Ryan Gravenberch: The Dutch Midfielder Who Became a Global Metaphor for Everything Wrong With Modern Football By the time Ryan Gravenberch finally escaped Bayern Munich’s substitute bench last autumn—fleeing south like a budget-conscious retiree discovering Portugal—the planet had already digested three new iPhone iterations, one attempted coup in Brasília, and the quiet death of the…
**The Global Circus of Liverpool FC Fixtures: Where Time Zones Go to Die** In the grand theater of international football, where tribal loyalties transcend borders and rational thought takes a holiday, Liverpool FC’s fixture list has become something more than a mere schedule of athletic contests. It’s a geopolitical document that determines whether a software…
Andy Robertson: The Last Honest Scotsman Running Full-Tilt at Global Capitalism’s Windshield By Dave’s International Desk, still nursing a diplomatic hangover from COP29 If you stand on Calton Hill at 4 a.m. and listen hard, you can almost hear the collective grinding of teeth in boardrooms from Shenzhen to Silicon Valley. The sound is produced…
The Global Arms Race for a Red Ticket By Our Man on the Kop, Calais Bureau Calais, France – Dawn at the Eurotunnel terminal smells of diesel, desperation, and duty-free gin. A lorry driver from Naples named Marco is showing me his phone: a queue position of 37,842 on Liverpool FC’s ticketing portal. Somewhere between…
The Right-Back Who Would Be Emperor A dispatch from the geopolitical wings of football, where passports, passports, and passports matter more than clean sheets By the time Trent Alexander-Arnold finished pinging another diagonal so accurate it could probably deliver a pizza to a UN safe zone, the world had already decided what he was: the…
Zubimendi: A Basque Anchor in the Age of Football Mercenaries By Our Man in the Transfer Minefield It’s 3 a.m. in Singapore, prime time for European football gossip addicts. Across the hemisphere, phones ping with the same headline: “Zubimendi Turns Down Liverpool.” Somewhere in Texas, a hedge-fund bro who’s never seen San Sebastián except on…
Alexander Isak to Liverpool: A Transfer Saga for the End Times By our man in the cheap seats, watching civilisation burn one rumour at a time LIVERPOOL—In a world where sovereign-wealth funds treat football clubs like NFTs and the average fan’s weekly wage couldn’t cover a player’s hair-styling budget, Liverpool’s courtship of Alexander Isak feels…
Liverpool vs Everton: A 120-Year Grudge Match in a World on Fire By Diego “Seen Too Much” Morales, International Correspondent The Merseyside derby—Liverpool vs Everton, if you prefer the branding—is one of those quaint English customs that somehow still matters while the planet smolders. On Saturday, satellites will beam images of two sets of Scousers…
The Red Machine Reboots: Liverpool’s Champions League Squad as Global Metaphor By Our Man in Every Departure Lounge Liverpool, England – While the rest of the planet debates whether democracy is clinging to life support or merely on a smoke break, 25 men in matching tracksuits have quietly re-certified themselves as a planetary spectacle. Jürgen…
