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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Spain need a manager who understands the style is dead and the team requires, not a complete overhaul, but a few significant tactical tweaks in order to get the best out of a fresh generation of very good players who are differently skilled than the legends that preceded them. Read more »

Under Jurgen Klinsmann's watch, the United States has moved in no discernible direction, constantly shuttling players in and out of the squad, messing with different shapes and approaches, going young in one tournament and leaning on veterans the next. Read more »

Atlético are proud of needing to suffer in a way their European peers don't, and that pride filters out into the stands at the Calderón and whatever parts of Madrid are indeed red and white. Read more »

Those Valencia title runs from not so long ago seem deep in the past as the club has been corrupted by a failed stadium project and super agent Jorge Mendes. The fans are losing the sense that ecstatic days like those could return. Read more »

The difference between Barcelona of two years ago and the Barcelona of now is their ability to render the play of their opponents irrelevant, but there's vulnerabilities that Atletico is perfectly setup to exploit. Read more »

Cristiano Ronaldo joined a lineage of beautiful mercenaries at Real Madrid and the utility of their extraordinarily fruitful business relationship appears to be waning. Read more »

Until their infrastructure improves and talent attracts more talent, China will be little more than a hapless business associate for Europe. When Atleti and Inter and Wolfsburg and Benfica are jonesing for additional funds, they will look east. Read more »

No one would argue that Jose Mourinho doesn't have a keen tactical mind or that he isn't extraordinarily charismatic, but he also verges on being unemployably temperamental. Read more »

Florentino Perez governs Real Madrid with a philosophy that's no philosophy at all: he loves big-name players and doesn't realize he has too many of them for too few positions. Read more »