What every small child understands about football is that the game is a Manichean struggle to define the nature of the universe and that beauty and chaos are the terms contesting the definition. This is because football, compared to other popular games, is frequently boring and random, and because we perceive it as boring and [...]

It was Thursday. I opened up the "Most Sent Stories" list on ESPN.com to see what I'd been missing. Robinho's about to be turned into a gold-plated Mickey Mouse phone, I muttered to myself, guessing. Somebody beat Wigan in a hard-fought 1-0 game.
Wrong. Wrong again.
The most-sent soccer story on ESPN.com is, inexplicably, more than [...]

He looks like a female track star. Picture him with a set of crazy Flo-Jo fingernails…something just falls into place. In my mind, he's winning the 200m hurdles, tearfully beaming and waving a red bouquet to the crowd. Sadly, I suspect that most of his facial expressions and tiny beards are designed to ward off [...]

I'm in the middle of moving, so new posts are going to be thin on the ground for a while. Olympic soccer? Yeah, I've heard of it. The start of the season? Hand me that box and some tape. I have extensive thoughts on the situation at Manchester City; I'm writing them on cardboard, in [...]

Team nicknames in soccer are too simple. Even a child can see this, and yet, although the child was our future and this happened in 1979, nothing ever changes, least of all the fact that it is chromosomally impossible for the human brain to imagine the color blue fighting against itself. What do you think [...]

Just got back from a weekend in northern CA, where I managed to take in the Quakes-Galaxy game without getting tangled up with any celebrity morticians or IRA operatives in the process. Just me and my ticket, no special sauce. Just a man and his hard plastic seat. I like that. I think I'm going [...]