The Paradise I yearned for called to me like the chirps of a nightingale in spring. I had seen the flames and punishments of hell, and was excited by the promise of eternal bliss and delight. Was it odd Bernd Schuster would be my guide? Yes. Was it strange he could fly? Even more so. But I suspended disbelief and tightly grasped Bernd's hand as we flew over the malebolgia, and we soon descended into a dense oak forest.

Upon landing, I immediately noticed two lifeless corpses sitting against a tree. We walked towards them, and I soon recognized them as Zinedine Zidane and Marco Materazzi! Surely Zidane’s left foot had ascended to heaven, I thought? Bernd spoke and I listened. "Their bodies  must wait here as their souls pay penance on earth for their sins." He paused, and then realizing I was still dumbfounded, added—"Anytime a man in Torino sits at a café with his love, his collar unbuttoned and his chest exposed, the Frenchman blows upon the patches of hair. The Italian sings sweet-nothings into the lady love’s ear." Bernd then extended his a hand, and I took it—I knew the Heavens awaited.

The contours of Heaven dazzled me. The clouds, the angels, the bright illumination—everything looked perfect. I floated alongside Bernd, skimming the top of cloud after magnificent cloud until we came to a group of men. I then saw a shocking sight—Ivan Helguera and Michel Salgado! I shook my head in disgust, but Bernd raised his finger to his lips and then spoke. "These are the men whose blood bled blanquillo, whose heart and courage exceeded God’s physical gifts." Bernd glared at me for a time, and I grudgingly  bowed out of respect, and then we continued on.

We soon came to an enormous cloud and we were approached by a playful, adorable puppy. I could not make out its breed—it had the ears of a German Shepherd, the shoulders of an English Bulldog, and the tail of Golden Retriever. Then, I saw another, and then another, and soon the puppies covered the entire surface of the cloud. I then looked up, and saw two men sitting on floating thrones, wearing golden tunics and smiling from ear to ear. However, the men were barefoot. Then, suddenly the thrones descended, and the puppies converged, excitedly licking the mens' feet. They moaned in delight. And then I made out their faces—it was Gonzalo Higuaín and Pepe!

Gonzalo Higuaín!? Heaven had a place for a man that scored 4 of his goals against Málaga? Pepe!? Had the Lord forgotten his potentially devastating and horrific penalty against Getafe? Bernd raised his hand to hush me, and smiled. "These two men move their feet unquestionably for the Madrid cause; their hearts and mind turned their legs long beyond any normal man's physical capacity." Bernd again glared at me, and I finally nodded out of respect to them, and then we floated on.

We soon came to a slanted cloud, and the grade appeared impossible to mount. At the top a brilliant light shimmered, too bright to stare directly into. Then, Bernd and I suddenly began to slowly float up the cloud. At the light grew brighter, I heard laughter off in the distance. I glanced around and saw Sergio Ramos and Iker Casillas, gliding with wings of brilliant white feathers and playing tag. Not surprising, I thought, Casillas is off his line and Ramos is in the offensive end. We abruptly stopped and Bernd put his hand on my shoulder. He gazed menacingly into my eyes. "This realm is reserved for the believers and those who discovered and maximized their blessings from God." I waived at the Spaniards and then we ascended upward again.

We passed through layers of white clouds, as beautiful as new snow under the full moon. In the distance, I saw the tiniest peak of a mountain. As we advanced up the slope, the mountain grew closer, until I finally saw a man sitting on a Golden throne. He sat in only his underpants! He wore thick-rimmed glasses, and a collection of beautiful blonde angles wrapped rings of Golden thread around his body. Once covered, they would slowly unwrap him while massaging his back and shoulders. It was Fabio Capello, and he was clearly in immense pleasure! Bernd spoke: "Capello brought glory back to Madrid because he knew that the ends can justify the means. But here his means have no end, just as his praises and glory shall circle the earth for its existence." I prostrated before him, and then we returned to our ascent.

The light grew brighter and brighter, until I could not see anymore. Bernd clasped my hand and I felt an incredible yet comfortable warmth, as if I was sitting on a couch in my grandparents' sunroom on a summer’s day. We stopped and I heard a boisterous laugh. Was this God? Bernd brushed my eyes with his fingertips and I could see. My legs shook, my stomach churned, and my throat heaved. Sitting on a magnificent throne of solid Gold, wearing a crown of emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires, at the highest level of the divine, was Robinho! Bernd saw the hate in my eyes and spoke. "God judges beginning, middle, and end. God reserves the highest rank for those who open their heart and move with the Holy Spirit, creating magical vibrations out of simple air. No other has moved so beautifully in the blanquillo shirt." Simply put, I could not handle the dissonance. My head ached, my body shook, and my ears rang and rang and rang.

And then I was back in my room, awake, covered in sweat. My dream had taken me to unexpected places, but reality beckoned in the form of Benzema, CR9, and Ricardo Kaká. I briefly reflected on Raul’s words and Bernd's gaze, on the punishments and prizes, but soon my recollection faded just as the mist dissipates before dawn.

Elliott Tucker is the editor of the excellent Futfanatico.com.

Related posts:

1. Third-Division Real Unión Knock Real Madrid Out of the Copa del Rey
2. Real Madrid Sack Bernd Schuster, Quietly Redefine the Concept of Failing Upward
3. Real Madrid Hurl Their Spells of Vengeance

- The U.S. upset of Spain in the semifinal delighted everybody in South Africa. In addition to giving Bafana Bafana hope of an equally improbable victory against Brazil, the win by the U.S. erased the sour taste left by the previous crowd favorite, Egypt.

The game was in Bloemfontein, on a bitterly cold night, and it started off slow. People were late in arriving to the gate, and expectations for the game were minimal. As everyone trudged to their seats, the mood seemed to convey a feeling of inevitability—how could Spain not win this game? At kickoff the stadium was only just over half full, with one contingent of fans making a bit of noise behind one of the goals.

However, as it became clear the onlookers were potentially going to witness a big upset, the atmosphere lightened and the fans in Free State Stadium found their voice. By halftime, the mostly-full stadium now had a good amount of singing and dancing. In the end it was the first venue I had been to where the sounds of fans' voices were louder than the vuvuzelas (see 40 seconds into this video).

- The reaction in South Africa was one of amazement. While praising the U.S. for their excellent performance, Spain's loss, more than anything, galvanized the entire country for the next night, when Bafana Bafana was set to take on Brazil from Ellis Park.

- The second semifinal was tense, and it was as close to a World Cup atmosphere as any of the games in the tournament. Bafana were going to try to do the impossible and upset Brazil. The magnitude of the task in front of Joel Santana's team rippled throughout the crowd.

In contrast to the game in Bloemfontein, the semifinal at Ellis Park drew all sorts of people to the ground. I arrived and was promptly ushered out of the way to make room for incoming motorcades of South African politicians, international figures from around the soccer world, and Jacob Zuma himself.

Security at the previous venues felt unimportant, as if it were tacked on to the experience as a formality. But here, the security at Ellis Park demanded that you take notice. I had my ticket and pass checked about five times as I made my way to the seat. In the end I'm sure the increase in security corps was solely for the purpose of people saying, "See, everything is safe here." After kickoff, it became just as easy to sneak around the ground as at any other match, and as with the other stadiums, the places you could and couldn't be sort of got blurred.

I took my seat close to the pitch and settled in for the game. The Bafana faithful seemed determined to lift their team against the much superior Brazilian opposition, and in the first half South Africa gave Dunga's star-studded cast as good as they got. Scoreless at the break, the fans started to kind of want to maybe believe their team could pull it off. 45 minutes to go.

Ellis Park is a proper stadium, and it should make for a great atmosphere during the World Cup. It's big enough that you really sense the largeness of the crowd—over 50,000 when sold out—but not so vast that the fans seem removed from proceedings. I had last been there in 2007, and since that time the stadium has undergone some pretty significant renovations. The interior of the stadium (locker rooms, VIP area, etc.) has been gutted and redone, while the added upper tier adds some significant size to the ground. One drawback—once you take your seat, getting away from the field is a nightmare. Don't expect to go anywhere at halftime, or even walk around the stadium with any kind of ease.

In the second half, Brazil began to gain the upper hand (how many times has that statement been written in history). I had to leave early, but even midway through the second half Bafana Bafana already seemed to be locked in a race against time. In the end I heard the final minutes of the game on the radio, where the the announcer called Daniel Alves' goal with grim inevitability. As the final whistle blew, however, he was defiant in the face of the loss: "People will remember this game," he bellowed, summoning up his last emotions from the draining 90 minutes, "People will be proud to be South African, and proud to be African."  He finished with a whole-hearted backing of Joel Santana, who pushed his native country, the five-time world champions, to the brink. "Now we have a team," stated the radio announcer. "Before Joel Santana, we had nothing."

- The reaction the next day was similar, with people showing a sympathy and a positiveness that were generally missing from Bafana's media coverage throughout the tournament. As the radio announcer had proclaimed the previous night, the game showed, if anything, that South Africa could make a go at it next year. The third-place game, where Spain had to come from behind to beat Bafana an extra time, gave South Africans even more reason for hope, and in the end there was a reasonable amount of praise for Bafana's performance in the tournament.

- At the final, the Brazilian support was significant. When the U.S. took the early lead, the crowd warmed to the underdogs, just as they had a few nights ago in Bloemfontein. In the end, however, Brazil's strength was too great, and the U.S. succumbed to defeat behind three second half goals from the Seleção. The exciting game closed out a reasonably good tournament, albeit it one that will ultimately do little to quell any doubts people initially had about South Africa. True, most of the commentary was positive and during my visit, the in-stadium adventures were relatively hitch-free.

However, as we saw in Germany, the World Cup experience is defined by so much more, in particular transportation and accommodations. While I don't have any horror stories to report on this front, be prepared for them to start flowing in eventually. If the outcry against the vuvuzela was loud, the complaints about travel snafus will be deafening.

In the end, the Confederations Cup was an important event for South Africa. It proved, at least to its own people within the country, that a tournament with teams from around the world could be a success. Obviously the World Cup is a completely different entity. There will be doubters no matter what, but for the time being South Africa can revel in the success of the 2009 Confederations Cup.

Related posts:

1. Notes from South Africa
2. Notes from South Africa: The Forbidden Vuvuzela
3. South Africa's World Cup Stadiums Are $300 Million Over Budget

— The Run of Play is now on Twitter. It's a bit scary, actually, because our little plot of land there seems to be haunted by the ghost of a seventeenth-century outlaw who never learned to work within the 140-character limit. Hopefully he'll be exorcised soon and we'll be able to get on with posting brief thoughts about commercials we remember from the '80s. Follow along…if you dare.

— Brian Cook at MGoBlog has the best response to USA-Brazil I've seen. Even though part of it is about sort of disagreeing with me.

— The way Fredorrarci feels about transfer gossip, I increasingly seem to feel even about transfers that actually take place. Can't we all just do something else for the summer and note the new rosters sometime in August? Richard has the right idea on this.

— How about an unofficial holiday on which we all, briskly and simultaneously, print some things out and get caught up? "Wow, Ronaldo's at Madrid," we'd say with a low whistle. "I can't wait for the season to start next week." We'd have exactly the same amount of information, but we'd be spared the months-long subliminal turmoil of not really knowing whether this is the end of everything or not.

— I make a partial exception for the Onyewu-to-Milan deal, which is delightful, in large part because we can now legitimately describe the Gooch as "Belgian-American."

