Croatia Reinvents the Beautiful Game

Eureka! It turns out that if no one plays defense, football becomes a very high-scoring affair.

All credit to Theo Walcott's very cool finishing (and even some credit to Wayne Rooney for his), but Christ on a unicycle, there was just no marking at all. The aftermath will no doubt result in a long national emotional crisis in Croatia, which will only be resolved by the Ninth Balkan War in 2034. The really great thing, however, is that this kind of result cues England-Can-Win-It-All hysteria, which naturally sets up the horrendous (yet inevitable) mental breakdown of 2010 to perfection.

Joe?

Hard to know what to make of one of the best clubs in Major League Soccer being beaten—make that thrashed—by mighty mighty Joe Public Football Club. Then again, maybe it's not.

Heavy Weather

Lord. It's exhausting just to read about all Liverpool had to do to survive Standard Liege today. So that makes four outings for the Reds so far, and four pretty dismal performances. Still, four good results. A funny old game, etc.

Back to School

Well, where were we then? The Eleven Devils School for Luckless, Brutal and Unskilled Defenders has been quiet indeed during the dog-days lull. Basically, I haven't been watching any football and thus found very little to say as August smoldered away, authoritarian Olympic glories and all. I don't know why the European leagues insist on starting up in August, when it would clearly behoove them to wait until September when I am ready to focus, see.

Still, it is time to grind the gears and get going for another season—not forgetting, of course, that we Americans are actually coming to the end of our stupid off-calendar championships, with MLS all a-flux (Bruce Arena's back! Columbus is still up top of the table! Excitement!) and the Portland Timbers engaged in a desperate struggle for the bottom-most First Division playoff spot. (Consider: they have won six of 25 matches and could still theoretically win the league. Genius.) Meanwhile, a couple of delightfully willful and mean-spirited goals against 'Boro have Liverpool masquerading as title-contenders, and I've got Deco on my fantasy team. Huzzah and hurrah—it's anorak time again!

Adu's Grace Kelly Moment

So, after beginning his career in a strange little federal district, Freddy Adu continues it in a strange little principality. From DC to Salt Lake to Lisbon to Monaco: one of the more unusual soccer career paths, even today. I'm a little puzzled as to why Adu's Benfica performance gets such bland reviews; 21 appearances, five goals and an established role as a super-sub seem like worthy accomplishments for a 19-year-old playing in Europe for the first time. (Then again, I've always been an Adu apologist...) Did anyone think he was going to Benfica as something more than a squad player? If he makes Monaco's XI on a regular basis, this move makes sense for both Benfica and Adu—they'll build up the value of their investment, he'll get the playing time he craves. But I'm skeptical. Ligue 1 is a step up from Portugal, which would lead me to think that, absent a dramatic elevation in his game, he'll probably be on the substitute bench again, or maybe even the reserve team. And what then?

The Surreal Season

Ah, late July. The Euros are over. The Olympics haven't started. Europe is embroiled in goofy transfer crises. Liverpool is busy stacking its reserve team with Swiss defenders and French teenagers. All the big clubs are off playing Guangzhou or someone. West Ham is playing the MLS All-Stars while the Inter-City Firm takes the measure of the Columbus casuals. The New England Revolution subdued a naked lunatic on an airplane. Giorgio Chinaglia is wanted by the law in connection with some bizarre Italian-football-criminal-scandal situation, which is to say a totally commonplace Italian football situation. DC United and Houston played a game with more weather delays than goals, which apparently finished with about 140 people in the stands. The Superliga is happening, maybe. The sound of the buzzing flies in my house is the sound of infinity.

The Singularity Is Near

Prepare thyselves: West Ham fans engaged in aggro with...Columbus Crew fans? The Columbus Crew? Man, some weird shit is going on in the pulsating heart of Ohio's football nation: first the club's cosmic-order-defying run at the top of the table earlier this season, then the "racist chanting" scandal (you're not a real club until you've had one), now this.

The Spirit of the Moment Dictates That I Call This One "Buzzkill"

This has nothing to do with football, but anyway. Buzz. Buzz Bissinger. Those who frequent the intellectual red light district known as the Blogosphere will know Buzz, the Certified Author who went bananas on Bob Costa's HBO chat show, getting all up in the grill of Deadspin's Will Leitch, accusing Leitch and his fellow bloggers of dragging the English language into the dirt, destroying the elevated tone of American sporting discourse (?) and, most of all, of displaying insufficient dedication to the Craft of Writing. The Craft of Writing, of course, must be learned using an Olivetti manual typewriter in the course of filing deadline-driven 400-word reports on American Legion games for slave-driving, micro-minded alcoholic newsroom lifers at theSmileyville Herald. The ill-disciplined youth of today have the temerity of skipping straight to those gimcrack Computational Machines, sounding off about the Majors without paying their dues, and writing without editors. Bad Things, man.

But I come not to rehash the Bissinger Diatribe, amply rehashed elsewhere. Nor, really, to prosecute any beef with Buzz, who does actually have some grade-A books to his credit. I just want to say that Bissinger doesn't really do his argument any favors with this sort of thing, a weird op-ed column for the Times. The Craft of Writing notwithstanding, this column contains the following phrases, which technical experts and even some gifted amateurs may recognize as "cliches":

"Pick your poison."
"I couldn't help but pinch myself."
"...my naked eye..."

Okay, whatever: I use them too. Not trying to be mean. Just saying. The larger problems, two-fold:

1) In a short space Bissinger manages a complete evocation of the Serious Writer going off in the usual fashion about the National Pastime. I love baseball, but Sweet Jesus, can we declare a five-year moratorium on odes to the bucolic majesty of the greensward? All the usual ingredients of Serious Baseball Writing are here: nostalgia; conservatism; passing attacks on free agency and modern equipment; the gee-whiz sense that the whole thing just oozes American goodness. Which I'm sure the College World Series does—but do your journalistic duty, man, and tell me something I don't know.

2) And then there's the strange twist the thing takes in the last few paragraphs, when it becomes clear that Bissinger wrote the thing, in no small part, because he got into a mini-brawl with stadium security. He wanted to take his camera into the park. They said no. Some sort of physical fracas ensued. The writer got roughed up, had to leave his camera behind, et cetera. I don't know what to make of it, really. Odd little story, which Bissinger tries to make fit into his overall thesis that the NCAA is evil—a thesis I can well believe, by the way, but which he does not prove dead-to-rights in this instance at all.

But they roughed me up! Buzz, I hate to break it to you this way, but that's what often goes down when you tangle with stadium security, a breed even less well-known for its professional comportment than sportswriters. I further hate to break it to you, but there is a forum tailor-made for one man's account of his fight with security guards—better suited to such tales, in fact, than the columns of the nation's leading newspaper. That forum, my friend, is called a "blog."

A Fan's Club? Alternative Freedom Club? Ask For Chips?

First came AFC Wimbledon. Then, FC United of Manchester. Now, not to be left behind, Liverpool supporters are launching their own grassroots "alternative" club into England's netherworldly non-league pyramid. Judging by the preliminary reports, AFC Liverpool will, fittingly enough, be sort of like the Beatles to FC United's Stones: roughly similar historical circumstances, less angry response. Both Manchester United and Liverpool FC have been subjected to messy takeovers by American interests; both fanbases include a lot of people who can no longer practically afford to go to Premier League games. But while FCUM comes across all punk-football-snotty and antiestablishment, so far AFC Liverpool just wants to get along with the Big Club, quietly plying its trade in the North West Counties League and hoping a player makes it to Anfield some day. (AFC does, however, boast a fairly amazing club crest, which combines the traditional Liverpool bird with a couple of bold Victory of Socialism red stars and a stylized wheat garland worthy of a propaganda poster celebrating the History Achievements of Soviet Agriculture.)

It's all fairly intriguing: could we be seeing the evolution of a new model, wherein every standard, Champions League-playing, international-talent-stacked MegaClub owned by deracinated oligarchs comes with a scrappy little Doppelganger, owned and controlled by local fans who will divide (or multiply) their allegiance? Will we see an AFC Chelsea, an FC Aston Villa of Birmingham? And how transportable is this strategy? Here in the States, with our next-to-nonexistent pyramid, franchise system and lack of promotion and relegation, any fan-owned alternative would probably have to start at an even more modest level, like a local or regional amateur league. But given the persistent (if thus far guerrilla-level) crackle of discontent about the rampant commercialization of the sport around the world, I would bet this sort of thing starts many wheels turning in many minds, and not just in England.

A National Disgrace

Somehow, I missed the fact that the United States failed to qualify for the Beach Soccer World Cup. I didn't even get a chance to join the howling mob that undoubtedly stoned the team at the airport on its return from the unsuccessful campaign. Still, it's never too late for a moment of national reflection. Solomon Islands will be there. So will El Salvador, with a team composed of "amateurs and fishermen," according to the FIFA website. And yet we will not be there. Where does the madness end?

20 Pints a Night V. Luther Blissett

Not that I feel very sympathetic to a multimillionaire who can't "adjust" to working in a foreign country without the help of a specialized minder, but this Simon Kuper column on the struggles of relocating footballers contains a couple gems. First, his description of the core of English football culture ("drinking 20 pints of beer in a night") is one for the ages. Second, the lede (that's journalism talk!) reminds me of the days when English anarchists used to attribute many of their polemics and other writings to one Luther Blissett. When asked about this, Blissett sensibly said something on the order of, "Well, it seems they like using my name."

Kurdistan Wanderers

I'm preparing (oh so slowly) a massive post on a massive book: David Goldblatt's The Ball is Round, a tome that Ray Hudson would describe as "MAGISTERIAL!" In the meantime, have a look at this interesting look at Kurdistan's halting efforts to pull together a national side, a story that would fit right in with Goldblatt's enormous reckoning of the intersection of the global game and global politics. It's, like, educational.

