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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I’ve been in Paris for almost five weeks now. And not for a single day was I without an Internet hookup. Actually, I spent several hours most of the past 30-some days looking at this computer. Yes, while in Paris. I know that’s ill but it’s the truth. OK, here’s my excuse: I do two […]

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David Beckham is the blogger’s gift that keeps on giving. This is a guy with one goal and one assist in six matches so far this season in Major League Soccer, which he couldn’t be troubled to join until the season was more than halfway over.  He remains the No. 1 draw for the Los […]

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I’m almost done reading a book at the apartment I’m staying at in Paris. It’s by a very prominent journalist who spent nearly his entire working career in newspapers, and I’m just powering through it and nodding my head a lot and thinking, “Yep, that’s how it works.” I was struck by a particular passage. […]

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The whole point of having a home game in World Cup qualifying is to play the match at the most favorable venue your federation can imagine. It seems clear that the U.S. Soccer Federation’s imagination is not very good. The United States is playing a critical World Cup qualifier, against El Salvador, at Sandy, Utah, […]

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I’m cranking away on the one-entry-per-day 2010 South Africa Countdown blog. This week, I’m taking closer looks at several of the big qualifying matches coming up this weekend. Also, of late, South American expert Armando Varela contributed his thoughts on the CONMEBOL qualifiers on tap Saturday.  And we did some serious research on the prevalence […]

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