Somewhere between the soy latte belt and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, two MLS franchises will meet on Saturday night in what the marketing department politely calls “a Western Conference showdown.” The rest of the planet, busy watching oil prices, missile parades, and the slow-motion implosion of several democracies, will glance over just long enough to…
Atlético de Madrid: The Last Reluctant Superpower of the Age of Excess By Our Man in the Departure Lounge Somewhere between the 60-minute mark and the existential dread that passes for extra time at the Metropolitano, it hits you: Atlético de Madrid is the only elite club left that still looks faintly embarrassed about being…
The Slow, Glorious Death of Hope: A Global Timeline of Crystal Palace vs Sunderland By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, somewhere above the Atlantic 1905 – Birth of a Rivalry, Birth of the Modern Age Crystal Palace and Sunderland first meet when Britannia still ruled waves and the planet’s thermostat was mostly intact. The…
Preston vs Middlesbrough: A Tale of Two Towns, One Ball, and the End of Civilisation As We Know It By Our Man at the End of the Pier, International Correspondent Deep in the damp heart of Lancashire, where the rain falls with the precision of a Swiss debt collector, Preston North End and Middlesbrough are…
In the grand, increasingly surreal tapestry of 21st-century geopolitics, where billionaires launch phallic rockets to nowhere and entire nations debate whether water is a human right, the name “Kyle Monangai” has begun to flicker on diplomatic radar screens from Tokyo to Timbuktu. Who, you ask, is this Monangai fellow? A Bond villain with a climate-altering…
Nate Landman: The Linebacker Who Accidentally Became a Geopolitical Punchline If you squint hard enough from the cheap seats of the global amphitheater, Nate Landman’s story resembles the kind of parable the World Economic Forum would commission after three negronis: a South African-born, Colorado-raised tackling machine who now earns his keep in Atlanta, proving that…
Raiders Depth Chart: A Global Power Ranking of Hope, Hubris, and Third-String Linebackers By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats Las Vegas—The Raiders released their latest depth chart this week, a tidy Excel sheet that purports to map the hierarchy of 53 men who chase an oblong ball for money while wearing armor. To the…
Budapest, 3:07 a.m. local time—while the rest of the city nurses pálinka hangovers and debates whether the Danube is rising fast enough to solve the parliament-building real-estate problem, a man named Za’Darius Smith is simultaneously being discussed in five different languages on three continents. Not bad for someone whose surname sounds like an investment bank…
