Fulham vs Brentford: How a West London Derby Quietly Became the UN General Assembly of Football By Our Man in the Departure Lounge For those of you reading this in Singapore, São Paulo, or Saskatoon, permit a brief geography lesson: the distance between Fulham’s Craven Cottage and Brentford’s Gtech Community Stadium is roughly the same…
Valencia C. F. vs Athletic: A Cosmic Barometer for Civilization’s Slow-Motion Collapse By Dave’s far-flung correspondent, filing from a café whose Wi-Fi password is “apocalypse2024” On the surface, the Sunday night collision between Valencia C. F. and Athletic Club at Mestalla is merely another La Liga fixture—ninety minutes of choreographed panic, questionable haircuts, and VAR-induced…
From the banks of the Willamette to the war rooms of Davos, the planet pauses this weekend for a proxy battle that, on paper, is merely a college football game between Oregon State and the University of Oregon. In practice, it is a perfect Petri dish for every neurosis the 21st century has on offer:…
The Curious Case of Chris Robshaw: How a Nice Boy from Redhill Accidentally Became the World’s Most Polite Symbol of Imperial Decline By our Man in the Cheap Seats If you try to explain Chris Robshaw to a taxi driver in Lagos, a barista in Bogotá, or a goat herder in the Pamir Mountains, you’ll…
Rangers Score Today, Earth Still Spinning: A Dispatch From The Front Lines of Futility NEW YORK—Another day, another 3-2 victory for the New York Rangers, and somewhere a hedge-fund manager in Geneva just made or lost the GDP of Moldova on exactly how many seconds elapsed between the second and third goals. The puck crossed…
Casemiro: The Last Samurai of Global Football’s Endless Aisle By the time the ink dried on Casemiro’s 2022 transfer from the Bernabéu to Old Trafford—roughly the moment a Saudi prince sneezed and funded three other midfielders—planet Earth had already rotated 1,463 kilometres eastward. Somewhere in Lagos a generator coughed itself awake, in São Paulo a…
Riyadh’s Night of Living Brands Al-Nassr vs Al-Riyadh, 26 October 2024, Mrsool Park—kick-off just after the last private jet drops off another influencer who couldn’t point to Saudi Arabia on a map but can pronounce “Ronaldo” in seven accents. The fixture itself is, on paper, a mismatch: Al-Nassr, the galaxy-branded superclub with CR7 as its…
Cade Klubnik, quarterback savior of the Clemson Tigers, woke up last Saturday on a continent that still thinks a “tight end” is an unfortunate consequence of yoga class. Yet by nightfall, his 38-35 overtime escape against Notre Dame had ricocheted through encrypted group chats from Singapore to São Paulo, proving once again that American college…
The United Nations has managed climate summits, pandemic treaties, and the occasional fistfight between diplomats, but nothing quite prepared the global commentariat for the moment a 20-year-old Slovenian named Benjamin Šeško became the most valuable Balkan export since cheap weekend breaks to the Dalmatian coast. In the grand tradition of football turning obscure Eastern European…
RIYADH — The desert air crackled with all the manufactured drama of a Netflix trailer last night as Al-Nassr and Al-Riyadh locked horns in what the league’s marketing department has optimistically labeled “The Capital Clásico.” That descriptor, like most things in modern football, is 30 percent history and 70 percent scented candle: a gentle lavender…
Bruno Fernandes: The Last Romantic in a World of Spreadsheet Football Somewhere between the ruins of Old Trafford’s fading empire and the fluorescent glow of Premier League accounting departments, Bruno Fernandes has become the last man alive who still believes football is meant to be played with a bleeding heart rather than a balance sheet….
Cole Palmer: The Quiet English Kid Quietly Reshaping Global Football’s Hierarchy By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between a damp Tuesday in Manchester and a sun-baked Champions League night LONDON — The world’s supply chains are sputtering, glaciers are auditioning for puddles, and democracy is locked in a never-ending group chat with itself, yet the planet’s…
