In the grand theater of global spectacle—where billionaires race to Mars and teenagers topple governments with a meme—there stands a bald Dutchman hurling tungsten missiles at a board the size of a dinner plate. Michael van Gerwen, three-time world champion and walking endorsement for prenatal caffeine abuse, has become the unlikely barometer for how the…
The world’s attention, already stretched thinner than a politician’s promise, pivoted westward last night to a patch of Astroturf in San Diego where Oregon State and Texas Tech—two universities whose combined endowments still can’t match what the EU spends on olive-oil subsidies—decided to settle their differences with shoulder pads and play-action fakes. For 60 commercial-splintered…
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—population 302,971 and falling—versus the entire state of West Virginia—population 1.8 million and, depending on whom you ask, still falling—may sound like the geopolitical equivalent of arguing over the last lukewarm pierogi at a family funeral. Yet from thirty thousand feet, or more precisely from a window seat above the North Atlantic, this modest…
Tuskegee vs Jackson State: A Southern Football Grudge Match That Somehow Matters to the Planet By Hans-Joachim “H.J.” van der Waal, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker ATLANTA—In the same week that COP28 delegates in Dubai were counting carbon credits on gold-plated abacuses, two historically Black universities in the American Deep South scheduled a football game that…
North Dakota vs. Montana: A Prairie Cold War the World Pretends Not to Notice By “Marcel Dufresne,” Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker PARIS—While the rest of the planet obsesses over which septuagenarian will control the nuclear football, a quieter, far more existential struggle has broken out on the high plains of the United States: North Dakota…
Facundo Buonanotte is 18, Argentinian, and already the subject of more WhatsApp voice notes than the IMF’s latest bailout. In a world where teenagers normally go viral for dancing next to moving cars, he has chosen the quaint hobby of threading 40-yard diagonals through Premier League midfields. The kid is Brighton’s newest bauble, a £6…
MUNCIE, Indiana—Somewhere between the soy fields and the haunted Arby’s off I-69, Ball State University is once again asking the eternal question: can a mid-major football program survive the twenty-first century without either becoming a farm team for the Southeastern Conference or selling its soul to a streaming service whose Terms of Service were drafted…
When the Telegram pings hit at 03:14 CET, veteran correspondents from Kyiv to Kuala Lumpur reached for the same weary adjective: “another.” Iryna, surname withheld until her family in Vinnytsia could be notified by someone other than a push-alert, was found sprawled across a Brussels pavement with the sort of puncture-count that turns cocktail napkins…
Sunday night in Florence and the Arno is doing its best impression of a mirror, reflecting a city that still believes in beauty even when the rest of the planet is busy uglifying itself. Inside the Stadio Artemio Franchi, Fiorentina and Napoli are about to play a football match that, on paper, is just another…
Darts Results: The Tiny Arrows Steering the Planet’s Fate By Our World-Weary Correspondent, still holding a lukewarm pint in an airport lounge that smells of fried regret London – Somewhere between the end of the Cold War and the start of whatever collective midlife crisis we’re calling 2024, the planet’s destiny has quietly slipped onto…
Atlético Madrid vs Villarreal: A Microcosm of Europe’s Nervous Breakdown By Our Man in the Cheap Seats with Expensive Tendencies MADRID—On a continent where natural gas is weaponised and nostalgia is a growth industry, two football clubs from Spain’s sun-bleached interior faced off last night to remind us that geopolitics can, for 90 minutes, be…
Lucas Bergvall: The Swedish Kid Who Made the Whole World Remember What Football Still Is By the time Lucas Bergvall’s name ping-ponged across global timelines last month, half the planet was already doom-scrolling about sea levels, election cycles, and whatever fresh apocalypse Elon Musk had scheduled for Q3. In that context, the 17-year-old midfielder’s transfer…
