We now have the FA researchers sitting on a mountain of research, virtually all of which points in one direction.

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.

There has always been a lot of the "cometh the hour, cometh the man" about the Italians -- remember Paolo Rossi in 1982? or Andrea Pirlo in 2006?

Pep Guardiola-- the world's greatest soccer coach, it seems -- had assured us: this Champions League final would be a great "advert for football."

My aim was to see whether the Frank De Boer blight had been eliminated, whether Atlanta was rediscovering its Latin style.

So U.S. Soccer is to implement concussion substitutions in 2021. Well, about time. I mean, that's good news ... isn't it?

This must genuinely be a case of less meaning more. Emil Cohill has died, age 81. The long-time secretary (for over 40 years, would you believe that?) of the Cosmopolitan Junior Soccer League.

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.

A big toe offside? Can that really qualify as "gaining an advantage" or "interfering with play or an opponent"?

Back in 2010 Ryan Shawcross was big news in English soccer. Not, sadly, for any act of soccer brilliance.

So Phil Neville will be Inter Miami's new coach. Is this, as the Miami bosses would have us believe, the beginning of an exciting new era in soccer (well, American soccer, or maybe just MLS soccer, come to that)?

Soccer's reaction to the concussion issue has been a joke. But it is much worse than that. It is a disgrace, and a dangerous one at that.

My sincere thanks to the United Soccer Coaches for handing me their new award -- their Media Career of Excellence award.

I treasure memories of both those guys. I saw much more of Pele, spending a month filming with him in the summer of 1972, in Santos, then later being close at hand as he played in New York.

Our opponents were always teams of working class boys, rather scrawny-looking lads, not as comfortably bred, or as well-fed, as us.