Been on vacation then away for Labor Day weekend.  Finally caught up with all the work.  Have not been reading and watching the news carefully in these past couple of weeks.  But it is obvious the ISIS and Ukraine situations are getting worse.  There are no good solutions out there.  So I don't blame Obama for not coming up with any great plans.  But I think he has made a lot of mistake in at least public perceptions.  For example, going golfing after the conference about Foley's beheading.  Also having leaked that the administration have no plan yet against ISIS was politically inept.  When there are no good solutions, at least act and talk tough but offer no specifics that can come back to haunt you, such as Assad's use of chemical weapons as the red line.  Look, nobody wants to send troops to Iraq and Ukraine.  So none of the hawks have a legitimate idea either.  For now, continue air power and send weapons.

Nishikori vs Cilic?  Whoever made a bet on this daily double can plan for retirement.  Or he may be investigated for blackmailing Djokovic and Federer.

Can the Big Ten play any worse?

This is the last blog regarding the World Cup 2014 unless something extremely crazy happens.  At this point, any one of the final four winning the Cup would not be shocking.  I will still go with Brazil to win it all even though they won't have Neymar and Thiago Silva.  On paper Germany is now a slight favorite but I think this may actually be advantage to Brazil.  There is still great pressure but instead of being heavy favorite they are a slight underdog.  They may play with a chip on their shoulder instead of a heavy burden.  And teams like Colombia, Costa Rica and France have lost top players and have played well.  Given the depth of the Brazilian team, they should be able to weathered the losses better than those teams.  So I will go with Brazil but as I said before, all four remaining teams can win it all.

There seems to be a lot more parity in this World Cup with the CONCACAF and African teams doing better than expected.  But I don't agree with those who think that the U.S. are close to winning the cup.  The U.S. has the best goalie in the world and we always produce great goalies.  We have speed and athleticism.  But our skill level are nowhere near the top teams.  We lost in possession in every game and the discrepancy in possession and shots in the Belgium game only points to our lack of world class skills.  The gap will not be closed completely in 4 or even 8 years.  Only Bradley and Dempsey can start on most teams in the world.  We have 5 Germans on the team and except for Green, Germany have no interest in them.  So unless we get athletes like Lebron James and Kobe Bryant to play soccer and we get a grass root system like they have in European countries, we have a long way to go before we can win the cup.  Sure, we can beat one of final four team on a given day, but to win four knockout round against the best teams, we can't do it in the near future.

My prediction of Roger Federer winiing Wimbledon almost came true.  He played a great tournament but unfortunately father time wins again.  I think this is his last chance to win another major.  I expect that Nadal will pass him in major titles.  Is he the greatest ever?  Given that he has a losing record against Nadal, even though Nadal was rising as Federer started to decline, it is hard to say that Federer is better than Nadal.  But I think Federer is still the best all around player, being in the top 3 of all time on clay, grass and hard courts.  This is something I don't think any other player can claim.