Heard this in the latest episode of The Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast (which is consistently excellent, by the way) and loved it so much I transcribed it. Is it 2026 yet?

Hannah Moore (presenter):

Would you have expected [England] to have done better than that [in Group C]? Should they have been more exciting in the group stage?

Barney Ronay (The Guardian’s chief sports writer):

Well, maybe? But international football’s often like that. I think we’re slightly spoiled by the club game where you see these intensely regulated teams, the amount of briefing and data that these players absorb, they understand every situation they find themselves in.

And international football’s not like that, it’s about feelings. It’s about the emotion of the occasion. It probably doesn’t translate well to television. I have to say, in the stadium, the games here have felt really exciting. They’ve been huge events.

Because international football is basically like Christmas, it’s this kind of disorderly meal, and probably isn’t cooked that well. But it has a great kind of pageantry around it. And you could probably pick it apart, and say: “this turkey’s really dry,” and, “why aren’t the potatoes crispier?” But, you know, someone’s singing a song, and Grandma’s got a hat on, and the dog’s just pushed over the tree. That’s what international football is, so it’s this emotional thing.

That’s from about 11 minutes and 30 seconds in to the episode Euro 2024: is it coming home?. A little rambling (see above), but in a good way.

The Guardian: Beer ban is show of strength and an almighty two fingers up to Qatar’s critics:

The ink was barely dry on Qatar’s decision to ban alcohol from World Cup stadiums when an informed insider in Doha was asked why it was happening now, just 48 hours before the tournament’s big kick-off. His response was succinct. “It’s a deliberate fuck you to the west.”

Fuck us? No, Qatar. Fuck you.

First you stole the hosting rights with envelopes of cash, then you moved the tournament to November, then you screw up even the most rudimentary hosting requirements. (Hotel capacity? Really?) That’s not even to mention the human rights offenses or the brutal working conditions and high death toll on the people you’ve tricked into coming to build all the stadiums.

And why? Sportswashing, they say, but for what? Tourism? To make people think, hey Qatar, they’re okay, I guess? Well, congratulations, it’s completely backfiring. Now everyone knows how much your country sucks, and even rabid soccer fans are only coming to the tournament grudgingly. You might pay people (or not) to post nice things on Instagram, but nobody’s planning a trip to fucking Doha next year.

#fuq___Qatar #Qatar___suqs

P.S. To hell with FIFA, too, for letting this happen.

Reading this FiveThirtyEight article on the advancement (or lack thereof) of the women’s game (written prior to last night’s US-Thailand match), this caught my eye:

For Thailand, South Africa or Argentina, a win in the group stage — or even a goal or two — can help raise the profile of women’s soccer back home.

People rightly celebrated Argentina getting their first-ever World Cup point from their 0-0 draw with Japan. Hopefully that does raise the profile of the Argentine side back home.

But it also occurs to me that Thailand getting absolutely, completely, record-breakingly demolished by the US could serve to raise their profile, too, if in a different way. I don’t mean to claim the US purposefully hammered them for this reason; it’s certainly a silver-lining point of view. But just imagine what the heads of the Thai football association must be saying to each other today. Or even the heads of FIFA itself, as they prop up their feet on stacks of money and sip cocktails garnished with hundred-euro notes.

Maybe it’s something like: Ouch. What can we do to help keep that from happening again?

I don’t usually drink on Tuesday evenings, though then again I don’t usually start drinking at 2:30, even on weekends. But today was a special occasion - the official official announcement that Major League Soccer (MLS), the top soccer league in the country, is coming at last to my hometown of Austin, Texas. It’s been a long road, littered with the roadkill of multiple previous lower-league attempts (RIP, “Aztex”, a truly terrible name that we nevertheless supported wholeheartedly during its two brief incarnations). It was always clear that we wouldn’t get a top-flight team here until some rich person came to town and decided that’s what they wanted, and sure enough, here he is. It’s a couple more years until we’ll get to see them on the field, but that’s all right. I’ve been waiting, and I can keep waiting. I heard the league commissioner, the owner, and Austin’s mayor - plus gloriously ridiculous Alexi Lalas, as well – say this was going to happen, and though that doesn’t really seem like it could be real, it seems more like a dream or something I’d watch happen on a livestream from some other city, this swag on the table came from somewhere. I mean, someone was giving away Heineken (until thank god it ran out and they let us have non-MLS-sponsor but tastier beer, e.g., 512 Oatmeal Stout) all afternoon. So here’s to it actually, for real, can-you-believe-it happening. ⚽️

