-Brighton might win the league. Aston Villa, Spurs, and United are all getting relegated. Brentford are gonna win the Champions League in 2028. I was right about everything: I overreacted to the first week of the Premier League season.

-Who is the best soccer player in the world right now? Throughout the season, I’m going to update my thinking around the question.

And one thing I read:

-Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard. I might just not be an Elmore Leonard guy. But I feel like I should be an Elmore Leonard guy. If someone has another book that will convince me that I actually am an Elmore Leonard guy, I’m all ears.

Enjoy your weekends, all.

-The top 50 players in the Premier League

-The annual 20-team Premier League mega-preview with my buddy Bill Connelly, who is somehow simultaneously previewing all of college football right now, too

And one thing I watched:

-The Boston Strangler. A real they-don’t-make-em-like-this-anymore production: a competent, above-average, less-than-two-hour thriller without any aliens or Confirmed Lore that I’ve seen described as to Zodiac what The Town is to Heat. If you don’t know what I’m talking about: find out. If you do, you’re probably firing up Hulu already.

Enjoy your 2026-27 Premier League season. Please pace yourselves.

-Hiring Jose Mourinho? Trying to sign the 30-year-old who just won the Golden Ball at the World Cup? It sure seems like Real Madrid want to go back to the way things used to be.

-Brighton to win the league? Spurs to get relegated? Cole Palmer to win the Golden Boot? I made five predictions that I think are more likely to happen than conventional wisdom suggests.

And here’s one thing I read:

-London Falling, by Patrick Radden Keefe. His previous, Say Nothing, might be my favorite book. Go read it immediately if you haven’t already. And then, when you’re done, read London Falling. It’s about the mystery behind a young man who fell out of a building after he started posing as the son of a Russian oligarch, but also about how a city stopped making things and remade itself as a haven for other people’s money. If you read the magazine story it was based on already, the book blows it up to such a bigger and richer scale.

Enjoy the Community Shield, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Wherever you fall on that spectrum from exhaustion to withdrawal: the Premier League season — somehow — does start, two weeks from today.

Here’s what I wrote this week:

-Is “winning” the transfer window actually a bad thing? I went through the last 10 summers to figure out the answer.

-Mauricio Pochettino is back with the USMNT for a full World Cup cycle. The challenge: actually make the team better this time.

And here’s one thing I watched:

-Defence of the Realm: a British political-conspiracy thriller from the mid-80s. It’s free on Tubi, and the quality of the stream is Netscape-buffering-in-1999-bad, but it’s shot by Roger Deakins (Sicario, Blade Runner: 2049, No Country for Old Men, etc.), so it looks amazing at the same time. You can also buy the Blu-ray from Wal-Mart, which would earn you the distinction of being the first person to ever purchase the Defence of the Realm Blu-ray from Wal-Mart.

Enjoy your weekends, everyone.

-What will we remember the 2026 World Cup for in 20 years: soccer making it in America, Erling Haaland’s breakout, Spain’s defense? None of the above.

-I have a new theory that explains this World Cup — and the five before it: the team with the best midfield always wins.

And here’s one thing I read:

-Oliver Harris’s first two Elliot Kane novels. If you want an easy-to-read, modern, spy thriller that takes place somewhere on the Earth that you’ve probably never thought about but actually might explain the future, then he’s your guy.

Thanks for reading along this summer. Enjoy the weekend. I’ll be back in two weeks.

However, Saturday’s “match” will be featuring the two living men under the age of 41 who are most obsessed with personally scoring goals at the World Cup, and they’re both in range of winning the Golden Boot. What’s the over-under for combined shots attempted by Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe on Saturday? 15? 20? 100?

As for what I’ve written this week:

-I went through all of the proposed fixes for American soccer — more fun! more free! — and figured out how the USMNT actually might become as good as Norway.

-I did it again: wrote an article about how Lionel Messi is the greatest male athlete of all time. It was either Messi or Usain Bolt in 2022; four years later, the answer is no longer up for debate.

