a giveaway, a tackle, a hug, another four years—-
Was it just a hug or something more? And what can we all learn from that most intimate moment filmed for millions to see? Penn State writing teacher Casey Wiley looks for long-term meaning in an emotional moment as he wraps up the fan’s four-year cycle…...
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a life toward soccer, pt 4
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The TIAS Diary Project continues with the 4th part of a series put together by Los Angeles artist Noe Valladolid. This is his life story, his soccer story in words and pictures. For the first installment, I referred to it as a stab ...
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a life toward soccer, pt 3
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The TIAS Diary Project continues with the 3rd part of a series put together by Los Angeles artist Noe Valladolid. This is his life story, his soccer story in words and pictures. For the first installment, I referred to it as a stab at a TIAS...
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Hating On Kickers: One Fan - Two Sports
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The TIAS Diary Project returns with an essay that hits close to home for me. Home–I should say head, as it was my head and long hair the American football coaches at my high school would grab during gym class when they called me a pussy, called...
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“Pity comes too late, turn around and face your fate: An eternity of this before your eyes!”
Last Saturday’s draw felt like a win. Yesterday’s felt like a loss, which isn’t to take anything away from the unbelievable comeback orchestrated by the USMNT against Slovenia.
It’s just to say that when, after a wonderful date, a...
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I think even less than 24 hours after the game, you’ve read enough about USMNT v England. And really, if you’re reading this website, you don’t need someone else to tell you what you saw.
So simply here to help take you there…
Overheard in Rustenburg… “Don’t call it a comeback. Or a miracle. And don’t...
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caught in the grip of the (soccer) city madness
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A new Azteca. That’s what it felt like–the beehive atmosphere, the passion, the patriotism–albeit without the built-in American worry of being drenched with beer and who knows w...
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The TIAS Diary Project returns.
While mainstream America media fawns over the game for the next month (not that there is anything wrong with that), I thought it important to return to the people who are always there, no matter no four-year cycle.
First up teenager Shaj Mathew, who found himself not so much questioning his...
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this is all five parts of the story.
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Sacha Kljestan throws up his hands. He did his best and doesn’t know what else to do. Maybe it’s time to quit. He’s thought about it before. One guy can only do so much. So many factors go into success or create failure. The...
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This is part 5. Here is part 4. Here is part 3. Here is part 2. Here is part 1.
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Sacha is in line for a spot in the American midfield, but where exactly he stands only Bob Bradley knows. The American coach deals in elusive simplicity, which he projects to the media and, sometimes...
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This is part 4. Here is part 3. Here is part 2. Here is part 1.
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The dream team. Not The Dream Team. The Hulking NBA players walked next to the soccer team at the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Oylmpics, but for an U-23 American soccer team, this was the best yet....
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This is part 3. Here is part 2. Here is part 1.
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Sacha played every minute of every game his freshman year as an attacking central midfielder. He finished second on the team in points, with 6 assists and 4 goals and was just one of three freshman to earn all-conference honors in the...
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This is Part 2 - Here is Part 1.
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He is Sacha’s father. He was his first coach. He taught his boys to play soccer a certain way. He battled to become an American citizen, lost his mother in war, and damned if he isn’t going to have his say. With carpenter hands, a bartender’s...
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Sacha Kljestan throws up his hands. He did his best and doesn’t know what else to do. Maybe it’s time to quit. He’s thought about it before. One guy can only do so much. So many factors go into success or create failure. The opponent is only of them.
Sacha sizes up his pre-teen cousin...
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Filip Bondy’s new book on the USMNT will get better with age
I almost put it down after the forward. In his 300-page book Chasing The Game (out now from De Capa Press), which interlaces player profiles and men’s national team history with expanded game reports from the recently completed World Cup Qualifying cycle,...
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TEN DAYS IN JOHANNESBURG: SPECTACLE v REALITY
Foreign children run amok in the tiny square that sits out front of my hotel, ringed with upscale restaurants and shops, and within the security gates that make the Truman Show-ed blocks of the artificially perverse Melrose Arch in Johannesburg safe for such shenanigans. Outside the gates, the...
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the TIAS Diary Project continues with a personal essay on the meaning of soccer
I’m off to South Africa for a week. While I’m traveling, enjoy this latest entry to the TIAS Diary Project. Read past contributions to the project; send your personal stories and photos to thisisamericansoccer@gmail.com for inclusion in the readers’ project now...
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greenwich village resident outlines a major league vision for manhattan’s pier 40In just ten days, the brand new and beautiful Red Bull Arena will finally open to soccer fans with a sold-out exhibition between Red Bull New York and Brazil’s famed Santos football club. New Yorkers will hop on the PATH train and in...
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In the last few years, I’ve spoken with Frank Dell’apa, Ray Hudson, Grant Wahl, Ives Galarcep, Jack Bell, Bruce McGuire, Jeff Carlisle, Buzz Carrick, Mitch Peacock, Robert Abramowitz, Beau Dure, and others, but it’s been a while since I sat down with one of the flashlight bearers in this little wilderness to get their...
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AMERICAN SOCCER MEDIA LANDSCAPE NEEDS TO GET BEYOND THE BLOG
Ives Galarcep moved to Fox Soccer. MLS hired my Waiting For Gaetjens co-host Greg Lalas and Sports Illustrated’s Jonah Freedman to run MLSnet 2.0. Jose Romero left the Sounders beat at the Seattle Times. Glenn Davis got laid off from the Houston Chronicle. Dirty Tackle...
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