Catalonia took another step on the road to sovereign status in a referendum today. And, as we typically do in reflecting the world of sports, we make it about us. To wit: “If  Catalonia leaves Spain … what does this mean for FC Barcelona and the Spanish league and the Spanish national team?” The short […]

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Not exactly a rousing endorsement of Major League Soccer. The data guys at the FiveThirtyEight website have come up with a batch of calculations they believe indicate the “relative strength” of soccer leagues in Europe, North America and South America. (See the rankings, about a third of the way down the page.) In simplest terms, […]

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I remember the 2009 Confederations Cup, in South Africa, where the U.S. national team nearly won a global competition. Bob Bradley’s Yanks shocked world-No. 1, unbeaten-in-35-matches Spain 2-0 in the semifinals (go back and read that again), then faced Brazil in the championship match and led 2-0 at half … before losing 3-2. I noted, […]

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I first traveled to Barcelona in the summer of 1992 to help cover the Summer Olympics for Gannett News Service. I was very impressed with the place. It had charm. It had class. It organized a very fine Olympics. It seemed like a city people would want to see, if they knew about it. And […]

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It always is a bit embarrassing, while traveling, to walk into someone else’s important holiday … and know little or nothing about it. A pre-Easter parade in San Blas, Mexico, in 2005. Bastille Day, which we didn’t see coming in Normandy three decades ago … and then tried to make amends by marching at the […]

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It was the biggest week in U.S. national soccer history. The 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa. In this order: (And we are not messing with you here; this actually happened.) U.S. 3, Egypt 0 U.S. 2, Spain 0 (!) U.S. 2, Brazil 0 — at halftime of the championship match. It ended Brazil 3, […]

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In 1999, a U.S. team led by Landon Donovan got to the semifinals of the Fifa Under 17 Championship, in New Zealand. The young Americans played Australia to a 2-2 draw but lost the shootout 7-6 when Kenny Cutler missed his penalty and Oz’s Joshua Kennedy converted. Brazil won the tournament and the Yanks finished […]

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We completed the five-day Camino de Santiago pilgrimage yesterday, and celebrated by having dinner twice in about five hours. Walking 13 or 14 miles a day is enough to work up an appetite that can be acknowledged without fear of gaining weight. So there is that. Thinking back, I failed to mention, over the past […]

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*By “triumphal” we mean stumbling past the sign that read “Santiago”. So, Day 5 of the Camino de Santiago, the condensed, 73-mile version of a pilgrimage that can be 10 times as long, for the minority who start walking in distant lands, and often is about six times as long when starting just north of […]

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The Camino de Santiago is a public event that passes through some of the most remote parts of Spain. The miracle is that the pilgrimage is so little touched by crime, especially given the surge in participation over the past 20 years, crossing the 275,000 mark in 2016, with women making up almost half of […]

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