The English Premier League. Has to be the longest competitive schedule in team sports. The 2016-17 season, which ended over the weekend with 10 matches … began on August 13 and concluded on May 21. Yes, that is a season that lasted nine months and one week. Or, if you prefer, 40 weeks and one […]

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I spend a lot of time reading soccer stories. As one does, in Europe. It does not take long to become caught up in European clubs and European leagues, and especially with English football’s Premier League, the most competitive in the world by the accounting of its boosters. Reading about what happened (or what might […]

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This has driven me to distraction for decades, going back to when I was a know-almost-nothing parent coaching my kids’ soccer teams in Highland, California. I was hazy about numerous concepts of the game, but one I understood quite clearly … and in the decades since have seen screwed up all the time, from kiddie […]

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In the States, this would be considered odd. Crowds at major sports events … breaking into song during a game. Singing happens, now and then, at U.S. stadiums. But it usually is scheduled and involves two songs — the national anthem and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. In England and Wales and Scotland […]

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It arrived in one of those daily “your highlights” list of links sent to me by Twitter with the aid of their spyware. Tweets on topics I have shown an interest in the past. Like English football or foreign affairs. Do they send those messages to everyone? Or just to people who aren’t tweeting enough? […]

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The financial ramifications of failure in England’s Premier League are the most dramatic in sports. The difference between income inside the league … versus income outside it for the three clubs who will be relegated in May … appears to be something north of 400 million pounds. Maybe around half a billion. Per club, per […]

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This has been an oft-revisited topic over the past five or six years. Has Arsene Wenger, on the job since 1996, stayed on too long as coach of English Premier League side Arsenal? Increasingly, the answers have come back, from fans and pundits, “Yes. It is time for Wenger to go.” The criticism of his […]

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I take a few long looks at the crowd whenever I watch an English Premier League soccer match. I am always impressed at what appears to be a person sitting in every seat. At every match. For every minute of every match. No matter the weather. In the winter, the fans stand out a bit […]

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Well, that was ugly. And perhaps unfortunately timed. Bob Bradley, the first American to coach a team in one of Europe’s biggest five leagues, was fired by Swansea City today — only his 85th day on the job of the English Premier League club. He was a dead man walking since Swansea’s 4-1 home loss […]

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I feel confident in saying I am as big a soccer fan as anyone in my age cohort who was born and raised in the United States. Came to the game late, got involved as a self-taught AYSO coach, volunteered to cover the U.S. national team, saw Paul Caligiuri’s Shot Heard Round the World, went […]

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