Portsmouth have beaten West Brom 1-0 to reach their first FA Cup final since 1939. I had planned to write a detailed match summary, but I think a minute-by-minute report might be a better way to relate the experience of watching football from a far-off country in this internet age…

Dimitar Berbatov taking the penalty kick that drew Spurs level in the Carling Cup final yesterday: coolness so pronounced that it almost seemed rude to Chelsea, a matter-of-fact confidence taken to the point at which it began to resemble arrogant detachment. It was as if Berbatov felt such scorn for the thought that Petr [...]

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 [...]

FA CUP 5th-ROUND ACTION: Barnsley have stunned Liverpool at Anfield, winning 2-1 on Brian Howard's 93nd-minute goal. It was a wild, inspired performance from Barnsley, who scored the 1-1 equalizer in the 59th minute and spent most of the rest of the match pinned in their own six-yard box, flinging themselves into [...]

I don't know much about rifle terminology. Can a bore be off? Is that something that could happen to a rifle? I think Wayne Rooney's bore was off tonight, because he essentially played the game of an assassin who brilliantly scales the ivy outside the bell-tower, swirls his black cape over his [...]

Is Kevin Keegan's return to Newcastle the second coming? We sent Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet William Butler Yeats to find out. Hover your mouse on the highlighted text for commentary on his match report.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is [...]

It's never with a feeling of great moral comfort that you can get excited about a player's injury, but at the same time, if Didier Drogba's now-surgically-repaired knee broke away from Chelsea and founded its own three-ring circus, the only surprising thing about it would be the girth of the bearded lady. It's got [...]

I don't believe for a second that England deserved the penalty—the tug of the shirt from Šimunić that brought Jermain Defoe so easily to ground was barely a flick, less than a gust of wind could do, certainly less than what passes without notice in nearly every football match—which means that as I saw it, [...]

It never should have come to the free kick they should have defended: James McFadden, ten minutes from time, should have knocked Kenny Miller's cross into the wide open goal before him, giving Scotland the 2-1 lead and a fighting chance at victory. The free kick never should have been called: it was the Italian [...]

But it was a fine performance nonetheless, as Liverpool coped with the stress of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere by recording a pedestrian 2-0 win. Rafa Benitez named an unchanged side for the first time since 1967, but Liverpool supporters will be clamoring for a return to the rotation policy after Fernando Torres and [...]