Villarreal vs Athletic: A Mediterranean Punch-Up With Geopolitical Side-Effects By Our Correspondent, still recovering from tapas and existential dread La Liga’s most politely named derby—Villarreal versus Athletic Club—kicked off on Sunday in a half-empty Estadio de la Cerámica, the tiles outside glistening like the tears of crypto investors. To the uninitiated, it looked like 22…
From the banks of the Potomac to the back-alleys of Bangkok, the words “Howard vs Richmond” are being whispered in the sort of hushed tones normally reserved for tax audits or out-of-season karaoke. One might assume the planet has bigger headaches—nuclear sabre-rattling, inflation that behaves like a sugar-addled toddler, or that peculiar modern ritual where…
Win-Win Game: The Diplomatic Fairy Tale We Tell Ourselves Between Wars By Quentin Black, Senior Cynic-at-Large GENEVA—In the marble corridors of the Palais des Nations, where the coffee tastes faintly of regret and moral compromise, diplomats still cling to the comforting bedtime story they call the “win-win game.” The phrase is uttered just before someone’s…
Strictly Speaking: How the Planet Learned to Love the Cage It Built for Itself By our man in the departure lounge, passport ink still wet Strictly speaking, the word “strictly” has always had a passport problem. It shows up at customs with its shirt tucked in, visa pre-approved, declaring nothing but certainty. Yet everywhere it…
Ypsilanti, Michigan—While the planet’s attention ricochets between Gaza, the South China Sea, and whatever Elon has tweeted before breakfast, two universities separated by 120 kilometers of potholed interstate are staging their own cold skirmish. Eastern Michigan versus Central Michigan is not, on the face of it, the stuff of United Nations briefings. Yet if you…
Madrid, 03:42 a.m. local—While half the planet doom-scrolls through another slow-motion geopolitical car crash, a different kind of catastrophe plays out in 4K slow-motion on beIN Sports: Real Madrid conceding a 93rd-minute equalizer to a team whose annual budget wouldn’t cover their left-back’s hair gel. Welcome to La Liga, Spain’s weekly referendum on national neuroses,…
A Balearic Breeze Meets Basque Grit: Why RCD Mallorca vs Alavés Matters Beyond the Med By R. “Rum-Soaked” Marlowe, International Football Correspondent, somewhere between duty-free and disillusion PALMA DE MALLORCA—On paper it’s merely match-day 34, La Liga’s mid-table equivalent of two people politely arguing over the last olive at a wake. Yet when RCD Mallorca…
McIlroy: The World’s Quietest Superpower By our man in the clubhouse bar, nursing a tepid G&T and an existential crisis that looks suspiciously like a scorecard. Somewhere between the 14th green and the 19th hole, Rory McIlroy has become the planet’s most polite geopolitical force. While other superpowers rattle sabres, devalue currencies, or throw perfectly…
The Utah State Aggies, a football program whose greatest victories usually involve convincing 18-year-olds that Logan in February is “quaint,” have improbably become a geopolitical weather vane. From the vantage point of a barstool in Sarajevo—where the local side has been relegated so often it should qualify for EU development funds—the Aggies’ 2023 season offers…
Rutgers vs. Minnesota: A Microscopic Proxy War in the Great American Colosseum Byline: “Roving” Ravi Mehta, tallying existential scores from a safe distance Somewhere between the 41st parallel and the longitudes of self-delusion, two land-grant universities—Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities—will collide on a rectangle of Astroturf…
From the comfort of a rain-lashed café in Lisbon, where locals fret more about the price of sardines than the price of oil, the satellite feed flickers to life. There it is: UCF versus Kansas State, a collision of acronyms and ambitions being beamed to every corner of the planet where people still believe a…
PARIS—At 3:17 p.m., while the rest of humanity pretends to work, a discreet brass plaque on Avenue Foch begins to glow with the quiet satisfaction of a slot machine that just hit triple cherries. Behind the door: Maître Sylvie Arquette, avocate en droit de la famille, billing €950 an hour to untie the Gordian knot…