Nice story by Roger Bennett, of “Men In Blazers”: HELLO, WORLD - Soccer in the U.S. doesn’t need a team in the World Cup. It’s already here to stay:

So even without the Yanks in Russia, America will be watching. Yes, we will be deprived of giddy collective moments such as when Landon Donovan smote Algeria, but take it from me, an Englishman, whose team failed to qualify for two World Cups in my lifetime — in Argentina 1978 and in the United States in 1994 — that won’t ruin it at all. Those tournaments turned out to be the two most enjoyable World Cups of my youth. Being able to watch and savor without the impending failure of my team hanging over the whole thing was like being freed from a sporting Sword of Damocles.

This your permission note, then, to cut work for a month, America. Do what you do better than any nation in the world: Savor the circus. Slink out of your cubicles en masse. Day drink. Watch, revel and inhale the World Cup in its full glory. It is the world’s greatest telenovela, replete with Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, heroes, villains, echoes of wars past, dodgy haircuts and Fortnite goal celebrations. And it will be on televisions across our nation. Even in the rural bars of Maine.

Way ahead of you, Rog, on the cutting work for a month, but just as excited. Let’s go.

Another Brian Phillips Grantland post worth its weight in gold, Stop Making Sense. As always with Phillips' writing – and I never use words like “always” lightly – the whole thing is worth your time. But basking in the afterglow of the final, and turning a brave face to the next four bleak World-Cup-less years, the passage below sums it up perfectly (note that it was written on July 3, just before the quarterfinals; thus “Germany-France on Friday”, “next 10 days”, etc.).

Every World Cup does one thing better than any other event that human beings organize. It focuses the attention of the world on one place at one moment. Around a billion people watched at least part of the final in 2010; that’s several Super Bowls. When a game becomes so ubiquitous, it almost ceases to be entertainment and becomes something else, an atmospheric phenomenon, an object of astronomy. Will more people watch Germany-France on Friday or see the moon over France and Germany? Only the Olympics brings people together like this, and hey, due respect to the Olympics. But oh man is it ever not the same thing.

And this, even more than neuron-blowing games or unbelievable outcomes, is the magic of the World Cup. Over the next 10 days, a substantial portion of the living population of the Earth will have its feelings altered simultaneously by the actions of 22 men chasing a ball around a field in Brazil. Whether you watch alone or in a group or at a stadium, you will know that what you are seeing is being seen by hundreds of millions of people on every corner of the globe, and that your joy, despair, or disbelief is being echoed in incomprehensibly many consciousnesses. Is there anything more ridiculous than this? There is nothing more ridiculous than this, but it’s an extraordinary feeling, too. When something incredible happens — Messi curls a ball around three defenders; Zidane head-butts Materazzi — it’s not just an exciting moment. It’s a bright line connecting you with the human race.

People call soccer “the world’s game”, and it’s kind of a cliché, but it’s also pretty much actually true.

I read a (typically) great post by Brian Phillips on Grantland recently, a Brazil World Cup travelogue but with Brian’s (typical) brilliant outlook: Train in Vain. Lots of good stuff in there about the national character of the country, its history, and some of the problems faced there, in light of hosting the largest sporting spectacle in the world. I recommend reading the whole thing, but the following philosophical aside really struck me.

Think of it this way: Almost every other sport tries to be exciting by augmenting human capability in some way (football pads, baseball bats, tennis rackets) or at least by perfecting it (agile giants flying toward an NBA rim). Soccer diminishes capability. Instead of making athletes superhuman, it gives them an extra problem to contend with: no hands. When a soccer player scores, she’s overcoming not just her opponents but also the absurd demand of the game itself, which tells her to be agile and then takes away the tools of her agility.