And one thing I watched:

-This clever, shoebox-sized, low-budget story about a dad who goes on a beach vacation and then deals with a bunch of unforeseen logistical issues as he tries to get back home to his wife and his son. It’s called The Odyssey.

Enjoy the final game(s), everyone!

Here’s what I’ve written this week:

-The loss to Belgium should officially put an end to the idea that a manager is going to save the USMNT.

-I picked out the eight most important players ahead of the quarterfinals.

-I continued to grade every team that’s been eliminated from the tournament. Morocco’s review should be up shortly.

Bonus: here’s what I’ve said this week:

-I was on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning to chat with Steve Inskeep about Lamine Yamal, Erling Haaland, and Lionel Messi.

And one thing I watched this week:

-Jackass: Best and Last. Among the new bits: four late-middle-age men chug extra-strength laxatives and then play Twister with their pants off. There’s also a humanoid robot who gives Steve-O a prostate exam. I mean this completely sincerely: these people are geniuses.

Enjoy the soccer!

I have been writing about the World Cup every day, across these two still-being-updated articles:

-Grades for every eliminated team

-The biggest questions facing every team in the round of 16

The latest updates should be in there soon, if they’re not already. And here’s one thing I’ve watched:

-The Lincoln Lawyer, the television show. Unlike the film — I have not read the books — it’s not “good”, but it’s weirdly obsessed with shouting out different Los Angeles restaurants every episode, and that’s apparently what my mind needs before every evening kickoff right now.

Enjoy the long weekend, if you have one. Enjoy the normal weekend, if you don’t.

Here’s what I’ve written this week — and will keep writing for the next couple weeks:

-Who are the metaphorical winners and losers of the World Cup so far? It was written after the second round of matches, but almost all of it still applies today.

-I’m going to be grading every team’s World Cup performance after they get eliminated — from now until the end of the tournament.

And one thing I read:

-I’ve finished three books in the past week. If I’m not watching or writing about the World Cup, I have to do something that occupies my attention and prevents me from thinking about the World Cup. Just finished In the Freud Archives, by Janet Malcolm. Freud, and all of the people who obsessed over him? Yikes!

Here’s what you got from me this week:

-How good were the USMNT against Paraguay, and what does it say about how far they might go? Even better — and even further — than you think.

-I overreacted to everything we’ve seen so far.

Here’s one thing I read:

-My print copy of Golden Goal. Friends of the newsletter and book, Alex Shephard and Miguel Salazar, made a magazine for the World Cup. It’s filled with the kind of soccer-writing we don’t get a lot of anymore — skeptical, sociological, sarcastic, still open to awe — and it’s also just a beautiful thing to have on your coffee table or in your bag. If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, go buy a copy now. You won’t regret it.

And here’s one thing I watched:

-Social media is poison, unless you have systematically adopted your Instagram behavior to make it so your entire algorithm is now, and hopefully forever, footage of random people reacting to the New York Knicks winning the 2026 NBA championship, thus making them the first-ever double-winners in the history of the league.

My first memory watching sports is watching the Knicks, year after year, and having the blood slowly drained from my brain by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. My dad, his buddy, my aunt, and I would throw a tiny blue-and-orange basketball around the room in the hopes of inspiring a run — and it would never work.

In a way, I think this primed me to become a soccer fan. Not because basketball represented failure and futility and hopelessness but because it forced me to realize you could find meaning and happiness in things other than the ultimate realization of a goal. Things like, say, a ferret-sized head coach latching onto the legs of an opposing player with biceps as big as the tires on your mom’s car. Or the satisfaction of realizing you had solved basketball as a 10-year-old: just have the worst player on your team fight Reggie Miller at the start of every game so they’d both get ejected! Or a guy who became synonymous with spinning car rims inspiring an unlikely and ultimately doomed run to the NBA finals. Or randomly attending a meaningless Saturday-night game against the Nets in the middle of winter, only for that kid from Harvard — the one that your Peruvian roommate watched play against your school, the one that made him say something like “Yo, some little Asian dude was dunking all over us. Homeboy is a fucking baller” — to come off the bench, score 25, and turn into Oscar Robertson for the rest of the month. For a couple weeks, homeboy was, in fact, a fucking baller.

