Hearts FC: A Tiny Scottish Club Teaching the World How to Fail Upward By Rodrigo “Rod” Valderrama, International Correspondent, still jet-lagged in Edinburgh Edinburgh—The official line is that Heart of Midlothian Football Club merely plays in the Scottish Premiership, population: roughly the same as a midsize IKEA on a Saturday. Yet Hearts FC has quietly…
Nick Woltemade: The Tall German Who Reminds Us That Even Hope Has a Vertical Limit By Dave’s Locker International Desk BERLIN—Somewhere between the second and third tier of German football, a 2.03-metre striker named Nick Woltemade is busy reminding the planet that the global supply chain of athletic miracles is still running two weeks late…
Oxford, Mississippi—population 25,000, humidity 100%—has once again etched its fall Saturdays onto the global consciousness with the release of the 2024 Ole Miss football schedule. To the uninitiated foreign correspondent, the announcement looks like a polite Southern afterthought; to the rest of the planet, it is a Rorschach test of late-imperial priorities. While the Sahel…
Bundesliga: Germany’s Weekly Reminder That Even Football Can’t Fix Late-Stage Capitalism By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, currently sober enough to file copy The Bundesliga kicked off again last weekend, and—much like the planet’s remaining glaciers—showed up right on time, slightly smaller, and with a multinational corporate logo where its soul used to be. From São Paulo…
It began, as most modern miracles do, with a viral clip: a cherubic 16-year-old from Warrington, England, flattening men twice his age on the oche like a cosmic steamroller powered by Monster Energy and GCSE stress. Luke Littler’s run to the PDC World Darts Championship final wasn’t just a sporting anomaly; it was a Rorschach…
Doncaster, South Yorkshire – 2:30 p.m. local time – and somewhere in the grandstand a sheikh checks his second passport while a Beijing syndicate updates its algorithm and a Kentucky bourbon heir pretends to enjoy the rain. Welcome to the St Leger Festival, the oldest classic on the planet, now streaming live to anyone with…
From the Thames to Timbuktu: A Timeline of West Ham vs Tottenham and the World That Watched It By Dave’s Locker International Correspondent The fixture is older than most democracies, yet somehow younger than the average political promise. West Ham United vs Tottenham Hotspur—London’s East-End dockers against the North-End pretenders—has been unfolding in one form…
San Sebastián, Sunday night—while the rest of the planet argued over which streaming service best buffered their insomnia, a wind-lashed corner of the Basque Country served up a 90-minute referendum on the modern order. Real Sociedad 0-1 Real Madrid: the scoreline looks minimalist, but the ripple effects are already rattling boardrooms from Beijing to Bogotá,…
The World Watches Two Second-Tier Londoners Argue Over a Ball: Fulham vs Leeds United as a Parable for Late-Stage Capitalism By the time the floodlights flickered on at Craven Cottage, satellites were already relaying the scene to betting dens in Manila, expat pubs in Dubai, and that one basement in Montevideo where a Leeds-supporting orthodontist…
Everton vs Aston Villa: A Tale of Two Cities, Three Continents, and One Very Expensive Mid-Table Grudge Match By our man in the global cheap seats, still wondering why airlines charge extra for legroom but not for existential dread. On the face of it, Saturday evening at Goodison Park is merely another Premier League fixture…
MADISON, Wisconsin—While the rest of the planet was busy debating whether A.I. will replace us before climate change finishes the job, roughly 80,000 bipeds clad in dairy-scented scarlet fleece poured into a concrete horseshoe on a Saturday night to scream at 19-year-olds in tights. Welcome, dear cosmopolitan reader, to Wisconsin football: the Midwestern passion play…
NEWCASTLE, England — Somewhere between the Tyne and the Wear, 52,000 locals are presently being reminded that hope is just disappointment wearing a fluorescent bib. Newcastle United, that perennial exercise in self-inflicted agony, welcomes Wolverhampton Wanderers to St James’ Park in a fixture that—on paper—looks like a mid-table shrug but, viewed from a safe distance,…
