More Great Soccer Writing

Its been about six months since we've featured some great soccer writing so here are a few as we start the summer.

Sometimes great soccer writing can be found in the business pages as Bloomberg London's Christopher Elser shows us this week in an insightful piece on the big gamble Real Madrid is making with its future with some of its current transfer deals. Elser does a fine job of reminding readers that far from being a rich club, Real Madrid is now so mired in debt that if Ronaldo and Kaka do not significantly up the club's revenues, it may start to resemble a teetering US bank considered too big too fail.

I contrast Elser's piece with a recent contribution by the AP's Jim Litke constrasting traditional US sports club owners with the wheelers and dealers of European football. Its always refreshing when someone can translate European soccer phenomena into terms American non-soccer fans (like Mr. never-played-sports-in-his-life Jim Rome) can understand...OK, maybe not Jim Rome (unless we get Jim Everett to make him read it). I'd love to see Jim do a follow-up article on how those European wheeler-dealer owners manage to do so well without acting like American sports team owners who blackmail cities (and their taxpayers) to build them a new stadium, lest they move to another city.

Finally, LFV reader Kevin Quinn passed along Al Needham's 1998 World Cup diary which he tells us pushed him from being a casual fan into becoming an "obsessive one." Reading Al's passionate commentary, I can see why.