1
Last goodbye
A ground winds its way into a supporter’s synapses over time. It’s not just about what you remember seeing on the pitch, the fleeting moments of glory or the longer hours of mediocrity. For older homes of football, it’s the awkward shapes of the stands built at different times, the crumbling bits of concrete, the paint peeling off the walls. The time you and generations of fans have invested pay back in memories that last a lifetime. This video might leave with you something in your eye as York City fans say farewell to Bootham Crescent.
2
Shanty-time
Ah, this is lovely from Match of the Day - a fun way to frame the history of Manchester United vs. Liverpool in the FA Cup.
3
Spotlight
Mary Phillip has five Premier League titles to her name, and that’s only a small slice of her achievements. Discover the story of a player and manager you should know more about.
4
New digs
This one surprised me, and perhaps Australian readers can help with some context - Western United FC’s new stadium will reportedly be the first stadium in the country owned by a professional soccer team. Planned at a cost of $115M, the 15,000 stadium is scheduled to open in time for the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
5
Project 2050
Long range goals are not something that have been all too commonly defined in lower league American soccer. Lofty goals sure have been set, certainly; in fact, often all too lofty with unrealistic hopes of earning expansion to Major League Soccer. Different paths are now being charted, with structures below MLS allowing clubs to consider sustainability outside purchasing a $300M franchise.
One community club has perhaps taken this to its logical extreme: Rosevelt Soccer Club in Maine has set a target of 2050 to reach third division level. Yes, you read that right: 2050.
Until recently, opportunities to establish a professional soccer club (or any other type of sports franchise, for that matter) in the U.S. have been limited only to the deep-pocketed, and the organizing principle of professional sports in our country is exclusivity instead of inclusivity.
But with the incorporation of the National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) and its recent momentum on and off the field, the opportunity for our club--and the thousands of independent clubs like ours--to become a professional club now exists.
6
Bargain bin
$275k a week to be “a really, really nice guy, a dressing room guy” as Jose Mourinho put it? Nice gig if you can get it. That’s the curious case of Gareth Bale, soaking up the wages at Tottenham Hotspur for a hard to quantify return.
You might wonder whether being a “dressing room guy” is what Bale was brought back for, when Levy did the deal to take him back on loan. Ultimately, Tottenham are paying him at least £200,000 per week — more than any of their other players — so that he can make a difference on the pitch. It was little more than two and a half years ago, remember, that he stunned Liverpool with that overhead kick in the Champions League final in Kyiv.
But for now, we just do not know whether we will see that explosive Bale ever again. Mourinho says there has been no discussion whether Spurs will keep him for next season, but if he is not playing for them he is unlikely to be playing for anyone else. He certainly does not intend to give up any of the money Real Madrid owe him for the last year of his contract or go on loan elsewhere. And if that means seeing out his final year in Madrid, so be it.
7
Keep it simple
Refreshing a club’s identity through its core symbol, the crest on the shirt, is a famously fraught process. Sevilla FC recently tackled this in a thoughtful way, engaging fans, the community and the club historian to build a revised look that does not break from the club’s history or the character of the city, Design Week explains. The full color, traditional crest will live on, but a modernized, flat version will also be deployed.
Summa creative director Pablo Amade tells Design Week that the studio worked with the team’s in-house historian on the process. He says that you can see Seville throughout the identity: “In the iconography which holds graphic secrets of the city and the club, in the layout system that is inspired in Modernist posters, and the photographic style and retouching is inspired by the work of Sevillian painter Murillo, a fundamental figure in the Spanish baroque.”
Amade calls the icons a “tribe”. “They are a set of graphic elements that are important for both the city and the club,” he explains. The number 16 which represents deceased player Antonio Puerta appears, as do references to the floor tiles in Seville’s Judería neighbourhood. “There are other not so evident elements that only true Sevillanos know,” Amade adds.
8
Generational talent
Catarina Macario scored her first goal for the United States on Friday night. She is going to score a shed-load more of them. Her winding road to the team from São Luís to San Diego is captured wonderfully by Bryan Graham in his story of Macario’s life in The Guardian.
It is the culmination of a journey – and a gigantic gamble – that first took shape on a different continent more than a decade ago.
Macario became attached to the sport from an early age growing up in São Luís, Maranhão, on Brazil’s northeastern coast, taking after her older brother, Steve, and playing in pick-up games in the neighbourhood. She cut her teeth as the lone girl among boys, first with the Cruzeiro youth team she joined aged five and later for a Santos affiliate after the family moved to Brasília where her mother, Ana Maria, was completing her surgical residency.
Knowing she would no longer be permitted to play on boys’ teams after her 12th birthday and her opportunities to develop would be severely limited, Macario’s parents were forced to make a difficult choice in order to cultivate their daughter’s gift. Her father, Jose, moved with the two children to San Diego where the infrastructure and support for women’s soccer was far more advanced than in Brazil. Her mother stayed behind in Brasília to offer financial support.
9
Indomitable
Who has the most points per game of any manager in Premier League history? English football’s short memory may have made us forget just how phenomenal Manchester City have been in recent years, but there ought to be no shock that it is Pep Guardiola. Not only do his teams win - they win dominantly. Stats Perform digs deep into the numbers across Pep’s performance in multiple leagues.
10
Language of the game
In “The Black Rebel Athlete: Spectacle and Protest,” James Cantres touches on the perceptions and tropes that will feel familiar to anyone who has listened to the cliched and consequential commentary that typically surrounds the game.
It is also worth mentioning the discourse of Black athletes’ supposed “natural ability,” especially when contrasted to the “grit,” “diligence,” and “determination” of their white professional peers. This language is especially frequent in evaluations of football (soccer) players; the top white players are often regarded as having toiled to earn their position, while their Black counterparts are cast as naturally talented and “blessed”—the suggestion is that Black athletes, like Black laypeople, are physically something altogether different from whites.
11
Survival
How is it that scores of Non-League clubs in England, who are almost entirely dependent on matchday revenue that’s been lost for almost one year now, haven’t gone to the wall? Tony Incenzo highlights the hard work and loyal toil of so many unpaid club volunteers in the fight for survival.
I’ve had scores of messages on Twitter recently about how club volunteers have gone above and beyond the call of duty in recent months. Here are a few examples…
* Before lockdown, Darlington had a matchday half-time draw that raised more than £600 for the club at each game. But now that fans are unable to attend behind closed doors fixtures, volunteer Andy Clarke has decided to continue the scheme online.
Each ‘Virtual 50/50 Ticket’ costs £1.00 with Andy raising £16,000 so far. This goes towards paying the players’ wages.
Andy said: “We are a fan-owned club so we don’t have a rich owner or large sums of cash in the bank to get us through this period with no revenue coming in. For us, it is all about the supporters rallying around and we are really proud to help out as football means so much to people in Darlington.”