UPDATE: In further news from the strange (but sort of awesome) parallel universe of the VIVA World Cup (which awards a bauble with the excellent Soviet-ish name Trophy for the Freedom of Peoples), Pitch Invasion reports that Umberto Bossi, head of Italy's separatist Northern League, showed up to cheer on the Cup-winning side "Padania." The fact that Bossi is a minister in the current Italian government notwithstanding, etc.

That's the Spirit

"Everyone is replaceable in this game. Everyone's a commodity."

—inspiring words from Portland Timbers manager Gavin Wilkinson.

It's...MinnowMania!

Sweet news from the nether reaches of the North American game (motto: "Taking What We Can Get Since Approximately Forever"): after the US Open Cup quarterfinals ended in a flurry of penalty kicks and red cards, two First Division teams landed in the semis. With Charleston and Seattle paired off in the next round, the scrappy little league that subsists in MLS' slender shadow is guaranteed a spot in the Final, and thus a possible berth in next year's continental Champions League.* True Fans will, of course, pull for Charleston, and not only because the Seattle Sounders collectively worship a nameless demon entity. Thanks to the franchise system, the Sounders are "going up" to the Major League regardless of their results this year, so only a Battery victory will yield a true Cinderella tale. Follow?

Meanwhile, north of the Border, a faintly similar story unfolds. The First Division's Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps are holding their own against MLS' Toronto FC in the weird three-team mini-league ("The Nutrilite Canadian Championship") that determines the Dominion's entrant in the Champions League. (Yes, I know it's not called "Dominion" any more. I'm a nostalgic.) While the 'Caps finished with four points and thus exited with a moral victory, Montreal can win the thing with a draw against the Football Club** on the final matchday.

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* Which, being a CONCACAF affair, will probably be a joke, but still. It's called the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, so it must be awesome.

** Which reminds me: does anyone remember when CONCACAF tried to rebrand itself as "The Football Confederation"? Good times. I think we should call it The Special Confederation.

Rocky Mountain High

Looks like the Colorado Rapids have overhauled their squad in a fairly dramatic fashion.

The Invisible Hand

I know economics is supposed to be all rational and whatnot, but the just-compiled league table of top-earning footballers calls the dismal science into question. Or, at least, points to a paradox: a striking number of the top boys are totally past their prime as players. I'm not saying D. Becks or old Henry don't still offer some value on the field, because they obviously do. Ronaldhino—I would say the jury is out. Kaka and Ronaldo and Rooney still seem to be in their pomp, as it were, but what exactly is Shevchenko trading on these days? Does this list hint at the existence of a de facto system in which superstars truly cash in after they've already exhausted their peak playing days? Or are these guys being paid to sell shirts?

Regular Service Resumed

Now that the Euros are over and we have a spare 15 minutes before the Big Leagues start up again, it's time for American soccer fans to do what they do best: obsess over competitions that no one else in the world (and the country? forget about it) has ever heard of. To wit, the US Open Cup, our national knock-out tournament, which continues a perpetually beleaguered and occasionally glorious history that dates back to 1914. (We all remember Brooklyn Field Club's edgy 2-1 victory over Brooklyn Celtic in the first final...and who could forget Greek American AA's dominance in the late '60s?)

Last night's Open Cup action—televised just about nowhere, as far as I can tell—saw three classic giant-killings. The Amalgamated Forces of Satan Everlasting, also known as the Seattle Sounders, wiped out Chivas USA; Charleston Battery beat defending MLS champions Houston on penalties before 3,000 (no, no decimals missing) at Blackbaud; and something called Crystal Palace Baltimore zapped the ever-hapless New York Red Bulls. Unfortunately, our hometown Portland Timbers are "concentrating on the league" after the unpleasant Hollywood United business...but this is still a great tournament.

(ADDENDUM: "Concentrating on the league," that is, except for the two mid-season friendlies against Mexican clubs coming right up, which I believe would qualify as "concentrating on the balance sheet.")

Only a Liverpool Man Could Do It

And they said Pepe Reina played no role.

Tiki-Taka

All hail a great new football onomatopoeia: "tiki-taka," apparently a Spanish nonsense phrase to describe how Spain plays, with lots of fast, crackling short passes. To me, that was the most impressive aspect of the new Euro champions, and I hope it's an inspiration to club and youth coaches and third-rate Portland-based futsal teams everywhere.

Viva Cascadia!

News of the VIVA World Cup, a competition for wanna-be nations, micronations, notional states and parallel-reality empires, leads me to wonder: Where is the Republic of Cascadia? My word, if Sealand can get a team together, why can't we?

The Accent Debate

I'm not one to leap to the defense of ESPN on too many occasions, but Jack Bell's excoriation of the network, occasioned by its use of British announcers during its Euro '08 telecasts, seems a little off-base too me, if I may use a baseball metaphor. This position strikes me as a logical outgrowth of Bell's larger objections to Anglophilia in the American game—the veneration of British coaches, teams and playing styles at the expense of other (specifically, Latin) influences. I actually agree with Bell about most of that: I don't think the tendency to turn Soccer America into the sixth Home Nation really does the game here many favors; among other things, it exacerbates the divide between Latino and Anglophone football/futbol cultures, which really holds the sport back. Half of American football goes "down the pub" to see English Premier League games and enrolls its progeny in pricey suburban-ish youth soccer programs, while the other half maintains rabid interest in the Mexican league and plays its football in ethnic leagues. Our national team contenders go off to race around the bottom half of the Premiership, which turns out to be excellent preparation for getting bossed off the pitch by the Czechs and Ghanaians. A house divided against itself, etc.

But in this particular instance, I think Bell argues from general principles rather than the specifics of the case. First of all, Andy Gray and Adrian Healey did a very good job. I thought, anyway.

Second, are those dudes better than the JP Dellacameras and John Harkeses of the world? Um, yeah. No disrespect to the latter, who I'm inclined to give their due and a "Most Improved" citation, but the level of tactical analysis was markedly higher during this tournament. Maybe it's a subconscious thing: British announcers operate on the assumption that they're talking to knowledgeable (or, y'know, close) fans, where American announcers feel a nagging obligation to explain things to the "average sports fan." The American soccer fan, Anglophone or not, knows when he or she is being condescended to, which is why previous major tournaments have seen English-speakers turning to Univision in droves.

Third, Bell seems to think ESPN's decision represents an attempt to appeal to expatriates rather than home-grown fans. This ignores the fact that a sizable portion of serious Anglophone soccer fans in this country, native born or not (and does that really matter) are English Premier League fans, and thus are accustomed to the dulcet tones of the Mother Country.

I do hope ESPN mixes up its World Cup teams. Why not retain Andy Gray and team him with Harkes? Stick Dellacamera with Healey to see what happens? Make Tommy Smyth and Julie Foudy work as a man-on-the-street reporting team in Soweto? It would be fun.

Insert "Reign of Spain" Pun Here

I remember him well. An old Italian dude, crusty as a ciabatta, in the little Chicago cafe I ducked into for Italy v. Australia. We talked a little World Cup between the Aussie fouls and the frustrated Italian grimaces. In spite of his rabid partisanship (he gave a hearty vaffunculo! when Italy converted its decisive penalty), he fancied Spain, which at that time was still ripping along nicely.

"The Spanish, they are young," he said. "They are fast. And they play like Champagne bubbles—pop, pop, pop."

And so it was. But as we all know now, that Champagne Spain went flat against the sturdier old wine of France in that tournament. Last night, however, the unfulfilled promise of that team—and a hell of a lot of other Spanish teams—was redeemed. The problem with champagne football is that its effervescence often masks a lack of the requisite steel backbone. After six unbeaten performances against very, very formidable opposition (let's see: a certified Team of the Future in Russia; defending European champions; defending world champions; and, of course, the Mannschaft) and goals conceded only every 200 minutes or so, it's safe to say Spain 2008 solved that problem. In a tournament that offered many, many flavors of the minute—didn't Holland have a team in there at one point?—Spain confirmed its overall supremacy with a performance that had both coltish flair and grown-up intelligence. When you can make Germany flail around like that, you have mastered both sides of football, the happy-talk "beautiful game" stuff and the essential dark arts. Torres' goal summed it all up: wily and physical as he out-duelled Lahm; brilliant and delicate in the finish.

One of the beguiling things about this sport is that you're never quite sure what you're seeing. Last night found me thinking that while Aragones is certainly a racist prick and looks like the host of Tales from the Crypt, he just may have assembled a team for the ages. Then again, last week I was talking about the break-through genius of Arshavin, and I was not alone. Spain certainly has the raw material for an all-time great team, but we'll just have to see. In the meantime, this tournament was a masterwork on their part, no doubt about that.

Ze Germans, on the other hand, have an admirable team that still needs a certain something. They can start by getting rid of Lehmann, who I see whining about the referees in today's papers. Call the whaaaaaaaaaa-bulance. Old Jens could have been sent off for handling outside the area. He has nothing to complain about. For all the talent in the team, and despite creating a real pressure-cooker in the second half, Germany never really looked like they were going to win. And that, itself, was a disconcerting thing...almost like a new era dawneth. But ask me again in two years.

"They Are Not Giant Raspberries"

This closing ceremony is just absolutely amazing. Amazing. That is all for now.

It Is An Entertainment Show

Yesterday, Matthew Yglesia's political blog took a brief and (as usual) dubious detour into the Americans-don't-like-soccer-why-is-that-oh-yes-they-do-oh-no-they-don't-it's-because-of-the-low-scoring-well-actually-are-other-sports-really-so-different-I-hate-the-diving-I-don't-like-nil-nil-draws-but-actually-nil-nil-draws-can be-quite-compelling-et-cetera-ad-nauseum debate. Eleven Devils made its customary ill-advised and instantly regretted foray into the comment stream, which at this point in World History is like watching people argue about whether the Earth circles the Sun...or, is that just what They want you to think? Still, the blog comments did include this incredible explanation of football's enduring appeal:



Why soccer becomes so popular that even Presidents and Kings come and support their teams play? You will certainly see them at major tournaments. these are my comments...As a show, soccer has a lot of handsome and well balanced body and very-rich players-celebs (thats why a lot of girls watch soccer ). The soccer players are like our common neighbors, tall or short, but with strong, energetic, cute or handsome appearances.

