The Assistant Professor of Football: Soccer, Culture, History.

... or: an Economist and a Tactics Nerd on what the last 6 weeks tell us about where the game is going. A spontaneous and incomplete post-final reaction.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

The recent CNN piece with me on why a draw "sometimes fee...

The traditional The Assistant Professor of Football season round-up is back. I asked guests from this past year, and some from previous years whose clubs had remarkable seasons of one sort or the other how their clubs have fared, what moment stands out, and what song best embodies their club's vibe this past season. They are:

Medea Voegeli, professional historian and hi...

If you're old enough — what do you remember about the 1994 World Cup?

And if you're not, try to picture it. Soccer in the United States before MLS existed. Matches inside the Pontiac Silverdome, a domed football stadium in Michigan — humid, bizarre, and somehow full. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Record attendances that still haven't been broken. A tournament that, by most...

Phil Harrison, a former Visiting Professor on soccer in Albania before the fall of the Iron Curtain, and me are giving our take on the song contest in Vienna this past Saturday. A very helpful visual breakdown of all points - jury and public - is HERE.

Eurovision has many things that soccer does - underdogs, spectacular collapses, bloc loyalties, political scores settled through performance, and a continent watching the same spectacle at the same time. And this year, the Eurovision Song Contest, a live-for-TV music contest with continent-wide public voting, is happening in Vienna, this coming weekend. Why there? Austria won...