If you think of it that way, can you understand the appeal that soccer has offered to billions of people? It exploded among the poor in so many colonized countries in part, of course, because it required so little equipment. But that can’t be the only reason. A soccer player is essentially belittled by the universe. But he outwits the universe. He grins at his ridiculous problem and overcomes it through grace and guile. Soccer is the beautiful game partly because it makes beauty seem so unlikely, seem virtually impossible, and then gives players just enough freedom to do something beautiful anyway. In its best moments — which don’t happen often, which don’t occur even in every match, and which are therefore to be savored — soccer is ballet breaking out of an enforced clumsiness.

We are now less than 50 days from the start of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, and I just finished what might be the perfect book to get ready for the big event: Soccer in Sun and Shadow, by Eduardo Galeano (published as Football in Sun and Shadow in the UK).

The introduction includes a truly great line, one of my favorites, which I’ve seen reproduced in several other soccer books. After feeling guilty for wanting to cheer for the star players of Peñarol (Uruguayan arch-rivals of his own beloved Nacional), Galeano writes:

Years have gone by and I've finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football. I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: 'A pretty move, for the love of God.'

And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.

The whole book is similarly lyrical and charming. The structure is kind of unusual; it’s a chronological collection of short vignettes, many less than a page. Some are philosophical ruminations on the modern game vs the good old days, some vivid sketches of glorious individual goals and players, and others fascinating time capsules of current events surrounding every World Cup, from 1930 through 2002.

An example:

The Cicada and the Ant

In 1992, the singing cicada defeated the worker ant 2-0.

Germany and Denmark faced each other in the final of the European Championship. The German players were raised on fasting, abstinence and hard work, the Danes on beer, women and naps in the sun. Denmark had lost out in the qualifiers and the players were on holiday when war intervened and they were called urgently to take Yugoslavia’s place in the tournament. They had no time for training nor any interest in it, and had to make do without Michael Laudrup, a brilliant, happy and sure-footed player who had just won the European Cup wearing a Barcelona shirt. The German team, on the other hand, came to the final with Matthaus, Klinsmann and all the stars. Germany who ought to have won, was defeated by Denmark, who had nothing to prove and played as if the field were a continuation of the beach.

It’s great stuff; I highly recommend it. Get a copy from your local bookstore or Half.com, or get the ebook from Amazon or Apple.

And get ready for June, when we’ll see new stories of victory and loss, glory and defeat. And some pretty moves, too, for the love of God.

Following are some assorted thoughts and observations. I also took some pictures; see them in this Flickr set (this stadium map will help orient specific locations).

• The number of people at the tailgate was phenomenal. The support they have already for this team is amazing.
  
  
• The new stadium is bigger and nicer than I expected. I really like it. It has an interesting design and a very comfortable feel.
  
  
• They sell beer at the stadium! This has come to feel like the holy grail of soccer games, at least to us in Austin, where games are played at a high school stadium where beer sales are prohibited. But here's the thing: it was all crappy mass-market stuff, Coors Light et al. I guess I've become a real beer snob, because although I drank it last night, it honestly made me wonder if that watery dreck is worth all the fuss.
  
  
• The supporters section was good, full and in full voice. They're led by not one, but two, capos, who worked tirelessly all night to keep the fans loud.
  
  
• One chant the supporters had was the "I believe... I believe that..." call and response. The chant ended sometimes with the "we will score" or the "we will win" that I've heard, but sometimes in just, "Scorpions!". Over-thinking this last had the three of us cracking up every time the "I believe in Scorpions" chant came along. Yes, we sure do believe in them, why wouldn't we, the existence of these arthropods has been conclusively proven, it doesn't take all that much faith. :-P
  
  
• My favorite chant was struck up during the introduction of the opposing players before the game: "You … may all … go to hell … I … will go … to TEXAS" (an homage, of course, to the famous Davy Crockett quote).
  
  
• For all the impressiveness of the supporters' presence, it cracked me up to overhear more than one person call them "booster clubs".
  
  
• What a great bargain these games are. Tickets start at $10, and parking is free. Even if you have a Miller Lite or four, that's still not too expensive.
  
