Sgulizia

LATEST ARTICLES ( 99 )

• Editor’s Picks: Russian and Chilean Hopes

  

  Recently I found myself reading a lot of old articles, tactical observations and predictions about Russian soccer, a mammoth league equipped to display the... Read more

  Posted on 02 March 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Kommienezuspadt (City 3-0 Blackburn)

  

  City's football as a linguistic contortion, a charivari of cacophonies. Read more

  Posted on 28 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Ernst’s Nerves (Napoli 1-0 Inter)

  

  The last time some of my Milanese friends savored the taste of Death, her lid half closed over the large bulging eyes and the fork of her bony hands, as the... Read more

  Posted on 28 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Helter Skelter (Atalanta 4-1 Roma)

  

  Both as a tactical formation and as a cultural institution, the 4—3—3 comes out of the psychedelic experience. Ideally, there should be research that seeks to... Read more

  Posted on 28 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Francesco Guidolin, the Quizzical Master

  

  For so long now—in fact until very recently—Francesco Guidolin has lived under the haze of public amnesia. Cloudily, he has existed in the memory as a sepia... Read more

  Posted on 28 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Meritocracies of Spite (Milan 1-1 Juventus)

  

  Iam quite happy it went down the way it did: not a shabby school of benevolence, nor an idiotic parterre of freelancing stars hissing to each other amidst gossi... Read more

  Posted on 25 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Limbs in Limbo (Napoli 3-1 Chelsea)

  

  Dante’s Inferno is best known for its dramatic scenes of apocalyptic destruction and catastrophe, and the poet himself had become famous outside of Italy—whethe... Read more

  Posted on 23 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Early American Capital and Bethlehem Steel

  

  The romance of sport illustration has long disappeared. Along with it, the long era of global tobacco smoking is fitfully approaching an end. Read more

  Posted on 20 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Eye Hygiene (Schalke 4-0 Wolfsburg)

  

  The hegemony of vision has been reinforced in the Bundesliga by a multitude of tactical and technological inventions. Visual images have become commodities. Read more

  Posted on 20 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Benzema and Higuain, a Jazz Reunion

  

  Like the eminent trombonist J. J. Johnson in the early 1950s, Karim Benzema is now the dominant bebop striker, and yet his saxophone sound has been criticized... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• The Soccer Machines of the Wolves

  

  Players and supporters of a team whose full name is Wolverhampton Wanderers know that soccer itself is a vehicle, a means for self-study, self-exploration; a... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• André Villas-Boas: New Low in Abstractions

  

  During the last few years a wicked fairy godmother escaped from Shakespeare’sMacbeth—there is no other way to account for it—and wove a spell over every young... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Paul Scholes, Or Many-Leveledness in Football

  

  How appropriate, for an English canon, to be also a rising Canon. Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Eerie Sights Of Bejing (Milan 4-0 Arsenal)

  

  Does it matter to anyone that Arsenal actually dominated possession? Of course not! It would have suited them better the other way around: to sit deep, soak... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Lysergic Amusements (Zenit 3-2 Benfica)

  

  Sometimes a Champions League game is beyond words: ancestral, hypnotic, edging towards the grotesque, lowering the head like a hen, tossing it like a stag—the... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• Ghostly Vignettes (Bayer Lev. 1-3 Barca)

  

  The burghers of Leverkusen found themselves stranded in Guardiola’s labyrinth, incurably experimental and almost frivolous, like the character of this winter... Read more

  Posted on 16 February 2012 CULTURE, SOCCER, SPORTS

• A Thracian Landscape (Barca 2-2 Madrid)

  

  And the battle of our times goes on—Sparta sorrows for its Adonis, Athens is a city of mourners. Like ancient deities descending from their native Olympus, the... Read more

  Posted on 15 February 2012 SOCCER, SPORTS

• In Capitulation (Lyon 1-0 APOEL Nicosia)

  

  Till only a few hours ago, every product from a Greek-speaking country was dismissed as crude, barbarous, and horrible—falling back into a dark distance, as if... Read more

  Posted on 15 February 2012 SOCCER, SPORTS

• On the Ringstrasse: Sunday Review

  

  Arsenal 1—2 Man Utd: five in midfield is pure joy ◊ Say this of Arsenal under Wenger: the plot changes every year. From a traditional 4—4—2 to a 4—2—3—1, from... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2012 SOCCER, SPORTS

• Ancelotti in Paris: The Ascent of a Gourmand

  

  Nobody said anything for a month, then Leonardo—a hell of a cute stunt as a maître of marketing operations—admitted the deal, sort of moodily. Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2012 CULTURE, HISTORY