in the NFC West division.

And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League... Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry set, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

THE ROAR of the death blast on the Avenue of the Americas cannot be heard in faraway Johannesburg. With eight weeks to go to the opening game in Soccer City, Sepp Blatter and his South African capos have enough problems. Outraged by price gouging, fans are staying home. In the townships citizens protest every day; ‘Service riots’ send messages to politicians that public money should be spent on homes, water, sewage plants and jobs, not stadiums that will become white elephants. Why should they listen? They have the police beat back the protestors. The World Cup is good news for Danny Jordaan, leader of the bid and now chief executive for the tournament. Quietly, his brother Andrew has been given a well-paid job as Hospitality liaison with MATCH Event Services at the Port Elizabeth stadium. A stakeholder in the MATCH company is Sepp Blatter’s nephew Philippe Blatter. The majority owners are Mexican brothers Jaime and Enrique Byrom, based in Manchester, England, Zurich, Switzerland and with some of their bank accounts in Spain and the Isle of Man. The Brothers are not happy. Sepp Blatter awarded them the lucrative 2010 hospitality contract aimed at wealthy football patrons, mostly from abroad. If that wasn’t enough, Blatter also gave them the contract to manage and distribute the three million tickets. The brothers are charging top rates for hotels and internal flights and expected to make huge profits. Instead, they are on their way to losing $50 million. They plan to recoup these losses in Brazil in four years time.

Argentina has one of the most successful national soccer teams in the world, and the country has won the World Cup twice, in 1978 and 1986. In this year’s tournament, the team ranks among the most formidable competitors, with Brazil’s coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, even predicting a final showdown with Argentina.

More people play soccer than the four of those sports put together, and the World Cup pits all nations against all nations, with almost every country on earth competing during the four years of qualifying that lead to the final tournament. As

And it occurred to me then that you would not escape, that there were awful men who’d laid plans for you, and I could not stop them. Prince Jones was the superlative of all my fears. And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince’s daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright—that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

Success in entrepreneurship is very much like a game—part chess match, part poker tournament, and part schoolyard soccer competition. You’ve got to make decisive moves in a really strategic way, bluff on occasion when you want others to think that you have a better hand, and pass the ball to and from teammates to hit your goals. Sometimes, it will be a straight line to a quick score, and at other times, you will have to double back, up the ante, and formulate a new plan.

Polish Approach” to World Cups and Euros: A theory posited by a Polish waiter in London who once told us: “We Poles always have a defined rhythm to the three group stage games we play at every major tournament in which we are inevitably eliminated. They even have ritualistic names: Match day one: “The opening game in which everything is possible.” Match day two: “The must-win game in which our team’s survival is on the line.” Match day three: “A dead rubber Game of Honor in which the result is irrelevant because the team is already eliminated.

Her crew must have been dismayed when it was informed of the Scharnhorst’s fate. The two battleships had been moored near each other for almost two months, and the crews had gotten to know each other. They had trained together, played soccer tournaments together, and associated together in other ways. Now, only half of them remained.

Not only are they long-lasting injuries, but there are long-term effects of playing on turf,” Alex Morgan once explained. “The achiness, taking longer to recover than on natural grass, the tendons and ligaments are, for me at least, I feel more sore after turf. It takes longer to recover from a turf field than natural grass.” For this reason, some players with leverage have refused to play on artificial turf. When superstars Thierry Henry and Didier Drogba joined MLS clubs after careers in Europe, where artificial turf is rare, they refused to play at venues without natural grass. Grass also offers a better quality of ball movement and natural bounces, while artificial turf can negatively affect the flow of the game. In other words, soccer is meant to be played on grass, and that’s especially true during a World Cup, the most important tournament in the sport. When Canada’s bid, which included artificial turf fields, was selected by FIFA for the 2015 World Cup, the decision flew under the radar at first.

They brought in players from other national teams around the world, including Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and others to sign a letter asking FIFA and the CSA to reconsider using artificial turf. When that didn’t work, they filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, arguing the decision to play the tournament on artificial turf was gender discrimination under Canadian law. After all, no men’s World Cups had ever been played on artificial turf, and the upcoming men’s tournaments had been planned to be on grass through 2022.

Now the Americans were at risk of not even qualifying for a tournament that they were the favorites to win. Suddenly, the media that hadn’t paid attention to Women’s World Cup qualifying became interested. “The irony of the whole thing is that when the U.S. men win, they get the coverage, but when the U.S. women lose, we get the coverage,” striker Abby Wambach said.

