Tag: Liverpool (Soccer Team)

Where’s the Next Generation of Great Coaches?

Twenty years, it would appear, is a very long time indeed. This week, a brief video montage fluttered through the flotsam and jetsam that clog my (and your) social media feeds — the engagement-farming banalities, the craven attention-seekers, the willfully deranged Kate Middleton theories — to celebrate the glorious madness of 2004. That was the […]

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Liverpool-Manchester City: Rodri Is the Premier League’s Best Player

Pep Guardiola would, in an unguarded moment, probably concede that he has a slight tendency toward hyperbole. With eyes wide and voice breathless, he will sing the praises of some hopelessly overmatched opponent his Manchester City team has just beaten by 6-1, his players’ jerseys untainted by sweat. “Guys,” he will say, “guys, they are […]

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Jürgen Klopp Dragged Liverpool Into the Future. Now He’ll Let It Go.

For Jürgen Klopp, the montages will be long and they will be emotional. There will, naturally, be artful drone shots of Liverpool’s skyline. There will be slow-motion footage of red-and-white scarves, twirling and writhing. There will, absolutely, be a stirring, possibly classical score. But most of all, in the wake of Klopp’s announcement on Friday […]

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Knowledge Is Power in Soccer. But Is It Fun to Watch?

Few things degrade quite so rapidly as the element of surprise, once exposed to the pressurized, accelerated conditions provided by elite soccer. In most cases, its half-life will extend no more than 90 minutes. Even in extreme, extenuating circumstances, it is unlikely to be more than twice that. Two games — one at home, one […]

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Soccer Watchalongs Like Stretford Paddock Offer a Broadcast Alternative

With the lights adjusted and the cameras rolling, the production team gives Joe Smith his cue. In five seconds, he will be broadcasting live to a couple thousand people. Mr. Smith’s mind, though, is elsewhere. “Slate is definitely the best way to build a roof,” he mutters to his co-host, Jay Mottershead, as the countdown […]

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The Premier League Needs a Commissioner

Pete Rozelle’s immediate reaction could not accurately be described as unbridled enthusiasm. He was 33. He had, for the last three years, been the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams. He was suave, charming and well liked. But he was nevertheless starting to wonder whether running an N.F.L. football team was really the job […]

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Xabi Alonso Isn’t Coming to Save Your Team. Not Yet.

Xabi Alonso has always done things at his own speed. As a player, it was his coolness, his control, his capacity to wait until precisely the right moment that made him one of the finest midfielders of his generation. As he contemplated the idea of becoming a coach, he saw no reason to change. He […]

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Luis Díaz’s Kidnapped Father Is Freed in Colombia

The father of Luis Díaz, a Colombian soccer star for the English club Liverpool, was freed on Thursday after he was kidnapped by a guerrilla group, Colombian officials said. “We report with joy the release of Don Luis Manuel Díaz,” the Colombian government’s commission for peace talks said in a statement on Thursday morning. “We […]

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Colombia Troops Search for Liverpool Star Luis Diaz’s Kidnapped Father

The authorities in Colombia have mobilized the national police and the military to look for the father of the soccer star Luis Díaz, a Colombian standout for the English club Liverpool whose parents were kidnapped in his hometown on Saturday. Given soccer’s popularity here, the incident captured the South American country’s attention, but it also […]

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Liverpool, V.A.R. and the Problem With Process

There are very few coherent sentences in what will, in time, doubtless come to be known as the Luis Díaz Tape, a sort of Premier League equivalent to the Zapruder film. The various protagonists communicate in clipped and meaningless phrases, any clarity sacrificed on the altar of self-important brevity. The tape lasts only two minutes, […]

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