Congrats on your successful recap of Sid Lowe's Guardian preview.

As long as Ronaldo is in this team, he's Route One, and Bale is not the team-focused player they gave up to sign up (Ozil) so he's bound not fail in living up to expectation. Bale had just seven assists last year, and his 21 goals can be largely attributed to the fact that the rest of Tottenham was generally crap.

The story earlier this year of Plateau United and Police Machine scoring 72 and 61 goals respective in the SECOND HALF of their games is incredible: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football…

Nerd Alert: I spend a not-insignificant amount of time each week thinking about who I would put in my Witness XI (those players whom I have seen play live or on TV). Try as I might, I cannot find a place for Zlatan. Every team he plays for seems to be centered around Him, first and only, and it would be to the…

This is mesmerizing.

Exactly what I came here to say.

So good.

Thomas Muller is hands-down my favorite European footballer at the moment. His nickname is "Raumdeuter," which translates roughly to "space detective" or "space investigator." He looks like your suburban neighbor went out for a jog with his dog, got lost and ended up on a football pitch.

Good on Moyes for reiterating this stance now, considering he employes the worst diver of the bunch (Suarez notwithstanding). He could have easily given the standard "I didn't have a good view from where I was standing line" and swept it under the rug, but he's doubled-down. Impressive.

How do you feel about Opta's definition of the possession statistic? By their measurement, "possession" is just the total number of passes for one team vs the other. As such, teams like Barcelona and Arsenal, who make tons of passes but don't necessarily hold on to the ball as often, have enormous "possession"…

I am an Arsenal fan and would argue for Sir Alex Ferguson before Professor Wenger.

We talkin Yards, Meters, or Metres?

Gigi's Wikipedia page has separate entries under "Controversy" for Homosexuality, Legal action for discrimination against homosexuals, Xenophobia, Anti-Semitism, Violence, and Various.

Dying. +1

Great stuff as always, Greg.

Serious Question: is Kate Upton a Supermodel, as suggested above, or just a super popular model?

Awesome article.

+1

Ah yes, fans who haven't seen a trophy in 8 years, whose coach is sitting on $80M which he refuses to spend, whose best players each of the past three seasons have been sold off and whose players look totally uninterested are unhappy. Shocking! Classless! Almost as bad as Chelsea fans booing their team when tied at…

Roses Are Red