  
• When you go, don't hit up the traditional concessions until after you head down to check out the row of food trucks behind the north stands.
  
  
• We couldn't cheer for him out loud, but it was good to see former Aztex fan favorite Jay Needham putting in his usual solid work in defense for the Rowdies.

Conclusion: two enthusiastic thumbs up for the Scorpions gameday experience. Aztex games at House Park are great, but I look forward to the day when we have this kind of environment here in Austin, too.

Here’s an idea for a site/app/whatever that, as a soccer fan, I’d love to have. I hereby release it to the world so that someone can build it for me.

The idea is simply a service to help you decide whether or not to watch games that you’ve DVR’d or which are being rebroadcast. You’ve stayed off Twitter to avoid knowing the score, which is great, but you’ve also avoided knowing whether the game is going to be any good.

The closest I’ve seen is the short-lived Redacted Match Reports on Howler Magazine’s blog. They only kept this up through the Euros last year, but here’s their description:

The idea is pretty simple: It’s tomorrow. You’ve recorded both matches—Greece vs. Poland and Russia vs Czech Republic. But when you get home, you only have time to watch one of the two. How do you choose? Bookmark [whatahowler.tumblr.com/redacted] and check it after the games have been played. We’ll give you all the information you need to decide which game to watch, with no scores or spoilers.

Though that was specific to picking which of two simultaneous games to watch, I think the use-cases is more broad. Take today, for example: Bayern vs. Arsenal in a second-leg UEFA Champions League game at 2:45PM (CT) could be awfully good. But there are also CONCACAF Champions League games tonight (Houston v Santos and LA v Herediano) that I’m interested in. Similar to how whichever checkout line you pick in a store is inevitably the slowest, I’m afraid that whichever game I decide to watch tonight will turn out to be the least exciting one.

Even if there weren’t any live games tonight, there’s still the question of whether I should spend two hours of my life (ok, more like 80 minutes with fast-forwarding) on that Bayern-Arsenal game.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of other people will have already seen it. They may not all agree, or be happy about the outcome, but there will surely be some consensus about whether it was a Good Game. Whether it was Worth Watching.

And that’s all I want to know. I don’t need the redacted details of Howler’s version (“XXXX leaves it until late in the second half”), just an indication of the quality of the game. It could be a simple scale: 1: don’t bother, 2: watch if you’ve nothing better to do, 3: DO NOT MISS.

Also unlike Howler’s curated version, this could be crowd-sourced. Apologies for the buzzword, but I think it’s a perfect application of a simple poll, like-button, hot-or-not kind of vote. Having a built-in audience to start with makes it an easy fit for existing sites like SBNation or BigSoccer, though it could be a standalone site, too (until SBNation buys it out; instant millionaire!).

Maybe my view of the market for such a thing is skewed by following European soccer, for which it’s common to want to watch a DVR’d or rebroadcasted match at home in the evening (US time) that took place five, six, seven hours prior across the Atlantic. It seems like fans of other sports would use something like this, but I just don’t know.

Anyway, there’s my idea, I give it to the world for free, all I ask is that someone build it so I can use it. Godspeed!

The first issue of the new, Kickstarter-funded Howler magazine arrived today. I love soccer writing, so I still look forward to reading the articles. But after flipping through this first, enormously formatted and overly designed monstrosity, I’m glad I only backed them at the “get one issue” level and not the “full subscription” level.

Maybe I’m just in a foul mood after watching Liverpool play well but lose YET AGAIN (3-2 at home to Udinese in Europa League), but this thing just isn’t my bag. A couple of quick examples of what’s put me off:

[caption id=“attachment_177” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] Like this sort-of, kind-of funny picture of Rooney and Kompany that’s part of the article title? Fooled you! It’s not part of the article! At all! It’s just a sort-of, kind-of funny picture, all by itself! The text to the left is the end of the article prior! No caption (just the title, “Gents”, and the artist), no accompaniment, no point. It’s Art, I guess! (Also, how about that giant red bar? A capital “I”? Maybe! A random red bar? Yes! Relation to anything at all? None!)[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_178” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] Know what this diagram of Bs, Ds, and Gs is meant to illustrate? Fooled you again, it’s not a diagram at all! It’s the title of an article! Called, “BDGB BDGB”, OBVIOUSLY! It’s about being a fan of Man U in the 70s, OBVIOUSLY! More Art, I guess! (Also, see the random circles and lines and colored bars and shadows sprinkled haphazardly all over? Still more Art, apparently!)[/caption]

