https://clickbutt.mrn/TOP_FIVE_MRII_SPORTS_NEWS_OUTLETS
With so much media getting shoved down our throats 24/7, it can be difficult to pick out the quality stuff from the chaff. With World Cup fever at full pitch, we put in the work for you to find the best sources for both accurate information and entertainment value.
NUMBER FIVE) RMAL RADIO COVERAGE
This is both only on the list and this low on the list because it’s kind of a technicality. Of course the best way to absorb the game is to experience it in real time, that’s a no-brainer, but I wanted to give a special shoutout to the folks at RMAL who go above and beyond in an age where radio isn’t the dominant force it used to be. Calling sports without video aides is an artform, and one that I think is severely underappreciated right now--seriously, give them a listen one of these days and experience how vivid a picture Toum Buurk can paint with just his voice. Also give your poor eyes some rest, if you’re reading this article I bet you’ve spent the better part of the last twelve hours staring at one screen or another.
TOUM BUURK: Welcome, one and all, to that most wonderful time of year--the World Cup has come again!
JII TIAAN: It’s Jii and Toum coming to you from Podvez Field, here in the chilly Free Republic of Vorita.
TOUM: Oh, you only think it’s chilly because you barely leave Mriin.
JII: We’re here for the football, not for you to rub your worldliness in my face!
TOUM: Au contraire, there’s no time that such things matter more than when taking in the sights and sounds of the multiverse’s greatest international competition.
JII: You’re just going to stiff Worldvision like that?
TOUM: Hah, Worldvision. There’s a miniature song competition contained in this Cup, so it’s nothing special.
JII: I don’t think anyone’s taking it all that seriously. I heard some weird Covellan propaganda tune there.
TOUM: Alright, that’s enough beating around the bush. We all know why we’re here, and looking down to the pitch there’s already an intensity just to how the Cosumarites and the Mrii size each other up while stretching.
JII: Seems Solara is calling over to a few of the opposition. Probably jabbing at the ones she’s faced in the Premiership?
TOUM: If she’s trying to get them riled up, I doubt it’s working. Peter Svensson of AFC Treason is wearing stone in the face of her laughter.
JII: You’ve got to imagine the veteran captain isn’t going to get himself distracted that easily.
TOUM: That might be why she’s targeting him, actually. Keeping things in good fun by making sure the jab is delivered to someone who can let things roll off their back.
JII: Can you imagine what would go down if she was talking shit to Ruhl’s face? I’m scared to, honestly.
TOUM: Well, good news for you: a distraction! Svensson has shaken Solara off his tail and met up with the referee and Mrii captain Joren Kreuger, readying for the coin toss.
JII: What do you call on a momentous occasion like this, Toum? Play it safe with heads, or go out on a limb and try your luck for tails?
TOUM: It’s a fucking coin flip, Jii.
JII: A coin flip the northeastern Atlantians have won! We’ll have to see how the Reaver midfield and defense holds up to the early pressure. Or perhaps a quick turnover will let Solara back up her words with kicks!
TOUM: I wouldn’t bet on that. Alexander Pearce runs a tight ship, and these are elite players--they’re not going to serve balls up on a silver platter like we saw throughout qualification.
JII: A salient point, as always. The teams have now taken their positions on the pitch, and the Vanquishers line up aggressively--Vega Zeale-Riddick and Romikk Valgard cut an imposing view...
NUMBER FOUR) MAAL MEMOIRS (SPORTS SECTION)
Mrii newspapers in general have been getting a bit rag-y lately, and even the Memoirs isn’t exempt from that--you’ll likely be embarrassed to be seen buying it with whatever is on the front page. But that doesn’t change the fact that Yon Kegant has done a wonderful job keeping the Sports section operating on a different level to the rest of the paper, both in keeping the grubby clickbait-wannabe marketers from invading his team and keeping the standard of reporting high with his own personal articles when he finds the time to follow the Reavers around. His very down-to-earth, by-the-facts writing style has been fairly called a bit dry by his critics, which does drag this ranking down a bit (alongside the aforementioned embarrassment factor)--but it also gets the job done with unparalleled efficiency, which is something I can greatly respect. Bite the bullet and flick a scale to your local newsie, and you’ll get everything you need to know for a game you couldn’t watch live.
Sports
It wasn’t because of the cuts.
