Here is Where The Invisible Female Football Fan Will Be Made Visible

Also more generalities and one or two specificities of being a female football fan. Some having to do with etiquette, a few having to do with boys, but mostly all concerning language. 

Here Is Where I Will Successfully Defend Alexi Lalas. No, really. No: really.

Tentatively entitled: "A Dude Evolving." 

Here is a Placeholder That Was Made in the USA

Here, or somewhere abouts, is where my survey of all things USA will inevitably nestle. Clint! Clint! Clint! That other guy! Emancipation from the English! Clint! More a note for me (Liz!) than you, because before you even read this threat of emerging, the actual emerging might have taken its place. But we need the note just in case; can not risk losing the timeline. In football it's really all we have. 

Clipped Wings: Generational Fractures in the Magical Kingdom of Iberia

I find nothing more seductive than process except writing about seduction by process. As soon as Spain gently defeated Honduras, I ran to my computer, giddy at the prospect of writing yet another piece about a team who became so enamored with the act of playing that they forget to score goals. A piece I could add to my library full of unfinished explorations of every possible cliche of Arsenal heartbreak. Unfinished because in the middle of each piece I would be driven to write down thoughts about writing my piece about process. But once I thought on Spain v. Honduras and wrote about my thoughts about thinking on it, I realized that I wasn't concerned by the over-simplified threat of "death by passing". Instead, I noticed a couple of emerging on-pitch fissures on the Spain team that the translucent anonymity of the Honduran performance had brought to the surface.

Spain’s early efforts were full of the fresh, elegant, telepathic play they’re known for and every football fan on earth (outside Tegucigalpawas at least) simply had to find pleasure in Villa’s one great- and one supergreat- goal. But by the middle of the second half, they looked out of ideas and exhausted. Much of the post-match analysis focused on Torres’ wastefulness of chances, but placing blame on him seems given how little game time he’s had since his surgery, and with the Jabulani/altitude combination. But mainly it seems odd because I found myself transfixed by Torres' early missing. As much as I admire Torres, he’s never been one of my favorite players to watch. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed watching him play as much as I did today.

Here is The Site of The Combustion

Which must be inventoried along with everything else. 

Stop Blaming the Players and Start Blaming Yourselves: Thoughts on the First Week

Note: I am too slow. Thoughts and observations come quickly; connecting them is a bloody crawl. And so, since I started writing this Switzerland has upset Spain and Forlan has scored a hundred goals. In 24 hours this little note has become a historical document, and I’m forced to rewind myself into yesterday, before a couple of open games convinced us all that our lives were worth living again. 

This week’s panic didn't seem to build: it was right there, obviously already coiled and ready, waiting within us. The whole world hungry for meaning and for something pure. Hovering and set to pounce. In a way, I think we all needed this World Cup too much. We longed for this terrible month long high, this instant transport to our fractured pasts, to our personal timelines of World Cups. So much more than a madeline, or an accidental song on the radio: the World Cup has become a sort of nostalgia corporation, pumping out projections of a more innocent time. It’s a ghost world of man-boys, queueing up for a tour of their childhood room: these are my model airplanes. This (bounce bounce) was my single bed. Do you wanna look at my Panini albums?

Here is Where I Will Announce Something That I Will Not Do

Later I will spend time attempting to convince us both that my failure revealed more than my success ever could. 

Disconnect Me: Thoughts on the Night Before the Most Connected Human Event of All Time

Today I found myself longing for a Tuesday afternoon Carling Cup qualifier. Just me and a couple other obsessives who wanted to see their team’s young players in action, players that wouldn’t start for a couple of years, if ever. Or perhaps an early-season Serie A game at an empty, half-rate Little Italy bar, bartender flirting with a couple of Dutch tourists as I was bored and hypnotized, lulled, by the lazy back and forth of Parma and Bari in a game of absolutely no consequence. 

Please understand: I love the World Cup. I am thrilled to see something that means so much to me mean so much to other people. I love how it connects the whole world. And yet- and I know it’s unfashionable- but there is a certain sadness, almost a mourning- that comes from suddenly having to share something that means so much to you with everyone else. The idea of sharing soccer with the whole world for an entire month suddenly struck me this afternoon as, well, rather profoundly exhausting. 

The Week Before: The Nike Ad and All These Broken Bodies

The first time I watched the Nike ad I liked it well enough. I mean: how fun! Ronal-doh! But afterwords I was left with a lingering feeling of nothing, and then a growing level of disturbance. This is hardly just an ad after all: it’s the single biggest artistic statement about the World Cup- about soccer in general-that will be distributed in the US. Obviously they constructed it so it could be experienced on different levels, depending on your level of knowledge. But it was just wrong. About everything. For everyone. 


Ok. So. It’s poking fun at the personas soccer players take on. So far, so good. We can all understand that. But it’s the laziest poking possible: it’s all just so obvious. This is a multimillion dollar soccer commercial that doesn’t give any indication of knowing a thing about any existing soccer subtexts. The only piece that touches on more than canned aspiration is Rooney’s; at least it gets at the odd tragedy of his class striving and makes a nod to his mysterious tendency to signify as a Bear. But that’s about it. Sure, I suppose I’m use to a high-level of football satire, but the ladies at Kickette could have written a more interesting script in their most champagne-soaked sleep. 

Here is Where I Will Lay Down The Rules

The ones I learned along the way. Before this whole World Cup thing gets going. Not life rules. Just football rules. Life of Football Rules. Trouble is I didn't tell them to you before this whole World Cup thing got going, and you can't tell someone the rules after the games are already finished. But my heart is so heavy with constructed guidelines and hidden codes of conduct that only I know the architecture of. Listen to me tell them to you and nod. Imagine I'm your grandma. The grandma at the pub.

Match Report: Friendly Currents (England vs. Mexico Friendly, 5.24.10)

A friendly is like an electrical grid. Parallel currents at different voltages headed to different destinations. Directions and objectives opposed but still getting and giving energy to a bigger network. It’s bodies and it’s running but it’s not a game exactly; it’s more and less than a game. Everyone on the pitch is playing their own game of candidacy, but they’re also just an x on a chalkboard in motion. Speeds become personal: while some players are just going through the motions, jogging in place, others fight for their lives. On the surface a friendly can seem boring, exclusively theoretical, but if you look more closely there's terror and panic. You never know when you'll hit a live wire; an unanticipated connection; a shock to the system.

Match Report Part 2: The Power of A Head Bandage (England vs. Mexico Friendly, 5.24.10)

At some point during the first half of the friendly against Mexico, Steven Gerrard took a knock on the head. He returned to the pitch with a bandage on his head and a new outlook on life. During the Chelsea v. Liverpool game a couple of weeks ago, I compared him to a mental patient; with roughly-wrapped gauze around his forehead he certainly looked like one. But a liberated one. Gerrard looked like a mental patient who had escaped from the asylum of his season at Liverpool through a very small bathroom window and thrown his sedatives into the artificial pond as he roared out of the compound. At least until the mania hit, intoxication was guaranteed: with his freedom, with everyday life, with breathing. Alternatively, you might say he looked like a little kid who fell out of bed after a season-long nap. Watch out mummy, he’s mad and he’s ready to play! Take your pick. He was a man resurrected.