TV coverage has a strong effect. We can see acrobatic and dramatic slow motions, we can see their fine faces closely. It is an entertainment show.

That's all that give soccer the number one sport around the world excepting Americans who call their no-foot ball as football and basketball full of giants .. ops sorry.

Memo to Spain: I Appreciate You.

So, I've been feeling a little churlish all day, like may be the ramble below did not give Spain due credit. To be honest, I was so disappointed in Russia—who were worse today than the counterfeit Stolichnaya I drank in Moscow in 1996—that I was not sufficiently impressed by Spain. I just watched the highlights, and feel the need to make amends: la Furia was, at least a moments, great. I would say Xavi got a little lucky, ghosting in straight through the heart of the defense without a soul around, but who thrives without luck in this game? He created the play to begin with, and killed it off crisply. Guiza's goal was a very nifty finish, a deft and delicate flick when he could easily have smashed it straight into the goalkeeper. And then, that third—the hexagon of sparky short passes in midfield, and then Iniesta's beautiful little lob to slit the defense: awesome. So, Spain, it's not I'm not into you or anything...

Dead-Blogging Russia v. Spain

Well, that's that, then. After we all convinced ourselves that the opening group game no longer mattered (why? because!), Spain proves that it was, in fact, a pretty good gauge of the two sides' relative quality. Arshavin—Arsh-who? Maybe the poor lad started reading this blog, that blog and the other blog, all of which got into a tizzy over his two-game wonder. Now it's time for him to call one of those shady big-wheel PR firms that specialize in rehabilitating the images of infamous political regimes and stars gone wrong.

By the powers vested in me, I give this game 5/10. Neither side could get to grips with the thing in the first half, which had an entertainingly discombobulated schoolyard air. As soon as Spain put together some half-decent (and no more) football, they had Russia by the throat; Russia seems to have lost the old Guus nous over the last few days, because they had not a fucking clue what to do with themselves. After the first goal—and, all due respect to Xavi, the defense was marking about as well as my futsal team does—Russia tried to play like Hiddink's Australia, and take a pound of flesh if nothing else. Dispiriting—and, good for Spain, la Furia responded by coming alive, pinging it around with some semblance of verve and constructing a pair of neat little goals.

Solid for Spain. Awful for Russia. And Germany must be feeling pretty swell about Sunday.

The Doener Kebab Cup

I rate that one a solid 8/10. Rattling crossbars. Bloody heads. A meaty geopolitical backstory. Sweaty coaches: Joachim "Es ist nicht ein Fashionmullet!" Loew, guiding the Mannschaft home, if you know what I mean; and that Turkish fella. That Turkish fella! Can we get him in MLS like yesterday, please? A blown penalty call, which I forgave the referee for immediately because the victim was Phillip Lahm (and because I would totally "switch" for that referee). Another one of Turkey's October surprises, undone by same.

Yes, this game pretty much had it all, or at least that's what I was able to discern amid the frequent interruptions in service, caused by lightning strikes attracted to the titanium android carapace concealed beneath Michael Ballack's "human skin." I started out a mildly pro-German neutral (you could call it the "Hungary 1939" model), but whore that I am I soon switched to backing the Turks. For one thing, they played by far the better football. For another, so many of my fellow Americans down at Kells were backing Germany that I got annoyed. How boring and Europhile. It was also a joy to see Jens Lehmann, a rude and ungentlemanly character who is (he said in a self-righteous tone of voice) just not a good team player, so comprehensively befuddled. In the first half, Turkey were composed when they needed to be and brassy when they wanted to be.

But they forgot one iron rule of international football: to beat Germany, it's not enough to outplay them. You have to jam a wooden stake into the Thing's heart and cut off the head—otherwise, the Thing keeps lumbering at you, jumping up at sky-balls like a dog playing Frisbee. And indeed, even after Turkey stung back with the late equalizer, Lahm—who bugged me throughout but ended up playing an intriguing anti-heroic role that I must respect—converted his chance with the lethal, coldblooded mindlessness of a warrior insect. Spain and Russia, you're on notice: plan to score 20.

Use World Cup As Bludgeon to Force SA's Hand in Zimbabwe?

Hmm. I honestly can't say if this makes sense or not.

Margaritaville United

Here's what a day of baby-sitting will do to a man: I just spent 17 good minutes of my life watching highlights (?) of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying matches, including Jamaica's 7-0 win over Bahamas and Guatemala's 6-0 win over Saint Lucia. I'm all for the minnows having their God-given World Cup chance, but doesn't it seem sort of cruel and unusual? Is this football, or target practice? (Strangely enough, the 2-2 draw between Honduras and, of all places, Puerto Rico, looked like it might have actually contained some decent play.)

ITEM: Guatemala did a kind of cool goal celebration, in which half the team ran to the touchline, sat down and imitated a rowing crew. Significance unknown. But how gauche is it to whip out elaborate post-goal festivities when you're beating Saint Lucia?

ITEM: I now know where I'm going if my whole life ever collapses: Saint Lucia, to either coach or play for the national team.

ITEM: CONCACAF sucks. I think the USA and Mexico should pull a "double Australia", secede and join up with the LatAms. Let Canada and Carlos Ruiz (who scored four against S. Lucia) have their fun.

Arshavin's Cross

That was just a brilliant game. As many have noted, Holland had the air of a successful, confident young man who suddenly runs into his more successful, more confident Doppelganger on the street: they didn't quite know what to do. And in retrospect, maybe the Dutch had it too easy in the so-called Group of Death, feasting on an Italy that obviously sent out the wrong XI, a France in steep decline and an all-too-Romanian Romania. But let's not take anything away from Russia, a team transformed in the last two games by the reappearance of this...this...this...this Arshavin kid. He looks like a 12-year-old who decided to go as the Fifth Beatle for Halloween, but the way he plays makes it seem like the last five or ten years of ball-flicking Brazilian mononyms and Portugese step-over artists never happened. Could the best player in the world be a wicked fast, clever, attack-specialist Slav? Not saying, just asking.

Anyway, hyperbole aside, that second Russian goal keeps playing in my head. You've seen it a million times: a player rushes down to the endline like he has something Important in mind...and then the ball spins out of bounds, or dribbles to the keeper, or flies off into row Z on the other side of the park. But when was the last time you saw a player pull the rock back, loop a parabola all the way over the goal, and hit the exact six-square-inch spot at the far post occupied by the lashing ankle of a teammate who started his run 30 yards out? Good night, Irene. Man.

The Third Rome

I admit it: I wrote Russia off after Spain poleaxed them in the first group game. I forgot who Guus Hiddink is, and I'm afraid I just didn't know much about Arshavin. I stand corrected.

Clash of Civilizations

A Dutch-American friend writes:

What was once an ideological empire tempering the market fundamentalist tendencies of the West has itself become the very caricature of capitalist excess. It is a national morality tale, like 1920s America. Today's Russia is the Great Gatsby writ large.

And that only highlights what a great duel could await us in today's Holland v. Russia, um, fixture. It's not quite Good Against Evil, Cold War-style, but the political science of the thing intrigues. Everyone's favorite sexy, 420-friendly, progressive little social democracy—a country that enjoys an entire export industry in groovy architects—against the sinister Bear, the ever-murky petro-imperialist kleptocratic appointive monarchy skulking on the edge of Europe in a knock-off Adidas track suit. These aren't just two football teams, they're two bloody sides of the Janus-faced Western World! Should be good times.

I would love to come off all right-thinking and say that 100 percent of my being is behind Holland—easily the most cohesive and attractive national team in years, bar a few moments of brilliance from Argentina here and there—but my Russophile tendencies mean that I, like Raskolnikov on one of his more perplexing days, suffer from a divided consciousness. Certainly, the Netherlands should be rewarded for its rockin'-good football and for not having creepazoid ex-KGB men in charge. On the other hand, to see the Orangje undone by the Empire, under the crafty tutelage of a mercenary Dutch coach, would make for one hell of a plot twist. Davai, Rossiya! Hup Holland!

The Departed

Usually, a bittersweet feeling sets in at the end of the group phase of a major tournament. Friends old and new must take their leave, and all of a sudden half the storylines in the soap opera disappear. In the World Cup, there's always some spunky underdog—a Trinibagonian or two—to mourn. Teams that may have played some tasty football—yer Cote d'Ivoires and so on—fail to survive. There's almost always a big part of me that feels like the really fun part of the affair ends when the multiculti two-games-a-day fete gives way to the zero-sum knockouts.

This time, not so much. Portugal, eliminated today by Michael Ballack's noggin (have I mentioned how impressive that thing is?), is the first side I've been at all sorry to see go. France? What a non-entity they turned out to be. I guess, based on WC2002 and this go-round, that The Feeling skips a tournament for them. Who else was there again? The Czechs? Eh. Romania? The thinking man's Austria. Switzerland? I actually spent one night there once, and barely remember it; I feel the same about the team. Somehow, even though this tight 16-nation format probably ensures a stronger field overall than the bloated, continental-affirmative-action-diluted World Cup, Euro 2008's also-rans are a pretty tepid lot.

On the other hand, who would have expected a match-up between Turkey and Croatia, a pair of outsider teams that looked in serious decline a couple years ago, to look so promising? Or that Russia, of all intercontinental empires, would suddenly look like the crew to give Holland a challenge? Or that the Dutch, kind of a cynical and brutal outfit two years back, would get all soulful and total-football-nostalgic? It's been a great championship so far—just a very unbalanced one.