Yon Kegant
Vorita, Free Republics
It’s fair to say I don’t really “get” the hubbub you’ll see in certain prominent footballing nations about cutting the team down to twenty-three players. Of course there’s going to be a cutoff somewhere for when you stop including players on the roster, but that so many seemed to fall on that specific arbitrary number befuddles me. There’s certainly no rule about it--Don Mizzet regularly pencils in twenty-five player rosters and the WCC hasn’t come after him for it yet, and I have to admit I’m a sucker for multiples of five. All that said, it’s a bit silly that people would actually pin a loss on the decision of who’s the twenty-second or -third person “on the plane”, as if that would change the average result of any game. These are all world-class players--if you can’t make something work with all that talent at your disposal, a +-2% edge isn’t going to magically turn things around.
It’s a lesson hard-learned for the Cosumarites--well, maybe it’s unfair to say that, as it’s a lesson they’ve been getting whipped by repeatedly in the past few years. They conjure up images of past nations that produced prolific, successful talent but couldn’t put the pieces together consistently at the national stage--Dainer and Falcus and the like. It’s true that Cosumar is a cut above those two, but their glass ceiling doesn’t rise that much further, and it’s for reasons that get displayed in games like the one Podvez Field. It really cannot be overstated how much more talented on the ball the Vanquishers are on average compared to the Reavers--if the game was just a match of dribbling it’d have been a slaughter in the other direction. But as it was, persistent breakdowns in communication among the Cosumarite midfield caused endless mischief. They came out with a plan Don himself has made liberal use of himself--push hard and early to put the game away before it starts. A great team will often morph into merely a good team when you pin them back right away, and from there it’s just a matter of cleaning up the scraps. It’s a good plan... but you know what they say about the best-laid plans of goats and bunnies.
There was a worrying sign of trouble right off the bat. Svennson’s very first touch of the ball was a standard forward pass shortly after the kickoff, but somehow there was nobody on the end of it. It wouldn’t come back to bite them--Serafino quickly noticed the gaffe and beat everyone else to the open ball, but it was curious moment why that was even necessary at all. What happened mere moments later stunned everyone watching--a standard turnover was followed by Malia just walking past Tidesson. This heavy-hooved, inelegant satyr--who’s had both of those traits reinforced in her A-League time--somehow ended up on the other side of the a young Galactico-winning superstar in the blink of an eye. However that happened, what was obvious is that the Cosumarites weren’t planning on it being that easy. Their formation shuddered as they tried to react, but it was all just a bit too slow… and they committed the cardinal sin of letting Solara run free. One smooth cross later and it was a three-minute lead.
That was only one goal, though, and early in the game--there was still a good seventy-five minutes to go, plenty of time for the Cosumarites to wake up. But it seemed they were set in their ways, attempting to shove the ball directly through the midfield and trying to jam it past the Reavers. Which is an… ambitious plan, trying to muscle your way through a swath of satyrs. When you have technical prodigies like Sibučić who would repeatedly cut up Hilda only to find no space because the rest of her team was clumped in the centre, it feels like something critical had been missed. And even beyond that, there was a continued theme of the Vanquishers being very slow to react--or rather, that they’d only react to what had last beaten them. After the first goal they remembered to precisely mark Solara at all times… only for Reina to strip VZR and just run and run and run. Perhaps Geraard & Uhlon have popularized the idea of the slow, lumbering ‘typical’ Mrii defender, but Reina most certainly has wheels. They certainly started respecting her, but only after they’d been burned as she linked up with Tali’raia just before the half...
NUMBER THREE) AROUNDTHEHORN.MRN
This is a folksy website that feels like it was designed a decade ago (I mean, it probably was). It really started to pick up steam in the past few years as it’s just about the only place that consistently produces coherent, comprehensive coverage of the MNL--including super-terse weekly write-ups for those of you that can’t get away from the office long enough to spare ninety uninterrupted minutes. And then there’s the fact that the blogger behind it cuts an interesting character. Their salt-dripped takes will swing wildly depending on which way the wind is blowing, and it’s fun to watch what random thing sets them off next. It’s fair to say they’re a bit of an unreliable narrator--not quite a crackpot, but if you’re after unbiased reporting this clearly isn’t the place.
aroundthehorn.mrn
HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE DID THE THING.
BY THE SEA WE BEAT A SECOND SEED IN THE WORLD CUP. I can’t believe it. I actually can’t believe it. This has been our white whale for the past three cups and not only did we overcome, we did it with room to spare. The Cosumarite juggernaut, rolling into the World Cup off a historic second half of qualifying, has fallen at the axes of the Reavers. The Vanquishers, Vanquished. A handful of Galacticos skewered on the horns of justice.
