Topic: Soccer

July 17, 2012

Vive Le Rouge

Andrew Lewellen

In its first year of operation, the Detroit City Football Club already looks like a legitimate minor league success story—a minor league squad with multiple groups of supporters and a solid on-field product deserving of all that passion. But this upstart team's backstory is more complicated than that, and has its origins in Detroit's signature stubbornness and uniquely polyglot population.

July 2, 2012

Ballers on the Pitch

Kate Perkins

Notes from the annual Steve Nash Foundation Showdown game, where NBA players and sports journos alike are tolerated by world-class soccer players. All for the good of the kids.

June 27, 2012

Fans In The Dark: Talking To Greg Lalas About Soccer, Film, and Soccer Film Festival "Kicking and Screening"

David Roth

Greg Lalas played soccer in the MLS, and has covered it as a reporter and editor for a variety of venues. In his role as founder of Kicking and Screening, a film festival dedicated to soccer films from around the world, Lalas is still finding new ways to see the beautiful game.

June 25, 2012

Random Fandom: A Man Without a Country at Euro 2012

Noah Davis

Many of the fans at Euro 2012 are there to cheer for players wearing the uniforms of their home country. But for those who found themselves in the Ukraine without any nationalism-related rooting interest, the Euros offered a unique and frankly kind of weird opportunity to try different national soccer identities on for size.

June 22, 2012

Glory, Glory for a Man for United

Suhrith Parthasarathy

Sports mean different things to different people, and for Mark Barry, they perhaps used to mean too much. Now an expatriate living in the States, he's found a home for all the things sports mean to him, with his raucous group of friends at Legends 33.  

June 20, 2012

You Do It to Yourself

Fredorrarci

It wasn't just that Ireland was outclassed during its brief, bruising Magical Misery Tour through Euro 2012. The problem was that, after fans talked themselves into believing in the boys in green, the team played such dispirited, pessimistic soccer.

June 19, 2012

Bohemians Rhapsodizing: Searching For Wins in a Gold and Red World

Joe Tirabassi

In the latest installment in our running diary of the Baltimore Bohemians' first season as a minor league soccer team, the Bohs struggle to find their way into the win column, but find their way thanks in part to a throwback-y embrace of some traditional Maryland flavor. Contains dangerously funky theme song for the late, lamented NASL team the Baltimore Bays.

June 18, 2012

Head Games

Ryan O'Hanlon

Football's concussion epidemic is a matter of public record. But recent reports about a surge of concussions in girls' youth soccer suggest another problem brewing. All sports have their element of danger, but how much are parents supposed to accept? And how safe can sports ever really get?

June 15, 2012

The Toon Army Takes Manhattan

Suhrith Parthasarathy

Dean Smith and Jack Keane wanted to host club soccer fans at bars in New York City. By bringing together fans of different loyalties and backgrounds, they got closer to recreating the communal atmosphere of real stadiums than English pubs ever have.

June 13, 2012

Kick Me Again, Jesus

Fredorrarci

Maybe it's a sensation that more regular qualifiers become blasè about, but when your team hasn't been to a major tournament for ten years, or a European Championship for 24, to see your team actually there—in the actual stadium, on the actual pitch, in front of the actual world—leads to explosive goosebumpery. But, as Irish fans (re-)learned the hard way against Croatia, the game has a cruel way of dealing with that sort of hope.