Beer Hall Putsch

Made a brief stop at the Thirsty Lion, just in time to see Ballack pop his header past Ricardo, with just enough time before I fled back to work (it will make you free, you know) to engage the guy sitting next to me in a vigorous debate over whether the bludgeon-skulled German striker fouled his defender. He seemed to think Ballack's two-handed launch constituted a definite foul. I held that while that may, in fact, have been true, it was the sort of tactical contact that happens all the time, and if you're looking for that call in a major championship, you are probably beaten anyway. Certainly, defenders get away with much worse all the time.

Idol Speculation

If, as Spangly Princess suggests and his form with both Barcelona and France seems to confirm, Thierry Henry is as past it as a reality show about talentless (but slut-riffic) starlets living among the commoners...does that mean we can crank the Thierry-Henry-to-MLS rumor mill as high as she'll go? We already saw an Henry boomlet when Seattle got the MLS nod (as a result of a malign cosmic conspiracy) and let drop some press-bait re: a plan to stuff the Frenchman's pockets with Cascadian-American dollars. I would say New York, shorn of its most promising star by the Altidore transfer and looking pretty creaky in the Designated Player department, would make the most commercially logical destination. Then again, maybe Superclub LA will find a way to bend the rules (imagine) to turn their lockerroom into a real Premiership 2000 reunion. It would be awesome—just like an Oasis tour.

Diving, Schmiving

I long ago stopped caring about soccer-bashing American sportswriters—or, anyway, I decided to try to stop caring, in preference to my former habit of allowing the 17,492nd version of the "soccer: sport of pederastic Trotskyites" opinion piece drive me into insane, fist-gnawing rage. Now I just shake my head with rueful amusement and put the writer in question on my long list of people never to read again. ('Round our place, we call this the Hitchens List.)

But here's a phenom I see more and more: the former-skeptic-turned-reluctant-half-convert, trying to make sense of matters futbol, in ways that may irritate those of us well-versed in Trotskyite pederasty but can also be of interest. Case in point for the day comes from Salon's King Kaufmann. I was sad to write King off a few years ago, because he's got one of the great by-lines in modern sports journalism and because Salon's readership, composed entirely of latte-sipping Volvo-driving Barack-loving bobo nerds like myself, enjoys 1:1 overlap with the Anglophone-Yank (Yanglo?) soccer demographic. I'm glad to see the King get with the programme (please note Trotskyite spelling; le program is also acceptable), even if he hasn't quite swallowed that delicious final gram of Drogba-flavored Kool-Aid yet.

One thing that continues to puzzle me, though, is why My Fellow Americans have such a fixation about diving. Yes, it's a disgrace to the game and all that, but aren't the big-time American sports full of cheaters and whiners, too? It seems like every NFL player breaks some rule on every play, and baseball is now a well-known chemistry experiment. As far as I can tell, the NBA consists almost entirely of Kobe and Shaq trying to game the refs, while the refs nervously check their Blackberries at every time out for their latest instructions from various Sicilian fraternal organizations. So what's the big deal with some skinny Italian boys rolling around like little bunnies in the meadow? I think it's kind of cute—but then again, a soccer fan would, right?

Make Mine Orangje Crush

As I survey the shattered particles of the so-called Group of Death, scattered like so many discarded Legos at the feet of Marco Van Basten, I have to wonder. Like everyone else, I have developed an enormous man-crush on this Holland team, which so casually dispatched its group opponents and, into the bargain, seems intent on playing football about as lovely as can be played under the modern conditions of production. This Dutch team has so much to recommend it—their goals are better, they zing one in every half an hour so no one gets bored, their passing is prettier, their shirts are tighter, even their names are longer—it's churlish to raise any objections at this point.

Still...isn't it always the way? You look at a four-team group and think, gor'blimey, guv'nor! This will be insane! Then three of the four sides turn out to play like MLS teams that stumbled on a cache of your better performance-enhancing drugs. The dubious send-off of Abidal aside, this French team was completely gormless: these Frenchies appear to have confused their repertoire of amusing Gallic facial expressions for a strategy. I do admire the kamikaze spirit of the Italian team, and I can practically hear Gianluigi Buffon describing his recipe for human liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti, but if these guys manage to win a trophy again, it's time for a full-scale Calciopoli investigation. The Romanians did the near-impossible by stumbling into the last day with a chance of advancing on a measly two points, and now we see how they got that way.

So the question is, when does someone step up and make Holland work for it? Is there a team in this tournament that can force the Dutch out of exhibition-season mode, test their not-entirely-convincing defense, make Dirk Kuyt's face even redder?

WTF?

Why, when pretty much everyone reviles penalty shootouts as a means of deciding knockout games, would anyone want to install the bloody things in group games? Has the world gone INSANE?

Choose Your Own Adventure

If you're Marco van Basten, with first place in the group locked down and a bench full of players who haven't seen the field yet, do you:

—let the reserves have a highly alliterative run-out against Romania?
—stick with the same basic XI to make sure no rust sets in before the knock-outs?
—shave your head again?

Group of WHAT'S UP NOW, B____?

So, after two demolition jobs performed on the effective co-world champions, is it safe to say that Marco van Basten is cooking up genius in the Dutch ranks? That was a fantastic performance, abetted by France's inability to finish, Ribery's penchant for trying to dribble through good tackles and a goalkeeper who will be in the male modeling trade by this time next week. This is how you handle all that Group of Death hype: destroy all you survey with swagger and confidence.

The Way-Back Machine

Ah. Courtesy the Guardian, a clip from one of the first real football matches I ever watched:

Five Stars Above the American Crest

I must say, as fanatically executed conceits go, it's hard to top a full-scale recreation of Euro 2008 from an alternate reality in which England made the tournament. It's a dangerous concept: it very nearly tempted me to compose a detailed Wikipedia entry from the universe in which the United States, rather than Brazil, develops a singularly gorgeous national style of football to match its obsession with the game, and goes on to win five World Cups. Fortunately, I caught myself, and will content myself with an elaborate private fantasy about the Portland Timbers' ascent from obscurity, up the intricate and legendary American football pyramid, into the Global Champions League.

Panic at the Disco

I'm not watching Poland/Austria, either, but I did take the time to make a happy discovery: Brazilian-born pseudo-Pole (BTW, if half of Eastern Europe can hand out passports to Brazilian mercenaries, why can't Team USA?) Roger has one of the most amazing photos in the history of Wikipedia. Please regard.

The Costs of Triage

During every major tournament, I find myself deciding to skip a few days, deciding in advance that they're expendable because the match-ups don't look all too enthralling. Thus, no football-watching for me today—a decision I'm coming to regret as I read various MBM recaps of the action. Sounds like the Swiss and the Turks are engaged in a heroic battle with the elements as we metaphorically speak.

Comedy is Dead

I believe I went on record with the idea that last night's US Open Cup fixture between the Portland Timbers and Hollywood United, an amateur team owned by a bunch of LA celebs which has featured Ziggy Marley and Vinnie Jones in its line-ups in the past (at the same time?), would be "funny" or something like that. I retract this sentiment at this time. H-United pulled a classic Cup giant-killing last night, winning 3-2 and allowing the Timbers to concentrate on the league for the remainder of the season.

The horrifying details are here. Let's see: the Timbers manage to score two goals for just the fourth time this season, but their World Cup veteran forward misses a penalty. A former Timber scores two pens for Dancing With the Stars United, and then they win it in stoppage time. It's a funny old game, etc. etc.

You-Ros for Heroes

I know it's sort of the done thing these days to come off all jaded about international football—surely, the club scene is where it's at these days, man! Where you can have an owner who's a wealthy fugitive arms dealer of vague post-Soviet origin, an egomaniac French coach who considers himself a genius and doesn't care who knows it, three indentured Ivoirian teenagers at every position, six Brazilian sex fiends as attacking substitutions on the bench and that huge-headed German striker everyone bid for last summer, all for the entertainment of your fat-bastard fans who have Latin phrases they don't understand tattooed to their forearms but either can no longer afford to go to the stadium or are under police ban from doing so...obviously, these are the conditions under which state-of-the-art football is played these days. By comparison, the international game is quaint.

Still, after the last couple of days, Euro 2008 looks pretty good, doesn't it? We've got crumbling champions (Greece, Italy), fading dynasties (France), a bunch of goals, those bright orange Holland shirts, David Villa and Cesc Fabregas' identical hair, and even a classic strike produced in the Sweden v. Greece game, of all occasions. Of course, it will probably all go to hell in the knock-out rounds, but there should be a few more days of decent entertainment in the thing.

The Cup

Courtesy Du Nord, the grid for tonight's first round in the US Open Cup. I think the quirky majesty of this out-of-the-way, neglected competition speaks for itself. The Pancyprian Freedoms? Bradenton Academics? Clearwater Galactics? Beautiful.

Carolina Railhawks v Brooklyn Knights
Real Maryland Monarchs v NY Pancyprian Freedoms
Richmond Kickers v Fredricksburg Gunners
Western Mass Pioneers v Boston Olympiakos
Minnesota Thunder v St Louis Lions
Michigan Bucks v Cleveland City Stars
AAC Eagles v Pittsburgh Riverhounds
Rochester Rhinos v RWB Adria
Austin Aztex v Atlanta Silverbacks
Miami FC Blues v Bradenton Academics
Charlottle Eagles v Clearwater Galactics
Charleston Battery v ASC New Stars
Crystal Palace Baltimore v Los Angeles Legends
Harrisburg City Islanders v Yakima Reds
Arizona Sahuaros v Seattle Sounders
Portland Timbers v Hollywood United

Spanish Bombz

Bazzzzzzoooooomba! Much as I figured Spain would treat us to at least one bubbly game of champagne wishes and caviar dreams, I did not anticipate that Russia would be the patsy. (I had Greece fingered for the drop—and, well, they should enjoy Sweden while they can.) The Russians were more enterprising than the 4:1 scoreline suggested, and Spain shakier on defense, but there's no real arguing with the way Villa and accomplices played. They're like a host of flying artificially intelligent knives around the penalty area. Or something similar.

