OK, I saw about 80 percent of the United States qualifying match with El Salvador. I had to watch it in the middle of the French night on some streaming video that may have been pirated. Or had to be? I’ll let you know if my machine comes down with a batch of viruses or […]

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This wasn’t how this was supposed to play out for les bleus, as the French team is known. As noted in a couple of posts (below), I went out to Stade de France tonight, just north of Paris, to see France in its Group 7 qualifier against Romania. France has been struggling to score, but […]

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You know we’re talking soccer, don’t you? Baseball puts up some zeroes, but halfway through a baseball game the odds are really high that someone will have scored. In soccer? Not necessarily. Especially when you are France. Yes, France. World Cup champion in 1998. World Cup runner-up in 2006. Tied 0-0 with Romania at halftime […]

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I’m sitting in the last row of press seating at the France vs. Romania match at the Stade de France, home of the 1998 World Cup … and just north of Paris. They’re about to play the national anthems. I don’t remember Romania’s, though I must have heard it at various Olympics. The female gymnasts, […]

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I am not a foodie. My eating origins, from a big, working-class family, were more about quantity than quality … in that mid-20th century American sort of way. So there is always a risk that an astonishing dining experience in Paris — and I’ve been here five weeks now — will be wasted/lost on me. […]

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