Ben Gill

Creative Director at Oxenfree Film & Motion

[MugFPL @PandaNoComply]

Respect

[Ben Gill @benjaminlgill]

@Meelsie143 @CrewCorridor

[Az. @__AAx98]

The best thing BBC have ever done. Still not sure how they’ve managed it.

[maya @mayaviatwitta]

we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.

That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.

FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.

US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.

So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.

Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.

Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.

They will not.

[Emmanuel Acho @EmmanuelAcho]

*Zlatan on Messi missing the PK*

“Everyone misses PK’s. I’ve missed PK’s, Thierry has missed PK’s… Alexi was never asked to take PK’s so he couldn’t miss…” 😬😬

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

Dance in the Country, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1883 (flipped)

[Diana Kristinne @DianaKristinne]

Life at 38, a summary:

[Ken LaVicka @KLVsays]

ooooooooof

[John Wicker Park @phonybone]

It’s anti art when your girlfriend goes to the bathroom during a movie you like and says you don’t have to pause it

[JPH @jessyjph]

Despite FIFA and the USA's best efforts, this is just simply the greatest sport in the world

[Alex Daugherty @AlexDaugherty1]

Do you think they ate at a Cracker Barrel

[MP𖤐 @MagicalPep]

🚨 Jamie Carragher Slams Arsenal After Final Defeat to PSG

🗣️: "That might be the worst performance I've ever seen in a Champions League final. Honestly, Arsenal played like Getafe for 120 minutes. Ninety minutes of sitting deep, thirty more minutes of sitting even deeper.

I kept waiting for them to show some ambition, some courage, but the plan seemed obvious: survive, survive, survive and hope David Raya wins the penalty shootout.

This is the Champions League final, not a relegation battle. You can't spend two hours defending your own box and expect people to praise it as tactical genius.

Mikel Arteta got it completely wrong. PSG looked like they wanted to win the trophy; Arsenal looked like they were trying not to lose it. If your entire game plan is to get to penalties because you've got a good goalkeeper, you've already handed control of the final to the opposition.

For me, that's one of the poorest final performances this competition has ever seen."

[U @UKIGFX]

Not for everyone.

[Todd. @Toddum_]

Here’s to one of the greatest to ever do it.
Mo Salah. The Egyptian King. 👑

[Men in Blazers @MenInBlazers]

Mo Salah leaves the Anfield pitch in tears as an iconic, trophy-laden Liverpool career comes to an end 👋

He won it all, and above all, restored a culture of glory to Liverpool. Long live the king 👑

[OptaJoe @OptaJoe]

93 - Mohamed Salah has assisted a goal for the 93rd time for Liverpool in the Premier League - now surpassing Steven Gerrard's 92 assists as the outright most for the Reds in the competition. Only.

[R E X @thatrexguy]

Even when he’s gone, I look forward to still hearing “Only Salah has more” every time a commentator reads a statistic. #LFC

[Gbemiga @Gbemiga__A]

Okay he seems to be having a lovely day

Make Arne Slot’s Liverpool have a game today

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???