— EPL Talk has a new series on Legends of English Football, starting with Sir Stanley Matthews. See, now, Sir Stanley Matthews is the kind of thing I would like to spend the summer reading about. Also, this.

— If anything, Siobhan actually underplayed the fact that this was a five-course meal and that for one of the courses she made pasta from scratch. I watched the whole thing unfold with a kind of awe. I may have been Gandhi in a past life.

The final Pro Vercelli celebration dinner: our team had won it all, we rested secure at the top, and I planned a menu including all those Piedmontese flavors that seemed most quintessential or intriguing or appealing or all three. That meant bagna cauda, a dish I would want to cook even if it weren’t a regional staple, since an hours-long simmer of garlic, anchovies, and olive oil seems irresistible in any context. (We dipped into our "warm bath" with grissini, twisted breadsticks that are the special claim of Piedmontese bakers.) It meant agnolotti, the signature local version of ravioli, which has long been my favorite kind of pasta. (The preparation of this dish gave me new respect for pasta-makers as well as a new aversion to my rolling pin.) And it meant hazelnut cake—a concentratedly easy slice that uses just a little sugar, a few eggs, and a dash of rum to bring out the essence of nocciole. (A spoonful of whipped cream or a cup of chocolate, Brian and I have determined through arduous experimentation, is a good accompaniment to this dessert.)

But the heart of our meal had to be brasato di manzo al vino rosso, beef braised in red wine. Given that my initial, weak culinary promises had been quickly condensed into the "robust red wines of the Piedmont region," it seemed fitting that such robustness should anchor our culminating spread. Wine pervades the cuisine of our imaginarily-adopted home: even the history of bagna cauda has been nourished by the soil of northern vineyards, since laborers used to cook the dish in fortifying open-air batches during their cold work of winter pruning. And wine helps to show the cosmopolitan pedigree of Piedmontese cuisine; bagna cauda, for example, is a rare peasant food that uses ingredients from far away, recalling how Jewish refugees from Spain brought the taste for anchovies to northern Italy after 1492.

Barolo—the king of Italian wines, and probably Piedmont’s most important export—owes its own distinction to another later emigration: the moment when Juliette Françoise Colbert de Maulévrier, a young woman from an aristocratic French family, was driven from her country by the Napoleonic wars and settled in the homeland of her husband, Count Falletti di Barolo.

The Marchese di Barolo does not seem the most likely candidate to advance oenophilia in the fields near Turin. Devout, childless, and self-sacrificing, Giulia is known for her charity work in prison reform and the religious education of poor women; she has even been presented for beatification. An adulatory biography published just after her death assures its readers that everyone in Piedmont "easily forgave her being French, so perfect was her freedom from vanity or affectation."

Nonetheless, Giulia knew the practical value of a little French affectation even when it might conflict with her saintly image. Before the nineteenth century, Barolo tasted sweet, fizzy, and insipid, due to the brief fermentation time for Nebbiolo grapes in the cold of northern Italy, but Giulia was savvy enough to seek the advice of Louis Oudart, a French oenologist; he told winemakers how to produce the dry, subtle, well-aging vintage that was soon prized in the courts of Italy and around the world. Admittedly, Oudart came to Piedmont at the invitation of the Count of Cavour—who managed to pay a good deal of attention to agriculture in and among his political activities. But Giulia was the one who put his new techniques into practice, evolving the cultural and economic fortunes of Piedmont through the example of her own estate. If she is ever canonized, I would venture to say, her contribution to food and drink does not dim the halo.

We were grateful for that contribution, certainly, after our braised beef. The dish’s principles are basic—cook a relatively tough cut of meat for a relatively long time in rich, flavorful liquid—but the result is complexly satisfying. Enjoy it while sipping more of the same flavorful liquid, and reflect on the many, various, crazy celebrations that are made possible by following football.

Beef in Wine, the ersatz American version

adapted from A Passion for Piedmont by Matt Kramer

makes two-four servings, depending on whom one is serving

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound beef, suitable for braising, in one piece (I used brisket; sirloin and round are other possibilities)
1 bottle robust red wine of your region (a dry wine, like Barolo, is better)
1 cup chicken or beef stock (plus a little more, perhaps, if necessary)
1 medium onion
1 large carrot
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
salt and pepper

1.) Preheat the oven to 300 F. Choose a large casserole dish with a close-fitting cover. Heat the oil in this dish, uncovered, on the stove top over medium-high heat. Add the beef in one piece and brown on all sides.

2.)  Chop the onion and carrot into small pieces. Add these to the casserole dish along with the wine, stock, bay leaves, cinnamon, and rosemary. Add a generous pinch of salt and some pepper.

3.) Cover the dish and place in the preheated oven. Cook for 10-12 hours, checking occasionally to make sure that the beef is not too dry.* The beef should be covered with liquid at the start and there should be a good bit of liquid in the casserole throughout the cooking process. Add more stock or wine during cooking if necessary.

4.) When the beef is very tender, remove it from the casserole dish to a plate. Remove the two bay leaves from the casserole, and blend the remaining liquid, along with the bits of carrot and onion, in a blender to make a thick sauce.

5.) Slice the beef, spoon the sauce over the slices, and serve.

* For this dish, I used a cast-iron casserole that is my current favorite piece of kitchen equipment, but I would guess that the beef could also be prepared in a slow cooker.

Related posts:

1. Robust Red Wines of the Piedmont Region
2. The Magic of Mold
3. Of Nuts and Chocolate

We played our last two games knowing the championship was settled, and won them with youth teams, 1-0 against Treviso and 2-0 against Lazio. We finished with 97 points, the most of any team since I started at Vercelli 12 years ago, and allowed only 19 goals all season. I would have liked to score more (I think we would have, had Teixeira not been hurt and out of sorts all year) but we won 31 games and took the league by 11 points; by any measure, it was a spectacular season.

All that was left was the Champions League final: Manchester United at the San Siro. I was nervous before the match, and not just because it had been a geologic epoch since we last won a game in Milan. We were playing to win our second straight European Cup, something no team had done in three decades. Man Utd had two of the best strikers in Europe in Steve Bony (24 goals in 29 games) and James Holmes (14 goals in 17 games), and the match was being billed as the immovable object of our defense versus the unstoppable force of their attack. On top of that, I was anxious about our own attackers: Kozlov had been playing well enough, but Teixeira had been absolutely awful since coming back from his latest injury, and I had no idea whether to play David (generally more trustworthy) or Linnane (in much better form recently) on the left. I picked Linnane, hoped Kozlov wouldn't get hurt, and left the rest to fate.

Fate looked cruel in the 31st minute, when Man Utd's Andrés Arévalo got on the end of a Steve Bony cross to put us in a 1-0 hole. But eight minutes later, Linnane dove head-first at a low ball from Paolo Martini and drove it into the back of the net. 1-1. Just before the half, Kozlov picked up a knock on a hard tackle from our former left back Arnaldo Mora. We went into halftime tied, and I had no choice but to send on Teixeira.

As the second half ground on, we gradually emerged with an advantage in possession and chances. Martini, playing in the holding midfield spot, was relentless in winning the ball, which freed up our attacking players to spread out wide and get forward, which in turn caused some disarray in Man Utd's tight 3-5-2 formation. Martini found Kenji Mogi unmarked at the edge of the area in the 51st minute, and Mogi sailed in the 20-yard shot to give us a 2-1 lead. From that point, we were never really threatened, and when I sent on our second substitute, Rafael Avilán, for the exhausted Fábio in the 78th minute, he returned the favor by scoring from close range three minutes later to give us a 3-1 lead.

Arévalo scored again to make it 3-2 in the 88th, but we survived a few minutes of late tension to secure a deserved win. Final match stats: 55%-45% possession, 16-7 shots on goal, 76%-60% pass completion.

We'd won our second straight Champions League title, and wrapped up a season in which we won the UEFA Super Cup, the Club World Cup, the Coppa Italia, the Serie A title, and the European Cup. It was a total, across-the-board triumph, and it has to go down not only as the greatest season in the history of the club but as the greatest season in twenty-first century football.

Counting the Europa League win three seasons ago, his is our third straight year winning at least a league/European double. So we're hardly strangers to success. But it's only now that I can really say we've re-established the club on a footing worthy of the past, which was the goal all along. We've proved ourselves not only against our contemporary opponents but against our own history. Now the only thing left is to figure out how to top it.

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: Time of the Season, Part III
2. Pro Vercelli: Time of the Season, Part II
3. Pro Vercelli: When You're the Clouds, the Sky Looks Cloudless

Also: We won the Coppa Italia, 1-0 over Roma at the Olimpico. Kozlov scored the goal. No one seemed to get too worked up about this—the board explicitly told me before the season started that they "didn't consider the TIM Cup to be an important competition"—but I'm happy, because it's the first time I've won the cup and because it means we're still on for the elusive Quadruple. We only have to win one of our final three league games (which are against the 20th, 16th, and 18th-ranked teams in Serie A) to take the scudetto. Man Utd in the Champions League final will be another story, obviously. Updates soon…

—
Song clip: Bruce Springsteen, "I'm Goin' Down"

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express, Amazon Kindle Edition, 22 April 2020
2. Pro Vercelli: Full Time from the Silvio Piola
3. Pro Vercelli: Wolves to the Slaughter

But is there any practical reason to think that US soccer could have experienced a sudden profound change between the Italy loss and the win against Egypt? Would it really be so bad if this were just the latest in a line of occasional stunning results that don't really influence the larger context, like 1930, 1950, or 1998?

Since no amount of "confidence" or "trust in each other" is going to give Benny Feilhaber the ability to pick out a pass or Bob Bradley the ability not to insert Sacha Kljestan into important passages of big games, I'm guessing we should focus on the latter question. But that's not to diminish the achievement of the team during these last two weeks. Just the opposite, actually, since what's frustrating about the endless obsession with "making it" in US soccer is that it blunts our ability to appreciate a spectacular moment: every astonishing upset has to answer to the inescapable narrative of progress; every flash of joy has to usher in an age. We have to deflate any good feeling that doesn't come with a trophy attached with a lot of defensive talk about "not settling for less" and being "in it to win." (Really? Two weeks ago we were going to be disappointed with anything less than a championship?) It's as if we can't fully enjoy even an amazing accomplishment like the Confederations Cup until we think the team is so good we can take amazing accomplishments for granted.

Don't get me wrong; I want the team to get better. I understand, and largely agree with, the incremental-improvement-over-time take on recent history, and I think, or hope, that each one of these hints of revolution slightly raises the level the team sinks back to when it passes. It's just that I'm more interested in seeing the run through this tournament, and the Spain game above all, as something to celebrate for its own sake, without thinking about next year or whether it's safe to nudge up my expectations. I'm sure I'm not alone in that, but partly thanks to Bradley's understandable emphasis in his postgame remarks, so much of the coverage has skirted the "what does this mean?" question that I've spent most of the last 24 hours wanting to take an anchorperson by his lapels and scream "We #$*%ing BEAT SPAIN! Doesn't that matter more than abstract 'potential'?"

Related posts:

1. Spain 0 – 2 United States: The Gift Outright
2. Notes from South Africa
3. Notes from South Africa: Final Thoughts

[EDIT: Still applies at full time, 2-3. More on this match and the tournament as a whole tomorrow.]

