At Wembley on Saturday, immediately before probably the third biggest game in their team's history, Dortmund fans held up a big banner criticising the club's decision to sign a (relatively minor) sponsorship agreement with Rheinmetall, one of Europe's biggest arms manufacturers.

https://twitter.com/RealTalkMCFC/status/1798004629180940328

They then spent the entire game, as you will have seen, getting involved with this sort of business. There is sometimes a kind of holier-than-thou vibe about (some) Bundesliga fans. Leverkusen were formed in 1904! They were a factory team! It's probably OK to let it go! But...

The fact that your club has also been wronged by VAR isn’t proof that Liverpool shouldn’t complain, it’s proof there’s an issue with a system that has changed football quite drastically in pursuit of a perfection it isn’t delivering. Your club should also be complaining. This one has generated a lot of heat because it isn’t in any way subjective. It’s not a judgment call. It’s a perfectly good goal ruled out (as far as we know, without the audio) first because of a (forgivable, if odd) misunderstanding, and then because…

Everyone knew about Moisés Caicedo in 2021. The reason Brighton got him was because only they could figure out exactly who his agent was. nytimes.com/2021/01/21/spo… Just to expand on this a little, because who has the time to read stuff these days: when Caicedo was at his first club, Independiente, he was swamped with offers from agents. There were at least half a dozen who claimed to represent him, or to be due a cut of whatever deal.

Starting to come round to this view, as it goes. I think as long as they can guarantee - or as close to guarantee as is scientifically feasible - that nobody on the pitch has Covid, then it strikes me the "fairest" thing to do is to play.

https://twitter.com/GNev2/status/1475798941195247618

As explained here, I think the policy of postponing some games but not others creates a level of competitive distortion that is probably a step too far, especially now teams are having games called off for Covid AND injuries. It sets a weird precedent. nytimes.com/2021/12/24/spo…

Misinformation, (debunked) claims about virility, loss of trust in the government, Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s swollen testicles: @tariqpanja and I tried to work out why there’s so much vaccine hesitancy in the Premier League. nytimes.com/2021/12/22/spo… A couple of notes: the fact the PL’s vaccination rate tracks that of the relevant age group in Britain more broadly doesn’t really explain it. Most people haven’t had meetings with Jonathan Van Tam. Also most PL players aren’t British. It’s not a representative sample.

The Euros should expand. 16 teams should qualify automatically. The Nations League should be revamped to create space in the calendar. Here's a blueprint for football, you're welcome. nytimes.com/2021/06/26/spo… This has not been universally well received, and that’s fine: as a well-known disruptor, I’m open to workshopping things. Even when it takes the form of respected peers and friends WhatsApping me to say it is “ludicrous.” But to explain a bit further…

It’s not sport if there’s no relationship between effort and reward. It’s not sport if success is guaranteed. It’s not sport if you can’t lose. It’s content.
nyti.ms/3ande4P If I'm honest, I found this piece quite hard to write. Partly that's because it's such a big subject, and because the avarice and venality behind it is so startling, but partly it's because *whispers* I don't really object to the theory, at least, of a European league.

There have been 10 Serie A games today. Seven of them, I think, kicked off at 2pm local time. And it reminded me that I’ve really started to notice the Pandemic Premier League’s lack of a match-day. I get why all the games are given their own TV slot: not just to give maximise audiences or to get the broadcasters who pay for the whole shebang more content, but because it costs a lot to televise a game, so running them simultaneously makes no economic sense.

It's starting to feel like the PL is going to talk itself into abandoning the season at some point. My impression is whether you think that's right breaks down to some extent on club lines, but also which bits of a very convoluted conversation have resonated most. Some thoughts: The logic that we must protect next season seems to be based on the idea that it can, in some way, be "normal." But it won't be normal, because most estimates seem to be we won't get fans in stadiums until some time next year. Starting in Aug/Sept with fans is not on the cards.

What follows is a thread about the football season. Sorry. But first, the caveat: no, football isn't important at the moment; but yes, it's OK to be interested in how it will play out, either as a bit of escapism, or because it means something to you. More than one thing can matter to people at a time, and not all things have to matter equally: for example, I can care both about the health of my family and whether my dog has had enough exercise. Caring about the second doesn't diminish the fact the former is more important.

Staggered, to be honest, that anyone would be coming out in favour of any method of resolving the season - or annulling it completely - this early. It’s almost like it’s opportunistic self-interest. There’s a case to be made for declaring it void. There’s a case to be made for calling it early. There’s a case to be made for continuing it when possible. Now is not the time to make any of those cases, partly because it’s crass, and partly because it’s really complicated.

There’s a bit of a false dichotomy in this whole Man City/Uefa thing: it’s really not difficult to think at the same time that FFP is flawed and that City shouldn’t have broken the rules, even if they didn’t like them. (Pending appeal, alleged, if proven guilty etc). Increasingly I think City have to be slightly careful with the risk of reputational blowback, even if they prove their innocence in some way, as I wrote here. Taking it beyond CAS, for example, could become sort of a Pyrrhic victory. nytimes.com/2020/02/15/spo…

The problem with this Kane offside debate isn’t the camera angle or whose footage is better or whether VAR is a good or a bad idea, it’s that the way we do offside at the moment is completely, self-defeatingly stupid. We’ve lost the point of what offside is really there to do - stop goal-hanging, basically - and become nit-pickingly obsessed with microscopic, jobsworth, fussy detail. That’s why it’s controversial. Because it’s impossible and insane.

If all you consider is *what* Sam Allardyce did at Everton, then you can make a case that sacking him is harsh. If you consider *how* he did it, then you really can't. And in that there is quite an important parable for everyone below the top six. He was brought in to keep them up. He did (though he didn't really need to: THEY WEREN'T GOING TO GET RELEGATED). He got them to 8th. He beat Liverpool on aggregate. He won the 2nd half against City. Boxes ticked, job done.

Yeah, but you can try. Not for me to speak for her, but I’m pretty sure she’d tell you that they wilfully complicate quite a lot of stuff in the fields of gender and culture etc. Some of that is necessary. Some of it isn’t. (Her organisation has to simplify it to disseminate it) But more relevantly: all writing is about transfer of information. The issue with the tactics writing we’re talking about is that I’m not sure the people transferring the information actually have it, just an impression of it.