By the time the national team prepared to compete in the 2013 Algarve Cup in late February and early March, collective bargaining agreement negotiations had ramped up considerably. With the team’s existing contract having been expired since the end of 2012, the players were also no longer bound by the no-strike clause in their contract and a boycott was on the table. In February 2013, while the team was in Nashville for their final friendly match before the Algarve Cup started, discussion turned to whether they should go on strike and skip the upcoming tournament in Portugal. “We decided as a team that we want to go on strike to get more money for our new CBA, and we were going to go on strike until we understood everything about the NWSL, before we were forced to decide which team to play for in allocation,” says Hope Solo. “There were a few players in the room that didn’t know how to vote, but the rest of the team raised our hands and said it’s time to take a stand.

Ultimately, the strike never happened. Some players felt, after speaking with the team’s attorney, John Langel, that striking before the Algarve Cup didn’t offer enough leverage. They were better off going to Portugal and continuing negotiations there with striking as an option after the tournament, before the start of the NWSL. They believed the launch of the new league offered the urgency that could make a strike effective. For Solo, who pushed for the strike, it was frustrating to see her teammates back off so quickly. Even though the Algarve Cup was a relatively minor tournament, it was the biggest national team event on the calendar until the 2015 World Cup, two and a half years away. The advice of the team’s longtime attorney to forgo the pre–Algarve Cup strike amounted to taking the federation’s side, as far as Solo was concerned. By that point, she had already lost faith in Langel’s ability to fight for the team and months earlier had started, on her own, looking for someone else who could represent the team. “It was really empowering for us. We finally were taking a huge stance against U.S. Soccer—we said, We’re putting our foot down, we’re going on strike, we mean business,” Solo says. “Well, it took about one phone call from John Langel to scare us into backing down and not going on strike.

The Americans didn’t know it yet, however, but that win over Colombia was serendipitous in an unexpected way. Yellow cards given to both Lauren Holiday (née Cheney) and Megan Rapinoe meant that Jill Ellis would be forced to change her tactics. The team was about to fix all of its midfield problems. A blessing in disguise was about to save the USA’s World Cup. It was about to unleash Carli Lloyd. Up to that point in the tournament, Lloyd had been asked to play alongside Lauren Holiday in an ill-defined central midfield partnership. Neither one of them was a defensive midfielder, and neither one of them was an attacking midfielder. They were expected to split those duties between them on the fly. That not only led to gaping holes and poor positioning in the midfield, but it restrained Lloyd, who throughout her career was best as a pure attacking player who could push forward without restraint.

The USA-Japan final was watched on television by a whopping 25.4 million Americans, smashing the TV record for the most-viewed soccer game by an American audience. Even more stunning, 43.2 million Americans watched at least part of the final. It beat every game of the NBA finals, happening around the same time, and beat the primetime average of the Sochi Olympics the year before. With 39 percent higher ratings, it destroyed a record set by the U.S. men’s team when it faced Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal during the 2014 World Cup group stage. The 1999 World Cup final, which had held the record for 15 years before that, had been watched by 17.8 million Americans. On social media, the moment was just as big. According to Face-book, 9 million people posted 20 million interactions to the platform about the final during the game. Tweets about the tournament had been seen 9 billion times across all of Twitter, with the final match earning the most engagements. Carli Lloyd’s half-field goal was the most-tweeted-about moment of the match. The national team’s victory touched millions of people—and that probably included plenty of little girls who had no clue who “the ’99ers” were and never saw Brandi Chastain twirl her shirt in the air. For the first time, millions of young girls saw the women of the national team as heroes.

With a quiet post-Olympics year ahead, U.S. Soccer secretary general Dan Flynn informed the players that the national team would “go dark” for 2005 and play between four and six games total that year. Rather than schedule the usual slate of games, the federation would instead focus on scouting new players. “If there are no games, where will the women play?” Langel asked. “The W-League,” replied Flynn. “Are you kidding me?” Langel said. The W-League wasn’t a professional league. It was a development league that included amateur, unpaid players. There was no comparison between playing international opponents with the national team and competing in the W-League. “We told them we don’t necessarily need a residency camp, but we don’t have anywhere to play at all,” says Cat Whitehill, who graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in communications. “They wanted nothing to do with us.” U.S. Soccer argued the next World Cup wasn’t for another three years and there were no major events the team needed to prepare for. It would be similar to the team’s schedule in 2001, when U.S. Soccer hosted just two home games for the national team. But for the players who had now made soccer their living and didn’t have the WUSA anymore, that was unacceptable. It’s not as if U.S. Soccer was simply scaling back friendlies. The federation said it had no plans to send the team to the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal, which the team always competed in. A team wouldn’t be sent to the Four Nations Tournament in China either, despite the competition being a usual fixture on the team’s calendar.