YOUTH MOVEMENT

Pro Vercelli's success this season has been fueled by a new wave of talent emerging from the youth ranks. We sat down with one of the season's most unexpected stars, 21-year-old midfielder Alexander Zech, to learn about the roller-coaster ride of the season, what it's like to play with his childhood heroes, and how Vercelli's most talented youngsters cope with the pressure of playing for the defending champions.

by SIMONE DI CESARE

So nobody knew who you were at this time six months ago. (Laughs.)

True.

And now everybody knows who you are.

Well, my girlfriend still gets confused sometimes. (Laughs.)

Hey, you came off the bench to score against Lazio in your senior debut, got the winning goal against Atalanta in the Coppa Italia quarters, picked up four Man of the Match awards in your first 15 starts, and had your manager singing your praises in public. Get a new girlfriend!

(Laughs.) Well, I like the one I have, thanks. But I'll remind her of all that when I get home.

How did all this happen for you?

I don't really know, you know? When I left [SC Rheindorf] Altach last year, a lot of people back in Austria said, "Oh, no, don't go to Vercelli, you'll never get to play, stay in Feldkirch where you can be a star." But from the very beginning, I always dreamed of something…bigger than Feldkirch.

Feldkirch is a part of Austria?

That's right. (Laughs.) It's a district of Vorarlberg.

See, I don't even know what you're talking about.

I just felt that, if a club like Pro Vercelli was interested in me now, how many more chances would I get to play at that level? And when I came to visit, I got a tour of Naming Rights Park, and the manager's wife gave me hazelnut cake. The town is small and everyone gets behind the team. What better place to go to try to make a name for myself?

And then you broke into the first team.

Really, though, most of the credit for that goes to fixture congestion. (Laughs.) The manager wanted to rest the "real" players before the home game against Inter, so I got called up to sit on the bench against Lazio. And once Kenji Mogi started looking tired, I got to go in. I guess I have good energy!

And you scored a terrific goal.

Well, I don't know if was really terrific of me, because it was Michele [Proietti] who dribbled into the box and rattled the defenders, then found David on the wing while they were rattled. I just "Austria-ed in" the cross, as we say at the Salzburg Akademisches Gynmasium.

Over four Lazio players.

Okay.

And then you scored the winner against Atalanta in the next game.

Yeah. But again, it was a pretty simple header.

Then you didn't play in the 1910 Derby, and Pro Vercelli couldn't get a goal.

We were stuck with a 0-0 draw, it's true. I'm sure we were the better team, though!

I'm just saying, I think I see a pattern here.

I hope you're right! Then I'll never have to miss a game again.

Well, let's see: Since you started playing regularly, we've passed Inter at the top of Serie A, made the Coppa Italia final against Roma, and reached the semifinals of the Champions League. I'm not betting against it!

I could be a good-luck charm! How excellent!

You played crucial minutes in Pro Vercelli's huge, huge win over Barcelona in the Champions League. What was it like to have your first European experience come at the Camp Nou, in only your sixth senior start?

That was an amazing feeling. I'm from Salzburg, so the best way I can describe it is to say that I felt like I was playing in the Mozartsgeburtshauskugelhopforchester on 27 Januar! I thought the Naming Rights was big, but going from 30,000 fans to 100,000 really makes a difference—really. It's like jumping from a string quartet to heavy metal, I think? Don't get mad, Pro Vercelli fans! I love string quartets!

You're a weird guy, Alexander.

When we took the lead [through Senad Ibrahimovic's 29th minute header, after Zech won the corner], I thought we were sure to win, but then they equalized [when goalkeeper Emanuel Sylla bungled his first touch outside the area, allowing Angel Hervieu to take the ball away from him and score into an open net from 22 yards away], and then [Michael] Dogan missed the penalty…I was wearing my heart in my throat! But the manager said don't worry, we've still got the away goal in the bag…

And then you won 3-0 at the Naming Rights.

It was incredible! Sammarco's goal was one of the best moments of my career. That was when I knew we were going to seize the day.

How did that moment compare to the demolition of Bayern in the quarterfinal?

Oh, the Barça win was nicer, no question. Okay, sure, we beat Bayern 3-0 at the Allianz-Arena, but we were supposed to win that game. Plus, a lot of the guys on that team speak German; they're my friends!

And now you're playing Milan in the semifinal.

It's so crazy to be playing Milan! I watched a lot of Italian football growing up, and Milan won all those titles—eight in a row! And now I'm playing against some of those same players. I read in a magazine that Francismar made his first start for the club in 2003. I turned five that year!

We're lucky, because we already beat Milan in the Coppa Italia semis [winning 2-0 in the second leg after a 0-1 loss at the San Siro], so we kind of "know how it's done." But we have to go to the San Siro for the second leg, which is not going to be easy. We have a really hard time winning at the San Siro.

I've heard that, yeah.

But I hope we win, because Manchester United and Arsenal are playing in the other semifinal, and I would love to go against a team from England!

Let's talk about Serie A for a second. Since you started playing regularly for the team, Pro Vercelli have kept winning while Inter have fallen a bit off the pace, losing to Sampdoria, Lazio and Salernitana and drawing with Lecce and Genoa. Now you have a seven-point lead with five games left, which some people are calling insurmountable. How do you deal with the pressure of maintaining that kind of consistency?

I know my teammates will not agree with this, but I was disappointed that Inter lost so many games. I thought we had an excellent race in progress, and I was excited to see how it would finish at the wire!

As for the "pressure" question, I don't feel much pressure, first, because I am doing what I love to do, and second, because I am not the only young player who has contributed to the team this season. Michele [Proietti] scored the winner against Salernitana two weeks ago, and he's 18, younger than Liesl, my little sister! And Paolo [Martini] and Riccardo [Caprioli] are both younger than I am, and have started more games. And when you think about it, players like David and [Jacopo] Sammarco were among the stars of the team when they were my age, and didn't have so many veterans on hand to help them out.

When you think about it, I am actually somewhat old!

If you say so, Alexander.

Then that's settled. I am ancient. (Laughs.)

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express, Amazon Kindle Edition, 29 August 2017
2. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express, Amazon Kindle Edition, 23 May 2014
3. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express Website, 24 May 2014

Tim Howard was a better goalkeeper than Iker Casillas tonight, not just because of deflections and chance. The near-post save on Fernando Torres's heart-stopping point-blank shot just before halftime was probably as thrilling for Everton fans as for Americans. This might have been the best game I've ever seen Landon Donovan play, and he didn't score a penalty, so that's saying something. Jozy Altidore isn't good enough to play for Xerez, but he just handed Spain their first loss since 2006. Unbelievable.

It probably means nothing; I hate to throw John Keats in at a moment like this (of course I don't, really) but I was definitely doing a melancholy-in-the-temple-of-delight double-take when John Harkes couldn't stop talking about fitness at the end, and then Alexi Lalas came on to attribute the win to "a good old-fashioned American game of soccer, just guys throwing their bodies around for each other" (or something to that effect). Really? We've just decisively beaten the best team in the world, and that's as romantic as we get? It's going to be back to obsessing over "guys who can play with their back to the goal and hold up the ball for the team" before dinner. But whatever; this happened, and sometimes a match that doesn't decide a championship is as thrilling as a championship, and this game was an amazing thing to see.

Related posts:

1. Spain 2 – 0 England: 10 Things I Liked About the Match
2. For Anyone Trying to Find a Way to Watch the Spain-England Game
3. 0-3! 0-3!

The first round is done in South Africa and the tournament is building excitement as the semifinals are set to begin. Bafana Bafana managed second place in their group, behind front-runners Spain, while Brazil topped Group B with the U.S. slipping into the semifinals in unbelievable circumstances. Some thoughts from the past few days:

— Bafana's victory against the All-Whites was watched by a record television audience of more than six million South Africans. The relatively easy victory gave Bafana the life in the tournament they needed, and they ended up advancing to the semifinals thanks to a draw between New Zealand and Iraq a few days later. TV pundits Clive Barker, a former coach of South Africa (not the director of Hellraiser), and Doctor Khumalo, the team's former playmaker from the 1990s, were unconvinced by Bafana's win, though both did blow celebratory vuvuzela calls on live TV. In fact, the lack of full-blooded support by the pundits is starting to worry a few people; outside the TV studios, at least, the fans here are starting to display a bit more belief in their team. In a way, the pressure on Bafana is off—they've achieved their goal of reaching the knockout round. Many think Santana could spring a surprise or two on Brazil, his native country, though that remains to be seen…

— Group B was much less straightforward, and I traveled to Rustenberg to take in the match between USA and Egypt. The stadium in Rustenberg is in the middle of nowhere and, as you drive up to the ground, you can see the floodlights from a good distance away. The ground itself is pretty bland and I found it lacking the character of a place like Loftus Versfeld, which I suppose is understandable considering the Royal Bafokeng stadium was only built a decade ago. The stadium is in great condition, easy to navigate, and ultimately not a bad experience, if a bit dull.

— During the game, some kind of official walked around on the track pointing at and identifying numerous banners in the crowd. The banners, all in Arabic and all from the Egypt fans, were removed soon after. I never got word on what any of these signs actually said, but this was a pretty early development, so the stadium crew must have been ready.

— Where previously Egypt was the darling of this tournament, and the second-favorite team of all the locals, the spectacular fallout from their loss against the USA has been something to behold.

A few days ago, a robbery in the Egypt hotel was reported, with a few players falling victim to the theft of around $2,400. The incident was troubling in South Africa. It came at a time when interest in the Pharaohs was at its highest; they had just grabbed a deserved 1-0 victory against faltering Italy, becoming the first African team to beat the Azzurri. Additionally, the robbery resurrected many of the security questions that until that point had been eclipsed by the football in the tournament. Suddenly security became a massive issue again.

Immediately following the disaster against the U.S., the story began to change. Newspapers now began to report that the Egypt players were robbed by prostitutes in a raucous post-game celebration from the game against Italy. Egypt was pilloried on the live post-game show, with callers expressing their disgust with they way the Pharaohs handled themselves, and making jokes about all matters soccer- and non-soccer-related.

The fans who I talked to were incredibly put off. "You cheer for them because you have to—they are an African team," said one person to me. "But it's so disappointing."

Egypt have their side to the story. The head of their delegation blamed the media for the Pharaohs' ousting from the tournament, citing the "shameful and disgraceful" coverage of the "theft", and legal action could be on the way.

— Some people I talked to who worked with Egypt during the team's stay here all pointed to how difficult it was to work with the Pharaohs. One of them offered up this story: "Whenever they would train, nobody on the team would carry any bags. Somebody would come up to us and tell us to carry their bags but that isn't our job, they have a kit man who is supposed to organize this. If we carry their bags then they would accuse us of stealing their things." Anecdotal, perhaps, but it seems as if Egypt is not doing themselves any good in the minds of the South African people…

— I've moved to Bloemfontein, site of the semifinal between Spain and the United States. The game will be played at Free State Stadium which, like Loftus, is primarily a rugby stadium. The atmosphere for the game should be tremendous and the fans in Bloem are well-known as some of the best and most passionate soccer fans in the country. Additionally, the Bloem fans are also known for their singing culture, so there could be some noise in the stadium tomorrow night in addition to the vuvuzela. I'm anxiously awaiting what promises to be an intriguing game…

Let's do this McKinsey-style, to bring some discipline to the lives of all the English majors in the audience.

Serie A
Through 18 games, we're undefeated outside the San Siro, but we've done badly enough inside the San Siro to be stuck in second place. On the first day of the season, we went down 0-3 to Inter in a 1910 Derby that had me throwing hair dryers in the locker room—even though statistically, it was a fairly even match:

Later in the fall, we lost 0-1 to Milan thanks to a late goal by Francismar, who is now 186 years old and kept alive mostly by spare car parts and surgical tape, and yet who still knows how to score when he is left completely unmarked on a corner kick by every player on the opposing team. Hair dryers were turned on, hot air was blasted, Conair products were thrown. Directly into the hot tub in a few cases.

