• To face the crisis of its heading problem, soccer must consider changing its rules. A ban on long goal kicks is an obvious option.
    by Paul Gardner on Jan 31, 12:57 AM
    We now know so much about the long-term effects -- particularly the behavioral problems -- that head injuries can cause.
      10 Comments
  • Part 2: Learning about soccer -- from jazz, and from the words of a great poet
    by Paul Gardner on Dec 24, 5:21 PM
    Does this complication of soccer improve the game, make it more entertaining, more worth watching?
      7 Comments
  • Learning about soccer -- from jazz, and from the words of a great poet (Part 1)
    by Paul Gardner on Dec 8, 3:16 PM
    This starts way back, way, way back, during the 1940s when I was a teenager in England. The war had just ended
      8 Comments
  • Small-town Spennymoor FC at tiny Brewery Field hosts a major moment for world soccer
    by Paul Gardner on Oct 25, 3:02 AM
    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.
      5 Comments
  • Liverpool and Man City give us a game to remember
    by Paul Gardner on Oct 6, 11:43 PM
    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.
      5 Comments
  • A Goal in a Thousand
    by Paul Gardner on Sep 29, 3:12 AM
    I'm not the praying sort, but how I wished for that goal. Me and tens of thousands of others. And Raul.
      1 Comments
  • Random thoughts on systems, goalkeepers, and referees
    by Paul Gardner on Sep 23, 8:52 PM
    That concussion protocol is often not being taken seriously, and not properly administered, has been pretty obvious for some time.
      14 Comments
  • Good bye Jimmy Greaves, the boy-genius of English soccer
    by Paul Gardner on Sep 20, 7:34 PM
    My thoughts and opinions about soccer, a somewhat incoherent bustling jumble, received a jolt on Sunday morning.
      7 Comments
  • Now who's making soccer's rules? Is it IFAB? Or the English Premier League?
    by Paul Gardner on Aug 30, 3:48 AM
    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.
      13 Comments
  • Soccer: A sport handicapped by its own lack of vision
    by Paul Gardner on Aug 20, 5:02 AM
    UEFA has ditched the away-goals rule. Good news or bad news? Neither, really. Simply a matter of facing up to the facts.
      18 Comments
  • FIFA and IFAB still dodging the question: Does heading have a future?
    by Paul Gardner on Aug 3, 3:13 PM
    We now have the FA researchers sitting on a mountain of research, virtually all of which points in one direction.
      15 Comments
  • A brutal experience for Mexico's Chucky Lozano
    by Paul Gardner on Jul 26, 2:21 PM
    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.
      7 Comments
  • Quite a weekend -- Italy wins at Wembley and Messi's Argentina triumphs in the Maracana
    by Paul Gardner on Jul 16, 2:24 PM
    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?
      15 Comments
  • Here we go again -- another s-crappy final
    by Paul Gardner on Jun 1, 6:06 AM
    Pep Guardiola-- the world's greatest soccer coach, it seems -- had assured us: this Champions League final would be a great "advert for football."
      16 Comments
  • The return of Atlanta brilliance? Not yet.
    by Paul Gardner on Apr 13, 3:08 PM
    My aim was to see whether the Frank De Boer blight had been eliminated, whether Atlanta was rediscovering its Latin style.
      8 Comments
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