Let's Go: Uruguay

While some big tournament goes on in Europe, there is football elsewhere in the world. I sat down this afternoon to check the offerings of GolTV's funny little On Demand highlights service, which during the Big Time season packages goals from Spain and the Bundesliga with some incongruous odds'n'ends, by which I mean the Colombian league. Right now, the editors find themselves obliged to cobble together 18-minute reels with only the Uruguayan and Ecuadorian leagues to draw from, it seems. Must be the life.

Not to say those competitions don't have their points of interest. I have an official Strange Fascination with the Uruguayan league, based in part on a brief visit to that lovely country (and a look at one of the tiny, tiny stadiums used by average provincial teams) and in part because it seems, well, kinda weird. To start with, there's a club called Liverpool which is not actually Liverpool (they wear blue[!]), and a club called River Plate that is not actually River Plate but which has a pretty interesting history of its own. The UruLiga doesn't amount to much in this all-singing-all-dancing era of football globalization—Europe steals all the players worth stealing, and then Argentina takes the rest. That is, if you evaluate it on the standard of a national league. In reality, I bet this is the best city league in the world: by my count, 14 of the 16 current teams are from Montevideo. That means, according to my sophisticated demographic analysis, that there is one first-division football club for every 95,000 or so Montevideans—that's got to be some kind of major-metro record, right? Greater Londoners will have to make do with just one Premier League side per 1.5 million residents next season, while 2.5 million Romans have to share one major team, plus Lazio. In Montevideo, the loyalties must shift block by block.

Football, Like Rust, Never Sleeps

One day, two games, two bankrupt performances by the most recent World Cup finalists. Time marcheth on, I guesseth. Accounts of France's outing against Romania suggest a team that, for all its creative players, seemed bereft of ideas. Certainly, in the action I saw just now, the poor Italians didn't have the beginnings of a clue; the Dutch, meanwhile, looked like they were trying to think of new, fun ways to smack the ball into the net. Two years ago, France thrived on quality and on the carved-icon powers of a few of its eminences, both grises and otherwise, while Italy prospered by being just a little more clever than anyone else. Based on today, both approaches may have expired.

Le Dejeuner des Chiens

Zut alors! Zounds like zey Francais haff dez-grazed zemzelvz.

Fancy Dans Redeemed?

I considered Portugal something of a disgrace in the '06 World Cup, with their diving and whining and repeated ugly wins. (In fairness, they did have to play England, which always guarantees an agonizing time will be had by all.) But based on today's evidence, the Portugese look like they're here (by which I mean, there) to play some real football. Stay tuned.

Yes, Dad

MLS fans face the prospect of having the car keys taken away the night of Prom.

Fistful of Euros

Five things I'm looking forward to in Euro 2008:

SAMIR NASRI: The kid bobs and weaves and Zizous all over YouTube. I want to see him and Ribery make some musique together. If nothing else, they can feed Henry a bunch of chances that he'll convert in inverse proportion to the importance of the match in which they occur.

THE ITALIANS: Two summers ago, they snuck out of Berlin with the trophy concealed in the boot of their car, using fake passports. If that was Ocean's 11, will this be Ocean's 12—many of the same perpetrators on hand, all the same jokes, all the ham acting, same outcome? Also, I really like it when Luca Toni runs around like an eight-year-old on crystal meth.

THE GREEKS: Not really. Oh, okay—it was sort of charming to see such a rank underdog bag a major trophy, even if they won it f'ugly. The Greek victory in '04, and all the grudging complaints about it, pointed to international football's Legitimacy Paradox: any time a nation outside the usual-suspects club finds some success, it seems to undermine rather than validate the integrity of international competition. When SoKo and Turkey made the World Cup semis in '02, many commentators, rather than hailing the upstarts, used their rise as evidence of the dubiousness of the whole tournament. Then Brazil and Germany restored the proper order of the universe to palpable relief. Likewise, I sense a widespread, if not completely explicit, feeling that Euro 2004 didn't really count, because the Greeks won it. This leaves me sort of wanting to see them pull a repeat—but I'm sure I'll get over that the first time I watch them play.

THE RUSSIANS: What, exactly, did Zenit Sankt Peter's win in the UEFA Cup portend for this long-fallen power? A lot of Zenit men figure in the Russian squad, which, not unlike Italy, draws heavily on the domestic league. The group looks moderate-to-difficult, so we'll learn pretty fast what this somewhat mysterious gang is made of.

THREE WILDLY ENTERTAINING SPANISH PERFORMANCES, FOLLOWED BY THE INEVITABLE QUARTERFINAL EXIT. That all goes without saying.

The Italian Job

Glad to see that the Special One hasn't dialed back his ambition.

A Small Miracle, As Delicate and Unique as a Snowflake, Has Occurred

Time teaches us all some pretty stern lessons—our bodies decline, our children start using slang we don't know, the New York Yankees continue to exist—but reserves one of its stoutest batches of whoop-ass to serve when American soccer fans come by for tea. After about a century in the global and domestic sporting wilderness, Yanqui futbol lovers tend to exhibit forms of post-traumatic stress syndrome: we're touchy, paranoid and tend to willfully take the losing side of every argument. We stick up for our half-bad domestic leagues and keep insisting that the national side could win it all someday. We bore our "normal" friends with lectures about stuff they don't care about; meanwhile, fans in "real" football countries consider us a pretty good laugh. So when something good actually happens, we tend to retreat to our darkened private altars and sacrifice a couple perfectly good chickens, no matter how small the event. (Hell, we still get sorta psyched when one of Our Boys signs for Derby County.)

Look out, poultry: a minor but real miracle just went down in Chicagoland. A new American soccer franchise picked a name, and it doesn't suck. The city's new women's team, under the able direction of demi-legend Peter Wilt, will be called the Chicago Red Stars, a name that both honors Chicago's awesome municipal flag and makes light allusion to football tradition in the form of Red Star Belgrade, et al. Again, it doesn't suck.

Understand that team-namin' time traditionally provides an opportunity for fans to gnash our teeth and eye the nearest high window. The corporate-marketing geniuses who get North American soccer in their clutches have given the world the likes of Real Salt Lake, the Kansas City Wiz, the Montreal Manic, the Jacksonville Tea Men, the Caribous of Colorado (!)...and as for the tawdry wilds of the indoor game, let's not even go there, except to say that "Arizona Sandsharks" marks a highlight of the art.

In their own still-formative league, the Red Stars' name easily outdistances the "Washington Freedom" (the notional mass-noun name: so '90s) and the "Boston Breakers" (also the name of a USFL franchise, which is either really cool or a really, really bad idea). What scares me, and should scare us all, is that five WPS teams haven't even picked names yet. Look out for the Los Angeles Sizzle, the New York/New Jersey Greater Metropolitan Areas and the Philadelphia Liberty Belles.

"Hello, My Name Is ________"

Looks like Jozy Altidore is off to Villareal. This is an excellent move for all concerned—MLS bags a record transfer fee, Altidore goes to a club interested in his development in a league suited to his skills.

And most importantly, on his first day, Altidore can punch Giuseppe Rossi on behalf of America. GO AMERICA! GO JOZY!

The Spangly Princess Interview, Director's Cut

Over at Du Nord, the Eleven Devils guest slot features an interview with Rome-based football blogger Vanda Wilcox, whose Spangly Princess, with its unique mix of Italian football coverage, historical insight and, whaddyacallit, personal whimsy, is one of the more fascinating football sites on this Internet of ours. I snipped a few Qs out of the DN interview—we journalists need to feel like we're using our "special skills"—so here, for you complete-freaks, is the whole thing:

—How and why did you start Spangly Princess, and how has it evolved?

I started my blog back in 2005 when I was still a doctoral student and living in the UK. It started off pretty randomly as something to occupy my mind during my part-time job which involved long late-night shifts in a university library, and I was trying to avoid studying... you know how it goes. I didn't even really choose a name, I just stuck with what I'd been using online since about 2000 on various message boards. I think this might be kind of offputting to people, especially now that I mostly blog about football, but it's too late to change it now.

—I have not done a comprehensive study, so I can't say for certain, but I would wager that Spangly Princess is the only football-ish blog that also contains long posts about World War I battles, philosophy and various retail obsessions. How would you define the thing? What makes you think, Aha! I should write about this on SP?

Is this a polite way of saying, why is your site so random? In general I try not to define it too much, because I don't really know how. I write about what's on my mind, which sounds terrifically banal, but basically if there's something which has got me excited, confused, depressed, infuriated, giggling or thoughtful, then it means I'll enjoy writing about it. And hopefully if I enjoy writing it, someone will enjoy reading it. Since I built up a readership – or rather, since a couple of people beyond my own family and friends started dropping by – I have developed a fairly good idea of what people would like to see on my site. That means that when there's any major news in Italian football, and especially in the world of fandom and the ultras, people (well, a few of them) expect me to have a comment on the situation. The same applies to the general trends in Italian politics, and especially Roman politics. And sometimes I buy a great new pair of shoes, and I just have to share. In the past I have more than once considered separating off the football stuff from the other bits, but people always tell me not to.

—When did you move to Rome? Can you tell us a little about how your love for AS Roma developed?

My family is part Italian and I grew up coming here every summer for a month or two, and speaking Italian at home part of the time. But I never made it to Rome specifically until 2002 when I came over here for a research trip. By profession I'm an historian and my main interest is Italian military history (y'all can insert as many jokes as you like right here) and specifically World War I. So I came to Rome to use the army archives here. I'm all alone in the city, not knowing anyone, and there's only so many hours in a day you can sit turning through dusty lists of military orders and piles of old newspaper. So I bought myself a ticket to go and see AS Roma. I've loved football since I was about 16, and my English side are Arsenal. Roma was meant to be a fling, a holiday romance, a bit on the side that my red-and-white boyfriend back home was never going to hear about. What goes on on holiday stays on holiday, right? Only, it didn't work that way. I fell in love, and badly. Don't ask me why, the heart has its own reasons. And I'd be lying if I said that the team weren't a factor in wanting to live here. I started coming over for months at a time (always during the football season, natch) and when I finished my doctorate, I got myself a research fellowship and moved straight over. That was February 2006; I can't see myself heading back to the UK any time soon.

