Beautiful photos of the beautiful game. That’s the subject of Hans Van Der Meer’s gorgeous photography. He’s published a book called “European Fields: The Landscape of Lower League Football.”
(Via.)
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A brief alert for all newley.com readers who’re into fantasy football (soccer). My kid brother Colin has put together a Yahoo English Premier League group; go here to sign up. It’s free. Email me (newley [at] gmail.com) for the group name and password. Lineups must be submitted by 11:00 a.m. GMT on Saturday, August 19 […]
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Sportswriter Bill Simmons has a great new column on choosing an English Premier League team to support.
The season starts on August 19; I shall be rooting for Arsenal, as ever. (I had a 24-hour layover in London in January of 2001. First thing I did upon arrival: took the tube to see Highbury, the […]
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Italy are through to the World Cup final. In what will go down as one of the finest finishes ever in a WC knockout game, Italy scored two gorgeous goals in the dying minutes of extra time to book a place in Sunday’s championship match. I was down on Italy going into this match; they’re […]
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Wayne Rooney has issued a statement claiming that his now-infamous crotch stomp was unintentional. I invite you to watch this and judge for yourself (the video clip contains some hilarious Chinese commentary, by the way.) Why not just repent already? The public will forgive Rooney his youthful indiscretions. Somebody’s giving the kid some very bad […]
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So I went to The Bull’s Head, a venerable Bangkok pub, to watch the England-Portugal match; the 150 or so English supporters in attendance were excited, hopeful, nervous, and then dejected, all in that order. Unbelievable game. Finished 0-0 after 120 minutes of regulation and extra time and then England absolutely imploded in the penalties, […]
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I have a story in today’s IHT/ThaiDay about international World Cup supporters here in Bangkok. I tracked down some Germans (easy), some English (also easy), an Italian (not so easy), and an Argentine (quite difficult). I tried to capture these fans’ hopes for what their squads might accomplish over the coming days. A snip from […]
A few of you have asked me to weigh in on the US national soccer team’s dismal performance at the World Cup. The American squad, it pains me to note, lost two games, tied one, scored only two goals (one of which was an own-goal gifted to them by the Italians), and generally stunk up […]
Thanks to the fine folks at World Hum for 1) pointing out a funny story about Thai monks enjoying (perhaps too much) the World Cup, and 2) mentioning my recent IHT/ThaiDay articles about the Kingdom’s contribution to the tournament.
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Right. So the US got absolutely demolished by the Czech Republic yesterday. It was a truly depressing performance (if you’re a fan of the American side). You’ll hear all sorts of speculation out there in the media about what went wrong — that our coach screwed up, that our players underperformed, that the US team’s […]
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This delightful image of indigenous Ecuadorian women conducting a penalty shoot-out comes from Mike F., a long-time friend of newley.com. You’ve gotta love it. Click on the photo for a bigger version.
Day two of the World Cup has just commenced and we’ve already seen some sparkling matches. Given my love for the tiny Andean nation of Ecuador, I was delighted to see the boys from la mitad del mundo beat a favored Poland squad 2-0. And today, in the tournament’s most exciting match thus far, an […]
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I’ve got a story in today’s IHT/Thai Day about illegal gambling surrounding the upcoming World Cup.
The first two grafs:
Sunton Tansiri represents the face of illegal football gambling in Thailand. Over coffee in his dimly-lit Ramkhamhaeng studio apartment, the 33-year-old punter explains that he and all his friends plan to wager extensively on the World […]
I’ve got a couple of stories in today’s International Herald Tribune/ThaiDay about two contributions Thailand’s making to the upcoming World Cup (despite that the fact that the country’s national team didn’t qualify for the tournament).
First, Adidas is manufacturing the official game ball (pictured above) in Chonburi province. And second, assistant referee Pratya Permpanich is […]
I recently purchased these potato chips at Bangkok’s Big C. (Big C is a Thai hypermarket, sort of like Wal-Mart but with an open-air meat section. Thailand has several hypermarkets, such as French-based Carrefour and Tesco Lotus, a UK/Thai joint venture.)
Anyway, I saw these chips and I thought, in this order:
1. Wow — […]