When Arouca—population 22,000, best known for producing granite and existential dread—hosts Benfica in the Taça de Portugal, the planet does not exactly tilt off its axis. Yet the fixture, charmingly abbreviated across betting apps as “AVS vs Benfica,” is a tidy parable for the times we live in: a micro-club whose annual budget couldn’t cover…
Jasmine Harman and the Global Cottage-Core Arms Race By Our Correspondent in the Department of Soft-Furnishings Geopolitics You may know Jasmine Harman as the relentlessly upbeat presenter who once persuaded a retired couple from Southend to trade a three-bed semi for a crumbling finca in Alicante on A Place in the Sun. What you probably…
Madrid, Spain – The sun still rises over the Plaza Mayor, but only after it has checked the La Liga standings on its phone. At the top, Real Madrid sit with that monarchical inevitability which makes republicans quietly despair. Ancelotti’s gentlemen lead Girona by a margin so slim it could be negotiated away over a…
The Curious Case of Pat McAfee: How an NFL Punter Became the World’s Loudest Weather Vane By the time Pat McAfee’s voice ricochets across your earbuds in Lagos, La Paz, or Lillehammer, the planet has already decided what it thinks. In one hemisphere he is the court jester of American excess, in another he is…
Alavés vs. Sevilla: A Tiny Basque Town and Andalusia’s Orange-Blossom Aristocracy Remind the Planet Why We Still Bother With Football By Correspondent-at-Large, still jet-lagged in Vitoria-Gasteiz The match program handed out at Mendizorroza Stadium is printed on recycled paper, ostensibly to save the Amazon but mostly because the club’s photocopy budget was blown on a…
Villarreal vs. Osasuna: A Microscopic Civil War in the Macroscopic Chaos From the vantage point of a satellite drifting somewhere above the Strait of Gibraltar, tonight’s La Liga fixture between Villarreal CF and CA Osasuna looks less like football and more like two neighboring villages hurling artisanal grenades across a river of global anxiety. At…
Storm Gabrielle, still politely calling itself a “tropical storm” while auditioning for full-blown hurricane status, has been doing the rounds like an unwanted houseguest who insists on rearranging the furniture and drinking all the good rum. Born somewhere east of the Lesser Antilles, Gabrielle has spent the past week sashaying across the Atlantic, flirting with…
UAB vs Tennessee: A Microscopic Proxy War in the Coliseum of American Excess By Our Man in Exile, filing from a hotel minibar somewhere east of anywhere that matters Somewhere between the opioid belt and the Bible belt—geography gets fuzzy when you’re jet-lagged on cheap bourbon and cheaper philosophy—a football game broke out last Saturday…
A Palmetto Punch-Up on the World’s Margins: SC State vs South Florida through the Bleary Eyes of the Planet By L. Vargas, Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk Picture, if you will, an over-air-conditioned conference room on the 38th floor of some soulless tower in Dubai. A Lebanese risk consultant, a Ghanaian cocoa broker, and a…
PARIS — Somewhere between the Champs-Élysées and the nearest tax haven, Kylian Mbappé has become the planet’s most expensive argument starter. From Dakar to Dubai, Seoul to São Paulo, the 25-year-old Frenchman now functions less as a footballer and more as a Rorschach test for the late-capitalist world order. Mention his name and you’ll learn…
**Bowling Green vs Louisville: A Quaint American Spat the World Can Safely Ignore** In the grand tapestry of global conflict—where nuclear powers play chicken in the Taiwan Strait and climate change turns entire nations into aquariums—it’s almost refreshing to witness a dispute so parochial it could fit in a bourbon bottle. The latest installment of…
Old Trafford’s Schedule: The World’s Favorite Soap Opera, Now in 38 Terrifying Episodes By Our Correspondent in a Café Where Even the Wi-Fi Has Stockholm Syndrome The moment the Premier League fixture computer spat out Manchester United’s 2024-25 calendar, three time zones flinched, two hedge funds recalibrated their Asian advertising budgets, and a bar in…
