Siberian
Registered User
I was reading this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/3731594.stm and I thought wow, Wayne Rooney, the hottest commodity in the football (ok, americans call it soccer) is going to go to Azerbaijan to play for team England. So Manchester United lets him go and play against these guys? What about the money they spent on him and the money they can potentially make with Rooney in the line-up? What if one of the crazy Azerbaijani decided to take a good kick on Rooney's knee and end his career? How ugly would that be? But then I thought I must have followed NHL and other North American leagues too much because in Europe they do not bother too much with questions like that.
Yes, all professional North American leagues have great athletes but the leagues kill players spirit to play the game just for the sake of it. Seeing Rooney playing for England against Azerbaijan is more probable than seeing Fedorov playing for team Russia against Austria where Rooney is already 10 times the star Fedorov is and hockey Austria is 10 times better than football Azerbaijan.
Now we even are not sure if we will see the best hockey players in the Olympics and it is all because of the league that only cares about itself. NHL is killing international hockey.
Yes, all professional North American leagues have great athletes but the leagues kill players spirit to play the game just for the sake of it. Seeing Rooney playing for England against Azerbaijan is more probable than seeing Fedorov playing for team Russia against Austria where Rooney is already 10 times the star Fedorov is and hockey Austria is 10 times better than football Azerbaijan.
Now we even are not sure if we will see the best hockey players in the Olympics and it is all because of the league that only cares about itself. NHL is killing international hockey.