With the increased globalization of the game, major tournaments are heading to new lands. Austria and Switzerland hosted Euro 2008, with next year's event heading to Poland and Ukraine. Last year South Africa staged the World Cup with Russia and Qatar on the horizon. While I'm all for spreading the game around the globe (aside for whatever shadiness helped Qatar land the 2022 World Cup), this trend presents a flaw with regards to tournament seeding.

Of all the people on the train, the one I wanted to talk to the most was the middle-aged man with the graying goatee, traveling with wife and two children. He and his son were wearing Chelsea jerseys. It's not rare to see folks around Chicago in soccer gear, but considering this train and most of its occupants were heading toward Soldier Field, where Manchester United were to take on the Chicago Fire, those two bold blue shirts stuck out.

One of soccer's newest brands is Virtu Football out of the fashion capital Manhattan, New York City. Virtu's latest collection features a premium range of soccer-inspired products for male and female soccer players and fans. In a rarity in this age of globalization, all of the Virtu's gear is made in Manhattan, New York City.

By NESTOR F. SEBASTIAN

The tournament that essentially inspired the World Cup had been watered down.

Little by little, Copa America had lost some of its prestige. CONMEBOL decided to implement a two-year cycle in the South American tournament in the mid-1980s to give each nation a chance to host the competition.

We often hear how technology and globalization have brought the world closer together. The Premier League is a perfect example of this. Soccer fans can watch matches live and debate it with other fans around the world on Facebook, Twitter, blogs,...
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A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by the mega-historian Professor David Starkey, during which the characteristically flamboyant expert on the British monarchy (and self-appointed ‘rudest man in Britain') broke into a somewhat controversial massacre of contemporary culture with a provocative alignment of 21st-Century life with the more insidious aspects of Imperial Roman society.

So the world is now a place in which LeBron James can own a stake in Liverpool. On Twitter yesterday, the news was greeted first breathlessly and then, by People Who Know Things, with derision. Ives Galarcep pointed out that athletes buy small stakes in teams all the time. Jen Chang declared that this was no different than if David Beckham bought 0.

It's Super Bowl weekend here in the United States and football is on my mind. I grew up in Los Angeles, a city without an NFL team. In fact I've never lived in a city with an NFL team. When I'm asked what team I support I run through a brief flow chart, and this year I'm backing the Pack.

Bargains USA world-cup: Al Jazeera World Cup rights extended to 2018, 2022 - AFP - http://news.google.com/news... 1 hour ago from News MLB NBA NFL NHL... - Comment - Like The National Al Jazeera World Cup rights extended to 2018, 2022 AFP "FIFA is pleased to announce the extension of its broadcast rights agreement with Al Jazeera Sport for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia and the 2022 FIFA .

In his introduction to the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer engages in an uncharacteristically tender retrospective of the manner in which he originally wrote the book. Looking back at his twenty-four year-old self through the uncompromising mists of time, Mailer highlights the frailties that were present in his early writing and discusses both the strengths and weaknesses of what was his first major work.