Major League Soccer’s season runs from March until late November. That encompasses some really warm days in the North American summer, but it doesn’t take in too much cold and damp — approaching winter or escaping it. And then there is the English Premier League. Which plays right through the winter, but starts in August. […]

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Final score: Al Ahli 8, Fujairah 1. And there is your season-opening game of the Arabian Gulf League season. One of the richest clubs in the league against one of the smallest, and 8-1 is a bit of a statistical outlier, but it’s not like anyone who knows UAE football says: “What? That’s not possible!” […]

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The English Premier League, in much of the Old World, is rather like the NFL is in the U.S. In attracting viewers and attention, it crushes whatever happens to be going on at the same time. What is curious is how the Premier League has, so far, not really taken full advantage of spreading out […]

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Summer is grim, in the soccer-loving precincts of the world. Most countries have soccer leagues that play from August and into May. And in June and July? A whole lot of nothing, aside from some tennis, some golf and … (ack!) cricket. For what seems like a month, the sports department TV, which sits poised […]

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I work in a room with dozens of Britons, and their interest in Major League Soccer extends about one team deep: The LA Galaxy. For two reasons:

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In much of Eurasia, Italian soccer was the first external brand seen on local TV. This was in the 1990s, when Europe’s other big leagues were still pretty much off the air. Certainly overseas. Italy, then, filled a programming void, and soccer fans all over the Middle and Far East of Asia, for instance, regularly […]

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Brad Friedel, the 43-year-old American goalkeeper, said today he will retire from soccer when Tottenham’s season ends next weekend. That will end the professional career of probably the most-respected U.S.  player, in England — and perhaps around the world. Friedel, however, was never quite as popular at home as he came to be in England […]

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Relegation would be a handy thing to have in U.S. sports. Most Americans, I think, understand the concept, by now. In nearly all global soccer leagues that aren’t Major League Soccer, two or three teams at the bottom of the standings go down to the next-lowest league. Which is pretty much a disaster. (And the […]

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“Park the bus.” I don’t know how far back in soccer history the term goes, but the first time I remember noting it was in regards to Jose Mourinho‘s Inter Milan side in 2010. I believe it referred specifically to Mourinho’s tactics in the second leg of the 2010 Champions League semifinals versus Barcelona. Inter […]

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A professional soccer team usually can accommodate no more than one big, strong, slow player in its lineup. And he nearly always is a striker known for being good in the air. He doesn’t have to win the ball. He doesn’t have to carry the ball. He doesn’t have to pass the ball. He doesn’t […]

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