Is The World's Best Manager Good Enough For Bayern Munich?
On July 27th, just months after the end of Pep Guardiola's first campaign as coach of Bayern Munich—one in which his team won four titles and dominated the Bundesliga like a counselors' team in a summer camp league—Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern's chairman, did something strange. While discussing whe...
The Making And Unmaking Of Preston Zimmerman, American Soccer Player
A version of this story originally appeared in the fall 2012 edition of XI Quarterly. ...
The Tour De France Is Agony For The Spectators, Too
Whenever I hear hardcore cycling fans explain the Tour de France to novices, they seem to emphasize one aspect of the race—the suffering—above the rest. Sure, they talk about the sprints and the hills and the strategy, and explain how the cobbles of northern France, when wet, make the road as slippe...
The Quietly Audacious Summer Of The Netherlands
Amsterdam is a city so prone to stereotypes it's hard to tell, from a distance, if it's a real place or if it's a kind of strange social construct, existing only in our collective memory. Until you visit, you're not quite sure, because everybody has an opinion on Amsterdam; they know what it's lik...
The World Cup Teaches Germans How To Be Proud Of Germany
If you know anything about German soccer, even if you're a not a hardcore fan and only pay attention when the World Cup steams into town every four years and blows its piercing, un-ignorable whistle, I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the following narrative. It comes from the 2006 World Cup, whic...
Where Jürgen Klinsmann Comes From
Before Jürgen Klinsmann snubbed Landon Donovan, before he coached Bayern Munich or the U.S. and German national teams, before he won the UEFA Cup as a player with Internazionale and again with Bayern, before winning the World Cup and captaining the German team to the European Championship, he lived ...