Anyway, we've spent most of the season lodged uncomfortably behind Inter, like Robin on the Bat Pole, in second place. Here's a chart of our league position through 18 games:

But I'm trying not to worry too much, as we're on pace to score more goals, concede fewer goals, and earn more points than we did last season, and it's a good sign if you're improving in every meaningful category on a championship season, right? Outside the Milan city limits, we've been virtually untouchable (four goals conceded in 16 league matches), and we've at least gotten all our Milan trips out of the way at this point. So there's reason to be optimistic. Though if we do lose the title to Inter as a result of dropping the first game of the season, I will…let's just say the quantity and wattage of the hair dryers that are brought to bear on our end-of-season wrap-up meeting will put Naming Rights Park at grave risk of being the Inferno after all.

The Champions League

We were the top seed in Group A, where we were drawn with proud Ajax, respectable Bayer Leverkusen, and nonessential Beitar Jerusalem (who actually featured a former Pro Vercelli player, Islam Bar Moha, a semi-regular staple in our Serie C1 promotion year). We lost the first game to Ajax at the AmsterdAm ArEnA (sorry if I'm bungling the vowel capitalization, kind of), but won the rest of our group games by a combined score of 13-1 and finished first in the pod.

As a reward for this feat, we were handed Barcelona in the first knockout round. That would be the same Barcelona who've beaten us in every game we've ever played against them, the same Barcelona who effectively knocked us out of the Champions League three years ago by defeating us twice in our group, the same Barcelona who can make the heart of our stoutest player flutter just by expressing a vague interest in him. This should be fun. Though possibly only for Barcelona.

The Coppa Italia
Because I know you care about the Coppa Italia: We've played one Coppa Italia match so far, and our youth team, or "Diaper Dandies," managed to procure a 1-0 win that puts us through to the quarterfinals, or "Elite Eight." The win was against Siena, or "Siena." It was awesome. Baby.

The Club World Cup
I was excited about this tournament. It's not every soccer competition that gives your fans the right to say their team are "world champions" while everyone else in the world rolls their eyes and makes faces at each other. So even though it was a massive distraction and an exhausting trip halfway around the world, we were bursting with optimism on the flight to Mexico City. We were fighting for the right to make overblown claims about a tournament whose exact importance everyone is confused about, and we were going to enjoy it.

Our first match, in the semifinals, was against the New York Red Bulls, and we struck a blow for product-placement sanity by beating them 3-1. Dogan missed a penalty in the third minute, but Contini scored twice before halftime to give us a 2-0 lead. New York pulled one back in the 50th minute, but David put an end to their quaint fantasies with a header in the 78th. It came down to reality, and that was fine with the New York Red Bulls, because they'd let it slide. The New York Red Bulls didn't care if it was Chinatown or on Riverside. They didn't need any reasons; they'd left them all behind. They were in a New York state of mind.

In the final, we faced Mexican powerhouse Club América. This was a tough draw, largely because the Estadio Azteca, where the match was being played, seats 105,000 people and is the home stadium of Club América. Without getting involved in a lot of complex analysis, the main thing we had going for us in this situation was that Club América aren't nearly as good at football as we are. And that turned out to be important. The Mexican fans made a lot of noise, but we had 67% of the possession and won 2-0 on goals by—once again—Contini and David.

We won this minor tournament, and we are now the champions of the world. Deal with the cognitive dissonance.

Players
We may only be in second place and facing grim prospects in the Champions League, but our new signings have actually been terrific. Emannuel Sylla, our new goalkeeper, has kept 16 clean sheets in 21 appearances and only conceded eight goals. Dmitry Kozlov, our new striker, has 10 goals and four assists in 18 starts. Alessio Capuano, our 20-year-old right back, is now rated as a wonderkid and has played well in his 20 matches for the club. Fábio has filled in in three positions and looked good in all of them. Rafael Avilán, our new midfielder, hasn't quite lived up to my hopes for him, but he's still averaging a 7+ and completing 80% of his passes. I don't have much to complain about.

Among our more familiar players, Teixeira has been the biggest disappointment, not because he hasn't played well but because he's spent most of the season injured and hasn't really gotten a chance to play. He has four goals in six appearances.

The most exciting players have been our youth projects Paolo Martini and Riccardo Caprioli. Martini, at 20, has continued his astonishing rise and is now probably one of the 25 best players in the world:

Here he is two and a half years ago, just so you can see the strides he's made:

Caprioli isn't quite on that level, but he has the highest average rating of any of our defenders and has been extremely consistent in his 18 appearances:

So: there's a lot to like about our season so far (the world championship, our defending, our overall league record), but also a lot of battles left to win before we can say the season was a success (passing Inter in Serie A, getting through Barcelona in Europe). I'm not planning any major signings or sales during the January transfer window. We have what we need at the Naming Rights; now it's up to us to put it to good use. Just hope our loss on the first day of the season doesn't bring back the ghosts of 1910 right when we were on the verge of laying them to rest.

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: The Ghosts of 1910
2. Pro Vercelli: Full Time from the Silvio Piola
3. Pro Vercelli: Bleak House

*Seriously, that sound never portends anything pleasant for Egypt.

Related posts:

1. Notes from South Africa: The Forbidden Vuvuzela

Like a hereditary aristocracy, in other words, a football club can only thrive with frequent infusions of new blood and a certain degree of external conflict. After winning a second consecutive Serie A title and a first European Cup, I wanted to remake Pro Vercelli over the summer: not to revolutionize the club or reject what made us successful, but to clear the sleep out of our heads, bring in some competitive new talents, and remind the core of the team that while the forgiveness of sins may be perpetual in religion, in football it's just the opposite.

Fortunately, our new identity as European champions gave us both the financial clout and the reputation to chase after pretty much anyone we wanted. Unfortunately, the new glut of choice led us right into the maelstrom of big-club bidding wars and ruthless tapping up. As a result, I spent a good part of the summer chasing targets who wound up signing for more money elsewhere and making me curse their parents' bones: no need to go into the excruciating details, but let's just say that if you read in the Vercelli Soccer Express that Dominic Sène would be a White Shirt next year, €17.75 million and immortal imprecations from the red book of pain sped him to A.C. Milan, and if you heard on the radio that I was chasing Landry Fofana, a new €93k/week deal and a ringing malediction from the bowels of the earth kept him in place at Real Madrid.

That's not to say we didn't win as many as we lost, or that the team we're left with isn't fantastically intriguing (if anything, we probably had too much turnover; but more on that in a second). What the summer ultimately showed was how radical the Paolo Galli deal from last season really was, and how much better it was for us than for Juventus. On top of the €875k/month that they owe us till January 2021, we sold Jorge Luiz (the defender we got in the deal) to Parma for €15 million, and Antônio (the midfielder we got in the deal) to Barcelona for €20 million. That influx of cash was the basis for everything we did this summer. Here's the cold breakdown of the major deals (i.e., apart from youth signings and the €1.5 million sale of backup goalkeepers I've never mentioned before):

OUT

Antônio (MC, Barcelona, €20 million) — He looked good on paper, but averaged a 6.8 for us in practice.

Jorge Luiz (DC, Parma, €15 million) — He only made four starts for the club, with the emergence of our youth player Riccardo Caprioli, he was superfluous.

Albert Vrancken (ST, Milan, €32 million) — Another player who stayed with us less than a year. He's a fine striker, but when the money from Luiz and Antônio allowed us to buy Dmitry Kozlov, we knew he'd be a third-choice player, so we floated him on the market. I turned down a couple of preliminary bids from Milan, and then they came back with this cannonball. This shattered the record for our highest-ever transfer fee (though I turned down Milan's crazy, Kaka-to-Madrid-like bid for Teixeira—€65 million—at the same time).

Aivar Kulik (DR, Palermo, €3.8 million) — After the way he floundered in the Champions League final, it was clear his time had come.

Jefferson Arteaga (DM, Udinese, €4.8 million) — A good utility player for the club over the years, but he's been utterly surpassed by our youth player Paolo Martini.

Davide Rubino (DM, Fiorentina, €9 million) — This one hurt, as Rubino's been one of my favorite players, if not one of our most talented, for years, and earned the love of the club faithful by scoring two vital goals and the cup-winning penalty in the Europa League last year. But it was clear he wasn't going to play much of a role after some of our other signings, and I didn't want to see him fading to gray in the reserves. And what better way to get the attention of our superstars than to sell a player everyone knows I love?

IN

Fábio (versatile, Real Madrid, €12.5 million) — One thing I want to emphasize this year is versatility. I've revised some of our tactics to give players more freedom to be creative on the pitch, and I'm going to follow that up on my end by being more flexible with formations and positional assignments—keeping in mind, in other words, that just because I think of the Ferj as a defender doesn't mean he can't also make a good midfielder under the right circumstances. Fábio fits this mandate perfectly: a 6'3", 22-year-old Brazilian with silky passing skills and defensive bite who can play anywhere in the middle of the pitch. We were able to snatch him out from under Madrid thanks to a minimum fee release clause they'd foolishly added to his contract. I'm expecting him to spend most of his time as a central defender, but also to slot into other roles as needed.

Rafael Avilán (MC/AMC, Chelsea, €21 million) — The riskiest signing of the summer, and one I'm just hoping will work out. One of the biggest tactical changes I'm making this summer is to rewrite the role of our most attack-minded midfielder, sending him forward more aggressively and essentially setting him free on the attack to wreak as much havoc as possible. Kenji Mogi can do this, but he tires out easily, so I needed another elite attacking midfielder to play the part. Rafael Avilán is a bizarre player—he's 5'4", 136 lbs., yet has a strength rating of 18—and he's spent much of his career on the bench at Milan and Chelsea. But he's a force for the Mexican national team, and there's a lot about him I like. Not my first choice, but honestly there weren't a lot of good midfielders there for the taking this summer.

Dmitry Kozlov (ST, Barcelona, €21.5 million) — This is the signing the fans are excited about. Kozlov is one of the best strikers in the world, he averaged better than a goal every two games for Barcelona over the last three seasons (plus 44 goals in 66 caps for Russia), and he only changed clubs this year because of some unspecified falling-out with the Catalans. We had to pay him knee-weakening money to get him to sign (€110,000/week, around twice as much as our next-highest-paid player), but we should make up for it in shirt sales, and, hopefully, in bushels and bushels of goals. He has a tough-minded, heroic personality ("Reslient," the game says), and he already doesn't get along with the flamboyant and volatile Teixeira, but since they'll never be on the pitch at the same time, I'm hoping it won't matter.

Alessio Capuano (DR, Standard Liège, €5.5 million) — Kulik's replacement at right back, a 20-year-old wonderkid whom I found languishing in obscurity in Belgium. (How did that happen? He's Italian, for God's sake!) Over time, he could be special.

Emanuel Sylla (GK, Milan, €7.5 million) — It's a hard fact that Jacob Larsen, who's been in goal nearly every game for us since we sold Marciano van Dijk in 2013, hasn't developed as much as I'd like and, at 25, is angrily crammed into the "good, not great" category. At the same time, Milan have a tendency to buy up great goalkeepers and not use them, and when I saw that Sylla—at 34, a former legend in Ligue 1 who's also the captain of Mali—was sitting on the bench at the San Siro, I had to make a move. €7.5 million might be a bit extravagant for a player who's nearing the end of his career, but you also never know with a goalkeeper. He could play another four seasons, but even if he only lasts one, if he's worth 3-6 points over Larsen, it will be money well spent.

