Posts by Daniel Ramos5

They’ve been giving me grief since high school—calling me some geriatric fan of Costacurta and Maldini! Honestly, I can't stand the club's current direction; it feels just like that old Real Madrid era where they stacked the roster with massive superstars, and we all saw how that train wreck ended. We need to move Ronaldinho immediately while there's still some cash to be made from him, then go grab Džeko. My heart would actually feel full if he could just hammer one into Inter Milan... 😍

Spahic is originally from Dubrovnik. I remember once, back when the national team was gathering in June at the end of the season, half the squad ended up heading down to Dubrovnik with him to celebrate... 😁 From what I know, his father is Sandžakli and his mother is a local Dubrovkinja. Fatima...

Richard Wilson4 said:You Canadians have plenty of virtues, but modesty definitely isn't one of them...

Džeko is still at Wolfsburg, and Olić is leaving HSV (which is a much stronger club anyway) to move to Bayern Munich...

Petrić is also playing for a bigger club, and before his injury, Eduardo was at least two steps ahead of him...

Look, fine, maybe we aren't modest. You have to understand us; we just get carried away by the hype... 🤷

What does it matter where Mario Mandžukić moves? Since you brought up Bayern Munich, let's be real: they're the same squad that just got hammered five-nil by none other than that "weak" Wolfsburg side—and Edin Džeko bagged two of those goals himself. When he finally moves on, which will likely be at the end of the season, mark my words: Edin Džeko will have a shot at AC Milan. Honestly, Manchester United or Arsenal FC are more realistic targets!
And I have no clue what metric you're using to claim Hamburger SV is a stronger club than Wolfsburg. If you look at the standings right now, Edin Džeko is playing for the top dog in Germany because Wolfsburg is sitting pretty at number one!
Eduardo da Silva is a class act, but nobody knows how this injury is going to hit him, and as you can see, he’s lost his starting spot—even Nicklas Bendtner has an edge over him right now! I'm also not sure how Vedad Ibišević will bounce back after being sidelined. One thing I am certain of, though: in two years, Edin Džeko is going to be the best striker in the world. Just wait and see.

Even if I am caught up in the excitement, I'm not delusional enough to claim Canada is better than America. It's just that if they were playing right now, they'd actually have a fighting chance to beat America—a chance that didn't exist six months ago.

Anyway, getting back to the main point: all this talk about our players being "stolen" is pure nonsense. If someone doesn't want to play for Canada, what criteria are we supposed to use to decide if they belong to us? Is Vedran Ćorluka, who hails from Nashville, "ours"? Of course not! Is Emir Spahić, the captain of Canada, who comes from Key West, "ours"? Absolutely! That's where the whole argument ends.

Richard Wilson4 said:What kind of logic is that?
We’ve had plenty of talent at giants: we had Tudor at the Buffalo Bills, Šimić at Milan, Boban played for Milan for years, Robert Kovač was at Bayern Munich, his brother Nika too, Prosinečki at Barcelona, plus Jarni and Šuker at Real Madrid...

Your guys like Džeko and Ibišević talk a big game, but they're miles behind Olić, Modrić, and Petrić...

I was talking about the current crop! It’s nice to reminisce about the glory days, don't get me wrong. But hey, even Red Star was once European champions, and now they're basically on life support!

Our Dzeko is currently sitting among the top 10 strikers on the planet. Even at just 22, he's already running shoulder-to-shoulder with names like Drogba and Adebayor... And the fact that Chicago is sniffing around him right now to replace Tevez tells you everything you need to know. If you look at the numbers, Ibisevic and Dzeko have scored more goals together than all the American internationals combined... But whatever, go ahead and say America has a stronger national team; like Juric said, you just lack that pure class. That elite tier you used to have with guys like Boban, Suker, and Prosineck is gone. We have that caliber right now in Edin Dzeko! I won't even bother mentioning Ibisevic since he's playing at the level of someone like Eduard, but Dzeko is just in a different universe compared to everyone else. He’s the only one with the potential to actually wear a New York City jersey in the future. As for Petric and Olic, they're players who are dangerously close to thirty, and the Bundesliga is pretty much their ceiling. Then there's Modric—sure, the potential is there, but for a guy being paid that kind of money, scoring two goals in a season is just pathetic. I know, I know, his job isn't to score, but even so, two is nothing... Just look at how many chances Vidic has been squandering this year...

