Real Madrid are indisputably great and that's the only argument they care about. Method and style and ethos are unimportant. Then you study their trophy case and consider that you might be in the wrong here. Read more »
Colin McGowan - Soccer Analysis
End-To-End Stuff: Real Madrid
End-To-End Stuff: Barcelona
When your youth academy isn't producing world-class talent and you want to keep competing for domestic titles and Champions Leagues, you might start to look like the thing you define yourself in opposition to. Read more »
End-To-End Stuff: Atletico Madrid
Atletico Madrid are entering what you might call their corporate era. It would be inaccurate to describe what came before it as pre-corporate, but it was rickety and volatile and strange. Read more »
End-To-End Stuff: Manchester United
Even healthy relationships don't transcend two parties using each other, and that goes octuple for when millions of dollars are involved, but Mourinho and United's partnership reads as especially transactional. Read more »
End-To-End Stuff: Tottenham Hotspur
Under Mauricio Pochettino, Tottenham has lived in that blessed sliver of the sport's upper-middle class where they're just rich enough to compete with Chelsea and Manchesters (United and City) on the pitch without being able to touch them in the talent acquisition marketplace. Read more »
End-To-End Stuff: Manchester City
Pep Guardiola's mythology is more specific and ordinary than what's commonly said about him. He's convinced he can think soccer into submission. Which is probably what many coaches think, but they're not as bright or committed or fortunate. Read more »
End-To-End Stuff: Chelsea
We're coming up on 15 years since Roman Abramovich assumed control of Chelsea. Abramovich hasn't mellowed or grown less contemptible, but he has rivals in the oil baron/club owner sphere. He's been normalized. Read more »
End-To-End Stuff: Paris Saint-Germain
Neymar's going to cost some $550 million, because one unfathomably wealthy family have decided he's worth that much. Because sports matter to us that much, in more ways than we can know. Read more »
Real Madrid Has Become A Monster With Their Reformed Transfer Strategy
Real Madrid occasionally make dumb, exceedingly pricey signings, but they're rich enough to make big mistakes and still compete for trophies. They sign the most obvious players, but those players are obvious because they’re awesome. Read more »
How Strikers Fuel The Endless Vacuous Transfer Seasons
Goal-scorers are kind of like the headlines of soccer. They're the most easily legible players in the sport. Their primary job is obvious and uncomplicated. Read more »
Antoine Griezmann's Future And The Game-Adjacent Commerce Of Transfers
Antoine Griezmann's been going to Manchester United for six months, if you're prone to believe the British tabloids. Read more »
VAR In A Sport That Is Happening All The Time
If we add video assisted replay, we will reduce scoreline-altering human error. But we will also increase stoppages and turn games into forensic and epistemological exercises. Read more »
Piqué's Inextinguishable Antipathy For Real Madrid
Barça have become more like Real Madrid over the years because occupying the moral high ground doesn't feel as good as winning titles. This is what Piqué is bristling against, when he periodically plants a couple jabs into Madrid's ribs. Read more »
Heading Off Barcelona's Down Cycle
Barcelona needs some new ideas and some new players. Europe hasn't solved Luis Enrique's side as much as they have simply declined. Read more »
La Liga And Allowing What's Strange To Become Interesting
If you spend enough time studying any group of people, you will find things to like about them. It is a moving experience and it reaffirms what most of us already know: people are infinite. And if we know this, we know to reject misanthropes and bigots. Read more »
The Chinese Super League Keeps On Spending With Improving Taste
Europe's giants are more than happy to sell off their spare parts to the Far East at crazy markups, but what happens when China comes for the players they want to keep? Read more »
Why Jose Mourinho Will Fight To Keep His United Perch
Jose Mourinho has never walked into a club and not provided an immediate boost. This United job has been different and he needs to make it work, at least for a while, as a kind of cosmic résumé-bolstering exercise. Read more »
The Fatigue Of The Transfer Market
Transfer season is a portrait of the starving sports fan. We enjoy the games so much that we have decided, in the sleepy summer months, to become fascinated with game-adjacent activity that resembles stock trading more than it does any sport. Read more »
Paul Pogba And The Chance To Do Anything And Everything At United
Jose Mourinho will construct United around Paul Pogba's versatility, giving him both creative freedom and tactical responsibility. He has the confidence and the ability, and that's precisely what makes his future so perilous and exciting. Read more »
Gonzalo Higuain And The Nonstop Domestic Talent-Poaching
Talent matriculates up the table in every league, reinforcing the existing hegemonies and guaranteeing that, over the long run, the continent's Napolis will never compete with its Juves. Read more »