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Yesterday, the women's teams for Clapton Community & Dulwich Hamlet Football Clubs were to play in the London & South East Regional Women's League trophy final. Hundreds of supporters from both teams traveled to Maidstone to attend the match, hosted at Gallagher Stadium (owned by Maidstone United FC). Clapton - a club whose home ground was the first in the UK to be recognized as an apartheid free zone - continued their long-standing tradition of showing support for the Palestinian people by flying Palestinian flags from the stands. Dulwich Hamlet supporters matched the effort with an enormous banner reading SHOW GENOCIDE THE RED CARD. This wasn't just a trophy final. It wasn't just the last match of the season for both teams. It was the last chance for trans women on both sides to play football, after the Football Association's transphobic ban against trans athletes, which takes effect on June 1st. The match was going along smoothly and Clapton was up 2-0 when, 20 minutes in, something unprecedented happened. In the words of the Clapton players: “Today, 32 women were denied the opportunity to play the L&SERWFL Trophy final. About 20 minutes into the match, both Clapton and Dulwich supporters were approached by a representative of of Maidstone United, Gallagher Stadium owners. He demanded that our supporters must stop waving the Palestinian flag, and the Dulwich supporters must take down their banner which read ‘Show genocide the red card.’ After both groups of supporters refused, a league official walked on to the field of play to stop the game. In a discussion with the match officials, players and coaches, he communicated that we could not use the ground while both the Palestinian flag and the banner were displayed. Our given options were to 1) play the game behind closed doors or 2) to abandon the game. Clapton’s players chose to abandon the game. Both sets of fans then came together in solidarity with the Palestinian people, singing more songs and holding up our banners in support of trans women and the Palestine people, respectively. Our players and fans are united in their support and concern for Palestinians who are being bombed daily. Showing that support with a flag or banner is no reason to abandon a cup final." With that, the Clapton players climbed into the scaffolds to join the supporters, soon followed by Dulwich Hamlet supporters who brought their banner over. Both teams & supporters united in defiance of the attempt to silence their support for the Palestinian people and their opposition to genocide. The Football Association - that same body that banned women from playing football for fifty years and has now banned trans athletes from playing football effective June 1st - have declared the Cup void and will not award it to either team nor schedule a rematch. They have also threatened both Dulwich Hamlets and Clapton Community FCs with discipline. In the words of Dulwich supporters Pepper Army: "Sport has long played an important role in putting pressure on governments perpetuating human rights abuse - from South Africa during the apartheid era to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. Those who argue that political protest does not belong in sport are either ignorant or are deliberately ignoring that history this is particularly true in the women's game access to the game has always been political and, even now, women continue to fight for the right to play football. We don't protest at our games because we think one protest in a regional football competition will change what is happening in Gaza. But we do it knowing that every protest joins a drum beat of defiance that is slowly convincing the world it cannot ignore the daily murders perpetuated by the state of Israel. We are proud of the behavior of Dulwich Hamlet fans today and we are equally proud to join hands with the fans of Clapton CCFC, who have already done so much to shine a spotlight on the plight of the past on the Palestinian people. History will judge us. Let us all be able to say we're on the right side."

In the words of Clapton supporters Clapton Punks: "Clapton Punks have always had a huge respect for the women's team but the actions yesterday have elevated this to a new level. We are so fucking proud of you. In Maidstone we stood together behind our shared moral principles without compromise against the whimsical prejudices of some rich stadium owners and their flimsy objections to a flag."

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The lionesses, regardless of today's outcome, are the new uswnt. Everyone will be judged against them.

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Lol

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Raso is one of my all time favorite Thorns, so watching her just thrash the Olympic champions was incredibly enjoyable. I should also say that her goals were made possible by Catley and Doors and their fantastic left side partnership. It was a fantastic night for former Thorns but not so great for Sinc. She had maybe one moment of danger as Canada looked utterly toothless. It doesn't help that Canada seems embarrassed of the program and unaware that they are the defending gold medalists and did nothing to support the squad.

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I should probably lurk again but today is pissing me off. Fucking hell.

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This blog may have defended Riley for his tactical weirdness in 2015 and beyond, but it sure as shit doesn't defend his creepiness. Like, get fucked.

I'm not sure if there are nicer people out there than Shin and Shim. They deserved better than this and better from the league and better than this weak tea the nt is serving up.

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Marta never won a World Cup. Here's what left her empty-handed.

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meleanashim Our happy place @qualitysins @emilymenges #prepreseasonfaces

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Fuck off

I don’t give half a shit who was in the right or wrong on Sunday, but Xhaka shouldn’t have been there, with that job wearing an Arsenal shirt. At every stage of his career and in every nation he’s been a foul machine who gets carded every third game and is the active leader at Arsenal in conceding penalties. At any other club that leader is a defender or a keeper--last line of defense getting suckered by attackers allergic to scoring in open play (ie the center forward for United at any given moment). 

But for a midfielder to have that badge of honor suggests the image of a panicked player scrambling back and launching himself studs first in the general vicinity of the attacker. This image also suggests a player who’s either incapable of keeping up with the play or player badly out of position. However, the man is 26 years old and plays right in the middle of the field, neither of which are a fullback trying to cover for a missing winger, or an ancient Toure brother still trying to hack it. His passing is far from shit, which is probably why he has a job, but honestly he’d be better off in some country with some other club where smooth passers who can’t defend are idols, and quit stinking up North London with his second-rate Paul Scholes routine, especially since Emery lacks Fergie’s connection to scary Glaswegians with knives that kept United at the top of the penalty table. Arsenal have been so fucked this year, they might as well start off in a 1-0 hole every game.

