Football Correspondent, The Observer. Also: @meninblazers @podcast_libero @bbc5live’s Monday Night Club. Author of Mister and Expected Goals.
Joined April 2010
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Jun 14
Think the central irony of this World Cup is that it kind of shows that "countries" are imaginary lines drawn on a map. This is a tournament played out by teams with lots of diaspora players watched in stadiums full of diaspora fans.
observer.co.uk/news/sport/ar…
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Jun 14
What a framing
Jun 14
From @TheAthletic: The USMNT heard the haters. On Friday night, the team's 5-goal matchup vs. Paraguay showed soccer to be dramatic, fun and contagious, and not the dull, low-scoring sport many believe it to be. nyti.ms/4vFPrnS
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Jun 14
Think there’s maybe a discrepancy between how much of a minnow teams like Curacao feel and how much of a minnow they actually are. They’re basically an Eredivisie team. This is…Borussia Dortmund against Fortuna Sittard or something.
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Jun 14
It was the same for Haiti, and will be the same for Cape Verde, I’d guess. They’ve all scoured their diasporas for players. Most of them have come through European academies. They’ve got good coaches and access to all the nutrition and conditioning stuff. They’re not part-timers.
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Jun 14
I don’t know if this is just rage-bait and to be honest he’s probably right about the economics of it, but it’s sad there’s a desire to take Europeans having a nice time in the US and turn it into some hostile (and wrong) diatribe. Maybe being in a new place is fun?
Jun 14
In 2007, the standards of living in the United States and Western Europe were similar, and most people don’t realize how much things have diverged since the US boomed after the global financial crisis and Europe didn’t.
They don’t fully understand how we’re living and we don’t fully understand how they’re living; even when we visit Europe as tourists, we don’t see their tiny, sad flats and their depressing grocery stores.
That is why Europeans visiting for the World Cup are going to, like, a Waffle House or a Taco Bell and losing their minds. Stuff we don’t even like or care about is wildly superior to everything everywhere else. We have no idea how rich we are.
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Jun 14
Oh, and also: there will be plenty of Europeans walking round America at the moment being surprised by negative things that we don’t see when we look out of our “sad, little flats.” It would just be a shame to focus on them, or judge a country by them.
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Jun 14
We can, for example, tell that pretending America is a land of plenty for all of its inhabitants does not appear to be strictly true. But these people are on holiday. They’re not anthropologists researching some advanced futuristic civilisation.
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Jun 13
Haiti have a manager who has never been to the country because it’s too dangerous. They can’t play at home for the same reason. Some of what their players have endured is deeply upsetting. Being at the World Cup is a miracle.
With @danigilopez
observer.co.uk/news/sport/ar…
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Jun 12
Me and @GeorgeRSimms had a chat about the World Cup of cognitive dissonance, which is both already a massive success and also feels deeply troubled in many ways.
youtube.com/watch?v=yQ0l1lXb…
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Rory Smith retweeted
Jun 12
Canada’s March to the Match continues to work its way through the Toronto streets toward the stadiums.
Beautiful scenes as fans chant and cheer and high five fans who are lining the streets.
It’s going to be electric inside the stadium today.
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Jun 12
The World Cup has always had a nation-building quality: from the vision of unity of France 98 to Germany's celebration of itself in 2006.
But can that work for the USA? How do fans feel about public patriotism? Where is the line between nation and state?
observer.co.uk/news/sport/ar…
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Jun 11
On the ticket prices: increasingly I wonder if one of FIFA's mistakes is believing the "104 Super Bowls" logic a bit too much.
I get they have to say that in public. Infantino can't admit that there are some less appealing games. But they could have tacitly priced that in.
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Jun 11
Consumers (whether tourists or locals, football fans or not) aren't stupid. They know, on some level, that some of the group games aren't worth $500 or whatever for a ticket, no matter how much FIFA try to pretend otherwise. If those tickets had been $50, though...
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Jun 11
And also: $50 for two hours of entertainment is still quite a lot! It's not like you're shifting them for pennies. That's a couple of months of Netflix! Without ads! It's a (small) family going to the cinema!
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Jun 11
It’s maths, and it’s LIVE
(It shouldn’t have been a red card. Not that sold on the first one tbh. Issue with VAR is that it can’t unsee things)
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Rory Smith retweeted
Jun 11
Sometimes it’s the small things that say all you need to know. The fact that FIFA decided the opening game would be at the Pro Evo knockoff “Mexico City Stadium” and not the Azteca is a very minor issue, but it’s an extremely telling one.
observer.co.uk/news/sport/ar…
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