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What to Watch This Weekend: Man City v Arsenal

October 23, 2010 — by Suman

Man City v Arsenal - probable starting lineups (via the Guardian)
The CultFootball team went over the list of this weekend's televised matches, and frankly not a whole lot jumped out at us--except of course the big Premier League match of the weekend: Arsenal at Manchester City.  The match kicks off Sunday at 4pm GMT--for those of us in the US that translates to 11am ET, televised on FSC. Why is this the match of the weekend?  Just take a look at the top half of the table: Team Pld W D L F A Diff Pts 1 Chelsea 9 7 1 1 25 2 23 22 2 Manchester City 8 5 2 1 12 5 7 17 3 Tottenham Hotspur 9 4 3 2 11 8 3 15 4 West Bromwich Albion 9 4 3 2 13 15 -2 15 5 Arsenal 8 4 2

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CommentaryNews

Play Up, Pompey

October 22, 2010 — by Sean

Click to buy!
Sad news out of the south of England today as it looks like struggling club Portsmouth FC may be forced to shut its doors due to massive debt. Perhaps I wouldn't have cared at all except for the book Bloody Confused, tracking the american author's journey toward football appreciation by way of Pompey's '06-'07 premiership campaign (I think that was the season). From the Mirror (Gaydamak is a Russian-Israeli arms dealer whose son owned Portsmouth, and his legal problems had caused issues with extensions of loans for the club before it was sold to new owners): "Unfortunately, despite the new owners fulfilling all the requirements of the Football League and the creditors, and agreeing and signing up to the required terms of the purchase of the club, at the 11th hour the goalposts have been moved by Mr Gaydamak and this has now made the deal

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CommentaryNews

Rooney Settles Back Into Ferguson’s Nest

October 22, 2010 — by Sean

Break up to make up
This week's episode of the Wayne Rooney show is all wrapped up, with the mighty pumpkin resolving his differences with coach and teammates, and scratching his X onto a new contract that keeps him at Old Trafford until 2015. There's no doubt that he acted poorly over the last few weeks, though you have to put some blame on his greedy bastard of an agent. From the Guardian: Rooney has become the best-paid player in the history of the club by agreeing a deal thought to be worth as much as £180,000 a week in a move that will inevitably invite allegations that he and his agent, Paul Stretford, have been guilty of cynical greed to get the best deal possible. He won't be thrown right back into the fray though, as he'll be out for the next three weeks nursing

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News

Europa League Action

October 21, 2010 — by Sean

Lots of action happening today in Europe's second most awesome club tournament. I'm sure you can find the rules that deposit teams into this tournament instead of its big brother, the Champions League, but here's a very general overview: Teams not reaching the Champions League threshold at the end of their respective domestic seasons are pushed into the Europa League, to be joined by Champions League castaways after the group stages. Each domestic league has a defined number of Champs and Europa League slots. There are some playoffs before the tournaments start, but ultimately you've got what are supposed to be the best club teams in Europe (+ Israel, Turkey, Russia – point of discussion here) playing each other for some trophies. Most importantly, more games means more television revenue, and these big sides with heavy salary demands need to get into these tournaments each year or they'll dip quickly

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Commentary

A Premonition from the Turks

October 19, 2010 — by Sean

Sir Alex, sitting peacefully, nary a care in the world when the little pumpkin directs a blast straight at the Scot's ear. How did they know? Watch through to the end. Turkish Airlines: Business Class for Stars featuring MANU [HQ] | Facebook

BooksCommentaryGeneral Knowledge

The Cruel Economy of Soccernomics: Capital, Players, and Football in the 21st Century

October 18, 2010 — by Ryan

soccernomics-e1360609029326.jpg
In 2000’s The Many Headed Hydra, historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker explored the transnational revolutionary Atlantic world’s collection of working and enslaved peoples’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Linebaugh and Rediker present numerous examples of this burgeoning Atlantic world proletariat as it struggled against the crushing dominance of a nascent capitalism shedding its mercantilist restraints.  The commoditization of labor and peoples, left sailors, slaves, and commoners as physical representations of opposition, providing tangible fervor and ideological depth to various uprisings, revolts, and revolutions from England to the West Indies to the United States.  Acting as “nodes of revolution”, sailors and slaves carried ideas, plots, and oppositional violence against “the dictates of mercantile and imperial authority” targeting the property of the growing merchant class.  (156) In the face of state sponsored violence of the period ranging from slavery to penal colonies to military intervention, revolution through piracy, slave revolt,

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Commentary

Premier League Preview for the Chilean Miners

October 14, 2010 — by John Lally1

David Villa signed jerseys going down the shaft.
On August 5th, 2010, 33 Chilean miners got stuck in a mine and were down there for 69 days. While their story has been covered in depth, one aspect has not been mentioned anywhere else...Chile is a nation of football fans and these 33 guys have completely missed the first seven matches of the Premier League season. Just for them, here's a look at the weekend's fixtures with a Chilean Miner's view (i.e. what you would have expected had you not seen anything in the last 69 days) weighed up against how the rest of us see the games. Arsenal v Birmingham Miners' View: Arsenal too strong at the Emirates and won't have any trouble dispatching with a middle of the table team. Rest of us: Having slipped up at home to West Brom, followed by a loss away at Chelsea, Arsenal

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Video

Colombia

October 13, 2010 — by Sean

Well the US played another toothless game against mediocre competition last night, but I don't care because this evening I'm going to a showing of The Two Escobars at Tribeca Cinemas. Ah when Colombia was producing great soccer and plenty of cocaine. Well there's the later...