However, the problem has been greater than Xhaka, and it’s been a spirals of “fuck offs” for the last few years. Working backwards it’s been a failure to properly tell Ozil and Mustafi to fuck off, and because Ozil makes a million pounds every time he gives a shit, the club doesn’t want to Ramsey what’s he worth, abruptly breaking off negotiations with him and letting him fuck off to Juventus. Honest, if Juve wants someone that generally means that player is worth the money and clubs should just pay their players. This clusterfuck followed the club’s CEO fucking off to AC Milan right after installing Emery as manager. I’ve seen this move in real life and it’s always when a boss is desperate to hire someone of authority but knows the choice is shit and doesn’t want to deal with the fallout. Thankfully he also sucks in Milan too, so it’s not like some massive tragedy, just none of the remaining powers that be have shown much gumption to show that they’re not shit. They only seem interested in giving Emery just enough rope, so the Arsenal coach job becomes a carousel for nostalgia acts, like at every other club, and not the envy of the league. Maybe we should be more like Chelsea supporters and just tell all these shits to fuck off, after all we are letting youngsters fuck off to become stars elsewhere, so we might as well go full heel. 

But really i need to fuck off too. Not from the sport or Arsenal or even this idiot blog but for trying to pull this dumb game apart and figuring out how it works and seeing how (maybe)I could make it work even better. This I was trying to come up with some sort of formula involving goal difference that would predict points so I could with all the certainty of SCIENCE how many points Xhaka’s howlers have cost us, and I could not. This game certainly has its trend and teams that score a lot of goals and don’t concede nearly as many tend to win a lot of games, but there are years where a dominant team on both ends fails to finish first because they demolished bad teams but couldn’t squeak past good ones. Then there are clubs that have years that 75% of league would envy but it ends with everyone getting fired because they barely averaged a goal per game. Since there’s no real way of counting for it, Xhaka’s snafu-brain (maybe) didn’t really cost the team anything, except the patience waiting for something to make sense. 

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don’t fucking tackle like this, folks

Emily Sonnett, ladies and gentlemen.

@danteysart

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On this day, 14 February 1961, Dainton Connell was born in Brighton. He became famous as a leader of one of the hooligan firms at Arsenal football club. He played a key role in ensuring that the fascist National Front – which was trying to infiltrate football fans – failed to gain any foothold at Arsenal, often confronting paper sellers. On one occasion he even inserted himself at the head of a National Front demonstration, flying a union jack to mock them. He later became a bodyguard and manager to the Pet Shop Boys. When he died in a car crash aged 46, his funeral was attended by 3000 people including Arsenal legends like Ian Wright. A memorial plaque to him by the Arsenal stadium was taken down by Islington council. Did you know that WCH had a YouTube channel? Check it out and subscribe https://youtube.com/workingclasshistory http://bit.ly/2DFaKgW

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this wasn’t my first post but it was my best post, because it was me replying to Ace’s best post. 

I’ll keep the archive here and all that fun shit, because I would seriously miss it in all of its stupid glory, but I’m not going to post here anymore. It’s probably questionable if I was really posting here. The switch from youtube to lifetime (and my inability to rip the videos from the nwsl site) really fucking killed this blog. That and working 40-50 hr weeks, esp. working Saturdays. 

It also sucked that so many of the people that I got to know through this blog drifted away. Probably all for very good reasons, but I still miss them.

It also didn’t help with the nsfw thing, even though as long as you don’t read certain posts out loud, this blog is pretty safe for pretty much anything. 

However, with the purge I finally put 2 and 2 together,--with the first 2 representing the shitheads at yahoo who owned this failsite and the second 2 representing the chickenshits at verizon, who bought yahoo and all their failsites,-- and made 4, which represents the fact that Verizon has always been bad for the internet, so I might as well move on.

I’ve been tweeting for a while @away__kit

and I just set up a discord channel, so hmu yo

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Form is temporary but class is permanent

You lot have always been class

cheers

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tumblr is run by a flock of absolute chickenshits

A better, more positive Tumblr

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

Jeff D’Onofrio CEO

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Portland Timbers 2018 Western Conference Champs! 🏆 

⚽ 52′ Sebastián Blanco  ⚽ 61′ Diego Valeri ⚽ 99′ Diego Valeri

c e l e b r a t e t h a n k s 💚 

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I’m not going to lol it because it seems to be working for now and at this very second they’re switching their shape by subbing on Long for Morgan, It also seems to be very effective for them to bomb down the wings, creating 3 vs 2 mismatches on both flanks.

BUT 

(USWNT ignores this)

(Welcome other challengers for the WWC)

But they can be got at. In transition JJ is function-less. Her only role is to slow down opposition counters down the middle. Without her as a viable target and without her relative abilities on the ball in the backline proper, the communication and distribution among the players in the first third of the field are suspect, and you can use a high press against them and force them into making howlers. They will not see this because it has been ages since they’ve lost. 

Australia understands the need for speed and tenacity against the USWNT. France and England also get this. Netherlands are the champions of Europe but an unknown entity to the Americans. Japan are the champions of Asia but have lost two straight to the US. However, those Nadeshiko lineups were entirely experimental. 

the uswnt is playing a 5-0-5