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 read in a newspaper that his first touch is phenomenal for an eighteen-year-old. I saw on a message board that his pace defies description. I heard on television that watching him practice free kicks would almost move you to tears.
I went to a blog that said he was better than Messi. [...]

Roswitha at Treasons, Stratagems & Spoils has written a really smart post contrasting Barcelona and Milan, looking at each club not just as a collection of players but as a set of accumulated cultural meanings which each club tries to manage and market. It’s a fruitful comparison and teases out a lot of subtle [...]

I’ve never seen a highlight video about Andrea Pirlo that didn’t feel wrong somehow. Mostly compilations of free kicks and penalties, mostly set to soundtracks that suggest a lack of confidence in the compiler (“Kiss from a Rose”? Really?), they seem to present not so much Pirlo as the environment of a football match, a [...]

The element of “spirit” in football can be perceived in this: that when he played for Milan, Andriy Shevchenko looked bigger, I mean physically bigger, than he is, and now, playing for Chelsea, he looks smaller than he is; as though, wherever we were sitting when we saw him before, we’ve moved fifteen rows back. [...]