• The tragedy of Scott Vermillion must not be ignored or allowed to fade away
    The early end to his life, the agonies he went through, the wretched suffering of his loved ones, are now all a matter of record.
  • More subs means better soccer? Don't bet on it.
    You will remember the famous Anatoliy Puzach ... No? ... Ukrainian-born forward for Dynamo Kiev and the USSR?
  • MLS goes wildly off the rails for 90 disgraceful seconds
    I have been enjoying MLS games so far this season: plenty of good, varied attacking play, plenty of individual brilliance.
  • Real Madrid's Thibaut Courtois: goalkeeping as it should be
    It takes us back many, many years, to 1878 when the sport's rules first recognized the goalkeeper as a special player.
  • Another new World Cup ball means more ballderdash
    Here they come ... the astounding, amazing, unprecedented, truly wondrous details of the new astounding, amazing etc Al Rihla, the new WORLD CUP BALL.
  • A second try for Carlos Cordeiro? No way.
    When Carlos Cordeiro appeared on the U.S. soccer scene, I dubbed him the Phantom President.
  • Yet again -- another protocol farce, this one from Leeds
    Leeds United's Robin Koch suffered a nasty head injury in last week's game against Manchester United.
  • To face the crisis of its heading problem, soccer must consider changing its rules. A ban on long goal kicks is an obvious option.
    We now know so much about the long-term effects -- particularly the behavioral problems -- that head injuries can cause.
  • Part 2: Learning about soccer -- from jazz, and from the words of a great poet
    Does this complication of soccer improve the game, make it more entertaining, more worth watching?
  • Learning about soccer -- from jazz, and from the words of a great poet (Part 1)
    This starts way back, way, way back, during the 1940s when I was a teenager in England. The war had just ended
  • Small-town Spennymoor FC at tiny Brewery Field hosts a major moment for world soccer
    Maybe, amid the welter of La Liga, Serie A, EPL, Bundesliga, La Ligue and MLS games, you will have noticed that Spennymoor FC took on Team Solan.
  • Liverpool and Man City give us a game to remember
    I'll start this by going back three years, almost to the day. It's October 7, 2018. We're at Anfield. TV pundit Graeme Souness was beside himself.
  • A Goal in a Thousand
    I'm not the praying sort, but how I wished for that goal. Me and tens of thousands of others. And Raul.
  • Random thoughts on systems, goalkeepers, and referees
    That concussion protocol is often not being taken seriously, and not properly administered, has been pretty obvious for some time.
  • Good bye Jimmy Greaves, the boy-genius of English soccer
    My thoughts and opinions about soccer, a somewhat incoherent bustling jumble, received a jolt on Sunday morning.
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