Soccer Archives

Monday

April 19, 2021

Why the European Super League is a really bad idea

Billionaire soccer club owners are being accused of self-interest and greed — and I for one am shocked. News of the proposed European Super League stunned sports fans worldwide this weekend. Twelve of Europe’s most historically successful clubs are proposing the formation of a 20-team league to become the new top tier of European competition, superseding the UEFA Champions League and Europa League. The ‘founding members’ of the ESL cannot be relegated — which the British press has dubbed an ‘NFL model’. That doesn’t seem like a fair comparison — the NFL is much more egalitarian. The American sports leagues may not have relegation, but they do operate a draft system which helps keep the rosters even over a 15-year period.

Tuesday

October 6, 2020

Rod Liddle

Britain clambers aboard the BLM bandwagon

Middlesbrough, United Kingdom Gareth Southgate, the unctuous, horse-faced manager of the England soccer team, insisted that his players take the knee before their game against Denmark in the Nations League last month. They were at it before the match against Iceland, too, and the Icelanders joined in, bless them, despite the fact that there is only one black person in all of Iceland and he probably ended up there by mistake. It was important, Southgate ventured, to show support for Black Lives Matter. And so down they all went, as Portland burned and the looters, bullies, thugs and professional agitators ran amok across the US.

Thursday

June 13, 2019

Matt McDonald

In America, we have no sense of a soccer scandal

Did you hear how the US women’s national team plunged to scandalous depths this week? The most successful outfit in the history of women’s soccer disgraced the nation by...celebrating the goals they scored in the opening game of the Women’s World Cup. A 13-0 victory against tournament minnows Thailand is hardly the most captivating way to suck the Twittersphere into caring about one of America’s best teams: of course a closer game would make for a more exciting watch. So the broadcasters and American media plumped for a different approach to stirring up interest: by fabricating a controversy. ‘Zero problem with the score line as this is THE tournament BUT celebrating goals (like #9) leaves a sour taste in my mouth like many of you.

Tuesday

April 9, 2019

Dominic Green

The Young Pope and the old game

The vision of Jude Law filming The New Pope at the beach has been acclaimed as a miracle — the washboard abs, the white trunks sticking closer than the Swiss Guard. As followers of the heretical TV series will know, the first series of The Young Pope featured another sporting vision, nuns playing soccer in slow motion. The soccer theme, if not the sporting nuns and the sex scene, is believed to derive from the real Pope Francis’s enthusiasm for the ‘beautiful game’. Any soccer fan wishing to understand the nature of faith will understand what Francis, a juvenile goalkeeper and fan of Argentinian league side San Lorenzo, sacrificed when, in 1990, he forswore watching soccer on television.