Botoșani vs FCSB: A Balkan Derby as Geopolitical Metaphor By Our Man in the Moldavian Mud, filing from a press box that smells of wet wool and existential dread One must begin, dear Dave’s Locker reader, by confessing the obvious: on the global index of Things That Keep the Planet Spinning, a Friday-night Liga I…
Necaxa-Juárez and the Quiet Apocalypse of Provincial Football By Our Man in the Americas, nursing a mezcal and a migraine in row 17, Estadio Victoria The world’s attention has been, understandably, elsewhere: Gaza’s rubble livestream, Musk firing another 3,000 people over emoji, and the International Olympic Committee debating breakdancing’s spiritual purity. Yet on Saturday night,…
Estonia vs Andorra: Two Tiny Nations, One Giant Mirror to the World’s Midlife Crisis Tallinn and Andorra la Vella sit 2,600 kilometers apart, but in the grand geopolitical waiting room they might as well be sharing the same cracked vinyl couch. One is a post-Soviet start-up that discovered capitalism the way a teenager discovers espresso—wide-eyed,…
Chorrillo vs. América: A Micro-Cosmic Spectacle for the End of the World By Diego “Doomsday” Delgado, International Correspondent-at-Large Panama City, 2:47 a.m. local time—an hour when sane people consider either sleep or arson—yet Estadio Rommel Fernández is lit up like a hedge fund manager’s conscience. Inside, Club Deportivo Chorrillo—population: the entire neighborhood plus two stray…