This leaves us with a basic roster/substitution chart that looks something like this:

(If only I could play them all simultaneously. It's like the ship from Galaga!)

And that's roughly the story of the summer. We lost the Supercoppa Italiana 0-1 to Roma, ending our unbeaten streak at the Naming Rights, but it was the Supercoppa, and no one cared. This year's Silvio Piola Cup featured Manchester United, Atlético Madrid, and FC Twente:

We lost 0-1 to United in the first round despite utterly dominating the game, then beat Twente 2-0 in the third-place playoff. We then retained the UEFA Super Cup by crushing Valencia 3-0 on a brace from Teixeira, which seemed to matter more in Vercelli than I ever would have guessed:

It's always nice to have your name sung in the streets, but are we really "rank outsiders" at this point? Lousy East Coast media bias.

We open the Serie A season with a really tough away match at Inter, and if we can win that, I think we'll be on our way.

Oh, and also, this happened:

It's nice to be asked, and I thought about it for a couple of minutes, but who needs the distraction. Anyway, I don't even know who "Marcus" is. There's no one in football more forgettable than the Brazil manager.

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: The Bump
2. Pro Vercelli: The Avalon Hourglass
3. Pro Vercelli: Offseason Factbook

In other words, our not-even-one-year-old arena is about to have its seating capacity increased by almost 40%. This is huge news, and it only heightens the importance of finding a good name for the place. And thus, to the contest results.

First, thanks to everyone who wrote in with an entry, whether by email or in the comments. There were a lot of great suggestions, which could be divided among a few different categories:

— Dante references. The new stadium is on the Via Dante Alighieri, and Vercelli actually puts in a brief appearance in the Inferno, so it would be a nice bit of cross-century synergy to use this as the basis for the name. Also, it would correctly indicate the club's cosmic aspirations. The only real con here is that I feel like Fiorentina fans could always hold it against us.

— Ex-Pro Vercelli players. Stadio Guido Ara, Stadio Pietro Ferraris, Stadio Virginio Rosetta, etc. These names all have the advantage of paying homage to the past while also honoring the name-form of the old Silvio Piola. On the other hand, everyone agrees that Piola was the greatest player Vercelli ever produced, so isn't choosing a different player as a namesake sort of taking things down a notch? You can't see the Chicago Bulls of 2019 moving from Michael Jordan Arena to Scottie Pippen Fieldhouse. Can you?

— Concepts from Pro Vercelli's history. These ranged from specific remembrances of the rivalry with Inter (Ricordati 1910) to more general pronouncements of Pro Vercelli's return to glory (Stadium of the Renaissance, Stadio del Risorgimento, etc.) I like the historical spirit of these ideas, but I wonder if it's wise to have a stadium name that takes as a premise the fact that your club used to be terrible. There's something sort of bittersweet about these names, if you ask me.

— Club nicknames. Ideas like "House of Lions" or "Stadium of the White Shirts." Some of these sound undeniably cool. (Who wouldn't want a stadium called "The House of Lions"? Come on!) But they're also a bit generic, especially since the stadium is technically named after the club to begin with.

— Self-glorification. A couple of people suggested "Brian Phillips Stadium." Please. Guys. You're embarrassing me. Check the mail over the next couple of days for your complimentary lifetime season tickets.

— Comedy. Apart from the 40% of all entries that wanted to name the stadium after Walter Colombo, we also had a fair number of votes for "Naming Rights Park," one for "Stadium of Robust Red Wine," and one for "Stadio Il Sodoma," after the Vercelli-born mannerist painter, who (and I quote) "lived in a house bursting with apes, squirrels and marmosets, and once painted a self portrait with a badger." (Thanks, mafu.) These have the obvious pros of being fantastic, along with the obvious cons of failing to convey the fact that everything about Pro Vercelli is almost terrifyingly serious.

But you know what? I can't resist Naming Rights Park. Part of me wants to go with Dante, but even more of me loves the idea of thumbing our noses at corporate sponsorship while creating a giant in-joke for the entire town of Vercelli. What finally settled it was the ease with which I could hear Derek Rae saying, "Live tonight from Naming Rights Park, on the beautiful Via Dante Alighieri." Plus, I see no reason why we can't still call the visitor's locker room "the Inferno."

So Naming Rights Park it is. If we need a game-world explanation, let's say people in Vercelli started using the name as a joke when the first architects' drawings of the new stadium included a giant "Naming Rights" on the roof (not that that would ever happen in real life, of course), and then a group of like-minded fans opposed to the corporate takeover of soccer banded together on the internet, raised some money, and actually bought the naming rights and went with that name. We've got a 20-year naming rights deal that's only bringing us €1 million a year, so if we got a couple of rich fans on board, this isn't even totally unfeasible.

Here we are then: Naming Rights Park, an elegant, modern, soon-to-be-30,000-seat arena in the heart of old Vercelli. Technically, Siobhan was the first person to suggest the name, so she should win the contest. However, since she's clearly already in charge of the stadium's fine dining, we're going to name the ultras' curva (the north stand) after the first person who didn't enter the contest over breakfast: Kyle. Who is now the official capo of the Curva di Kyle.

Congratulations, Kyle. Just remember: Our tifos had better put those jokers from the rest of Italy to shame. We're still undefeated for all time at the Naming Rights, and we're going to need all kinds of atmosphere to keep it that way.

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express, Amazon Kindle Edition, 22 April 2020
2. Pro Vercelli: No Time for Losers
3. Pro Vercelli: Arrival

"I hate all those weathermen who tell you that rain is bad weather. There's no such thing as bad weather—just the wrong clothing."
— Billy Connolly

Hang On to Your Ego

Sport is heightened life. It is a grand parody of our need to see order and patterns in the universe, to grade its constituent parts. We go to great lengths and devise innumerable ways—points, goals, centuries, PER, VORP, votes—to class participants and determine one superior to another. In a sense, it's a convenient fiction: better, perhaps, to believe that a result reveals some incontrovertible truth than to chalk it up to an accident of history, to a decision once upon a time that a game should last ninety minutes, not eighty, or that the goalposts should be precisely eight yards apart, not twenty-three feet. Better to attribute a defeat to corrupt refereeing than to chance.

With this comes a belief in the correctness of particular attributes. Thus is experience often prized. Pace, strength and "passion", whatever that is, are totems of the Premier League. In 2004, when the world was briefly José's, it was fashionable to state that a good manager was one who took decisive and evident action, such as making substitutions before an hour had elapsed.

But these qualities are neutral. They are not possessed of any innate positivity (or negativity). Experience can dull instinct. Pace is useless if it sends you in the wrong direction, strength if you can't get close enough to your enemy to apply it, "passion" if you end up with an opponent's kneecap skewered on your studs and a three-match ban. A decisive, early substitution can be just as bad as a late one.

This matter is especially pertinent now, as a swarm of the gleeful rushes to see who can be the first to push Cristiano Ronaldo over the white cliffs of Dover. I was going to say that the vast coverage afforded Ronaldo's impending transfer to Real Madrid was reminiscent of that accompanying the death of some great personage. But that wouldn't be completely accurate—even tools turn into top blokes after death, after all. It's had a finality to it, alright: that of the judgement of a contemptible soul.

His crime is egotism. He is a wonderfully gifted player, the argument goes; why does he have to be so selfish? "Football is a team game," admonishes the Telegraph's Kevin Garside. Which, of course, it is, except when it isn't. Football is a team game is a half-truth, and therefore a half-lie. It takes something complicated and tries to reduce it to a memorable and digestible credo. Where the ultimate beauty in soccer resides is in the tension between teamwork and individualism. If it were merely an individual game, it would still be 1865. But if it were merely a team game, it would be indistinguishable from a military drill. Discipline is essential, but where football sparks into conflagration is when someone forgets it. It's when someone, consciously or unconsciously, decides to abandon the strictures and see what he can do about destroying the other team's. To do this is, at least in part, selfish. The reward is an outsized dollop of personal glory; the risk is that you get chewed up by the machine and leave your team in a perilous position.

The point is that this is needed. You can get so far as unit, as a tightly-rehearsed band; but sometimes, dammit, you need a soloist to take things to a higher plane. The key is to ensure that this looseness is properly incorporated into the team: less Trout Mask Replica, more "Marquee Moon".

In other words, selfishness is what you make of it. It is not bad—not inherently, and not unless you let it or want it to be. To map the selflessness-selfishness, teamwork-individuality and humility-arrogance spectra onto a good-bad one is to try and mangle them into a form they have no business taking. For all the claims that the sale of Ronaldo is the QED on Alex Ferguson's genius, his real achievement was realising how to use Ronaldo effectively—to have the sheer nerve to, against a strong current of received wisdom, hitch United's wagon to this particular star and watch it go. Between the pair of them, they made Ronaldo's egotism work in the most devastating way. They showed that it could be used for good, just like pace and strength and experience.

Listening to the Rain

'Twas ever thus, but somehow Ronaldo gets it in the neck where others have avoided it. Johann "Two Stripes" Cruyff got his daddy-in-law to take him to Barcelona when he lost the Ajax captaincy. But he's Dutch, therefore his arrogance and selfishness are sexy, therefore he gets a free pass. Zinedine Zidane was an OG—Original Galáctico—someone not above taking the Pérez euro. Where Ronaldo's fouls late in the Champions League final were deemed petulant acts of spoiled bratitude, Zidane was aloof and mysterious—the type you'd make an art film about—so his violent episodes have been excused, even incorporated into the idea of his genius (he even gets sent off in the movie). Dennis Bergkamp would never have scored one of the greatest World Cup goals, against Argentina in 1998, had his stamp on Siniša Mihajlović in the previous round been spotted. But he is Dutch, and mysterious, and aloof, and has probably had a film made about him in an alternative universe not so far removed from our own.

Northern Europe has long been fascinated by the Mediterranean, and this is especially so for the weather-beaten, melancholy-at-heart islands off the continent's northwestern shore. Southern Europe is eternally exotic: the object of disgust, desire, fear, admiration, envy, revulsion. It is a complex phenomenon, which says as much about the observer as the observed.

Let's take as an example a former custodian of United's no. 7 shirt. Eric Cantona was the Good Latin: stubbly of face; handsome, in a bulbous-nosed sort of way; extravagant, in an economical sort of way; superficially indifferent to his audience; given to responding to those who would trespass against his sense of Ericness by going mano a mano (well, pied à poitrine); oh, and dead philosophical (read: silent, non-smiling, French).

Ronaldo is the Bad Latin: devious; more likely to try to gain an advantage by deceiving the officials than by an honest, hearty elbow to someone's temple; has almost certainly had his bikini line done; extravagant, in an extravagant sort of way; excessively thin-skinned; responds to someone trespassing his sense of Crissyness by pouting or weeping openly. He is this close to being a stock gay South American toyboy in a crap sitcom.

Cantona is and was admired. Even the criticism of him betrayed a sense of men wanting to be him. Cantona spelled danger—exciting danger. In truth, it was a safe danger—that is precisely why it was exciting and not scary. His presence was shocking because it was new and unexpected. It was as thrilling as a boyband to an adolescent girl in the first flush of lust, and about as threatening. He was the sixth member of Take That. Meet Eric: the Moody One.

