I realized this weekend I have moved into a form of Premier League partisanship that revolves around a single question: What is best for Bob Bradley? Bradley is the coach of Swansea City, a club already mired in a fight to avoid the disaster of relegation. Bradley is the American coach of Swansea City, and […]

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In Europe, the belief that soccer is more interesting to watch than American football is widespread. Approaching unanimous. If that preference is questioned, what often comes up is this: “American football has too many breaks in play. Soccer is continuous action.” The NFL RedZone package, however, turns that complaint on its head. It is the […]

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Qualifying for the soccer World Cup, any of them, should be easy for the U.S. national team. Jurgen Klinsmann, however, is about to make it difficult. The Yanks lost 2-1 tonight to Mexico in Columbus, Ohio, the first match in the Concacaf “Hexagonal” and the first defeat to Mexico on U.S. soil in five World […]

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Not a good weekend for American soccer people or the league most of them play for. Landon Donovan’s comeback from retirement suddenly ended as he went off at halftime with a hamstring injury and his LA Galaxy went out of the Major League Soccer playoffs in a shootout. Bob Bradley, the first American to coach […]

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Paris has just about everything … but when it comes to the, OK, less-than-highbrow concept of the sports bar … well, they don’t do it often and often don’t to it well. All these years later, we finally seem to have found a competent sports bar that is a sports bar in a way that […]

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This is big. Take a deep breath, American soccer fans. A Yank has taken charge of an English Premier League team … a team in the world’s most popular sports league. Bob Bradley is the new coach of Swansea City, the Wales-based club that already is at risk of relegation, seven matches into the season. […]

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Wow. Hard to remember the last time a guy screwed up the greatest opportunity in his professional life as quickly as did Sam Allardyce. A year ago, he was an unemployed English soccer coach of middling reputation whose claim to celebrity, as far as it went, was “never being relegated” — a reputation he burnished […]

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How big is the English Premier League? So big that a French telecom is paying the world’s most popular soccer league 100-million euros per season, for this season and the next two, to show all of the Premier League’ games. In France. Did we make that clear? In France, which has its own soccer league, […]

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It’s time for Americans to do themselves a favor: Take the national anthem out of U.S. sports events. We have plenty of good reasons to do so, and as soon as possible. To wit:

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Back in December, as long-shots Leicester City led the English Premier League, most of world football figured they would fade badly. Those swollen ranks included Gary Lineker, the host of the BBC review show Match of the Day. Lineker was so sure Leicester would fall back into the pack that he vowed to host MotD […]

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