Most likely, someone else got to him before you did...
More importantly, who has a wedding on the day of Super Bowl??? I would unfriend them immediately...
A soccer fan.
Sports thread: Everything sport related here.
- Thread starter Gollevainen
- Start date
A soccer fan.
vesicles
Colonel
Equation
Lieutenant General
The Falcons Defensive were on the field most of the time and they were gassed and out of breath. That's why their pass rush became ineffective against Brady. Also poor time management by the Falcons coaches, should've just run the ball and the clock out some more.
Most likely, someone else got to him before you did...
More importantly, who has a wedding on the day of Super Bowl??? I would unfriend them immediately...
Your Miss July now wife whom became the woman of your dream that's who.
SamuraiBlue
Captain
Wow what a match.
The opening match for the C League Beijing Sinobo Guoan Football Club vs Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club. The referee had the whistle constantly in his mouth with 53 fouls 12 yellow cards and 2 reds.
Since it was such a violent match the referee missed some.
The opening match for the C League Beijing Sinobo Guoan Football Club vs Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club. The referee had the whistle constantly in his mouth with 53 fouls 12 yellow cards and 2 reds.
Since it was such a violent match the referee missed some.
timepass
Brigadier
Football Legend 's Coming to Pakistan. He's going to participate in an exhibition match as well.
broadsword
Brigadier
CBA gave Stephen a second chance, the others better than 'bush league'. Now their soccer league is giving the has-beens a golden parachute.
My wish is to see crowds that can match those we see in US stadiums.
My wish is to see crowds that can match those we see in US stadiums.
broadsword
Brigadier
That is the driver I always root for.
Blackstone
Brigadier
Perhaps the Communist Party of China might reconsider its hostility towards golf, because it was actually invented in ancient China and not in Scotland- as those people like to believe. Facts are, westerners didn't invent the game, they merely popularized the Chinese game of .
BEIJING—The PGA Tour China is caught in a sand trap.
The U.S.-based organization said it has been unable to get any Chinese tournaments approved for its upcoming season, which last year began May 9 and featured more than a dozen events.
“We’re stuck moving forward,” said Greg Gilligan, managing director of the PGA Tour China. “There’s a lack of clarity over how to get approved.”
The impasse comes after a falling-out between the PGA Tour and its Chinese partners, and amounts to another bogey for golf in China.
The game was banned by Mao Zedong as a bourgeois pastime, and more recently nearly 200 golf courses have been closed amid President Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption by government officials and ostentatious displays of wealth.
The PGA Tour came to China with high hopes, seeking to expand the game’s popularity and perhaps find a breakout star who could do for golf what Yao Ming did for basketball.
In 2013 it struck a deal with the quasi-governmental China Golf Association and promotion firm China Olympic Sports Industry Ltd. to stage tournaments.
Two years later, the PGA began questioning the business practices of the China Olympic Sports Industry, or COSI, and “the particulars of financial transactions,” Gilligan said. He declined to give specific examples but said those concerns were raised with CGA and COSI executives.
“We weren’t satisfied with how they explained them,” Gilligan said.
A COSI representative said executives who worked on the partnership have left the company and declined to make anyone available for comment. The Wall Street Journal reached one of those former executives, who declined to comment.
The China Golf Association also declined to comment on the matter. Separately, the CGA has said it is now working with COSI to stage its own tournaments.
Gilligan said the PGA also had concerns over staff turnover at COSI, the company’s knowledge of golf, and what he said was its lack of planning for the upcoming season. He said the PGA ended its three-way partnership late last year after the CGA refused to change the arrangement with COSI.
The PGA hasn’t abandoned hopes for staging tournaments this year, Gilligan said, possibly by getting a “higher authority” or provincial-level officials to approve the events.
For that, the PGA would have to bypass the powerful CGA. Although it isn’t an official government agency, the CGA is led by Wang Liwei, who directs the department in the government sports ministry that oversees golf. The CGA has asserted authority over tournament approvals.
“They’ve monopolized the opportunity,” Gilligan said.
China has nearly 1.4 billion people, but at most perhaps three million golfers, Gilligan said. New golf-course construction has technically been banned since 2004, and the country has less than 500 courses—compared with more than 14,000 in the U.S.
The sport has long been a symbol of Western excess in the minds of many Chinese, said Dan Washburn, author of “The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream.”
Players and fans at the Buick Open at Guangzhou Foison Golf Club. Photo: Zhong Zhi/Getty Images
Chairman Mao “labeled golf the sport for millionaires, and, honestly, that’s still what golf is to this day in China,” Washburn said. “No government official should be able to afford to play a round of golf, let alone own a golf-club membership. It is out of reach of all but the very wealthy.”
Gilligan said financial returns from the venture were modest, but the PGA tournaments in China helped qualify one of two Chinese nationals for the Rio Olympics and helped a number of Chinese golfers earn spots on the Web.com Tour, the PGA Tour’s minor-league circuit in the U.S.
Liu Dongfeng, a professor and co-dean at the Shanghai University of Sport, said China continues to oversee golf and most other sports on a Soviet-inspired model, where the goal was to nurture athletes for Olympic glory.
Seeing the potential for economic returns, China is now moving to make sports more of a commercial enterprise, he said, phasing out the old system where a government office is paired with a quasi-government association.
Liu said soccer was the first sport to abolish its government office in 2015 and basketball appears to be next, with Yao this year becoming the first head of the China Basketball Association not drawn from government ranks.
“In terms of priority, golf is absolutely not on the agenda,” Liu said. “The prospects for golf [aren’t] very bright, unfortunately.”