Thursday cannon fodder: SIMS traffic jam

England

Chelsea want to sell Kepa Arrizabalaga
Wouldn’t you want to sell him too? The Spanish keeper, 25, hasn’t worked out at all — he’s been dreadful. The $90M Chelsea paid is looking like a massive waste of money.

West Ham fan banned for wearing shirt protesting the board
The Guardian kind of buried the lede here. The guy was a volunteer flag waver working for the club and unzipped his jacket to reveal his shirt before the match. All for protesting bad ownership. Just maybe don’t do it while you’re working for the team. The fan is not allowed to attend matches for the rest of the season.

MLS

FC Cincinnati sign Jurgen Locadia
Brighton & Hove Albion’s once record signing has struggled to score goals in England. He was having a decent season on-loan to Hoffenheim.

Konrad de la Fuente trains with Barcelona first team
The 18-year old spent the fall playing for Barca’s youth side and has played three matches with Barcelona B. He has played in the US youth system but has not played at the senior level internationally.

NYRB hire David Thelwell as head of sport
While it’s structurally clear where he fits into the hierarchy, under the GM and above the sporting director, how that plays out and what, specifically, Thelwell will do at the club remains to be seen.

Sounders sign João Paulo as a Designated Player
The 28-year-old midfielder has spent his professional career in Brazil, the last three seasons with Botafogo.

Sounders sign defender Yeimar Gomez
It’s been a busy week in Seattle, apparently. Gomez joins from Union de Santa Fe in Argentina.

Other Sports

The XFL starts this weekend
The article linked is a list of who and how to watch. The league features a number of former NFL players, college stars, and familiar names on coaching staffs. They’ve also changed a number of rules to try to make football more exciting.

Simone Biles is awesome
Need I say more? She is Jordan, Woods, Federer, Gretzky, Messi level. SBNation’s Natalie Weiner wrote about how Biles keeps raising the bar in a sport that has “failed her.”

Katie Sowers is also awesome
The 49ers offensive assistant and first woman to coach in a Super Bowl urged fans to be kind and to remember that her players are human in the aftermath and reactions to their loss on Sunday.

The connection between the naming of the new Seattle NHL team and a romance writer
It hasn’t been announced yet, although there were rumors that it’s going to be the Krakens. The Athletic (paywalled) looked into a romance novelist who has trademarked the name Seattle Sockeyes for her books. She’s not preventing the team from using the name, but is getting hate mail/message as if she were.

Tokyo Olympics ‘seriously concerned’ by coronavirus
Qualifying events have already been affected, and the Olympics seem to be more concerned about the psychological effects of having a contagious virus spreading around the region rather than with the actual virus getting into Japan and spreading to fans and athletes.

Bill Belichick joins Rob Gronkowski partying it up
That Gronk was having a great time in Miami for Super Bowl week is not surprising. Not sure many people expected Bill Belichick to join him at the beach parties.

Other Stuff

Man creates traffic jams by pulling phones around
The artist put 99 phones in a wagon and pulled them down the streets. Google Maps read that as traffic jams, showed it on the map, and suggested routes around. It’s funny but also disconcerting — a sentence that applies to oh so many things these days.

The Sims turned 20 this week
It’s one of the most successful gaming franchises ever. I played it years ago. Did you?