With a quiet post-Olympics year ahead, U.S. Soccer secretary general Dan Flynn informed the players that the national team would “go dark” for 2005 and play between four and six games total that year. Rather than schedule the usual slate of games, the federation would instead focus on scouting new players. “If there are no games, where will the women play?” Langel asked. “The W-League,” replied Flynn. “Are you kidding me?” Langel said. The W-League wasn’t a professional league. It was a development league that included amateur, unpaid players. There was no comparison between playing international opponents with the national team and competing in the W-League. “We told them we don’t necessarily need a residency camp, but we don’t have anywhere to play at all,” says Cat Whitehill, who graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in communications. “They wanted nothing to do with us.” U.S. Soccer argued the next World Cup wasn’t for another three years and there were no major events the team needed to prepare for. It would be similar to the team’s schedule in 2001, when U.S. Soccer hosted just two home games for the national team. But for the players who had now made soccer their living and didn’t have the WUSA anymore, that was unacceptable. It’s not as if U.S. Soccer was simply scaling back friendlies. The federation said it had no plans to send the team to the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal, which the team always competed in. A team wouldn’t be sent to the Four Nations Tournament in China either, despite the competition being a usual fixture on the team’s calendar. The players demanded to know how U.S. Soccer could justify skipping the tournaments. Flynn replied that it was “the technical director’s recommendation” to play a lighter schedule. The technical director? April Heinrichs. The players wanted to figure out if Heinrichs really believed the team should play so few games in 2005, so Julie Foudy reached out to her. “Is that true? Did you tell U.S. Soccer we should only play five games?” Foudy asked. “I never said anything like that,” Heinrichs told her. “I told them you should play 20 games.” If Heinrichs hadn’t recommended such a sparse schedule and, in fact, recommended around 20 games, it seemed that U.S. Soccer was making a decision that went against what was best for the players. The players saw a clear double standard—the men’s team hadn’t played so few games since 1987, almost two decades earlier. They concluded U.S. Soccer’s real reason was the same one behind most disputes between the players and the federation: money. The federation, it appeared, did not want to spend the money for training camps, player stipends, and travel for overseas competitions, even as it was sitting on a $30 million surplus at the time. “In 2005, they had no plans for us and wanted us to go quiet so they didn’t have to pay us the entire year,” says defender Kate Markgraf.

A couple of players who ask not to be identified say Solo had broken team rules about curfew more than once. They remember a specific incident during a tournament where Solo spent the night with her boyfriend instead of in her assigned room. These players say they told Sundhage, who chose not to punish Solo rather than turn it into an ordeal. On the flip side, Hope Solo was the greatest goalkeeper in the world. Sometimes what makes an athlete so great on the field can be the same thing that causes them problems off the field. Could you have Solo, the top goalkeeper, without Solo, the troublemaker? With a few months until the World Cup, there were more pressing questions at the moment, though. What if prosecutors revived Solo’s case and she was convicted? What if she got into trouble again? Would the federation have to suspend her? Could the USA win a World Cup without Solo?

The prize money certainly said something about FIFA’s priorities, though. The same week the 2015 Women’s World Cup kicked off, United Passions debuted in movie theaters. It was a propaganda film that FIFA produced about itself and bankrolled for around $30 million. That’s double the total amount of prize money FIFA made available to all teams participating in the 2015 Women’s World Cup. The film earned less than $1,000 in its debut weekend in North America, for the worst box-office opening in history, and it went down as the lowest-grossing film in U.S. history. Almost all the millions of dollars FIFA poured into making the movie was lost. The film has a 0% rating on the popular movie-review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, and a New York Times review called it “one of the most unwatchable films in recent memory.” And remember the uncomfortable encounter at the team hotel between the Americans and Brazilians after the 2007 Women’s World Cup semifinal? That would never happen in a men’s World Cup. That’s because FIFA assigns different hotels and training facilities to each men’s team, to serve as a base camp throughout the tournament. The women don’t get base camps—they jump from city to city and from hotel to hotel during the World Cup, and they usually end up bumping into their opponents, who are given the same accommodations. American coach Jill Ellis said she almost walked into the German meal room at the World Cup once. “Sometimes you’re in the elevator with your opponent going down to the team buses for a game,” Heather O’Reilly says. “It’s pretty awkward.

And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince’s daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright—that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

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A couple of hours here, a couple of hours there…they add up. How many of these things have we gone to? Plays and Suzuki concerts and dance recitals and karate tournaments and soccer games? And there are still four more years to get through. Not counting college. By the time Ashley graduates…” He rolled his eyes. “Our lives have fewer hours left all the time, we can’t be cavalier about a couple here and there. They’re precious. Like rare gems in a dwindling collection.