230210 Raven Newsletter

I type with fingers burning up with fever for the real Super Bowl. It is Merseyside Derby Weekend. Liverpool vs. Everton. With Darwin Nunez and Neal Maupay in the role of Hurts and Mahomes. I know on form it is Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl quality, yet the existential stakes facing each team only serve to make the game’s sting feel both more excruciating and thus more sweet.  

We will break it all down below, but on a more serious note, I feel like I need to begin by saying this, after a week of stunning news across the sport we love: This feels like a true Rubicon moment for football. A crossroads. The major off-the-field storylines are a moral crescendo. Manchester City is being investigated for over 100 violations of its economic regulations – an unprecedented charge by a league against its most successful club. At the very same time, just across town, the Qatari head of State, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, is descending upon Manchester United. Simultaneously, news has broken that Saudi Arabia is offering to underwrite Egypt and Greece’s World Cup hosting costs so it can buy its way into hosting the 2030 World Cup, all the while FIFA are floating the idea of Saudi Arabia’s tourist board sponsoring the Women’s World Cup. The throughline of all of these stories is the same: The attempt by nation states to buy global football and repurpose it as a deafening megaphone through which to airbrush out human rights abuses that pockmark their global images. After the Qatar World Cup, they will either flood the zone and succeed by normalizing the act, or the greed and rot which has gripped football’s decision-making power brokers and facilitate all of this will be exorcised. This is where we are. These are the stakes: Will FIFA, UEFA, and the Premier League allow their purpose to be perverted by subjugating the competitive values of the game? Global football is in a moment of quite awful “choose your own adventure.”

🍻🇺🇸 TOMORROW we unleash our Tim Ream Television Special on the world via Peacock. That is right, one half hour with that singular, inspirational American Warrior who rose from kicking tennis balls around a St. Louis warehouse (for realz) to global football's biggest stage. In 24 hours’ time, click THIS LINK and you will see it available, along with every one of our TV Shows from the past two seasons. 🍻🇺🇸

That Timmy Ream interview caps another week during which we continued our multi-pronged assault on your senses, including a MiB YouTube Exclusive with Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira. If you're wondering how good Chris Richards can be? WATCH HERE. We are putting so much content on our YouTube channel these days. Subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe.

I. To the Football

i. West Ham vs. Chelsea (Saturday, 7.30 AM ET, USA)

David Moyes has gleaned four points in his last two games and dragged himself away from the brink. Despite Chelsea briefing the press that this is a long-term project, Graham Potter has to be approaching must-win territory and needs to show some forward direction in his attempt to turn the football world’s most expensive collection of “Hello My Name Is…” badges into a coherent collective. What a spectacle: Declan Rice v Enzo Fernandez.

How much money did Chelsea really spend? A deep dive by the remarkable Swiss Ramble.

ii. Arsenal vs. Brentford (Saturday, 10 AM ET, P’Cock)

How will Arsenal rebound after the shock of being KO’d by Everton, footballing Buster Douglas? A return to winning ways after just their second league loss of the season can place the trauma of Sean Dyche’s new manager bounce behind them. A second wobble against an organized, hungry Brentford will unleash the British tabloid hounds and ratchet up the crucible of pressure.  

iii. Leicester vs. Tottenham (Saturday, 10 AM ET, P’Cock)

Nourishing that there is lovely news in football: Antonio Conte returned to work at Tottenham on Thursday after undergoing surgery to remove his gallbladder. The combustible Italian has been told by his doctors to take it easy. These doctors have clearly not watched him patrol a Premier League sideline. Unclear whether he, or his assistant Cristian Stellini, will take the field along with Brodge and his Gucci Belt. 

iv. Leeds United vs. Manchester United (Sunday, 9 AM ET, USA)

War of the Roses: Round 2. Wednesday night’s 2-2 draw was Total Chaos. Ten Hag’s midfield, shorn of suspended Casemiro and injured Eriksen, could muster no control. Leeds’ frenzied horde overwhelmed them, but just as American fans began to compose epic poems about the night Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie ran rampant at Old Trafford, the classic Leeds trope of feckless defending let Rashford and Sancho roar back.  Elland Road will be at Bearpit levels behind “Chris Armas’ lads.”

More: Leeds Manager search slops on. Unfathomable to me that Leeds had no successor planned when they had so long to think about a transition stretching back to October. Rayo Vallecano’s Andoni Iraola was the latest to turn down the move. Feyenoord's bald plotter, Arne Slot, said to be latest target.

Also: Ten Hag worries about Antony. 

v. Manchester City vs. Aston Villa (Sunday, 11.30 AM ET, USA)

Can Pep drown out the noise surrounding his locker room? English football has never witnessed anything like this. A team that has been in search of perfection take the field with a giant asterisk hanging like the Sword of Damocles over all their achievements. Were they all just fraud?

I loved this piece: If Manchester City are guilty they have betrayed football as a spectacle.

vi. Liverpool vs. Everton (Monday, 3 PM ET, USA)

Epic rumble in name. In reality, on current ability, not so much. Rock Bottom of the 2023 form table Liverpool face up to the woeful blue team in 17th place, Damned Everton. Sean the Scalp Hunter will hope DCL is fit and that his Spartan approach to training will ensure the new manager bounce lasts more than 90 minutes. Liverpool, who have lost just one of the past 27 Merseyside derbies are in free fall, summoning a meager two goals in the last five matches they have played. Everton fans will hope for a rematch of the Dyche-Klopp rumble. However, when Everton face Liverpool under the floodlights? What could possibly go wrong?

