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Category Archives: Soccer
Heading a Soccer Ball Hurts
I enjoy playing sports but I’ve never been any good. When we picked teams in grade school, I was usually among the last people selected. A man’s got to know his limitations. When I got coached up, I could be … Continue reading
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NYT: ‘Why Does No One Care About the World Cup This Year?’
David Wallace-Wells writes: What is more striking to me is the muted interest of the rest of the world, which every four years for decades seemed almost to pause for a month to engage in a truly global but appealingly … Continue reading
Posted in Buffered, Nationalism, Porous, Soccer
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The Premier League and the Making of a Global Football Public in the United States
Over the past decade, the English Premier League has become a fixture of American life. In the early 1990s English football sat at the margin of American attention. Beyond immigrant communities, a small core of soccer devotees, and a scattering … Continue reading
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Orthodox Boys & The Champions League Final
Around Los Angeles this morning, hundreds of Orthodox boys had one priority — getting the score of the Champions League final from the gentile security guard. I’m used to boys wanting the Dodger score and the Lakers score, but the … Continue reading
Decoding Pep Guardiola
ChatGPT says: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, according to Alliance Theory, is best understood as an alliance engineer who mastered legitimacy before dominance. His genius is not tactics alone. It is coalition construction inside elite football. Start with Barcelona. Guardiola … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Soccer
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Is Soccer Boring?
Not to me. Here are some comments on Steve Sailer’s site: * Messi and the Argentine team had felt disrespected by Van Gaal and the Dutch team’s attitude and comments before the game, and especially by the latter’s height-ist style … Continue reading
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Football in Sun and Shadow: An Emotional History of World Cup Football
From this classic work: How is football like God? Each inspires devotion among believers and distrust among intellectuals. In 1902 in London, Rudyard Kipling made fun of football and those who contented their souls with ‘the muddied oafs at the … Continue reading
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The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer
Here are some highlights from this 2008 book by David Goldblatt: * The British historian Eric Hobsbawm encapsulated this oddity when he wrote ‘The twentieth century was the American century in every way but one: sport.’ This is not exactly … Continue reading
The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning And Making Of English Football
Here are some highlights from this 2015 book by David Goldblatt: * Sir Richard Turnbull, the penultimate governor of Aden, told Denis Healey, then Britain’s defense secretary, that, “When the British Empire finally sank beneath the waves of history, it … Continue reading
The Barcelona Complex: Lionel Messi and the Making–and Unmaking–of the World’s Greatest Soccer Club
Simon Kuper writes in this 2021 book: * By 1970, they had developed a revolutionary new brand of football, one that would help shape the sport for the next fifty years, especially in the Netherlands and Barcelona. Ajax people didn’t … Continue reading