Barcelona

Everybody remembers the first time they had something extraordinary, something that made everything else either make sense or pale in comparison — food, clothing — something that makes the light bulb come on and you say, “Ah, THIS. This is it.” Flick’s Barcelona right now is, for people with a sense of fun (lacking a… Continue reading How is football supposed to be?

Pep Guardiola was a bum. We know he was a bum because he was at the club for four seasons, had Messi and a coterie of legends at his disposal, and only won the Champions League twice. Luis Enrique was also a bum. Come on, Messi, Suarez, Neymar and you only win ONE Champions League?… Continue reading When winning isn’t enough

Football is an incredibly fast-moving game. The ball, the players, time when your team is losing or clinging to a one-goal lead, football makes a mockery of chronological reailty. But for some players, football moves slowly, so slowly that they have time to consider, time to choose then time to act. Those players are rare,… Continue reading Xavi Espart and the speed of being slow

When you love something, that sometimes means you have to leave it. The announcement from Alexia Putellas that she would be leaving the club of her ACTUAL life, a story lived from childhood and a father wanting her to one day, fight for the colors, an arc of sustained excellence that ended with helping that… Continue reading Farewell, Queen, and thank you for everything

About a thousand years ago when I was a working man, I was assigned to review Kid Rock, then all the pop cultural rage. That was my job, so okay. I checked set lists, listened to all of his music, read articles, did everything I could to educate myself about a performer who, artistically, I… Continue reading What do we see when we don’t see what we see?

At the end of it all, football doesn’t care. It is an ugly, grinding maw that extracts what it needs and then shits out the rest, like a digestive system fed by money and repugnance. Players, clubs, reputations, everything goes in and out comes the waste in an ugly process participated in by clubs, media… Continue reading Of Ronald Araujo, lions, men, injuries and grace

People born in the 1980s were the last generation to experience life without the Internet. Why is that interesting? Because since then, increasingly, life lived on the Internet has shaped behavior. When the young man was talking crap to Mike Tyson and got punched in the face, in many ways that is emblematic of life… Continue reading The problem with the Internet

In August 2024, I was sure that Barça was a decent team. You couldn’t convince me otherwise because the squad list included players like Pedri, Robert Lewandowski, and Ronald Araujo. These are players that would walk into most starting 11s on the planet, after all. Given recent domestic success—a league title in 2022-23, runners up… Continue reading Winning Titles and Having Fun Doing It: Barça 2024-25

Kids. In trying to figure out why Hansi Flick’s Barça is like it is, maybe that’s the answer. Kids. In an interview, Dani Olmo said that the young Barça players make the locker room like a party. Because what else would kids do? Being sensible is for grownups, and there is plenty of time for… Continue reading Barcelona, defined by audacity, is on the cusp