Anyway, as I recall they did say in their Kickstarter promo, with all fair warning to me, that they would have “some of the most striking art and design you’ll find in any publication being made today”. And there are some neat graphics in here, certainly; some that even seem to serve a purpose beyond their creator showing off to other magazine/design people. And I am optimistic about the writing, but I’m disappointed overall. Best of luck to you, Howler, but I won’t be subscribing.

One thing I know for sure about being a fan is this: it is not a vicarious pleasure, despite all appearances to the contrary, and those who say that they would rather do than watch are missing the point. Football is a context where watching becomes doing . . . When there is some kind of triumph, the pleasure does not radiate from the players outwards until it reaches the likes of us at the back of the terraces in a pale and diminished form; our fun is not a watery version of the team’s fun, even though they are the ones that get to score the goals and climb the steps at Wembley to meet Princess Diana. The joy we feel on occasions like this is not a celebration of others’ good fortune, but a celebration of our own; and when there is a disastrous defeat the sorrow that engulfs us is, in effect, self-pity, and anyone who wishes to understand how football is consumed must realise this above all things.

The players are merely our representatives, chosen by the manager rather than elected by us, but our representatives nonetheless . . . I am a part of the club, just as the club is a part of me; and I say this fully aware that the club exploits me, disregards my views, and treats me shoddily on occasions, so my feeling of organic connection is not built on a muddle-headed and sentimental misunderstanding of how professional football works. This Wembley win belonged to me every bit as much as it belonged to Charlie Nicholas or George Graham . . . and I worked every bit as hard for it as they did. The only difference between me and them is that I have put in more hours, more years, more decades than them, and so had a better understanding of the afternoon, a sweeter appreciation of why the sun still shines when I remember it.

– Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby

I’ve long scoffed at people who recount their team’s exploits using the personal pronoun “we”. What’s this “we”? You’re not the person out there doing anything, you’re sitting in the stands, or more probably on your couch at home watching TV.

But in my more recent, soccer fanatic years, I’ve had the impulse to speak this way myself, though I’ve fought against it. After reading the excellent passage above, no more. “They” may not understand it, but it truly is “we”.

Odd coincidences: coming across this name-drop at roughly the same time that the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team won gold at the London Olympics.

At the time [1970], the club disapproved of perimeter advertising and pre-match DJs, and so we had neither; Chelsea fans may have been listening to the Beatles and the Stones, but at Highbury half-time entertainment was provided by the Metropolitan Police Band and their vocalist, Constable Alex Morgan. Constable Morgan (whose rank never changed throughout his long Highbury career) sang highlights from light operettas and Hollywood musicals: my programme for the Derby game says that he performed Lehár's 'Girls Were Made To Love and Kiss' that afternoon.

– Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby

This is a repost from “An Absolute Cracker”, a short-lived Tumblr of mine.

Most of the shots of the blue & yellow crowd at the Ukraine-Sweden game were totally baffling. Were they Ukraine fans? Sweden fans? I COULD NOT TELL. But this cute little Ukraine fan (and of course all the people cheering immediately after a goal) was the exception. Lots of people are loving his reaction – pure, unadulterated celebration – but the almost better part to me is the look right before, wide-eyed & expectant… This. This is what it’s all about.

This is a repost from “An Absolute Cracker”, a short-lived Tumblr of mine.

What a soccer day yesterday, with two big games. First – well, actually, first was the Championship promotion game between Blackpool and West Ham, which on most other days would be big, but yesterday it was little more than a footnote to my soccer day.

Anyway, first for real was the Champions League final. I was technically a neutral, but got pretty wound up in anti-Chelsea fervor during the run-up to the game. I really wanted Bayern to solidly beat Chelsea, if not outright humiliate them. Alas, it was not to be.

