England vs South Africa: Two Nations, One Cricket Match, and the Illusion of Global Significance By Our Correspondent Who’s Learned to Love the Absurd London—For 48 hours this weekend, the planet’s most urgent diplomatic crisis is not Ukraine, Gaza, or the slow-motion implosion of the Antarctic ice shelf, but whether a red leather sphere can…
NFL 2025 Schedule: The Empire’s 272-Game Roadshow Rolls On, and the Rest of the World Pretends Not to Watch By the time the NFL unveiled its 2025 regular-season slate on Thursday night—an event now ceremonially streamed to 195 countries, including some that still outlaw American football as “ritualized concussion”—the league had already booked more hotel…
The NFL’s Global Roadshow: How One League Exports Helmeted Capitalism to a Bewildered Planet By Dave’s Locker International Desk Every September, while most of the world is busy arguing about energy prices, coups, or the correct pronunciation of “GIF,” roughly 120 million humans from Minsk to Manila suddenly acquire opinions on third-string cornerbacks. The culprit:…
The USMNT Conundrum: America Learns That Soccer Is Not a Tax Write-Off By Our Man in the Global Press Box The United States Men’s National Team—abbreviated like a hedge fund that never quite delivered—has once again wandered onto the world stage, blinking like a tourist who forgot to exchange currency. From Berlin to Bogotá, seasoned…
Dublin to Dubai, Vegas to Vladivostok: Conor McGregor and the Global Theater of One-Liners and Lawsuits By Diego “The Diplomat” Salgado, for Dave’s Locker When Conor McGregor first laced up gloves in a threadbare Crumlin gym, the planet was busy worrying about Greek debt, Beyoncé’s surprise album, and whether the Large Hadron Collider would accidentally…
Phillies Score: A Humble Tally That Could Tilt the Planet From a rooftop bar in Istanbul—where the Bosphorus glitters like a bribed official and the muezzin competes with Euro-trash pop—tonight’s Phillies score scrolls across the ticker: Philadelphia 7, Opponent 3. The barflies, mostly German tech consultants who think RBI is a new cryptocurrency, raise their…
Eagles Schedule: The 17-Week American Gladiator Calendar the Rest of the World Pretends Not to Watch By the time the NFL’s 2024 Philadelphia Eagles schedule dropped—on a Thursday night, because nothing says urgency like prime-time marketing—the planet was already busy. Tokyo’s Nikkei had closed up 0.4 % on semiconductor gossip, Berlin’s Bundestag was arguing about…
Crawford vs Canelo: When Two Hemispheres Collide in a Glorified Parking-Lot Behind a Casino in Vegas Dave’s Locker Global Dispatch, 9 May 2024 The boxing world has finally found a way to make the war in Gaza, the collapse of the Yen, and the slow-motion implosion of the Arctic ice shelf feel like quaint side-notes:…
The Roman Empire had bread, circuses, and the occasional crucifixion; the modern United States has 17 weeks of NFL football, $18 nacho helmets, and the moral certainty that anyone who kneels during the anthem must hate freedom. From the outside looking in—say, from a rain-soaked Glasgow pub or a Seoul subway car packed with K-League…
Dispatches from the Midfield of Geopolitics: Lia Wälti, Switzerland’s Accidental Diplomat By Dave’s Locker International Desk Geneva, Switzerland –– Somewhere between the UN’s Palais des Nations and the Wef football stadium in Bern, Lia Wälti has spent the last decade proving that being a defensive midfielder can be more effective than most multilateral summits. While…
The Ballad of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink: A Post-Colonial Dutchman Kicks His Way Through the End of History By Dave’s Locker International Desk Rotterdam – It is tempting to treat Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink as a mere footnote in the great PowerPoint presentation of modern football: a 90s-vintage striker with a howitzer right boot and a surname…
Terence Crawford and the Quiet Art of Global Violence By A. Serrano, Foreign Correspondent (currently hiding from creditors in a Moldovan airport bar) Omaha, Nebraska—birthplace of TV dinners, Warren Buffett, and now the planet’s most polite destroyer of men. Terence “Bud” Crawford has, in the grand tradition of American exports, taken something provincial (the Midwestern…
