Jason

[LK. @LKCOYB]

Title talk is tapped.

But when you’ve won a league from 10th, won a CL vs Bayern in their stadium, beat Pep’s Barca with 10 men, smoked PSG 3-0 etc, delusion is expected.

Chels thing. Opps wouldn’t get it…

[shafman 🇵🇸🇸🇩 @yaron__zango]

nothing said here considers poor and middle class people.

he’s talking to himself and his rich friends

[Alhaji Bauer @aFb0rda_]

Gaming has never been boring as an adult. You people for dawg the FIFA small. Go on a quest.

-Ghost of Tsushima
-Horizon Zero Dawn
-Far Cry
-Ghost Recon
-Uncharted
-COD

I bed like 2.30am last night. 20-30 mins each. When it gets tough, dawg den play another game. Repeat.

[Alfred @CallmeAlfredo]

$200 million sunk into a project that never delivered a single habitable home. Charges against the former minister for causing financial loss to the state, dropped.

GH¢90 million in financial loss found in the MASLOC case. Someone who ran from justice, was tried in absentia and sentenced, has come home, and now walks out acquitted.

Two cases. Significant public money gone. The state running Operation Recover All Loot has recovered nothing from either.

The message to those currently facing prosecution for causing financial loss is clear. Hold the line. Wait for the calendar. Wait for the next turnover.

The message to current and future looters is louder. Take as much as you can. Even if your party loses power, even if you are charged and sentenced, you only have to outlast one election cycle.

No deterrence. No prevention. Just a queue of cases waiting for the political weather to change.

Ghana akyi gu hɔ

[OWURA! @kwaku_MB]

This month has been such a financial disasterclass! Herh. Sight of my bank app sef dey make I sad.

[Scott Geelan @Scott_Geelan]

Ghana’s best RB in my lifetime & was perfect for international football. Cracking delivery from wide, progressive, two-footed, unselfish off-ball, ran all day, defensively savvy. His impact in each third yet to be properly replaced on Ghana’s right flank.

[Kojoo_kay @kojoo_kay]

It’s Saturday and I have time so my thoughts on this sanitation discourse.

The average Ghanaian citizen isn’t aware there is a social contract. Our thinking on issues that affect us but are issues the government should fix has made me realise that we have low expectations, the years of governmental neglect have become like the weather and because we can’t fix it, we adjust to it. On the other hand, it’s easy to reach out and call out citizen behaviour so we channel all our moral energy there.
We have also substituted power for moralism because that’s the only power the average citizen has. They can’t cancel a contract, audit DA’s or even force them to desilt their gutters.

[Erling Haaland @Erling]

Well well well 😂

[Enoch Δ @agyeitah]

Totally missed your response.

But this isn’t about pride, @garyalsmith. It’s about false narratives being given the time of day.

Underdogs lose leads to favourites. Everywhere. In every confederation.

When Japan lost a 2–0 lead to Belgium, people praised Belgium, gave Japan some slack and moved on. Nobody indicted Asian football.

Croatia scored first and lost yesterday.

It’s football.

But I find the way you build this supposed 30-year pattern strange.

Your most obvious pull was Nigeria in 1994. So I went back and checked the actual data.

All of it.

Since 1970, African teams have taken the lead in 79 World Cup matches.

They won 44, drew 21 and lost 14.

That means African teams avoided defeat 82.3% of the time after taking the lead.

Even in this tournament, the full picture is different from the story being told.

Yes, Côte d’Ivoire led and lost to Germany. DR Congo led and lost to England. Senegal led and lost to Belgium.

But Morocco led and drew with Brazil.

Egypt led and drew with Belgium and Iran.

Cape Verde led and drew with Uruguay.

Algeria led and drew with Austria.

South Africa led and beat South Korea.

Côte d’Ivoire led and won two games.

Egypt led and beat New Zealand.

Senegal led and beat Iraq.

Ghana led and beat Panama.

Algeria led and beat Jordan.

So African teams have led 15 times in this tournament: 7 wins, 5 draws and 3 losses.

That is not a continental pathology.

That is football.

