A week or so ago I was busy damning FIFA and IFAB for not making rule changes that would ensure that soccer would be an entertaining game. It seemed clear to me that neither body even considered it part of their job to make sure that a balance was maintained within the sport between offense […]
SoccerTalk with Paul Gardner
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Soccer: A sport handicapped by its own lack of vision
UEFA has ditched the away-goals rule. Good news or bad news? Neither, really. Simply a matter of facing up to the facts. Not for the first time in this handicapped sport, what looked like a good idea has not worked out. The good idea was always, at least partially, misrepresented. In the home-and-away games, the […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
FIFA and IFAB still dodging the question: Does heading have a future?
Charlotte Cowie, the English FA’s Chief Medical Officer, has just told us that research on concussion injuries funded by the by the English Football Association (among others), continues to produce “insightful data that has enabled us to make changes in the game.” Yes, indeed. We now know, thanks to these intrepid researchers, that goalkeepers are […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
A brutal experience for Mexico's Chucky Lozano
Brutality? In soccer? Not very often, I would think. I don’t ever remember using the word myself, and am pretty sure I haven’t ever heard it from soccer people. Thuggishness, yes, I’ve heard that plenty of times, along with players being described as thugs. But rarely as brutes. Yet the word “brutality” is in the […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Quite a weekend — Italy wins at Wembley and Messi's Argentina triumphs in the Maracana
So the Italians are back. Back as the absolute masters of tournament play. The team that always finds a way to do the right thing. That much-needed tying goal against England in the Euro Nations final came from … who? A center back if you please, Leonardo Bonucci — with the decidedly unglamourous stat of […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Here we go again — another s-crappy final
Pep Guardiola— the world’s greatest soccer coach, it seems — had assured us: this Champions League final, his very own Manchester City against Chelsea, this would be a great “advert for football.” That was a pretty silly thing to say for one as steeped in soccer knowledge as Pep. The record of soccer’s climactic games […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
The return of Atlanta brilliance? Not yet.
I had thought it would be a useful venture to watch Atlanta United’s game against Costa Rica’s Alajuelense. My aim was to see whether the Frank De Boer blight had been eliminated, whether Atlanta, under new coach Gabriel Heinze — a Latin American coach to coach the team’s Latin American players — was rediscovering the […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
New medical research may shine unwelcome light on soccer's old, old problem
So U.S. Soccer is to implement concussion substitutions in 2021. Well, about time. I mean, that’s good news … isn’t it? Yes — and no. Yes, because it will — in theory — mean that the “concussion protocol” will now stand a better chance of being properly and fully enacted. Instead of the hurried and […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Thank you, Emil Cohill. In memory of a wonderful human being and one of soccer's very best servants.
This must genuinely be a case of less meaning more. Emil Cohill has died, age 82. The longtime secretary (for over 40 years, would you believe that?) of the Cosmopolitan Junior Soccer League. That doesn’t sound too grand does it? Maybe so, because the title matters not. But Emil did matter. He mattered to so […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Once more, soccer flirts with tragedy
I return, yet again, and without apology, to the role of goalkeepers in the modern game. Once again there has been a very nasty injury: in the Premier League, Wolves keeper Rui Patricio took a tremendous wallop to his head from the knee of defender Conor Coady. And once again, we have soccer circling its […]