The MLS Is Back tournament, championship, extravaganza, whatever it was, worked out pretty well, I thought. I mean, given how hastily it was concocted, the irking restrictions imposed on the playersby the life-in-a-bubble routine, the rapid succession of games, the eccentric kickoff times, not to mention the constant testing to make sure that COVID-19 didn’t […]
SoccerTalk with Paul Gardner
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Bournemouth, victimized by a colossal VAR/Hawk-Eye error, deserves compensation
If there’s one factor above all others that thoroughly incenses me about VAR, it’s this business of dictatorial offside decisions based on millimetric measurements. However technically (readmicroscopically) correct they may be, they offend. First because they are beyond human scope to record, meaning that the sport is being handed over to computers, and how good […]
Posted inStory
Pochettino to Atlanta? Or has Bob Bradley proved the new coach doesn't have to be Latino?
A year and a half ago, when Atlanta announced, with much self-congratulation, that it had signed Frank De Boer as the coach to replace Tata Martino, I calledthe appointment a “betrayal.” I also found it impossible to swallow the words of Atlanta’s English president Darren Eales as he so ecstatically sang the praises ofDe Boer […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Twellman's curious praise for roughhouse soccer
I have been pondering an important soccer question. If you were a season-ticket holder with a big club and found that, seated next to you at every game, there was Taylor Twellman, orsomeone like him who knew everything and never shut up throughout the entire game … how long would it be before you attempted […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Was British soccer ever that great?
Some years ago I read an article in the English press that greatly irritated me. I tore the page from the newspaper and put it aside for further study. Around here, putting things aside is prettymuch the same thing as mislaying them. The page quickly vanished, buried in the heap of similar cuttings and clippings, […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
How I somehow escaped from freezing to death during a soccer game
Another episode of quarantine-induced nostalgia has surfaced. We’re going back over 70 years for this one … * * * * * * * * * * The winter of1946-1947 was, by general agreement, the worst of the century. In England, a critical coal shortage seriously threatened industrial production, electricity was in short supply, the […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Soccer's disgrace: unchecked goalkeeper violence
I return to the worrying tale of Eric Garcia, the young Man City defender severely injured last Wednesday by a violent collision with his goalkeeper, Ederson. OnWednesday, when we last we saw Garcia, he was being stretchered off the field. Not, as I had assumed, to be rushed to the hospital. The hospital visit was […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
The EPL's shaky return, and another goalkeeper victim
Alas for the English Premier League, usually so deft at promoting itself. Here we had the long-awaited (it’s been 100 days) return of EPL games to television. This was an emotional occasion, waybeyond its soccer importance — with all the players wearing “Black Lives Matter” wording on their shirts, standing in silence for coronavirus victims, […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
Bundesliga Ghost Games highlight a refereeing problem
So — games without fans? Like them or (more probably) not, these German “ghost games” have presented soccer with a unique opportunity to explore one of its most contentious areas: tryingto decide whether referees are significantly affected by crowd noise. An opportunity that soccer, with its finely tuned ability to not notice suchopportunities, will of […]
Posted inSoccerTalk with Paul Gardner, Story
College Soccer (Part 3): A Dreamland where only radical change can ensure a place in soccer's pyramid
So here comes the difficult bit. Trying to make a coherent whole of my dealings with and memories of college soccer since 1960. It’s not easy because there really isn’t anything coherentabout men’s college soccer. Not easy? I suspect it’s impossible. But let’s see … I first experienced itas an almost comical imitation of the […]