Ronaldo may look like a Lithuanian R&B superstar whose hit, "I Love You Kissy Kissy Baby", you couldn't go ten minutes without hearing in Dnipropetrovsk last summer, but he is dangerous. He threatens the established notions of what a footballer in Britain should be. His masculinity is effeminate—unabashedly, unapologetically, provocatively; and what's more, he is very, very good at what he does—unabashedly, unapologetically, provocatively. As Rod Liddle notes in the Sunday Times (in criticising Ronaldo), it is for his "decided continental-ness", his "un-Britishness", that he is reviled. It is not because Crissyness is absolutely wrong; it is because he fails to conform to a specified type. It is because he falls outside a standard set by years of reverence, because he declines to kneel before a statue whose foot has been buffed to a shine by decades of worshippers rubbing it for good fortune. It is an environment in which it is perfectly reasonable for someone—a professional writer, no less—to assert that:

…when he [Ronaldo, obviously] winked at the Portugal bench after Wayne Rooney had been sent off in the 2006 World Cup, it was as if we had looked through a window into his soul

—and, even after three years and gallons of cold blood, believe it to be true (British football writers could have taught that Jesus bloke some tricks about making a feast from scant ingredients) and fail to acknowledge that the thing Ronaldo was accused of—the thing he didn't do—would have been the expression of a universal quality that manifests itself in many different kinds of people. Ronaldo's problem, if it can be so described, is that not that he is selfish or deceitful or arrogant: it is that he is the wrong kind of selfish and deceitful and arrogant. It is that he can all too easily be cast as the villain. It's a reading as honest as the whiteboard in Vince McMahon's office.

You Are Everyone in Your Dreams

A motif of the would-be gravediggers has been regret. We are asked to lament that someone capable of such astounding feats should present such an unappetising personality. Perhaps there is some merit to this. Perhaps it would be better if he shed his Crissyness. Perhaps it would be better if he grimaced less and smiled more, if he cut out the diving, if he got a crew cut, drove a used Cortina, stopped sleeping with the type of woman beloved of nervous, Lynx-drenched thirteen-year-old boys. Perhaps then, he would be a more productive member of society and we could be more secure in our enjoyment of what we see.

Perhaps. Either way, the idea is flawed. It is based on the fallacy that the player can be separated from the person—that the two should be separated. Complaining about those bits of Ronaldo's personality that displease you and holding them up as incontestable grounds for despising him is like moving to the countryside for the scenery and complaining to the farmer next door about the smell. It is the qualities for which Ronaldo is loathed that have been at the core of what he has achieved—the stuff for which some of the grandest praise has been offered. When you admire him for bamboozling an opponent by sleight of foot, you are admiring his vanity—his tan and six-pack. When you curse him for appearing as much on the front page (and INSIDE: PAGES 4,5,7,8,9) as the back, you curse him for having a go from forty yards against Porto. When you celebrate the magic that gave United the power of flight these past few years, you celebrate the drive which took him to Madrid. Ronaldo is what Ronaldo is, just like every player is what he is—the sum of himself, no subtractions.

(Incidentally, when you praise the outstanding management which has made United the greatest English club of their time, you praise the management which effectively sold Ronaldo a year ago and kept shtum until last week, prolonging the saga of the deal that always was.)

And this is the most frustrating aspect of the consensus that has built up about Ronaldo—that it tells only part of the story. His peacockery cannot be viewed by itself; it is not its own reason. There is a massive sense of insecurity at the root of all he does. It's as if his every act is an effort to prove himself to someone—anyone, perhaps. One does not need to see him play to appreciate this—anyone who turns his hair into an Exxon Valdez recreation is, it is safe to say, trying to prove something. But take a look at the first ten minutes of the Champions League final, in which he, almost maniacally, tried to shape the outcome of the game to his will. It was as if he had taken the pre-match talk of Ronaldo vs. Messi—Who's the Greatest? to heart, and set about trying to answer the question with a flame-thrower. He seems frighteningly sensitive to having an audience. He plays as if he's watching himself on the television; he projects himself in a way that would be desperately hammy if it weren't so substantial. Lionel Messi plays like a romantic, as if divinely guided, with no seam between thought and expression. Ronaldo is the machine laid bare, the mystery shown to be made of working parts. For all the sharpness and quickness of his trickery, and for all that he is, at best, unplayable, he displays an unnerving lack of spontaneity. He plays like a computer game footballer whose animations are extraordinary and entirely pre-rendered.

The tragedy—or potentially tragic flaw—of the great individual footballer is that he can't do it all alone. Individual disciplines such as tennis or running embody a kind of dynamic purity: one person pitting their wits against another (and possibly others, depending on the sport). What intrigues about football is its dynamic clash; to return to a theme, football is a team game played by individuals. Ronaldo has left a manager who understands this and who deftly applies this understanding, to play for a team where…well, where God alone knows what awaits. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to guess that Real are investing in a belief that if you bombard your opposition with enough individual brilliance, they will succumb. How this turns out will make Real compelling viewing. What role Ronaldo plays in the scenario will make him especially compelling viewing; but then, he usually is.

The thundering tedium of restatement after restatement of Ronaldo's undesirable traits as if they alone count does a disservice to the breadth of sport. Its participants are not pantomime characters; its lines are fuzzy, its angles oblique. It's not about having a "type" against which prospective heroes can be measured and discarded; sport isn't there to churn out people you wouldn't mind your sister marrying, or to validate your worldview. If it is a quest for perfection, then it is doomed to failure. It is all about the imperfections; it is the flaws that make it interesting. Otherwise, it's just a grumpy letter to the editor about a split infinitive.

Fredorrarci writes about football at Sport Is a TV Show.

Related posts:

1. Cristiano Ronaldo and the Ballon d'Or
2. Real Madrid Hurl Their Spells of Vengeance
3. Guus Hiddink Comes Down with the Force of a Thousand Hurricanes on Cristiano Ronaldo's Hairstylist

The Confederations Cup is underway in South Africa. Despite a disappointing result by the home team, a scoreless draw with Iraq, the interest level here is steadily rising. It's helped that three of the games have been great spectacles in themselves: Spain's 5-0 demolition of New Zealand, a 4-3 thriller between Brazil and Egypt, and a tense affair between Italy and the U.S., where the World Champions had to come back from a goal down against a U.S. team playing with ten men.

I was in a mall when the festivities began on Sunday, with dancers taking the field for the opening ceremony at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. I walked by an electronics store to find a throng of people lined up outside the entrance watching the show. After a speech by newly elected president Jacob Zuma, the tournament was ready to go.

Back at my hotel I watched the match with a group of hotel employees who had taken a lengthy break to see their team. When it finished scoreless, the sentiments were mixed. The pundits on South Africa's television station Supersport laid into the much-maligned Joel Santana for coming out too defensively, a sentiment shared by many. The guys I was with bemoaned their team's bad luck on the day, which included Kagisho Dikgacoi's goal-bound header being unfortunately cleared off Iraq's goaline by a teammate. Another person I asked said the blame lay squarely with the team. "We lost it ourselves," he groaned. "We had the chances but not the goals."

By the time you read this, South Africa may already be out of the Confederations Cup. It'd be a shame, since it would be great for the tournament to have the local team around. With Bafana's struggles however, Egypt has jumped to the forefront as the local favorite.

The performance Egypt put in against Brazil showed why the African champions are so well-regarded here. Though they went down 4-3 in the end, the rallying cry was based on how well Hassan Shehata's team acquitted themselves against the South Americans. Indeed, the local response to the second day of action here revolved almost entirely around the moral victory for all of Africa brought about by Egypt's play. The global press will fawn over Brazil at any given opportunity, but the focus in South Africa was all about the performance of "brave, resilient, outstanding Egypt," as one article in Pretoria News put it the next day.

I caught the Egypt/Brazil match in my hotel, where the onlookers outnumbered the ones for Bafana's game the previous day. Afterward I headed to Loftus Versfeld to watch Italy take on the United States.

Loftus is first and foremost a rugby stadium and just over two weeks ago it hosted the 2009 Super 14 final between Pretoria's Bulls and the Chiefs of Hamilton, New Zealand. Built in 1906, the stadium has undergone some renovations recently, with some notable work being done to the roof. The underbelly of the stadium is cavernous, with high ceilings in the brick-walled locker rooms and paths going every which way.

The ends of the stadium are great, with a low, small grandstand giving way to an upper tier that features either luxury seating or offices (I couldn't determine for sure, but these were all conspicuously empty during the game). It looks a bit like Highbury's Clock End or the BayArena.

The red brick is all over the stadium, and there are uneven cobbled paths leading around a walkway that climbs to the upper levels. While the paths are wide, the entrance to the pitch is narrow and as it got closer and closer to game time, the walkways began to get congested as fans started streaming into the ground. You access your seats by walking along the pitch, a la the San Siro, and as kickoff approached, the paths quickly clogged up.

Some of the stadiums have not been particularly full so far in the tournament, but the crowd of around 30,000 at Loftus Versfeld was lively and up for the match. Despite the sign, fans were not—to put it mildly—deterred from bringing their vuvuzelas. Depending on your view, these nasal horns are either endearing as part of the local soccer culture or incredibly and incessantly annoying. The noise of the horns carries over onto the television, where it's rendered as a more or less perpetual buzz.

Indeed, people who are watching the games from TV have written me to ask about the noise: "What the hell is the continuous droning sound?" wrote one of my friends who was aggravated by the fact that the vuvuzelas blare at a constant volume, whether somebody has scored, it's halftime, or absolutely nothing is going on.

The vuvuzela outcry is mainly coming from those, like my friend, who are watching the tournament abroad. In the stadium, the fans love them. It's one of those things you bemoan until you actually are able to try it: think laser pointer. On TV the horns conflict with the commentary, among other things, but in the ground the ambient noise is part of the atmosphere. It is undoubtedly less abrasive in person than it is via satellite.

Somebody blew one about three feet from my face as I was rushing around the stadium during the pre-game, and I cursed the thing as my ears rang. Later, though, I enjoyed watching a few guys near my section take turns surprising other members of their group with vuvuzela blasts from incredibly close range. When in Rome, I guess.

Just as the tournament was beginning I read of the contingency plan for police to take over security for the event. It's hard to make a judgment on something like this without an actual security problem in the stadium taking place, but my experience at Loftus was fine. As usual, there are kinks to work out—somebody tells you to go the wrong way, doesn't let you into a place you think you're supposed to be, or you turn the corner into a fence—but you always get these type of brief hold-ups as the volunteers and security detail work through their first night at an event. I suppose that is not the most ringing endorsement, either, but hopefully nothing worse develops over the course of the next week.

This is a huge few days for sport in South Africa.  The Springboks are set to begin their test match with the British & Irish Lions on Saturday. In fact, the Lions played last night in Port Elizabeth, a stadium that was going to be used for the Confederations Cup before delayed construction caused its removal from the venue list. Additionally, the South African cricket team has advanced to the Twenty20 World Cup semifinal in England .

First up, however, Bafana Bafana are fighting for their Confed Cup lives against New Zealand. I won't be at the stadium, but we'll see if a vuvuzela or two makes an appearance in the hotel…

Related posts:

1. Notes from South Africa: Final Thoughts
2. Notes from South Africa
3. South Africa's World Cup Stadiums Are $300 Million Over Budget

[Editor's Note: Anders Wollek will be providing coverage from South Africa throughout the Confederations Cup. This is real, people.]

