Correspondence
The topic of whether American sports have enough swearing continues to prompt fairly more conversation than Google’s algorithm might expect, with Dan Rosenbaum losing points for citing Latest York Rangers fans chanting “Potvin sucks” for instance of spite — that’s a bit P.G. for my tastes — but recovering admirably with an impressive theory in regards to the differing natures of crowds.
“Most soccer fans see the opposition once a season,” he wrote. “Possibly two or 3 times, in various cup competitions. In baseball, we see a division rival around 10 times a yr, in three different sets of games. The vitriol is due to this fact expended over time, fairly than being focused. Aside from Phillies fans, who appear to have boundless depths of bile.”
The newsletter regular Shawn Donnelly, meanwhile, has an issue. “Chelsea bought Enzo Fernández for a cool $130 million,” he wrote, accurately. “Do they pay Benfica this sum immediately? Or is that payment opened up over plenty of years, the best way I repay my Subaru Impreza?”
I’m not quite sure whether that last bit is boasting or a subtle message to Subaru, but regardless: Some Premier League teams, particularly, will put the total money total down for a deal, often as a way of improving their probabilities of signing a player they actually need. Typically, though, payments are delivered in installments: perhaps two or three, front-loaded in the primary couple of years of a contract.
An inquiry from Brett Jenkins, too, a confessed “novice” fan who’s searching for recommendations for “soccer books, fiction and nonfiction.” The primary advice is, all the time: Don’t read soccer fiction. Unless it’s written by Steve Bruce.
Nonfiction is richer territory. It pains me to do it, but Jonathan Wilson’s “Inverting the Pyramid” might be the precise book you’re searching for, but there’s an entire canon value exploring, most of it also written by Wilson, but with noble exceptions from David Winner, Sid Lowe, David Goldblatt, Joshua Robinson and Jon Clegg, and some idiot. I like all of James Montague’s work, too, but my favorite soccer book, by a whisker, is Robert Andrew Powell’s “This Love Is Not for Cowards.”
