Today, for the first time in at least a decade, I watched the whole of both NFL conference-championship games. If you follow this blog you will know we were out of the country for about eight years in succession when the National and American conferences got around to deciding their Super Bowl representative. I have […]

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This must be a time of some anxiety for Landon Donovan. The top scorer in the history of the U.S. national team, as well as Major League Soccer, is thought to be on the verge of extending his playing career with MLS side Real Salt Lake. But it has been nearly a month since it […]

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Sean McVay, is it? All of 30 years old, is Sean? And this is the Rams’ latest great idea? Hiring the youngest head coach in the Super Bowl era? Will it be seen, in a few years from now, as a club blunder right up there with spending six draft picks for Jared Goff or […]

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And you thought it was difficult to keep track of 32 World Cup teams … Starting with the 2026 tournament, Fifa will give Planet Soccer 48 national teams for its quadrennial event. If it seems like overkill, it is. Nearly one in four of Fifa’s 209 members will be at the 2026 World Cup, which […]

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Ah, memories. This collection seeped into my consciousness when prompted by the discovery that the Oakland Raiders are playing at Houston on Sunday … and remembering I had covered an NFL game in Houston. At the Astrodome. While covering the Los Angeles Rams. In 1978. A long, long time ago. And I was pretty sure […]

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Wow. It had been that long? I covered at least 15 Rose Bowl games, maybe 20, and  should have known this. But I may have mentioned I’ve been away. What I know for sure is that USC is supposed to 1) be in the Rose Bowl more often than this and 2) win the Rose […]

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Someone will get hurt. Actually, lots of someones already have. OK, then. Someone else will get hurt. Seriously hurt. This weekend or next. Or both. Soccer’s goal celebrations. Out of control. Mindless, actually. Exuberance perhaps is to be expected, following something as rare (in many soccer games) as a goal. However, in their enthusiasm to […]

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Landon Donovan apparently is considering continuing on in Major League Soccer. This, after a couple of months of interesting-but-not-scintillating play with the LA Galaxy at the end of the 2016 season. That he could keep up at all is impressive, in his nine games back, during the autumn. He is 34, will be 35 in […]

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I am impressed by how often the cameramen, and directors, of sports broadcasts manage to get images of athletes spitting … into our living rooms via television. Baseball’s World Series manages to get bearded players spewing streams of brown “tobacco juice”. If a viewer is lucky, guys in the dugout might limit their expectorations to […]

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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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