There is no easy way to get to South Africa. No matter how you slice it, it's a difficult journey. When I boarded the plane, my immediate dilemma revolved around my plan of attack to combat jet lag – would I sleep at the beginning of the flight? Stay up all night before getting on the plane? Try to power through for the first 10 hours and sleep for the last five? In the end, any such planning for a flight like that is futile. I elected for the ad hoc method of sleeping at any point I could, ultimately ensuring I stumbled off the plane still in a daze induced by red wine, Klipdrift and muscle relaxants.

O.R. Tambo Airport in Johannesburg had ostensibly undergone some renovations since I last saw it in 2007. It was hard to tell, especially from the outside where construction is still ongoing. Confederations Cup signage and LOC volunteers adorned in official track suits pervaded the terminal. As I walked through to locate my bag, it became clear that the tournament set to begin next week was not the biggest sporting event on incoming travelers' minds.

The British & Irish Lions Rugby team is touring South Africa, playing a series of matches against local club sides before facing the South Africa three times in the coming few weeks. Apparently 40,000 are making their way from the UK to catch part of the tour. At the airport, the empty Confederations Cup Fan Information tables looked lonely as rugby fans streamed through the baggage claim and out into the chilly Jo'burg morning.
Brian,

It's still a few days out from the beginning of the tournament, but the situation at the airport probably won't change too much. Somebody told me that 70 percent of the tickets have been sold for the Confederations Cup, 95 percent of which are local. People aren't traveling for this tournament, but that does not mean they won't be paying attention.

The Confederations Cup generally gets some mild attention and there are usually pretty good teams playing games at a time when there's not much else to watch as international soccer goes. This year should be different, but not because of the football. While the field should produce some interesting games – particularly in the brutal Group B -  people will be paying attention to this tournament to see how South Africa handles it. It's a World Cup tuneup in every sense, with more pressure on the host country than any team on the field. It's an international soccer tournament where soccer is not the biggest story line.

A day after I arrived, I headed to an international friendly between New Zealand and Italy. It was the teams' final tune-up before opening the tournament against Spain and the United States, respectively. The match was played at Super Stadium in Atteridgeville. It was a miserable night; cold and pissing down rain. As I arrived it looked like not many people had braved the weather conditions to see the game. After all, it was about as meaningless as friendlies can be, especially when you saw the team Italy trotted out there.

When Marcello Lippi sends out a team at Loftus Versfeld on Monday, it could contain as many as eight different names. So the game against the Kiwis wasn't exactly a dress rehearsal for the Azzurri. In reality Italy probably knew that other teams would be watching and, as I read later at U.S. Soccer's Twitter page, it turned out they were.

So a meaningless game on a rainy, cold night. Not too exciting. In fact the biggest form of entertainment came right after the kickoff, when a number of fans streamed in through the gates and headed up to the VIP section. I'm not sure why these fans were late, but they all had rudimentary stickers reading "VIP" and swarmed up onto the cold terrace during the first 10 minutes. I wanted to see the lineup sheet so at halftime I snuck into the press box, or outdoor-press-bench as it was. It took a little determination, but nothing out of the ordinary. I'd expect tougher security at the actual Confederations Cup games.

In the end the crowd wasn't too bad. Italy had a pretty good following, as usual, and some guy kept waving his giant Italian flag with little regard for my face. The soccer on display was awful. Italy, who won 4-3, never bothered to move out of first gear. Backup Italian goalkeeper Marco Amelia put in a truly pathetic display between the posts, forcing his teammates to half-heartedly come from behind three times (if that is even possible) in order to get the win.

When I was here last, the enthusiasm of the locals was infectious and things haven't changed much in that regard. It's easy to get frustrated in this country, when matters, however minor, don't go to plan. It happens often, but you have to take it in stride or risk getting fed up and being miserable. At least one thing that you can always rely on is the nice attitude of the people.

I asked a few about the tournament and while everybody was unanimously looking forward to opening day, when South Africa takes on Iraq from Ellis Park, they were equally skeptical of their own team's chances. The struggles of Bafana Bafana have been well documented, from the protracted Benni McCarthy saga to the recent dispute concerning players' wages. The nation's most popular team has a lot to play for and Friday's headline on the back page of Pretoria News said "Bafana Must Restore Lost Pride."

One man I asked just shook his head. He refused to give a prediction for South Africa in the Confederations Cup, but would say that he agreed with McCarthy, who is the nation's all-time leading scorer, being dropped. "He's a star player but he wants to pick and choose his games. We don't need his type."

"Maybe this will teach him a lesson," he added with a tinge of hopefulness. Its doubtful that the whole dispute is at its end is anyway.

The feelings of doubt aren't extended to the actual running of the tournament and the people I spoke to state unequivocally that the country is ready. "We've had the Rugby World Cup, the Cricket World Cup and just this year the IPL," said one woman. She also said that the feeling that South Africa isn't prepared to host a tournament like this (or the one in a year) is solely perpetuated by people who are on the outside looking in. "This is not just about South Africa but about our whole continent," she told me. "It will be a great event."

As we move towards opening day of the tournament, it is clear the excitement, at least within the country, is building. So while those tables at the airport won't be getting much traffic, at least people will care about the Confed Cup from within South Africa. And regardless of what the locals say, there will probably still be that skepticism from those following the tournament on their televisions around the world.

Related posts:

1. Notes from South Africa: Final Thoughts
2. Notes from South Africa: The Forbidden Vuvuzela
3. South Africa's World Cup Stadiums Are $300 Million Over Budget

The win against Treviso means that, despite feeling harried and pinched for most of the season, we actually finished with one more point than we earned the season before. It also means that we went undefeated for the season, in all competitions, in our new stadium. In fact, we have yet to lose our first game there. I loved the Silvio Piola, but there's something about the new place that tells me we're going to love it even more.

And on that note, we need to give it a name. I propose a contest. Submit your entries and/or votes for entries in the comments or by emailing contest@runofplay.com. I'll pick the winner (I will take votes and arguments heavily into account) and announce the results on Monday. The prize: if you come up with the winning entry, the section of the stadium where the hardcore fans sit (stand, I should say) will be named after you. That's right, Doug Cobbleplunge: this is is your chance to see the Doug Cobbleplunge End become a reality.

There's a lot to be said about where we are as a team, about possible offseason moves (we'll need a new right back for sure), about youth development, about the feeder club situation, about the staff. But this isn't the time for any of that. There are moments in life when you owe it to the forces that made you to stop and take in what you've done. Like you're only the representative of a million factors and confluences that all flowed together into what happened, but because you're the representative you have to pause and go over it all again so that everyone knows where they are. You have to reflect.

We won every competition we entered this year except the Coppa Italia, all the way back to the no-consequences Silvio Piola Cup. We've got the Supercoppa Italiana, the UEFA Super Cup, the European Cup, and the Serie A trophy all sitting over the fireplace, and the shine when we look in their direction is a thing to soothe your soul. We're it, now. We're the club. We're not the richest club on earth, and we're not the top-ranked club by some computer coefficient, but it's known. Everyone knows it. We may not be on top of the mountain for long, but we made it here, and no one can ever take our flag down or tell us we don't understand the view.

Pro Vercelli is a club with a deep history, as you know, and until this season, we were always defined by that history; we were always "the club that was struggling to recapture the greatness it had lost." We're not giving up one iota of our mission to live up to the past, but now our fans can point to the present as a thing of glory all on its own. If anything, we can respect the past more, because it's no longer a torment or an unreachable ideal or a source of alienated pride. It's something we can identify with out of our own experience. We know how it felt.

So that's what all this means, at the moment. It won't get much better than this. Expectations will rise, accomplishments will be taken for granted, egos will get out of control. That's just human nature, and I know that there's no use wishing it was otherwise if I plan to keep the club afloat. I'll just have to manage it. But for now, we know that where we are is somewhere special. We remember what it's like not to be here, and we can appreciate what here is both for itself and in light of everything we did to reach it.

How many times in football do you honestly get to say that? How many times in life?

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: Contest Results
2. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express, Amazon Kindle Edition, 29 August 2017
3. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express, Amazon Kindle Edition, 22 April 2020

Welcome to Pretty Much the Exact Opposite of the Thunderdome. Okay, here's the deal. It's 2019. A dozen years after Twitter (not a fad, by the way) transformed the very way we think about information, the power of social networking is being harnessed at all times to redefine who we are and how we interact in a world of dynamic choices. The new interconnectedness is rebuilding smarter communities by leveraging us from the ground up, 24 hours a day. Niagara Falls is being run right through Facebook now. It is also possible to Like something directly in the real world.

One consequence of this is that the latest media-rights agreement between UEFA and Snirp (the international sports-content behemoth that was formed in 2014 in the now-legendary merger between ESPN and Stephen Fry) contains a provision stipulating that managers in the Champions League final are required to keep a running MindJeeves of the event for people ("Woosters," in the parlance of our times) who are stuck following the match on an approved GSM device, while updating their Allegiance Lists at work.

The bad news is that having to keep a running account of Pro Vercelli's Champions League final against Roma will almost certainly make me a less effective manager. The good news is that the phone they gave me is capable of piloting a backhoe with its thoughts. And believe me, in 2019, that's more significant than you might imagine.

Refresh this page for the latest updates.

Prospectus. It's happening. Pro Vercelli are facing Roma in the 2019 Champions League final. We'll be bringing you the action LIVE, as the match unfolds, as destiny reveals herself, as History falls like rain. The world begins at 6pm BST. That's 1pm US Eastern time. That is one o'clock pm today.

Game Background. I'll be playing the match with highlights set to "extended" and the match speed turned up to around 70%. I'll pause the action whenever I need to write an entry, so I'm not, you know, missing all kinds of goals while I'm struggling to come up with a synonym for "pass." Hopefully the whole thing will take about as long as a regular match. I can't vouch for my state of my mind at the end of it.

I won't be able to add video highlights in real time because the videos take too long to encode, but I'll put them in after the game, almost as if they were being shown on the Snirp Sports Evening Roundup (which everyone watches religiously, largely because it's anchored by puppets). So check back later for that. Onward.

Prematch Considerations. For us, the biggest news is that Michael Dogan is suspended for the match, so we're forced to play the game of our lives without our:

1. Captain
2. Player who has the most goals
3. Player who has the most assists
4. Player who has the highest average rating
5. Only good left back

Other than that, things are fine! Oh, wait, except that Teixeira, our second-leading scorer, who got us to this point with his away-leg hat-trick against Inter, has been out for three weeks with a hamstring injury and will be making his first start since then tonight. My assistant Roberto Colapietro describes him as simultaneously crushed to dust by the pressure and arrogant/complacent because of our recent run of results. Should be an interesting team talk.

One piece of good news: Roma are without their right winger Pierre Jost, the team's second-leading scorer, who's down for two months with a hip injury. Other than that, they're fit and ready to go.

Lineups. I might have out-thought myself on this one. Rather than playing David in Dogan's place at left back and giving Mark Linnane the start on the left wing, I'm keeping David on the wing and replacing Dogan with our Brazilian youth player Leandro. His inexperience and lack of physical strength make him a potential liability, but Roma's right winger is also a backup (albeit one with 30 caps for France), and if Leandro can hold the position I'll have Linnane on the bench as a fresh substitute at striker in case Teixeira falls apart.

