Recent content by Pope Benedict XVI Fan

To an extent, yes. It's all relative. It's a mistake to think of Soviet foreign policy as a unbending continuum from Lenin up until Gorbachev turns up in 1985 and changes the rules. It's just as simplistic as a Russian thinking US foreign policy goals and doctrines were exactly the same from...

Any Middle Age Whites that arrive in the neighbourhood generally open up a lot more socially once they have a few years to get over the huge culture shock, learn the language, understand local fashions, grasp how electricity works, get used to the food, figure out what to watch on television and...

12 team league, everybody puts $100 into the pot$15 for the top scoring team each week, $240 total (teams on a bye or already knocked out of the playoffs still set their line-up and are eligible to win the weekly prize)$300 for regular season points champion$100 for regular season points...

I don't know much about Flynn other than the pretty decent half he had against the Pats last year, but it's wrong to say that you can't improve arm strength. Brady when he came into the league had a below average arm and now, whilst he doesn't have a cannon like Vick or Cam, he can make all the...

Otto Graham averaged just over three rushes per game, led the league in passing yards five times and pass completion percentage four times. So no, it's a pretty silly comparison.

Bobby Charlton practiced with his left as a kid by removing his shoe and sock from his right foot and knocking a ball against a wall in the street for hours at a time. With the old heavy leather balls back in the 1950s you definitely did not want to have to play the ball with a bare foot too...

Is it definitely confirmed that DMC is out for this week? Or are the guys that are picking him up taking a but of flyer on this one?

You'd end up with defences sitting much deeper, which would make the high-tempo pressing game that has been evolved at the top level over the last 25 years almost impossible to play. I couldn't say for sure that it'd be a bad thing, but I am certainly very much against any idea like that.

I'd rather live in Manchester by a long way. Milan is a pretty boring city really. For Tevez though it's probably a language issue as much as anything else, he's been in England 5 years now and still needs a translator, so I understand why he wants to leave.

I didn't realise NCAA had different rules for substitutions so I went and looked it up in their official rule book. You are allowed unlimited subs throughout the game and a player subbed in the first half is allowed to come back in during the second half. That just seems really dumb.

Dinner plate. When the club was set up in 1901 there were a lot British ex-pats in Buenos Aires and the club founders thought having an English name River Plate, as opposed to Río de la Plata, sounded cooler.

But equally players like Marin, Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Götze and so on.Germany has always produced highly technical, creative players (Netzer, Scholl, Häßler, Littbarski etc.) they just had a down period 2000-2005 or so. It happens, even Brazil have sent some pretty ordinary teams to the World Cup.

2-3-5 and variations on it is what teams played in the early 20th century, until 4-2-4 took over as the predominant formation in the late 1940s/early 50s. Not sure why youth teams would be playing that way in the 1970s though, seems really dumb.

Zonalmarking.net is a site that does tactical analysis and breakdowns of major matches across the top leagues in Europe throughout the season. Currently they have been doing reviews of the Gold Cup. For example here is their review of the US v Panama game.Jonathan Wilson is probably the best...

Sure, they have a memo from FIFA saying that a representative GB team wouldn't effect the home nations, but this relies a) on trusting Sepp Blatter to not go back on his word (and remember, the Scottish and Welsh FA's both called for his election to be postponed along with the FA) and b) any...