—The Curva Sud. Discuss.

Ha. Seeing as in three years of blogging about it I feel like I've only touched elliptically on its manifold appeal and unpleasant undercurrents, I'm not sure what to say here. The Sud is one of the major reasons I fell for Roma in the first place: that first game, I had a seat in the Nord at the opposite end. I sat down, looked up, and saw in front of me something which I had never seen, or dreamed of, in any English ground I'd gone to (Highbury, obviously, but also Goodison Park, Stamford Bridge, or others besides). It's amazing and slightly scary and makes you feel alive like nothing else.

—So, at the risk of inviting a book-length answer, just what IS it about Italian football? Why is it so...uh, weird? And if that's not clear, maybe that is because I can never quite articulate the particular and essential strangeness that seems to make the Italian game so different from football in, say, Germany or France. Can you help?

Ah yes, this I can do. The answer is very simple, which is to say profoundly complicated. The answer is: Italy. Italian politics, society, culture and daily life are all that bit more…. weird than France, Germany, England, Scotland, Spain. Perhaps weird is the wrong word, but the difference you rightly identify in football is present in most areas. Passion, chaos, cynicism, love, despair, corruption, gambling, beauty, sophistication, violence, avarice, power, elegance, cruelty, delight. Just, y'know, everyday run of the mill things.

—Here's a question strictly from the perspective of American fans. We, who have long lived in a form of distant football exile, like some lost Old Testament tribe, often think we know a lot about the history of big clubs abroad, or perhaps I should say, we often form our random allegiances based on a few shreds of information. Like, no one really likes Real Madrid, because they're the "fascist" team, but everyone loves FC Barcelona, because they're...uh, cool, or something. Ditto Lazio/Roma, to an extent. So, how much of that is for real, how much is a simplification, how much is just irrelevant to the daily understanding of actual fans of these clubs?

This is a really great question and one that's hard to answer. But I can 'fess up slightly that when I first wanted to go to a game here, I chose Roma not Lazio because "everyone knows Lazio are fascists". So it operates here in Europe too, to some extent, it's not only a US phenomenon. I guess that many of these stereotypes have a basis in truth, but they are still just stereotypes at heart. The Barca/Real story can be read as a PR war which Barca have won in a pretty major way. But I've read that they took money from the Franco regime as well. The experiences of living under fascism for a long time are complex, and they don't generally reduce down to a simple good/bad dichotomy I'm afraid. Given that in mainland Europe, many if not most clubs' fans have an overall political alignment, at some level you can make a choice based on this stuff, sure. But it's never as neat as the simplified versions make out, and while not precisely irrelevant to the daily understanding of actual fans, as you put it, is kind of marginal for the majority. Because at least in the mythology of how these things work, you don't choose your team, it chooses you. It's your local side, your dad's team (or increasingly nowadays your mum's team) or because you wanted to be Marco Van Basten when you were 6, or because your best mate in the playground supported them. If the team of your city happens to have a strong element which is neo-fascist (as Roma sadly does) or perhaps supports Stalin (see Livorno) you just have to grin and bear it. I occasionally read a US site about my team and I find it very weird seeing what is important for these Roma fans, and how they perceive the club and their own support, compared to how it looks from inside the Curva Sud. But I wouldn't presume to judge other people's support for their side, however it is based or expressed. These guys who get up to watch games at 4 in the morning on TV… I'm not going to say "you're not a real fan, you've never even been to Italy." You can judge the level of knowledge someone has, but not how they feel. At heart being a fan is an emotional bond, and we can never know how someone feels on the inside.

—How do you think your various other interests—philosophy, politics, war, etc.—inform your understanding of and writing about football?

Oh, completely and utterly. At least in Italy, you can't follow football without following politics too. I find that there's nothing that can't be explained by an analogy to the First World War. This is one of those great universal truths, no?

—How do readers react to the different subjects you blog about? Do people seem to get the same joy out of a post about philosophy as they do from one about Totti?

Judging by the comments I get, most readers enjoy the fact there's a variety of stuff. I am blessed with some very intelligent and perceptive readers, many of whom will come up with far better ideas in the comments than I do in my posts. Sometimes I put up a match report and no-one has anything to say, then I'll ask people to help choose me a dress and they're all falling over themselves. When I post something historical, that tends to derive directly from my archival research. That means it's brand new material which has never been written about anywhere else, online or in print, and people seem to enjoy that.

—How has the football blogosphere affected your life as a football fan? I mean to say, has the fact that there are now innumerable people writing about football from innumerable perspectives changed the way you look at the game?

Yes, for sure. Good writing should challenge and inform as well as entertain, and I have both learned a lot and been challenged in my assumptions by many good football blogs. I write for Pitch Invasion [pitchinvasion.net] which has an excellent selection of writing from around the world, including material from writers in Poland, Argentina, India and Egypt: this is amazing and something that was never possible before blogging. Then to name two very different but excellent blogs off the top of my head, sites like 200percent [200percent.blogspot.com] or The Run of Play [www.runofplay.com] offer inspiration and insight into whole new realms of fandom, and new ways of thinking about the game.

—Let's say there is no Internet. Would you be writing about football anyway?

Tricky. I guess not in any regular and systematic fashion, I'd be writing a it at home for my own purposes, because I love writing, but that's all. In the last year, at the insistence of my boyfriend who's a journalist, I have actually submitted some pieces for publication in real life actual solid paper magazines! Which I would never have dreamt of doing myself, and which was only possible thanks to the Internet. Weird, huh. I still find it pretty mental that someone on the far side of the globe might actually be interested in what I have to say about anything, never mind regularly want to read me drivelling on about Francesco Totti and the boys.

ELEVEN DEVILS ON TOUR!

Your Humble Correspondent takes this (very) modest show on the road tomorrow, with a one-day "guest blogger" stint at the great DU NORD. Lord Bruce, master of Du Nord, is slumming in England, and I am extremely flattered to join the cast of distinguished soccer writers, thinkers and drinkers invited to run the place in his absence. Today's star, Andrea Canales, aptly dubs Du Nord "hallowed ground." I shall try not to profane it.

Among other attractions, Eleven Devils' trip across the blogosphere will feature:

—EXCLUSIVE BLOGGER INTERVIEWS!

—SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION!

—THE SAME HALF-INFORMED RAMBLINGS OUR READERS HAVE COME TO EXPECT!

That, however, gives only the sketchiest idea of what this dread visitation will be like. For a better idea:

Mourinho Italia

So everyone's favorite manager/performance artist goes to Inter Milan, a club that's successful as could be on the domestic level. This move therefore invokes the Avram Grant Principle, in which a manager at a major club is considered a failure if that club fails to win the Champions League. The question, though, is not whether Jose can handle the pressure—it's whether the pressure can handle Jose. More importantly, will Mourinho's signature bizarre media statements scan as bizarre in Italian, or will the Romance-Language-to-Romance-Language transition go more smoothly?

Love For Sale

Well, well—what is there, really, to be said about England's little jaunt to Trinidad? We are deep in FIFA kabuki here, and I especially like the part about the FA's anxiety that its World Cup bid not be seen as "for sale." They're delighted to participate in the 100th anniversary of Trinidadian football—man, who wouldn't be? A chance to chum around over rum cocktails with the estimable Jack Warner is not to be missed. My question is, can someone dig up a plausible commemoration in the Pacific Northwest, so we can con England into playing here? Sadly, we missed the 30th anniversary of Soccer Bowl '77, but there must be something else. Chugger Adair's birthday?

UPDATE: Looks like everything is going very well.

A Cheap Holiday In Other People's Misery

The attentive Eleven Devils reader (and I know you're out there, lurking amid the Interporn) will note a dearth of comment on the Portland Timbers Football Club of late. That's because I, uh, haven't actually been to a match yet this year. This makes my second consecutive year of atrocious attendance, but, uh...well, I was there at the beginning! For real! Back in the day when the Timbers Army consisted of a couple guys with buckets and a few local ska enthusiasts! There are photos that prove it! Seriously! Rose City 'til I die, if I had the wings of an eagle, etc., etc.....

In my absence, it seems the Timbers have an intriguing, if typically muddled, campaign going in the exalted United Soccer Leagues First Division. (A real league: look it up!) They won a bunch of matches to start, made an earnest run at the world record for consecutive draws, and now can't seem to buy a goal. The big away match against ever-hated Equipe L'Impact de Montreal takes place tonight before Stade Saputo's crowd of rabid Quebecois nationalists and the vast continental television audience of Fox Soccer Channel. We have a way of winning at Montreal—or, at least, it has happened—and three points would put us in a very peachy slot in the table. So, on balance, things are looking up, especially compared to a couple of the trainwreck seasons we've endured in living memory.

But that is emphatically not what I'm excited about. No. The most exciting thing to happen to the Club, probably ever, comes in the form of the US Open Cup, the venerable (one of the oldest Cup comps in the world, in fact) knock-out tournament that is, like the name says, open to clubs from all levels of competitive soccer. A star-crossed tournament at best for the Timbers in past years, this time the Cup yields a fantastic, totally hilarious first-round fixture. On 10 June, the Timbers will host—yes, that's right!—HOLLYWOOD UNITED, the world's most glamourous pub team. They say football makes people happy, and it must be true: ever since I heard about this pairing, I've been on the edge of uncontrolled mirth.

Hollywood United, see, was founded by a dude from the Sex Pistols, a couple guys from The Cult and one of the guys from Def Leppard who had all his limbs. Ziggy Marley—Ziggy Marley—has played for one of its several sides, as have a revolving cast of Commonwealth-inflected showbiz also-rans (I guess "B-List United" didn't have quite the right ring...) and retired pros. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Ziggy, Robbie Williams or Vinnie Jones (!) are in the current first-team squad. Still, the prospect of taking on a club run by a bunch of puffy ex-rock stars is delicious. You just can't make this stuff up.

