This blog is going to go through, as Shelley Duvall said to Woody Allen in Annie Hall, a Kafka-esque experience.
(Are we still allowed to cite Annie Hall? Can we separate the comedy from the comedian? Note for future episode …)
Anyway — yes, we’re going through a metamorphosis. This blog won’t be updated any more, but the best entries will be kept here for all eternity, assuming it’s somehow being beamed into space for posterity once we finally destroy this planet or at least make it uninhabitable for people and server farms.
In 2019, FIFA paid World Cup winner France $38 million.
Players got about $500,000, so that’s a total of $11.5 million. That’s a little more than 30.2%, a number that would make the U.S. men overturn tables in the boardroom. Under their old CBA, which is still in effect even though it expired at the end of 2018, they would’ve earned a bit more than $26 million, or nearly 70%. The women get just short of 100% when you include the Victory Tour bonus, which is paid on top of their fees for friendlies.
For 2022, FIFA is expects…
Adapted from some Twitter messages …
When you say MNT athletes and coaches make 10x more, you would’ve had a point during the Klinsmann era. His hiring and salary were big mistakes. And they paid him a lot of severance.
I wrote about 2,400 words explaining why I feel compelled to write pieces like the one I just did for Soccer America on the women’s team and the pay dispute.
I did some editing and whittling to try to make this digestible.
Look, I’ve covered all this before. So many times, in fact, that I forgot until this morning that I once did an all-encompassing guide on the matter.
In a just world, that would’ve been my final say on the matter.
But with the release of a film called LFG that takes such a one-sided view of the issue…
When last we left the story of Shelby Garigen, the upstate New York soccer trainer facing “child pornography” charges because a 17-year-old boy sent her some pictures as a prelude to a planned, legally consensual sexual encounter, she had been harshly sentenced to 37 months in prison.
Not surprisingly, Garigen wants to appeal that sentence. To that end, she has changed lawyers, and her new representative wants some time to get up to speed before she starts taking up taxpayer money in prison.
But the new lawyer has already filed something that raises a whole host of red flags…
Because doing taxes this time of year isn’t enough, it’s also time to take a look at the U.S. Soccer budget — a particularly harrowing exercise this year because the national teams have been idled or playing in front of empty houses due to COVID-19. And because people refuse to give up on their lawsuits or settle them.
The bottom line: U.S. Soccer expects to have just $22.6 million left from the $162 million it had a couple of years ago. The federation was prepared to spend that pile of assets down to $50 million. …
Several things to wrap up here, from Fairfax County to the world at large.
Fairfax County vaccination progress: A new county dashboard is useful not just for stat-keeping but for checking where you stand on the waitlist. Roughly half of the people who’ve registered are still on that waitlist.
Fairfax County goes orange: One of the bluest counties in Virginia is no longer in the red zone, reserved for those counties with too many digits in their stats — 101 new cases per 100,000 population in a week, 10.1% positivity rate.
The positivity rate has dropped from 15.01% in December…
The Boston Globe reported Friday on the latest charges in the fallout from Global Premier Soccer’s demise, and as expected by those of us who’ve been following the story, the Boston Breakers and Sky Blue (previous management) were wrapped into the saga.
Disclaimer: This does not mean Breakers and Sky Blue officials did anything illegal. This is quite a legal quagmire, as you’ll see here.
The story broke open in the New England Soccer Journal one year and two days ago. You’ll see that story cited many times here; dig to the legal sites if you want even more documentation.
“Black culture is hip-hop culture.”
That’s a controversial statement that opens either a can of worms or a contentious set of discourses — the latter being academicese for “can of worms.” If you’d like to read more about hip-hop history and the uneasiness some people — in my experience, mostly Black people — have with letting hip-hop stand as the primary representation of Black culture, read these …
For the UK’s Academy of Music and Sound, academic/journalist Isobel Trott untangles the complex history and sociology of hip-hop, from parties to protests to problematic violence and misogyny. But she sees more…
In 1987, I used a four-track recorder, a borrowed drum machine, a Casio synthesizer, some old microphone, a Peavey amp and an Ibanez guitar to record music. Record four tracks, mix them down to one, record three more, mix those down to one, and that’s probably about it.
Today, I used a two-octave keyboard and an iPhone with hundreds of sound options. I can supplement as needed with my old Ibanez, and old Squire bass, and a Fender amp I bought when I handed down the Peavey.
To make it work, I just need an iRig, Bluetooth headphones, non-Bluetooth headphones…
