Lincoln City vs Chelsea: A Tale of Two Cities, One Carabao Cup, and the Slow Death of Romantic Football By Our Man in the Departure Lounge The world awoke this morning to discover that Lincoln City—population 103,000, famous for a cathedral, a sausage, and the crushing sense that ambition peaked circa 1215—had been invited onto…
Espanyol vs. Valencia: A Mediterranean Morality Play Staged for the Streaming Masses By Diego “Glad-I’m-Not-the-Ref” Morales, International Football Correspondent Barcelona, Spain – In a corner of Europe where the tapas are small but the existential crises are supersized, RCD Espanyol and Valencia CF met on Saturday in what the marketing department optimistically branded “La Lucha…
When the Carabao Cup draw ping-pongs its way onto screens from Bangkok betting shops to Lagos viewing parties, it does so with all the gravitas of a kindergarten nativity play performed inside a burning cathedral. Yet the fixtures—bright little LEDs on a fixture list that stretches from steamy August to the frostbitten finale in February—are…
The planet is burning, currencies are wobbling like a drunk on a Segway, and yet somewhere in North America grown men in pajamas are sprinting in precise geometric patterns while millions watch with the solemnity of papal conclave. Welcome to the 2024 MLB Postseason, that annual festival where statistical theology meets corporate pantomime and the…
PARIS—On a rain-slick Tuesday in Montmartre, a busker in a crushed-velvet cape is murdering “Rhiannon” on an out-of-tune accordion. The gendarmes yawn; the tourists film it for TikTok. Somewhere above us, orbiting satellites are still broadcasting Stevie Nicks’ 1975 vibrato to yurts in Mongolia, co-working pods in Lagos, and a Russian oligarch’s panic room in…
Christian Yelich and the Global Currency of Elite Mediocrity Dave’s Locker – International Sports Desk MILWAUKEE, USA – While half the planet argues over the price of bread and the other half doom-scrolls through the latest geopolitical fire sale, Christian Yelich woke up this morning, stretched his $215-million hamstrings, and prepared to jog languidly toward…
Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides While the World Burns By Dave’s Locker International Desk The planet’s longest-running slow-motion car crash—also known as 21st-century geopolitics—has a curious soundtrack: the low, gravelly chuckle of Jeffrey Bridges echoing across every continent like a cosmic barfly who’s seen empires rise, fall, and get rebooted as streaming miniseries. From Siberian…
Brewers vs. Padres: A Minor Skirmish in Baseball’s Forever War for Planetary Attention By Matteo “Mirthless” Morgenstern, International Desk, Dave’s Locker MILWAUKEE—Somewhere between the Baltic’s latest gas-pipeline panic and the Pacific’s newest island-building scheme, two American ball clubs squared off last night in a contest whose ramifications, we are assured by regional television executives, are…
The Bear in the Global Kitchen: Jeremy Allen White as a Mirror to a World Simmering on the Edge By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk (and one very tired espresso machine) PARIS—At 5:47 p.m. local time, the TikTok algorithm in 42 countries simultaneously shoved a sweaty, inked Chicago chef into every vertical screen from Lagos to…
From the moment Aitana Bonmatí lifted the Women’s Ballon d’Or last October—an award shaped suspiciously like a golden hamster wheel—she ceased being merely Spain’s best midfielder and became a global Rorschach test. To the corporate suites at Nike, she’s a scalable brand asset; to the Saudi Public Investment Fund, she’s an inconvenient reminder that some…
Fog, Guitars, and Existential Debt: A Global Dispatch from the Town That Won’t Shut Up By the time the first siren wails across the Tamaulipas border, half of Monterrey is already live-tweeting it. In Lagos, a software engineer queues Silent Hill 2’s soundtrack between Afrobeats drops because nothing says “Friday night” like a 2001 lo-fi…
MARSEILLE – PSG: THE MEDITERRANEAN DERBY AS GLOBAL TRAGICOMEDY By our Special Correspondent in the Seventh Circle of Marketing The fixture that France still quaintly calls “Le Classique” kicked off last night under a purple Provençal sky, and—because the twenty-first century will monetise oxygen if given half a chance—was beamed to 195 territories, three international…
