Woah! What the hell was that? Hey, guys? Can anyone hear me?
Man, I wish I knew what was going on. I was just taking it easy down in the swamp, using the water to support my enormous bulk—you know, the way we do—and munching on some of the tree-leaves I was able to reach thanks [...]

It’s a day of nostalgia here at The Run of Play. We’re reminiscing on a simpler time of the internet, back when it was all Winona Ryder mailing lists and intricate debates about whether David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were married in real life. “IRL,” we called it back then, in our smug, efficient [...]

THE LEAGUE THAT DEVOURS
The recent success of English teams in the UEFA Champions League competition has led to considerable anxiety among football writers and administrators and to fears that the English Premier League is “eating the rest of football.” This curiously gruesome but nevertheless oft-employed expression, which depicts the Premier League as a predatory [...]

Look, I feel bad, okay? I should have realized I was going too far. I should have realized that spamming pictures of freshly killed animals with crude anti-hunting captions wasn’t the best way to introduce myself. I see that now. I mean, it’s only natural. After a hard day of thinking seriously about the Darfur [...]

…damned if it doesn’t close up shop right when it starts to get interesting.
Here’s how this works: I’m going to walk you through all four Champions League quarter-final matches this week. I’m not going to make predictions, because fuck my predictions. That’s what Alan Hansen’s for. If you want a prediction, Alan Hansen can [...]

I know William Gallas is supposed to have undergone a complete transformation and become a leader with a heart of oak since he signed for Arsenal, but I’m not seeing it; there’s too much desperation in his mohawk and his eyes. Compared to the group of calm bankers and war-heroes-after-the-war in the Milan defense [...]

I’m going to leave out everything I thought I might say about money and purity in football, about big clubs vs. small clubs, about moral high grounds and about the deep, unsettling ways in which the organization of the game is changing. The only point I’m going to make is the one I thought [...]

Somewhere in the far-off background static of football news this week, behind Champions League results and concern that Pele’s ego has finally eaten his brain, you might have caught the dim suggestion of an idea that the very fabric of European football is about to be ripped apart. The details are probably swimming at [...]

Liverpool have just beaten Besiktas 8-0 at Anfield to record the largest win in the history of the Champions League. The Liverpool players’ own shadows on the pitch did more to stop them than the Besiktas defense, but regardless of the opponent this Liverpool performance was a work of art—fluid passing, precision and power in [...]

While the rest of the world will be talking about the ongoing unplanned bridge collapse that is Liverpool’s 2007 season and the slightly unexpected emergence of Rosenborg as a legitimate European power, Chelsea and Schalke 04 deserve a word for turning in a perfectly watchable Champions League tie at Stamford Bridge this afternoon. The [...]