More: How Liverpool have been hurt on the field by a brain drain off it

Entire Premier League Broadcast schedule here.

III. News and Notes from MIB MIB MIB 🍻

i. Massive news from MiB HQ. The return of European Nights, Presented by Paramount+, where Rog and The New York Times' Chief Soccer Correspondent Rory Smith revel in the world's biggest club competition. It all goes down next Tuesday ahead of the Champions League Round of 16. We will celebrate the clashes, the culture, and the culinary delights of the world's biggest club competition. Look for it on our Pod feed.

ii. Also on our Pod feed next week, American States United with Daryl Dike, Presented by ESPN+. DO NOT MISS THIS INTERVIEW. Drops Thursday. 

iii. Yesterday's Pod special featured conversations with Trent Alexander-Arnold, Patrick Vieira and Bukayo Saka. LISTEN HERE. In other Pod news: Rog's Instant Reaction to Manchester United 2 - 2 Leeds United AND Rog and Davo breaking down breaking news (best breaking since Liverpool College Crew) of both City's FFP violations and Jesse Marsch's firing. 

iv. A quick shout for our American States United Newsletter, which I love so much. It is designed to give you a quick and easy way to keep up with the avalanche of news about our Best and Brightest plying their trade in the world's biggest leagues. Tyler Adams. Yunus Musah. Lindsey Horan. We've got you covered. SUBSCRIBE. 🇺🇸

IV. More Football, Did Ya Say?

i. Every Premier League team's most-liked tweets from last month and what it says about the club in the digital space. Fascinating. 

ii. Huge respect to Alex Morgan for speaking out so articulately about the dystopian prospect of Saudi Arabia’s Tourist board being an official sponsor of the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. More here.

iii. Everton may have spent this season on an insane owner-propelled crusade to prove they are the worst-run club in the world. Yet their fanbase is one of the greatest. This beautiful short film about Paul Stratton, the Scouser who has been running convoys from Liverpool to Ukraine, will fill you with joy. It is all that is good about football. Give it a watch and feel better about the world.

V. Not Football, and All the Better for It

i. The Most Important Job Skill of This Century. I don't want to spoil it before you've clicked but okay fine it is newsletter links section writing yes.

ii. All Hail the Hoagie. My favorite hoagiefest song (circa like 2010) is sadly nowhere to be found on the internet so I will leave you with my second favorite instead. I will keep my third favorite to myself to maintain an air of mystery.

iii. A Football Fan’s Guide to Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Producer Miranda writes: Have some haunting childhood trauma related to a mandatory school pep rally when the Eagles made the Super Bowl in 2005 -- which was coincidentally just one week before Rihanna released SOS and blew my MTV-watching child mind -- so like many, I go into this Super Bowl with mixed emotions.

Related: Rihanna: Since She’s Been Gone. "In January 2016, when Rihanna released her most recent album, the eclectic, intimate “Anti,” Barack Obama was president, Prince was still alive and TikTok did not yet exist."

iv. Her car died, so she walks to work. One day on the walk, she found $15,000. Can't decide if this story was planted by the anti-car lobby or the pro-commuting lobby and am feeling very conflicted about it.

v. Bigfoot sightings can be easily explained, scientist says. I'm assuming that this is the scientist?

vi. Can You Befriend a Whale? The other day someone asked me what my favorite genre of film was and I was like oh easy whale documentaries and then they were quiet for a bit and pivoted the conversation away from cinema because apparently that was the wrong answer.

vii. A map of how to say ‘I love you’ around the world. In some ways more useful than knowing how to say "I think I could maybe see myself falling in love with you" around the world, which I have already learned from watching that one Bachelor spin-off where they pretended they were at the winter Olympics.

viii. The Big Little Secrets to Paul Rudd’s Massive Appeal. Is his performance in Clueless a secret now??

ix. Lea Michele on Glee, Growth, and “the Hardest F**king Role in New York.” Must be low pressure writing up an interview with Lea Michele since you know she won't read it. Jkjk. Going to go watch the Spring Awakening reunion doc and cry again.

x. 19 ways to help Turkey and Syria

xi. I love this Song: Overflowing Cup by Floodlights

xii. I am really enjoying this book: Stolen: A Novel by Ann-Helén Laestadius. Scando Rog powers on. This haunting book is rooted in the Sami communities in the Swedish North. It captures both the silence of the place and pain suffered by the Sami people who dwell there with their singular once-nomadic culture under threat. 

That is it for today. I am gutted by the passing of the great Burt Bacharach. The albums he recorded with great Liverpool fan (and Italian football commentator) Elvis Costello in the late 1990s are woven into some of my most treasured memories of the time. Here is God Give Me Strength:

“Since I lost the power to pretend

That there could ever be a happy ending

That song is sung out

This bell is rung out.”

PS. I have received so many truly lovely Ravens from all points this week. I am so moved by your thoughts on your fandom, the depths of your connection to football, and the strange and wonderful ways you have chosen your teams. I am working my way to replying. Keep sending me them. They lift our spirits at MIB more than we can say. Our email is [email protected].

To Better Days Ahead for All.

Let’s Make Great Memories through Football together and savor every second.

Big Love. 

Courage,

ROG