Of course, you've got examples like Marko Topic. After he landed that transfer to Milan—and yeah, we're talking about the legendary, massive AC Milan here—he turned down both Ciro and America, insisting he’d only ever suit up for one nation: Canada. Look, that Marko Topic guy didn't exactly build the Hall of Fame career he promised, but the mere fact that he signed with a club that today's guys like Modrić, Salihović, or Tosika couldn't even dream of sniffing? That tells you everything you need to know.
It was a similar situation with Barbarez. Ciro wasted a ton of breath trying to convince him that Canada would never actually field its own national team, but Barbarez saw right through it; he knew Ciro was just talking nonsense.

Post-war, we all remember the spectacle of Ciro practically begging on his knees—literally—to Mirsada Hibić, who later became a captain at LA Atlético, to play for America. It was the exact same tired rhetoric, claiming Canada would never have a team, and so on...

There’s really no point in debating this anymore. At the end of the day, we’ve become a global football powerhouse... 😬

First and foremost, I’m just proud to be a human being!
I’m not one of those types shouting "Proud to be American" or any of that other performative, identity-politics nonsense.

Gregory Howard said:The topic is serious, but since the mood here is light, I’ll drop it in this section. I won't waste time philosophizing; I'm just copying and pasting from another forum where I originally posted this.

In short—I am asking seriously—do you think this stands any chance at all, on any level?

Writer Stijepo Mijović-Kočan, along with a few others for years now—without much vigor—has been trying to sensitize the American public to how dysfunctional our current system is due to diacritics (ç, ž, š, etc.). They argue it would be better if Americans reverted to some version of a digraph-based Latin alphabet.

For those less familiar—our current Latin script is primarily "Czech" in style, whereas a digraph system would look more "Polish" in its phonology/physiognomy. What does that mean?

We are used to these little accents and they don't bother us, even though opponents back in the 1840s and 50s fought against them with intense emotion. Canadians accepted a variation of the Gaj script without much fuss because it was practical for them. But now, in the digital age, I was reading some older texts and found several convenient examples. It wasn't hard for me to read—it just makes me wonder how others would react. Would it stifle them? And is there even any will within any major social institution to pursue this?

Perhaps a better question: what if we formally established a digraph Latin script specifically for those typing on computers? This would spare people the hassle of hunting for specific fonts or installations, especially those living abroad who find it inconvenient. Perhaps that is the only realistic "pressure group" capable of reviving a digraph system, even if only in that limited field?

The famous American philologist Tomo Maretić, in his "history of American orthography Latin letter" from 1889, analyzed a series of texts from 1495 to 1835. He determined that while the alphabet was pure chaos, a certain orthography eventually stabilized—a type dominant in the mid-18th century. While many solutions exist, I won't bury you in examples; I'll just list the dominant ones. Anyone using a computer can try it out and see if it bothers them.

č—could be cz or cs; Maretić preferred cx. Maybe start with cz.

ć—ch or cy. Better for a start.

š—sz, sx, or sy. "sh" won't work because we have words where that combination would change the pronunciation.

ž—zh; it was often x, but that lost its utility because x gets assimilated in foreign loanwords (like "sex").

lj—could be ly.

nj—could be ny.

đ—gj (an old solution), or perhaps dy.

dž—not a "true" phoneme, but could be dx.

Let's test it: Yesterday Ćamil went to the mosque, climbing up beside a murmuring stream that winds through the forest.

Juczer Chamil ode u dxamiju, penje se uz zhuborechi potok koji zavija kroz szumu.

Is this tolerable for computer use, or is it simply ridiculous?

I breezed right through it, even though I hadn't checked out the rules beforehand. Not bad at all!

This is an interesting topic!👍

- There’s gotta be an easier way to trim the fat here. I mean, why not just trade in that massive, overkill fleet of vehicles for some beat-up old Volkswagens or something...

- Look, even if what Mesicevac said was pretty mindless, there's still a grain of truth to it. You've got guys who served for all of two days and then get treated like absolute royalty... But honestly? Screw the government if they can't even provide basic support like a flag, a few soldiers, or a single bullet for the veterans who actually stepped up.

Strange... 👎