And then the second big game: the return to the field of my hometown team, the Austin Aztex. There’s a lot of history for me with the Aztex (a whole other blog’s worth), but bottom line, I was just pumped to go to a live game again, without having to road-trip to Houston, Dallas or San Antonio for the privilege.

It was fantastic. This new team is “just” PDL (amateur, mostly college guys playing over their summer breaks), and the competition is “just” other teams from around Texas (El Paso, Laredo, Midland, etc.). But even though it was supposed to be a lower level of play than the previous pro Aztex team – and maybe it was, it’s hard to compare after just one game – it didn’t matter a bit. It was a blast.

Winning 6-1 over a team that had 2 players ejected didn’t hurt the celebratory homecoming, either. :-)

Here’s the double-decker bus we rode from the Lion & Rose to the stadium, also a blast. Bonus that nobody was decapitated by power lines or tree branches.

So the day featured two games from the farthest extremes of world soccer. From some of the biggest names in the game playing on manicured grass in a packed Allianz Arena, to a bunch of amateurs playing on artificial turf in a 70-year old high school football stadium.

Some fans might find that swing, from the very pinnacle of the game to essentially the very base, too far to stomach. But I love it. Because across all the miles and characters and stories, it’s still the exact. Same. Game.

This is a repost from “An Absolute Cracker”, a short-lived Tumblr of mine.

I was excited to see that Fox’s own Jamie Trecker personally attended and then wrote about the women’s Champions League final today. Until I read it, that is. What an insulting, condescending turd.

Take the same piece and imagine it being written by some baseball or NFL journalist, attending the men’s final, then patronizingly patting everyone on the head for a nice little time with your little ball, but concluding with a sniff that their sport was still The Bestest. You’d have soccer fans everywhere up in arms. But somehow the so-called “senior editor” at Fox Soccer gets away with gems like the following:

While you might turn up your nose at the idea of seeing a women’s club match (as some of my fellow ink-stained wretches did when I mentioned it to them this morning)

No need to be apologetic about going to a world-class soccer game, bro. I’m sure they’ll still let you back into the clubhouse when you get back.

Before you ask, yes, it was a “real” soccer crowd

Again with the defensiveness. Not sure what else 50,000 fans would be. I guess he expected all soccer moms and little kids, plus players' families?

Now, let me be frank and say that the game would not have made you forget Manchester City.

Well that’s no shocker, since that Man City match was widely regarded as one of the most exciting games in modern Premier League history. And remember, nobody seems to think Saturday’s Champions League final will make me forget Man City, either, even though those players have boy parts instead of girl parts.

the only people who didn’t look like they enjoyed the atmosphere were the players – they looked very nervous in front of the wall of people . . . partly because the women usually play to pitiful, invisible crowds.

This was a bigger than usual crowd for them, okay, fair point. You don’t have to be quite that vicious about it, though. I mean, really: “pitiful” and “invisible”?

And even though the level of play isn’t that of the Premiership, Lyon wasn’t half bad. Still, the future of the sport is not feminine.

Whuh . . . WHAT? What. What the fuck is that? Ohhhhhh. Ah, yes. That’s a reference to ol' Sepp’s comment ("We have always believed that the future of football is feminine").

And there we have it: Trecker’s whole point in going, his whole point in writing about it. To refute year-old empty rhetoric from a corrupt old dickbag that nobody likes or even believes about anything, anyway.

Dear Jamie. The sport doesn’t have to be masculine or feminine. It can be both. There’s enough room for both! There are apparently 50,000 people who are into women’s soccer enough to attend that match just two days before the vaunted men’s final is held in that very same city. That fact will probably not hurt attendance on Saturday. It’s okay. Men’s soccer is not in danger, and you don’t need to defend it. And if you’re uncomfortable with or incapable of covering women’s games as, you know, actual games, then please don’t bother. Your contribution will not be missed.

The moral of the story: forget Trecker and Fox’s “coverage” of the women’s game, and just read Jenna Pel at Pro Soccer Talk. Instead of one token paragraph, you get a whole story about the actual game, with no gender agenda either way.