So. One thing led to another, and now here we are. The Premier League season, which once seemed so endless, is over. People have been stabbed, and champions have been crowned. We’ve had arrests, protests, lawsuits, assaults, class conflicts, scandals, accusations, media brawls, affairs, divorces, funerals, break-ins, international diplomatic crises, and unplanned encounters between [...]

It was never supposed to be this way. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in football. An exciting day—that’s what we thought we would see. A contest. A game! Now the sole remaining question—the final, terrifying, all-important question—is how can we go on? How can we placate the wrath of a God who may [...]

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 [...]

Well, that was a nasty piece of fun, wasn’t it? I don’t have room to list all the feral little moments I enjoyed during the Chelsea-Man Utd match: there was Rooney snarling at Nani; the weird bust-up between Drogba and Ballack, which led to the gorgeous comedy of Ballack turning his back on Drogba and [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

You can’t fight it. You can criticize its style. You can complain about its sportsmanship. But the fire-bomb is coming. The roof of your house is going to be shattered, and your walls are going to light up. From far off it will look like a match being struck, then [...]

The endgame phase has arrived for the Barclays Premier League season. Dormant hierarchies are reasserting themselves, and short-term hopes are dashed. With seven games left, Everton are now the only club with a chance of breaking into the traditional top four, and the big-club intramurals last weekend saw Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and [...]

This is a kind of purpose: to ask what these things mean. How is it that the story-craving and myth-making parts of our imaginations are able to see greatness and find joy in some arbitrary movements on a field? What does the rhythmic sidestep or the incisive pass echo in human experience? [...]