Without all of that, I don’t think I would’ve been able to love a sport where almost no one ever scores and the same rich teams almost always win. The Knicks have made so many people happy, together. Everyone, other than Victor Wembanyama, deserves to feel like they do right now.

Have great weekends, all.

-At the beginning of the week, I ranked who I think are the 50 best players at the World Cup. An angry USMNT fan told me I was either ignorant, blind, or both because I had Declan Rice and Jamal Musiala above Christian Pulisic. We love this time of year.

-Joke’s on him. I found 13 different stats that prove the USMNT is actually going to win the World Cup.

-I was on NPR’s Science Friday, which actually airs tomorrow, to talk about how annoying AI is going to be during the World Cup.

-I was on Wharton Moneyball — my favorite sports-nerd pod, hosted by four people I respect more than anyone else in whatever “field” this is — to chat about the World Cup’s new format, how favored the favorites are, and the specter of the set piece.

And one thing I watched:

-The first 40 minutes of the Knicks–Spurs game last night. I fell asleep — in bed, with my laptop open — right after the Mikal Bridges layup that cut the lead to 15. I don’t check my phone for at least an hour after I wake up, and I just started repeating the phrase “Wait, are you fucking kidding me?” at progressively louder octaves when I opened it this morning.

The last text I sent before I closed my eyes was telling my brothers that “MSG is washed” and that all the bozo lawyers and i-bankers and mediocre late-night hosts who only have a show because they kept laughing during live skits on SNL who could actually afford Finals tickets had given that gigantic French dilettante a red carpet to a 2-2 series. And, I mean …

Sports are the best. FIFA stole this from me. Never sleep. Go Knicks.

-First, I ranked all 48 nations who will be kicking the ball around various half-empty NFL stadiums this summer.

-Then I used AI to predict every game of the World Cup. And by “AI” I mean, Ay, I did it. Your boy (me) smashed his noggin into the keyboard and analyzed every game from start to finish, all 103. This is how we retain our humanity.

And one thing I watched:

-My brain has been running at a super-low capacity this week beyond writing these two pieces, so this is all I have to say: Every point Jalen Brunson scores should be worth 15, and every point Victor Wembanyama scores should be worth 0.15.

Go Knicks. And if you’re in Syracuse this weekend, come to Doyle’s Books on Saturday, where I’ll be doing a reading from 630 to 830 pm. And if you’re somehow subscribed to these updates but haven’t purchased my book, Net Gains, please rectify that!

Here’s what I wrote this week:

-Which World Cup favorite is most likely to crash out in the group stages? If you know me, you already know the answer.

-Is it a problem that the Champions League final is almost never a good game? The last player on a losing team to register an assist was Dejan Lovren.

And here’s something I watched:

-The Sheep Detectives. No, I don’t have kids. And yes, I drank a beer during last night’s 7 PM showing. I regret nothing. It was fun!

Quick reminder: For those in the Syracuse-ish area, I’m doing a reading at Doyle’s Books on June 6th from 630 to 830 pm. Go Knicks.

Here’s what I wrote this week:

-Who are the top 50 American soccer players based on a very simple model I created a couple years ago?

-How and why did Arsenal win the Premier League? Here are nine stats that explain it all.

And one thing I watched:

-The final season of Andor: I don’t care about most of the various iterations on the Star War — or, really, any franchises other than the Missions: Impossible — but I’ll watch anything Tony Gilroy makes.

Enjoy your weekends, everyone!

Here’s what I’ve written:

-How would I assess Michael Carrick were I paid to do so by Manchester United Football Club?

-Bill Connelly and I re-ranked the Premier League teams for one last time this season: what happened to Liverpool and Chelsea? Will one of the league’s three smart teams finally make the Champions League? And is Roberto De Zerbi the new Sam Allardyce?

