phantom points
“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 date...
sixty years and 24 hours later
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 be...
the opener
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...
shades of south africa
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 story...
fubu (bring the boys back home)
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 story.
Now...
two sides of the mexican pipeline
After hearing from a few people about the poor sound quality of the interviews on last week’s Waiting For Gaetjens podcast (sorry about that), I figured I’d transcribe the two interviews and post them here. I normally wouldn’t do this–I hate the whole, I write the same thing that I Twitter that I podcast that...
vietnam star or league minimum
Did I just learn why the negotiations over the collective bargaining agreement are so contentious? Did I find out just how disrespected the Vietnam league is? Or did I discover that MLS doesn’t think he’s worth it? There is plenty to learn from the professional path taken by Lee Nguyen, but at present, all I...
fifa & the year of african football
Do FIFA and its international tournaments really make a difference for the countries that host them? Could they? Should they? And what responsibility must the host country take on? What if instead of leftover stadiums host nations received fully integrated, brand new transportation systems? Will that be what South Africa reaps beyond profits for...
vietnam superstar
QUICK PROGRAMMING NOTES:
TIAS, Du Nord, The Original Winger, Soccer By Ives, and The Offside Rules will be hosting a party Friday night 9pm in downtown Seattle at Kell’s Irish Pub (FYI - bar charges $5 cover, which is not going to us). It’s a true soccer bar I’m told, should be a good time. Won’t...
just get real and do it
Want improvement? A century ago as America’s eastern cities overpopulated it was, “Go west, young man.” For soccer a century later the trumpet sounds the same. Only going west means tracking back to the previous western frontier. In mainland Europe. Or at least that’s what Simon Kuper believes and writes in his and economist Stefan...
a life toward soccer, part 2
Los Angeles artist Noe Valladolid continues his illustrated soccer biography
The TIAS Diary Project returns with the 2nd part of a series put together by a young man in Southern California. This is his life’s story, his soccer story in words and pictures. Consider it a stab at a TIAS graphic novel.
For the first installment, I...
