Been donkey’s years, as the Brits would say, since I did a list. It’s time. This one is going to be a little apples-and-oranges. My favorite road trips as a professional sports journalist. Some considerations: –What is more important? The travel? Or the event I was there to cover? –Or will we almost certainly get […]

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In 2008, when Manchester City Football Club was sold to a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, it hardly warranted intense foreign interest, let alone surprise. Man City was a middling-to-lower-middling club in the English Premier League, and foreigners already were buying up English soccer teams. Two of the biggest brands in English soccer, […]

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I have some history with Jonathan Wilson, going back to when I was in Abu Dhabi working for The National, the emirate’s English-language newspaper. Wilson was one of our European soccer correspondents, contributing a couple of pieces per week. He often took on topics focusing on what he perceived to be significant trends in the […]

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It is a cool November night, and I don’t know it yet, but I am sprawled on my back at the Cal State Los Angeles football field. Above me, a rectangular patch of vision switches on inside my facemask. On the fringes, darkness broken up by banks of electric lights. In the center, dominating the […]

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A sort of silly string of posts stretches through this blog, going back to 2009, in which I ponder the great question of our time: “Which English Premier League soccer team should I support?” This is a weighty and defining decision in large parts of the world, increasingly including (of late) the United States, which […]

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The last time I spoke with Brian Goff, I was a little annoyed with him, or so I thought. Really, I was annoyed with myself. See, Brian Goff did not annoy people. He was polite to the nth degree and seemed to have no enthusiasm for drama in the workplace. Or raised voices, for that […]

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I have always liked that journalistic convention … on how to handle a “dateline” when traveling via water. You write “aboard” and continue with the name of the ship. Such as “the USS Enterprise” or “HMS Victory” or “RMS Titanic”. A few decades ago, the dateline also would have included the day a story was […]

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Living in western Europe, the assumption by most Americans, including this one, is that professional soccer teams must not be far from any point on the maps of England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France. That assumption would be wrong. Where we live, in the Occitanie region (previously known as the Languedoc) of southern France, plenty […]

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The world over, sports action tends to cluster around weekends. Friday-Saturday-Sunday are the heavy days because that is when more people have more time to spend paying close attention to whatever athletic endeavor matters most to them. Monday-through-Thursday … not nearly as fun or hectic. Usually. Then there is European soccer, which 12 weeks a […]

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We made a fuss over the statue of David Beckham unveiled a couple of days ago at the former StubHub Park stadium. The first at a Major League Soccer stadium. It should have been Landon Donovan; he put in more years, scored far more goals won more championships. For Beckham, the Los Angeles gig always […]

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