And one thing I read:

-Just finished Inside the Box, by David Epstein. This got at something I’ve been feeling for a while now: we have way too many choices. It’ll make you look at the world slightly differently, which, I think, is the point of writing an idea book like this.

Here’s what I wrote this week:

-It’s tempting and fun to make sweeping proclamations this time of year, but pretty much every narrative that emerges from the Champions League semifinals is bogus.

-Are Barcelona running Lamine Yamal into the ground? It sure seems like it.

And here’s one thing I read:

-Adam Tooze on what might happen if China decides to start making its own food. My expert analysis is that this seems like a big deal.

And, bonus, here’s one thing I watched:

-Last night, we watched The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is a fun movie about … the hollowing out of the journalism industry? I also recently watched Antitrust, which is a fun movie about … circumventing anti-monopoly regulations? More like this, please.

Enjoy your weekends, Knicks fans.

1. Switzerland-Serbia at the 2018 World Cup

2. Every other time Xherdan Shaqiri took off his shirt in public

3. All of the times Xherdan Shaqiri didn’t take off his shirt in public

4. Everything else

Here’s what I wrote this week:

-Thought experiment: What would’ve happened if Mohamed Salah never signed with Liverpool? I followed all of the ripple effects.

-Rankings: what does the USMNT’s depth look like across the starting eleven?

Here’s a video I forgot to post last week:

-I was on ABC News Live, powered by an AOL CD I found on the street and my dial-up modem, to talk about what’s happening with Tottenham.

And here’s one thing I read:

-If you watched any of those corporate thrillers on Criterion that I recommended — and even if you didn’t — Max Read wrote a fantastic essay about what all of those movies say about how we lived then and what was about to happen next.

This raises a number of different questions, none of which are more important than the following: Why the hell do I have a Bluesky account?

Here’s what I wrote this week:

-I sent this year’s Premier League ball (Puma) and last year’s Premier League ball (Nike) to a scientist and had him test their aerodynamics in a wind tunnel. What did we find?

-I ranked all 20 Premier League teams, in order of how much power they each have.

And one thing I read:

-Stoner, by John Williams. I’d avoided this for a while because it seemed like “baby’s first New York Review Books book” to me. Maybe because of the cover and the name? That was silly. It blew me away.

Some stuff from me this week:

-How did Tottenham build a team with nobody who can pass? They tried to do Moneyball — but ended up doing the exact opposite.

-The top 50 players in the Premier League, ranked. I always find this exercise to be pretty hard (read: impossible), but this one was especially tricky. The league is in a weird place; it’s really hard to know how good anyone is right now.

-Bonus: I was on Slate’s Hang Up and Listen podcast last week — for their penultimate episode. This week’s episode was the finale. After the BS Report, this was the first sports show I regularly listened to; it’s been around since Rio Ngumoha was born. What a run. And oh, yeah: I talked to Ben, Lindsay, and Alex about Wrexham and how buying a soccer team is a bad idea.

And one thing I read this week:

-The Porkchoppers, by Ross Thomas. This was probably my least favorite book of his — it’s about the chicanery behind an upcoming national union election and lacked the tiny moral center that make his books feel a little warmer than everything else in the genre — but I love all of his books. Here’s the Village Voice, summing him up: “What Elmore Leonard does for crime in the streets, Ross Thomas does for crime in the suites.” The Times called him “America’s best storyteller”.

-It’s happening again: a 30-something is the best player in the Premier League, and his contract is about to expire. What should Manchester United do with Bruno Fernandes?

-Does failing to qualify for the Champions League help you win more games in the Premier League? Betteridge’s Law of Questions Posed in a Newsletter does not apply here!

And instead of a reading suggestion this week, I’ve got a watching suggestion:

-The Criterion Channel put out a “Corporate Thrillers” collection for this month. If you’re subscribed: enjoy the best of what Hollywood no longer has to offer. If not, it’s 11 bucks a month and they have a week-long free trial. I re-watched The Firm the other day. Nobody does lovable, scary, pathetic, kinda-cute sleaze-ball like Gene Hackman did.

Enjoy your weekends, everyone.