And if this were an African problem, Africa should at least be uniquely bad at it.

We aren’t.

From 1970 to 2022, African teams lost 17.2% of World Cup matches after taking the lead.

AFC teams lost 20%.

CONCACAF teams lost 23.4%.

Even if we start from 1994, your 30-year window, it is CAF 16.4%, AFC 20% and CONCACAF 22.9%.

So where exactly is this unmistakable African pattern?

You have built a continental theory from a few painful games spread across decades.

To do that, you have to ignore Algeria holding against West Germany in ’82.

Cameroon repeatedly holding in ’90.

Nigeria seeing off Spain in ’98.

Ghana killing games in ’06.

And just four years ago, African teams led nine times at the 2022 World Cup and didn’t lose once.

Cameroon held against Brazil.

Tunisia held against France.

Morocco held against Belgium, Canada and Portugal.

That was four years ago. Not 30.

And before someone says these numbers are inflated by games against weaker opposition, let’s narrow the sample further.

Let’s look only at games where African teams took the lead against European and South American opposition.

Since 1970, it has happened 53 times.

African teams won 27.

Drew 14.

Lost 12.

That is a 77.4% non-loss rate after taking the lead against the two historically strongest footballing regions in the world.

So what you have identified is not a pattern.

It is a highlight reel of pain with the denominator deleted.

Yes, the collapses were real. Senegal’s was bad. DR Congo’s was bad. Côte d’Ivoire’s was bad.

But Japan’s against Belgium was bad too.

Croatia scored first and lost.

Spain’s collapse against Nigeria in 1998 was spectacular.

The difference is that those failures were attributed to the people who actually oversaw them: the players, the coach, the team.

Nobody said, “Croatia blew a lead, so Europeans lack concentration.”

Nobody built an Asian theory from Japan doing it more than once.

As for the coaches you cite, Thiaw was diagnosing Senegal’s game management.

That was his team in a game his team blew.

Senegal is a team.

Africa is a continent.

A coach owning his own failure is accountability. Stretching it into a verdict on 54 countries is your addition, not his.

And that is my pushback.

You may be coming from a place of good intentions. But Africa, and I must say this to you as an African, is diverse.

Sometimes coaches make bad decisions. Sometimes players panic. Sometimes underdogs sit too deep. Sometimes the better team comes back.

Sometimes a team just blows a lead.

[shafman 🇵🇸🇸🇩 @yaron__zango]

the kenyan proverb is fitting here: “let the young man in his desperation go out to hunt. if he kills an elephant, his poverty ends. If the elephant kills him, his poverty ends.”

[jylfeng @jylfeng]

Attack on Wemby FULL SERIES

[Josh Hart @joshhart]

ASSENAL!!!!!

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Come and visit London’s Home of Trophies. 🏆

Book your Stadium Tour at Stamford Bridge now. ⭐️⭐Come and visit London’s Home of Trophies. 🏆

Book your Stadium Tour at Stamford Bridge now. ⭐️⭐Come and visit London’s Home of Trophies. 🏆

Book your Stadium Tour at Stamford Bridge now. ⭐️⭐Come and visit London’s Home of Trophies. 🏆

Book your Stadium Tour at Stamford Bridge now. ⭐️⭐Come and visit London’s Home of Trophies. 🏆

Book your Stadium Tour at Stamford Bridge now. ⭐️⭐Come and visit London’s Home of Trophies. 🏆

Book your Stadium Tour at Stamford Bridge now. ⭐️⭐️

[Josh Hart @joshhart]

You couldn’t teach the type of Hate Watch I’m on today

[Arron Automata 🤖 @Arron_TK]

He just booted up the game after a long day at work, give him a 20gb update.

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🚨 Michael Jackson will be Burnley’s interim manager until the end of the season, club statement confirms.

Follows Scott Parker leaving with immediate effect.

[Jena💗 @debzzzyy]

saint jhn was so goated

[CEDRIC @M00NC4KE_]

there is an anime series whose entire premise is loosely based on this question

[jerome @readJerome]

The funny thing about this man’s media campaign prior to this happening is that it made me even more likely to believe whatever he’s been accused of.