Now, all we have to do is beat them. No problem. Right?

Dead-Blogging England v. USA

Gaaaaah. I took my leave from this sad occasion at half-time, after making precious few observations, due in part to the fact that precious little occurred, and in part to the fact that I know sweet FA about football and am only pretending. But, anyway:

—We have a silly team. DaMarcus Beasley is a silly player. Steve Cherundolo—silly player. And note how both also have silly names. Eddie Johnson may be a "grown-ass man," but he still gets caught in possession just about every time he touches the ball. Silly. In their inability to do a thing with the ball when it comes to their feet, in their fecklessness in the last 40 yards of the field, in their woeful inability to defend a set-piece against a second-rate European opponent, the Americans personified silliness. We will still beat Mexico four times out of five, however.

—Those new USA kits actually look kind of cool.

—I like friendlies, because they only ask 45 minutes of your time. Unlike the three-hour Sturm und Drang of your average Big Final, with its inevitable extra time and penalty hoo-hah, a friendly little friendly offers less than an hour of actual entertainment before the mass substitutions turn the match into an episode of Whose Line Is It, Anyway? "John Smith (who?) receives his first international cap (and his last) here in the 81st minute..." Et cetera. Instead of ruining your whole day with alcohol, adrenalin and disappointment, the friendly gives you the perfect excuse to linger over one (1) pint for a bit, curse the day Carlos Bocanegra (see? silly name) was born, then head back to work. Perfect!

—The atmosphere (or restful lack thereof) at my downtown Portland soccer bar filled me with nostalgia, in fact. About two dozen people held dozy court over mid-day beers and lunch, muttering peaceably at the rare outbreak of action on the big screens. This was vintage Soccerball USA, a refreshing change from the rampacked scene at the same joint during the Champions League Final: the coupla hundred Johnny-Come-Lately fans in their brand-new Manchester United PLC and Chelsea Football Club garb, whooping, hollering and groaning with histrionic abandon. I mean, I love to see that stuff, since it plays right in to the dearest long-held fantasy of the American soccer fan, i.e., that History Is Turning Our Way. But frankly, it can be a bit much, and can engender a predictable longing for the old days, when finding a soccer match on television in this country was sort of like tracking down a covert gay sex club. (Or so I imagine, y'know. Poetic license.) Used to be, every match drew this kind of polite and tiny crowd. And PS, I was totally hip to Bleach before Nevermind came out.

—I see, from the Guardian's jaded MBM coverage, that England now lead 2-0. Good for them—excellent warm-up for Euro....HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Sorry, couldn't resist. We'll be lucky to get past Bermuda. Later.

That Sinking Feeling

I sit here wondering why I am gripped with an indistinct but real feeling of impending doom...and then I remember: Oh yes, the USA plays England today. In 20 minutes, in fact. That's got to be it.

Prediction: England 3 : 1 USA. Brace from Rooney. Feel free to call your bookies now.

The Philosophy of a Loser

Ah, the comforting equilibrium of the Premier League: Manchester United are champions, Arsenal are the pretty team that should have won it but botched the job, Liverpool sort of suck but stumbled to a lucrative half-successful season in any case. And at Chelsea, a veritable high-school drama class has broken out. Welcome, Hull City! You'll have fun.

"I feel toward my love for Chelsea rather as Dr. Frankenstein must have felt toward his monster when he saw it terrorizing the countryside."

Please read this rather extraordinary Champions League Final MBM.

The Amazing World of Football

What other sport features matches between crunchy-left darlings Tibet and right-wing Italian separatist nuttos "Padania"? That would be none.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Now that I am done vomiting, allow me to share some reflections on today's Champions League final:

—Both as a spectacle and as a sawker match, this was a freehanded mixture of the ridiculous and the entertaining. Hey, guys, how should we decide the (ostensibly) finest football competition on Earth? Why not have the players slide around on a disintegrating real/fake turf imported from Slovakia for 120 minutes, then play tiddlywinks at 1:30 am for the Cup? Da, tovarish!

—Then again, this is Big Time Football circa 2008: total Bizarroworld absurdity is integral to the package.

—Still, goofy as this whole match was, I did find plenty to enjoy. Ferdinand's near-decapitation of Joe Cole was a nice moment, and the whole Ballad of Carlos Tevez took on a kind of strange anti-heroic grandeur, especially in extra time as he flailed about, looking ever uglier. John Terry's denial of Ryan Giggs in the goal mouth provided the drama of a Fistful of Dollars/guns blazing on Main Street variety, with the respective participants' fate in the penalty shootout serving as the wistful coda. Yes, I had a beer. Just one.

—I caught only the back half of this match (also known as The Part With No Goals, In Which Chelsea Hit the Woodwork Twice, Proving That God Thinks This Kind of Thing Is Funny) at Kells, here in scenic downtown Portland. For extra you-are-there English verisimilitude, there were a bunch of bald, middle-aged white "blokes" bellowing about who was and was not a "cunt," and a drunken tramp who appeared to be rooting for both sides.

—Didier Drogba needs to learn how to put his weight behind that swing.

—Roman Abramovich needs to stick a crowbar in his wallet and buy a bloody tie. Does he think he's OJ on the first day of trial?

—This marks two years (just about) and exactly 300 posts of Eleven Devils. Thanks to all 10 of you for reading. At some point next week, it seems I will be "guest blogging" on the far better, more useful and popular blog Du Nord. Details to follow.

In Other News...

As the Big United prepares for today's clash in Moscow, the Other United, rebel breakaway punk football exemplar FC United of Manchester, is celebrating its third promotion in a row. I can't wait for this Cup derby somewhere down the line.

Dynamo Chelski v. Manchester Bay Buccaneers: PREDICTION

So we come to the end—the Eurodelic SuperSeason concludes with the Financial League Championship Final (And Illegal Heavy Arms Bazaar) in Moscow tomorrow. This exciting occasion actually marks Eleven Devils' second anniversary (not like we're solipsistic or anything), and provides yet another opportunity to figure out (temporarily, until the next time they play each other...in about two months) who REALLY rules the jungle: Manchester United or Chelsea. As Roman Abramovich and various members of the Glazer clan receive "special massages" in the luxury suites, their hirelings will do a one-match reprise of their 38-match race for the Premier League crown for the edification of many, many intoxicated Englishmen and the rest of the world.

So what will happen? And who will care? Here at Eleven Devils, the Editorial We finally had a good long sit down and decided to support...Chelsea. A painful decision in many ways, but ultimately an easy one because, y'know, fuck Manchester United. That's about the best we can do. At least a few Chelsea fans have suffered in living memory, and blue is a lovely colo(u)r, and they've got John Terry and Petr Cech's clever hat. So lezzzzzzz gooooooh you Blues!

Outcome prediction: Chelsea 1 : 0 Manchester United. Didier Drogba goal on some unspeakably ugly and forgettable piece of business in about the 75th minute, either followed or preceded by the inevitable Wayne Rooney red card. Fun! We'll see yas.

Every Good Boy Deserves F_____

Congratulations to Zenit Saint Petersburg for bagging the UEFA Cup and all, but...I'm sorry, what brings that competition into more disrepute? The fact that Manchester City qualified for next year's edition by finishing sixth in the Premier League's "fair play" table? Or the fact that Fulham, a club that would be looking forward to next year's big clash with Ipswich Town if not for divine intervention, almost qualified by the same metric? Shouldn't there be a separate competition for "fair play" standouts—maybe one where both teams sit down for a nice cup of tea at midfield?

Rangers v. Manchester

Ah, Rangers. Let's just admit that we would have been surprised if all had been sweetness and light, eh?

New Boots & Contracts

The Eleven Devils Stamp of Approval descends with terrifying speed and force on this Richard Williams column, in which he compares the meaty, beaty, big and bouncy Premiership bonus boys to the less lovely side of '70s rock in its most decadent phase. Pushing the metaphor, Williams sees a parallel between the scruffier, more egalitarian (and, sounds like, more fun) world of the Championship and the pub-rock insurgency that led directly to punk.

This jibes with some preoccupations and reactionary opinions long held 'round here, to wit: while the Premiership can be dandy entertainment, it's also symptomatic of the Soviet-style gigantism and mindless power-worship that have taken over all of sports. One sees this everywhere—from the capitulation of the entire American sports scene to the NFL juggernaut (and its college junior league) to the glammed-up parody cricket of the Indian Premier League, the alleged Invisible Hand is used as an excuse for crushing the small, the quirky, the independent and the non-mainstream. Meanwhile, fans are renovated into consumers, their traditional sense of ownership replaced by a passive role. Buy, buy, buy, kids—until the owners find a more lucrative market, at which point, one way or another, you're gone.

We Are the Champions!

Actually, my Albina Going FC Unicorns are having a bit of a rough go of it in Portland Futsal's increasingly tough Third Division; we took our second one-goal defeat to league leaders Brooklyn Park Pub this week, and face two matches in two days to finish our season, with our prospects for climbing above fourth place (out of five) looking sketchy at best.

However, all is not gloom. Two of our players, in fact, should be sucking down the bubbly today, because they are co-owners of the newly minted FA Trophy champions, Ebbsfleet United. I'm sure Sam and Jimmy are having a fine time on their private islands today. Moguls.

The People's Car

Surely there is a wry historical joke hiding in the news that DC United, the club whose fierce Eagle Rampant badge has prompted some uncharitable comparisons to the aesthetics of various unsavory 20th Century political movements, just signed Volkswagen as its shirt sponsor. I am too tired to make it, however.

Today's Apocalyptic Forecast

The Columbus Crew is (are?) the best team in Major League Soccer. Lines for well-provisioned bunkers form to the left.

Mundo Albiceleste!

