The Run of Play - Soccer in Style

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Last Updated
September 5, 2008 09:09 EDT
Added
June 26, 2008

September 4, 2008

Mad City

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It Helps Not To Know What You're Doing You have to be a regular person. Experience is relevant when it's relevant and irrelevant when it's not. The main qualification you'll need, of course, is access to the money that will allow you to acquire the position. But no one trusts an expert. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 02:04 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, Manchester City, billionaire owners, money, this is not a response to anybody's National Convention

September 1, 2008

The Beautiful Game, Part Two

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Football is beautiful that is, aesthetic in the same way that all sports are aesthetic, because it rests upon a set of rules that are designed to realize a specific kind of experience: designed, in other words, not only to make the game fair, but to give it a particular style. Basketball would involve largely the same [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 04:14 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, football as philosophy, sports, why do we follow sports?

August 30, 2008

What Do We Mean When We Call Football the Beautiful Game?

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What every small child understands about football is that the game is a Manichean struggle to define the nature of the universe and that beauty and chaos are the terms contesting the definition. This is because football, compared to other popular games, is frequently boring and random, and because we perceive it as boring and [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 12:01 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, chaos, football as philosophy, why do we follow sports?

August 28, 2008

The Secret Behind That Shevchenko Transfer Fee

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It was Thursday. I opened up the "Most Sent Stories" list on ESPN.com to see what I'd been missing. Robinho's about to be turned into a gold-plated Mickey Mouse phone, I muttered to myself, guessing. Somebody beat Wigan in a hard-fought 1-0 game. Wrong. Wrong again. The most-sent soccer story on ESPN. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 09:13 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Andriy Shevchenko, Chelsea, Don't Miss, ESPN

August 18, 2008

I Finally Figured Out Who Didier Drogba Looks Like

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He looks like a female track star. Picture him with a set of crazy Flo-Jo fingernails...something just falls into place. In my mind, he's winning the 200m hurdles, tearfully beaming and waving a red bouquet to the crowd. Sadly, I suspect that most of his facial expressions and tiny beards are designed to ward off [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 08:18 AM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: DIDIER DROGBA, crowd

August 13, 2008

The Run of Play Bloweth Where It Listeth

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I'm in the middle of moving, so new posts are going to be thin on the ground for a while. Olympic soccer? Yeah, I've heard of it. The start of the season? Hand me that box and some tape. I have extensive thoughts on the situation at Manchester City; I'm writing them on cardboard, in [...] Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 08:11 AM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, Manchester City, Olympic Soccer, schedule update

August 9, 2008

The Significant Nicknames Project

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Team nicknames in soccer are too simple. Even a child can see this, and yet, although the child was our future and this happened in 1979, nothing ever changes, least of all the fact that it is chromosomally impossible for the human brain to imagine the color blue fighting against itself. What do you think [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 03:35 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, Soccer, significant nicknames project

August 5, 2008

The Tuesday Portrait: Inner Life of Robbie Keane

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[Visit the post to hear the audio track.] Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 11:20 AM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, Liverpool, Portrait, Robbie Keane, inner lives, the tuesday portrait

August 4, 2008

I Went to San Jose, and I Didn’t Found a Website Called Plazzy

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Just got back from a weekend in northern CA, where I managed to take in the Quakes-Galaxy game without getting tangled up with any celebrity morticians or IRA operatives in the process. Just me and my ticket, no special sauce. Just a man and his hard plastic seat. I like that. I think I'm going [... Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 04:20 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, Major League Soccer, San Jose, domestic correspondence, ira, quakes

July 30, 2008

A Maiden Is Sacrificed, a Football Kit Is Born

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I've never really understood the hoopla that surrounds the unveiling of new football kits. However, now that I've seen this kit-unveiling video from Bayern Munich, I can honestly say that understand it far, far less. Try to make yourself watch the whole thing. You'll think you have the point around the :50 mark, but believe me, [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 11:50 AM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Bayern Munich, Football Kits, the marketing of meaning, unveiling

July 29, 2008

The Tuesday Portrait: Ray Hudson

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O what am I that I should not seem For the song's sake a fool? Yeats It's impossible to separate Ray Hudson's appeal as a sportscaster from his appeal as an object of mockery. But because even most of the people who mock him basically like him, no one ever quite acknowledges this, and a strange situation [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 05:19 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, Portrait, Ray Hudson, fool, sake, the tuesday portrait

July 27, 2008

My Greatness May Be a Metaphor

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Like many of you, except that in my case it's actually deserved, I've learned from playing Football Manager that I am the greatest football manager in the history of the world. It's true that my abilities have, unaccountably, failed to create much of a stir in the outside world. Relatively talentless men like Brian Clough [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 08:15 AM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, Football Manager, Management, brian clough, pixel dramas

July 23, 2008

Phrasenschwein Project Update

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A couple of months ago I told you about an idea I had for a "Dictionary of Generic Narrative in Football" a glossary of terms that would teach aspiring soccer fans how to talk about the game through the most widely admired and up-to-date cliches. At that point, I promised project updates, and here's the [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 03:33 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Don't Miss, phrasenschwein project, soccer fans, the movement is bigger than any of us

July 21, 2008

I’m Your New MLS Correspondent!

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I guess Brian couldn't handle the idea of me at the head of a revolutionary army, because I woke up this morning to find a terse email inviting me back to the site. I'm going to cover MLS, finally living up to that old adage, "See the country, cover MLS." Apparently "[I] can pay for [...] Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 01:15 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail
Tags: Columbus Crew, Don't Miss, Major League Soccer, West Ham, email, swooning for hooligans

July 20, 2008

Second Email from Vandal-prone

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So...meet your new MLS correspondent. I genuinely have no idea how else to respond to this. I think it's pretty clear that the kid needs to come back to America. Hi there, So...sorry it's been so long since I wrote. You probably think it's all because I was stewing in fury over the fact that you published [. Click to continue reading...
The Run of Play - Soccer in Style @ 05:25 PM EDT | Blog Profile | Post Detail