I don’t even know what I’m rambling about at this point, I’m just shaking. I was all ready to pull out the stock responses, “oh, we don’t have the ‘veteran presence’, that ‘killer instinct’ that separates the Winners from the Also-Rans.” What Electrum, Pasarga, even damn San Jose Guayabal had over us. But not Cosumar. Or maybe Cosumar had it but now we have it too?
Okay, okay, deep breaths. I don’t know who in their right mind wasn’t watching, especially after we were up two-oh at the half, but here’s a rundown of what I can piece together… the first half was honestly just a blur, but Solara’s second right as play resumed is crystal-clear. Hilda hadn’t done an awful lot other than shove people around to make space, but made herself heard with a booming, arcing pass that caught Solara on the sprint already scything deep into Cosumarite territory. She just had to jink past Svensson--and I swear I saw her blow a raspberry at him as she did--before smashing it past Na’Kefir. I don’t know about you, but I was just about catatonic at this point. Three-oh? Against COSUMAR??? A SECOND SEED IN THE WORLD CUP AND WE WERE WINNING???????
Like, I couldn’t even muster my “we’re still going find a way to screw this up!” because, like, come on. You really have to bollocks something up to throw away a three goal lead, doubly so in the second half alone. We might be chokers but we’re not that bad. And especially because, like… they kinda still just didn’t change anything? The didn’t come on until like 70 minutes! Clearly what you were doing was not working at all, why wait so long? It’s gotta be especially crushing to the Cosumarite fans, because Ruhl and Neptune immediately got shit done and scared us straight, made everyone remember that this was, in fact, a game of football. I don’t begrudge them that consolation goal at all, I’m just so glad there wasn’t another so I’d get a heart attack waiting for the ridiculous equalizer in the ninety-fourth minute.
Whew. Fuck. Let’s not fuck this one up this time, please? Pretty please?
NUMBER TWO) THE POST-MATCH INTERVIEW
Look, we all love Don here. We stuck with him when the internet turned after the Darmen draw last World Cup, the ridiculous five-all match that doomed us to a third straight group-stage exit. Because we know he’s smart, and clever, and funny. And you’d also know those things about him if you watched these interviews! The actual content of them can vary greatly, going from in-depth tactical discussion to sardonic jabs at critics, the press, internet trolls, the other team, our team, himself… anything, really. And we were so glad we got to see him keep doing those interviews all the way through the AOCAF, which probably ensures we’ll keep hearing from him for at least a few more cycles!
Don sighed, suddenly hit with an urge to sleep for three years. But there was no getting around it--even more grating than the probing questions after a hard loss, he’d have to deal with the insufferable expectations that comes with a huge win.
“So, we’re winning the whole tourney now, right?” asked one particularly oblivious reporter.
“What--no, what are you--” the dragon choked back another sigh and gave himself a split-second’s pause to reset--”I’m not going to count out any possibilities, but that’s patently getting ahead of ourselves. We still have a match against the defending champions, there’s absolutely nothing we can take for granted.”
“Do you think the Vanquishers will ever get their shit together?” asked one particularly ribald reporter.
“I want to say it’s a matter of when, and not if,” he gave a deep shrug, “but I’m starting to worry for them. The skill is there, obviously; you could even argue this is a golden generation for them. But they just can’t seem to leverage it when it matters most. To be fair, you could say the same of us, but we’ve only had one player to even get mentioned on the Galacticos long-list. Whether that’s a mark against Cosumar for not working with their gifts or a mark against those sportswriters for not valuing our players properly, only time will tell.”
“Do you think the post-qualifying friendlies with the Equestrians had any effect on the result?” asked one particularly observant reporter.
“I--er, hrm. I hadn’t considered that. It’s true both teams suffered a defeat in the Equestrian States, though I’d not normally chalk anything significant to non-tourney matches. I could see an argument that we were ‘hungrier’ or some such bollocks, as that was a rather unceremonious loss compared their closer 4-3 result. But that’s digging deep for a tenuous connection.”
“Do you think Baker Park’s lack of recognition from AOCI will be a morale hit when they play fellow Atlantian nations like Cosumar and ourselves?” asked one reporter digging deep for a tenuous connection.
“...alright, that’s enough questions for today.”
NUMBER ONE) US!
What were you expecting, c’mon.