After visiting Argentina last year, the XIDevils Editorial Committee maintains a Strange Interest in all things Albiceleste, from tiny cups of really good coffee to riding noble steeds across the pampas. Delightful, then, that a commenter on the previous post (a guy from, of all places, Malayasia) runs this blog devoted to all Argentine players everywhere. God bless the Blaaaaghosphere.

Zenit's Zenith

So as I survey the possible wreckage of the Champions League final, which I fear will be a dire occasion enlivened only by the different comic facial expressions Drogba and Ronaldo use while wagging their fingers at the referee, I've been thinking how awesome it will be next year when the superb fantasy-football line-up of Bayern Munich gets its act together and rips through the CL. And then, of course, Bayern goes to Russia and gets completely sashlik'ed by Zenit St. Petersburg, like so:

zenit_bayermunich
Uploaded by thefootie

All of which leads me to both revise my predictions for next year's Champions League and reflect that the competition would be REALLY awesome if clubs like Zenit could make it to the final stages.

Five Things to Root For in the Champions League Final

—An earthquake.

—UEFA has the foresight to hire a panel of Chinese and Romanian judges to decide the diving competition between Didier Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo.

—Petr Cech takes the field in a full suit of Medieval armor.

—Roman Abramovich starts a money-throwing fight with the entire Glazer family and buries them alive in Euros.

—The inevitable Wayne Rooney red card.

Beyond that, I can think of nothing else. Signed—

—Bitter as a rural Pennsylvanian:

XIDEVILS.

Pinker than Palermo's Home Strip

At last, a real idea for affecting progressive social change within football. Enough of the milquetoast official "Let's Kick INSERT REACTIONARY TENDENCY Out of Football" campaigns. Time for real action. The Grauniad's Steven Wells—always worth a lookie—hits on the brilliant idea of just assuming all pro 'ballers "have it in for each other," if you see what I'm saying. This move, if undertaken by a working majority of fans, would simultaneously eliminate homophobia within the game and set up all kinds of hilarious scenarios involving pricey designer man-bags and spa treatments. Was I the only one who noticed that, during last week's Barcelona v. Man Utd match, only the players' aestheticians seemed to on their game? I have never seen a finer collection of sculptured eyebrows.

Strangely, Guardian readers do not appear to be reacting favo(u)rably to S. Wells' insight, to judge by the comment box.

P.S.: Wells quotes an ex-Juve paper-pusher to this effect: "There are no gays in football ... a homosexual cannot do the job of a footballer." Interesting. I would like to introduce this gentleman to the goalkeeper for my Albina Going Unicorns. Dangerous Dave could bury the man just inside the penalty area without hesitation—on a clean play, mind you—before offering him a ten-percent discount on his next hair dye.

Shock of the New

I am stunned, stunned, STUNNED. I mean, color me a deep shade of stunned: Sir Alex Ferguson is whining. Paint me in your deepest, darkest variety of amazed.

Lipstick on the Pig

"In practice this was all about the gently absorbing spectacle of two fine teams struggling to find their distinct and separate rhythms. And for the fact that, true to form, the game refused to conform to type. How refreshing to be reminded that at this rarefied level football can still be awkward, tense, even at times rather unsatisfying."

—Barney Ronay, in the Guardian, re: Barcelona v. Manchester United

A more charitable interpretation would be hard to find.

The World's Premier Club Competition!

For real? Leave aside the fact that three out of the final four teams in the "European" Champions League hail from the same country, giving the semi-finals the feel of your regularly scheduled Carling Cup plus a Very Special Guest who will appear to lecture the audience about UNICEF. It's more disappointing that four out of four are playing like sides battling to escape relegation from the Belgian First Division. As the grim display mounted by Barcelona and Manchester Bay Buccaneers wound down this afternoon, I found myself wishing John Arne Riise could run on to the pitch to add some zest to the proceedings.

Now we face the worst of all possible worlds: Chelsea and Manchester United hoofing it all the way to Moscow to play the finale. At least Roman Abramovich can host a sweet kegger at his dacha.

A FANTASTIC DIVING HEADER!

I have heard it argued that the romance, surprise and whimsy have been driven out of elite football by, y'know, the Corporations. Not if John Arne Riise has anything to say about it! The rocketing redhead's last-gasp own goal yesterday was remarkable for a number of reasons, particularly in that it was the sort of chance that professional strikers often fail to convert. On a philosophical level, it proved that life (or at least the Champions League) is fundamentally absurd and absent of coherent meaning, an arena of Nothing in which caprice rules. (If, for example, Avram Grant goes from washing socks or whatever he was doing before Mourinho was offed to managing the Champions of Europe, he will have this unthinkable and random occurrence to thank.) And even I, a diehard Liverpool fan for about 18 months or something, had to admit that it was sort of hilarious. You just don't see grown men doing that very often.

The Commish Speaks!

Someone needs to tell MLSCzar Don Garber that a blog, like the one he just started is supposed to be a forum in which you sorta let loose, think on the fly, say what you mean, experiment a little. Not another opportunity to say the same thing you've been saying for 10 years in the PR-department-approved corporatospeak you always use. C'mon, Commish—where are those drunk party photos?

Falcon Crest Athletic

Courtesy the estimable blog Pitch Invasion, a report that the prospective owner of a small English club wants to change its name to "Harchester United", to match the fictional club in the soap opera Footballers' Wives.

I think this is a great idea. It worked wonders for FC Dallas.

Sliverpool

As this report makes clear, the on-going ownership meltdown at Liverpool keeps fluctuating between tragedy and farce. It seems likely that someone, probably some sort of transnational oligarch with billions of what they call quid at his/her disposal, will have to bail the Reds out of their disastrous bondage to a pair of American idiots. In the meantime, said idiots seem hell-bent on reducing the club to splinters.

As Comrade Lenin once asked, What is to be done? As long as football clubs are set up as private entities (or, worse, traded on the stock markets, which value nothing but growth and, as America's major newspaper companies have discovered in recent years, deliver swift and vicious punishment when said growth doesn't meet their expectations), fans will see their beloved teams bought, sold and asset-stripped. Manchester United is now as much a debt sinkhole as a football club. Chelsea could collapse tomorrow if Roman Abramovich suffers a heart attack or one of the misadventures mysteriously common to successful post-Soviet entrepreneurs. The Premiership's weaker sisters are vulnerable to fire-sale emergencies and hostile takeovers. Meanwhile, the league's run-away success makes it likely that other competitions around Europe and the world will try to match the English model of massive private investment.

Not to come across all Black Bloc or anything, but I think the only solution is some form of collective ownership: substantive control exercised by fans. Barcelona and other Spanish clubs operate that way, as do the members of the Bundesliga, one of the best-run and most populist major sports leagues in the world. A plan for a fan takeover of Liverpool already surfaced in response to the year's troubles. It may not be going anywhere, but it speaks to the larger truth. It's time for fans of the game everywhere to get stuck in and demand a real say.

Perfect Mediocrity

The kind of gem only the great Du Nord can deliver: in its not very long and not nearly sufficiently sordid history, FC Dallas (ex-THE BURN) has (or as the English would insist, have) won 162 matches, lost 162 matches and drawn 47. By some small coincidence I always feel a small piece of my soul turn black and die when I accidentally watch FC Dallas.

It Is Good to be the King

In the midst of everything else happening in the MegaHuge World of Football—Liverpool's simultaneous boardroom meltdown and plucky voyage to the English Champions League semifinals, Bayern Munich's stellar season with its new fantasy-league line-up, the march to Euro 08 and, of course, the New England Revolution's new teenage stars from Gambia (who knew?)—let's not ignore the big week in the life of Silvio Berlusconi. Of course, there's the small matter of possibly regaining Italy's premiership (that's the political kind). While the prospect of taking command of a major European nation would be enough for most men, Berlusconi also seems poised to make a big human-resources move: it looks like Ronaldhino will leave the employ of the Barcelona Collective to join Uncle Sil's Milan francheeeez-eh. The beautiful bucktoothed Brazilian is done drawing his paycheck from FCB's mass membership; instead, he'll get his circa $12M a year from the pockets of one Big Cheese. Insert Eduardo Galeano essay here.

REDS CRUSH ARSENAL AS NEW ERA OF GLORY DAWNS!

Just had to say it.

SOUNDERS! SOUNDERS! SOUNDERS!

We interrupt our standard non-service to note that the new MLS franchise holders in Seattle chose to retain the city's glorious soccer tradition and call their new team "the Sounders." This means they rejected such previously mooted (is that a word?) possibilities as "Seattle Republic" and "Seattle Alliance," both of which sounded like the names of left-wing newspapers or gay bathhouses. ("Seattle Cooperative Commonwealth," "Seattle Monetary Union" and "Seattle Non-Aligned Movement" did not make the finalists' field.) The move comes after a reported onslaught of pressure from those well-known traditionalists, the fans of the currently extant Seattle Sounders—man, those 25 people must have stayed up nights setting up anonymous Hotmail accounts.

Meanwhile, down in Portland we look forward to our future archrivalry with the Yakima Reds.

Boing Boing

The opening weekend of Major League Soccer action, the traditional highlight of the American sporting calendar for over 100 years, saw plenty of goals. Even some very good goals. But how many came on second chances off 'keeper deflections? I counted at least a half-dozen in the highlight reel I YouTubed, including the first couple in the New England v. Houston revenge match, played before the legendary blue tarps of Foxboro Stadium:

Shaka, Brah!

We have a new arrival in the soccerblogosphere: Shaka Hislop.

Let's Drink to...FC ST. PAULI

Yes, Eleven Devils has gone sadly silent over the last few months, largely due to Your Humble Correspondent's preoccupation with the complicated heist of a French gold shipment he's become involved with as a "bag man", and with writing a "book," which is like a blog that never changes and has no videos. These two pursuits—heist-planning and book-writing—both really cut into a man's football consumption. So in absence of any real "content," as the professionals say, let's just raise a pre-San Patricio glass to one of many reasons that football RULES, the mighty fans of FC St. Pauli: