Thought it could happen, but I didn’t think it would. (See: yesterday’s item.) Fifa went all weird today, voting for two countries to stage the 2018 World Cup and 2022  World Cup … that certainly were not the most fit candidates to do so. They would be Russia and Qatar, respectively. When the winners ought […]

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This is exciting, if you’re a soccer/football fan. Two World Cup announcements tomorrow on the same day. Never has happened before. Probably should never happen again. Personally, I think it’s going down this way so that aging Fifa president Sepp Blatter can push his influence another four years into the future without having to live […]

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This must seem a bit over the top by now. Well, it does for me, too, and I have the benefit of knowing how it happened. Three visits to Paris in 13 months and change. To recap:

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Go ahead, name the top three sports venues in Africa. I’m thinking you can’t name three.  At all. A year ago I certainly couldn’t, and if you can do it now it’s because you were paying attention to the names and datelines from the World Cup in South Africa. Africa pretty clearly seems the most […]

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I don’t know this. But I believe it. Rumor floating around … that Manchester City, the new big spender of the English Premier League, is trying to add Landon Donovan to its roster. Considering that he scored three goals in the World Cup and had that nice 10 weeks with Everton last winter … Sure. […]

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Watching a soccer match while you put out a newspaper is a bit tricky. Especially when the big-screen is over your right shoulder and around a pillar. But I saw more than enough of Spain-Holland to be hit by this thought at about the 75th minute: If I had never seen a soccer game before, […]

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Let’s see … Where were we … before ants and LeBron James took over our lives. Germany had just bombed Argentina out of the quarter-finals, Uruguay won that bizarre handball match over Ghana, Brazil went out to the Netherlands, and Spain took down Paraguay. Which were the two days when what had been shaping up […]

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In the run-up to the World Cup, I wrote — early and often — about the coaching disaster that was Diego Maradona. He somehow had Argentina in peril of not qualifying for the World Cup by dint of bizarre lineups, erratic behavior and bad results against some of South America’s lesser sides. I became convinced […]

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On Day 22 of the 2010 World Cup, “Holland 2, Brazil 1” figured to have no rivals for the attention of the soccer planet. Ha. Uruguay defeating Ghana on penalties in a madcap match was the story of of the day, for a variety of reasons. Sportsmanship, the Laws of the Game, villainous Uruguay, unlucky […]

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The Big Show shut down for two days, and it gave us a taste of what our summer will be like only 10 days hence. Ack. For three full weeks we could watch at least two World Cup matches every day. Twenty-one consecutive days. If we had a couple of TVs, we could watch two […]

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