Liverpool storm to the top of Premier League expected points while teenage phenom Lamine Yamal leads LaLiga with an incredible 8.74 performance rating and becomes football's most valuable player at €200 million. Read more »
Soccer Analysis
Soccer Power Rankings, August 2025: Liverpool, Yamal, Kane
Chelsea Grown An Attack, One Summer At A Time
The strategy appeared to be throwing as many young attackers on the field as a nine-figure budget would allow and seeing what stuck. But what if, either by precision or scattershot approach, Chelsea actually succeeded in building a cohesive, world-class attack, one characterized by directness, speed, and goals? Read more »
Xabi Alonso Tries To Resolve Real Madrid With Structure
Xabi Alonso has a roster loaded with talent, but he is navigating an unforgiving balance between stardom and structure. Read more »
Soccer Power Rankings, April 2025: Liverpool, Barcelona Top Leagues
The Lamine Yamal breakout season has continued with Barcelona winning a domestic treble. Read more »
Soccer Power Rankings, March 2025: Liverpool Sustain, Dembele Emerges
Mohamed Salah and Liverpool are atop the Premier League rankings, while things are far closer in Spain between Barcelona and Real Madrid. The critical top-5 clubs and players in the major European leagues. Read more »
Eden Hazard Fades Into The Distance
The casualness was part of Eden Hazard's brilliance. Plus, we never saw him have to readapt his game as he aged. In a roundabout way, never seeing Hazard fade away in smaller leagues is its own sort of immortality. Read more »
The Force That Birthed And Sustained Luis Rubiales
Because soccer is unpredictable and fun and joyful and compelling- because it's a very good thing- it attracts the amoral, cynical, and outright awful people, who seek to capitalize on our interest in it. Read more »
Jurgen Klopp Constructs A Second Liverpool Era With Cody Gakpo
There is a unity between Jurgen Klopp's philosophy of pressure and his ability to shape raw material, to turn the potential of Cody Gakpo into something tangible and match-winning at a Premier League and Champions League level. Read more »
Eden Hazard And The Real Madrid Transfer To Exit Cycle
The same drumbeat that carried Eden Hazard to Real Madrid will try, in a syncopated cadence, to push him out. It is the peculiar thing that Madrid does. Read more »
The World Is Made Of Both Heavy And Buoyant Things
El Gran Derbi is the best rivalry hardly anyone outside Spain cares about. Given that Sevilla and Real Betis have both been pretty good over the past half-decade or so, their matches are intense and well-played. Read more »
Gianni Infantino's Amateur Hour
Gianni Infantino has a greedy proposal to host more World Cups with shockingly cynical justifications for it. Read more »
Inter Milan On The Verge
Clubs like Inter Milan are always in a tenuous position in the tier right below the behemoths who will poach the players who contribute to whatever fleeting success befalls them. Read more »
Barcelona Is Asking A Lot Of Club Legend Turned Novice Manager
Coaching hires are a crapshoot and Xavi doesn't have much of a record to go on. But he's Xavi. So, sure, why wouldn't Barcelona give him a shot? Maybe he'll turn out like his old boss Pep, or like Simeone. Read more »
Kane, Mbappe And Their Gilded Cages
Kylian Mbappe is on the verge of joining Real Madrid, either now or next summer while Harry Kane must wait for Daniel Levy to decide his fate for him. Read more »
La Liga's Big Three Enter Season In Varying Degrees Of Chaos
Real Madrid have some healing to do, Barcelona are hard up for cash, and Atleti simply need to prep for the season. Read more »
Poets, Heavy Metal & Suffering: The Journey To Find A Different Way
There is always a search for a new way, new ideas to reconcile Platonic playing ideals with the pragmatism of an everyday budget. The compromise leads to a larger discussion of what football actually means. Read more »
Kylian Mbappe Enters His Redemption Arc
Going through a penalty miss trauma in front of the world is part of a soccer hero's journey. We always knew Kylian Mbappe was world class, but now he has a familiar narrative that invites us along with him. Read more »
The Euros As A More Generous Reading Of The Game And Its Players
Tournaments like the Euros function as an exploration of what the gifted but not quite great are capable of, when they're asked to do everything. Read more »
Spain Fill Sergio Ramos' Absence With Missed Penalties, Goals
As Spain struggled for goals and a definitive penalty taker through the group stages, Sergio Ramos was giving his final goodbye at Real Madrid as he was also left off the Euro roster. Read more »