Roma are fielding their strongest available starting lineup, as you'd expect. Cavalli is the Italy goalkeeper; their midfield duo of Nelles and Oner is one of the best in the world; and their striker Alberto Cairo probably is the best in the world, at least in terms of raw ability:

Their left winger, Manuel, isn't much of a scoring threat (Finishing 12), but he's blazing fast and deadly with a cross. Reuven's lack of pace is a potential weakness at the back, but other than that, they're not a team with a lot of obvious vulnerabilities. In any case, we're running roughly the same formation, and just looking at the lineups shows that this is a heavyweight fight:

Pro Vercelli: Larsen; Leandro, Ferjancic, Ibrahimovic, Kulic; Sammarco, Martini, Mogi; David, Contini; Teixeira
Subs: Linnane, Arteaga, Rubino, Cherif, Mendoza, Caprioli, Bloch

Roma: Cavalli; Pavoni, Reuven, Ne, Orlando; Cruz; Nelles, Oner; Manuel, Lefevre; Cairo
Subs: Manetta, Ronaldo, Cuomo, Jawo, Tedesco, Zenga, Costa

Tactics. Everything about this season has made me skittish, but I'm not here to act scared. I told the players in the team talk to win this for the fans in Vercelli, and at the very least we mean to give them a show. We're spreading the formation across the width of the pitch and aiming for fluid build-up play based on movement, a slow tempo, and lots of short passes. Ideally, we'll work the ball down the flanks and win some corners—maybe not the best strategy while Dogan (our corner-taker) is out, but then, Roma have fairly short defenders. In any case, the fullbacks are pressing forward, so we'll have to hope the Ferj and Ibrahimovic are able to contain Cairo and Nelles on their own.

Into the Bright Lights. We're coming out of the tunnel now into the beautiful Estádio do Dragão…it's a warm Portuguese evening…we're lining up for the anthems…I can only imagine how typing on this thing makes me look on TV…

The Chommmmm-pyonnss!

1 min And we're off, as Teixeira knocks the ball back to Ibrahimovic. We make a decent start, stringing nine passes together before David tries to dribble and has the ball carved out of his side by Cruz.

2 min We've had almost all the possession in these early moments, but have struggled to advance the ball out of our own half. Now, however, Sammarco pushes it up to Martini, who fires it out to David on the left wing. David beats Orlando and sends the cross into the six-yard box. Cavalli just gets his hands around it. Contini was lurking, menacingly, on the other side.

4 min GOAL!!! @#%$!!!!! (Manuel, 1-0 Roma) So much for that bright start. Also, so much for my theory that Manuel "isn't much of a scoring threat." Orlando beats David to a long ball and heads it to Oner in midfield. Oner forwards it to Nelles, who plays a simple pass to Manuel on Roma's left flank. Kulik should have it covered, but Manuel makes a move that literally shivers Kulik down to his most basic sense of self, rounds the corner, and drives in toward the goal. Ibrahimovic could stop him, but elects to defend against the cross and takes himself out of the play. Sammarco sees what's happening, but can't get there till Manuel has already fired in a low shot that slips between Larsen and the near post. Ugly, ugly defending from my team.

7 min Kulik, whose soul is still somewhere to the left of his body after the move Manuel just inflicted on him, inbounds the ball to Mogi, who immediately loses it to Oner in midfield. Young Leandro makes my heart swell by taking it straight back from Oner and bundling it ahead to David, who makes a threatening run down the left and finally wins a corner off Oner's legs. Contini sends in a very good ball, but Ibrahimovic knocks it down with his hand and draws the whistle. Silly.

10 min I'm trying to decide whether the goal radically showed up my tactics or whether it was a fluke that shouldn't warrant major adjustments. I'm leaning toward the latter conclusion—statistically the match has been very even so far, with Pro Vercelli having a slight advantage in both possession and passing, and all things considered I think the odds are with pressing forward rather than going all cautious because we're behind. Also, if Kulik had only defended the ball rather than the white rabbit tromping through his fantasies, we wouldn't be in this predicament.

14 min Manuel rounds Kulik and charges down the byline again, but this time he tries to cross to Cairo and Leandro heads it away. Sterling performance from Leandro in these first fifteen minutes. Kulik, on the other hand…I'm sending him an instruction not to mark Manuel so tightly, in the hope that if he leaves himself some recovery space he won't be so easy to beat.

16 min Our most promising attack of the game so far. Sammarco intercepts a throw-in and heads the ball to David, who inaugurates a beguiling string of passes outside the Roma area. Leandro, coming forward down the left, threads the ball to David in the area, who sends in a high shot across the face of the goal. Slightly too high, unfortunately. But encouraging.

21 min Manuel tries another run down the left touchline, but Kulik is giving him more of a cushion this time and is able to cut him off. Score one for my minor adjustment.

22 min Cruz pushes the ball ahead to Cairo, who darts past Ibrahimovic and tries a speculative shot from about 35 yards. It sails harmlessly away. Ibrahimovic missed his interception that time, but in general our defenders have kept Cairo pretty well in check.

24 min It's nervy out there. We're threatening periodically, if not exactly laying siege to their goal, but Roma are keeping their back four fairly deep and flat since they took the lead, which is making it hard for Teixeira to find space to exploit or even to get the ball. Teixeira has been absolutely nowhere so far, come to think of it, says the manager who coolly remembers that he has Linnane waiting on the bench.

25 min As I suspected, Teixeira's motivation rating is "looking complacent." In the Champions League final! God, I love talented youngsters with temperamental personalities.

26 min GOAL!!!! We're back!!! (Sammarco, 1-1) And it comes out of nowhere! Pavoni fouls Contini near the right edge of the box, about 30 yards back from the byline. While the tall players jockey for position in the area, Mogi rolls the free kick behind him to Sammarco, who's unmarked 35 yards from the goal. Sammarco takes a giant step forward and blasts the ball into a channel that almost magically opens before it. Ray Hudson, who by 2019 has taken his rightful place as a Champions League commentator, is on TV talking about the parting of the Red Sea. Back of the net. Priceless.

30 min The match is settling into a deeper groove now that the score is level. The stats still look very even (Roma have a 52-48% possession advantage), but we're spending more time with the ball in a dangerous place. I've been watching the player motivations, and hilariously, the Ferj's jumped from "playing okay" to "playing with confidence" the instant he hit Oner with a hard tackle that brought a physio on. Once they taste blood. You know how it is.

34 min We put together a great spell of possession—the ball's whizzing back and forth across the Roma area; the Roma defenders are desperately heading it clear, but always right to our fullbacks—but Teixeira can't lose his marker. Contini finally takes a shot and sends it 1100 yards above the crossbar.

36 min A painful near miss! This is bizarre—we've almost exactly duplicated Sammarco's goal of 10 minutes earlier. Pavoni fouls Contini, this time a bit further to the right of the area, and Mogi again slides the free kick to an unmarked Sammarco, this time a bit closer to the goal. Sammarco absolutely lays into the ball and sends it at the top left corner, but it richochets off the post and goes out of play. Sammarco looks really into this, though; I'm switching his "long shots" to "often."

39 min Teixeira finally finds some open space and takes the ball on a throw-in from Kulik, but he's all the way over on the right flank. Instead of dribbling, he sends in one of the worst crosses I've ever seen: slow, bouncing, aimed at no one, and angling away from the goal. It skips harmlessly out of bounds. Behind me, I hear Linnane clearing his throat.

42 min Roma work the ball through the center of the pitch, but as soon as Lefevre tries to break free down the right, Leandro slides in and knocks the ball into touch. The kid is earning a 6.9 for the game so far and is completely justifying my faith in him.

It's Halftime. I'm off to talk to the team and draw some things on a board. Back as soon as I finish my mandated interview with the Snirp sideline puppet.

Halftime II. Not a classic match by any means, but given the absence of Dogan, I'm happy with our performance. I'm not making any major halftime changes, just trying to fire up the team with an encouraging talk (Leandro gets "Pleased" and Teixeira gets "Disappointed") and hoping for more of the same. It would be easy to overreact to the occasion and try to micromanage at this point, but I suspect this is the kind of game in which our best chance is to trade body blows and hope we find an opening rather than to dream the fight out of existence with tactics. I'll keep looking for opportunities and small improvements, in other words, but the players are going to have to win this, and I'm not going to drastically revise our approach until Roma convince me that they can find a weakness in it.

45 min We're back. No substitutions on either side. I'm trying to feel out Roma's halftime adjustments…

47 min They look a lot more methodical in the early minutes of this half. The midfielders casually move the ball around the center circle, finally frustrating Martini to the point that he takes down Oner and earns the first yellow card of the match. Easy, kid. Eaasy.

53 min Another near miss for Pro Vercelli! Also another touch for Teixeira, but he's well covered and passes back to Leandro on the left edge of the pitch around the midfield line. Leandro sends the ball forward to David, who almost replicates Manuel's goal from the fourth minute, beating Orlando to the byline, bearing down on goal, and then smacking a low near-post shot from point-blank range. Unlike Jacob Larsen, however, Cavalli is able to stop it. He can't hold on to it, though, and it rolls out for a corner.

54 min GOAL!!! (Ibrahimovic, 2-1 Pro Vercelli) Sammarco takes the corner and sends a high ball into the six-yard box. Ibrahimovic leaps over Cairo and heads the ball past Cavalli, straight into the back of the net. After everything we've been through over the years—the incessant transfer demands, the failed captaincy, the awards, the championship, the bizarre behavior, down to the amazing way he just stopped scoring goals from corners this year (until now, at least)—this somehow feels like a culminating moment.

56 min We are 34 minutes from being champions of Europe.

60 min GOAL!!!! It burns!!! It burns!!! (Nelles, 2-2) Okay, well, now we're 30 minutes from being sent to extra time. Six minutes after we take our first lead, Roma cancel it out as Lefevre tricks the ball past Leandro (he's had a great night, but he got so badly beaten on that play that it's almost impossible to describe without using leetspeak) and crosses for Nelles, who slips between Sammarco and Kulik to knock it into the net. Where were our central defenders?

60 min Watching the replay, I see that the Ferj was marking Oner—fair enough—while Ibrahimovic was standing stock still, in perfect isolation, on the edge of the area, contemplating the action. Scoring from a corner for the first time in months means not having to defend, I guess.

61 min Roma nearly threaten again as Manuel takes a long pass and tries to duck into an opening in the middle of the park. Fortunately, Kulik is still playing off him, and has time to react, although not without fouling him. Lefevre winds up with the ball in the area after the free kick, but shanks the shot to the point that Larsen just ignores it. I barely even had a minor heart attack—that's how badly he missed.

65 min Two adjustments before I hit a full-blown panic. First, I'm dialing down our attacking mentality a bit and looking to play a slightly more cold-blooded game: narrower width, less aggressive closing down, longer passing. Roma have had some success with their patient approach after halftime, and the match feels like it could tip their way at any moment. Second, I'm sending in Linnane for Teixeira. Teixeira is the hammer of might when he's got his boots laced correctly, but tonight he's out of practice, overawed by the occasion, and retreating into his pose of arrogant detachment as a result. Linnane hasn't impressed me as a striker—he's a better winger by far—but Teixeira has been our worst player (his rating is 6.2) and I'd love to see a striker in our shirt even just challenge Cavalli.

67 min Cairo tries to cross from the right, but Leandro comprehensively stuffs him. A minute later, Lefevre tries the same thing with the same result. Leandro's a really promising player, but his stats are not that good—he's just playing out his head tonight.

70 min Pavoni knocks the ball to Cairo in the area, but Cairo fails to connect with it and it rolls straight to Jacob Larsen. An anxious green tinge is settling over the game as we enter the last twenty minutes.

75 min Roma win two corners in quick succession, but we easily deal with them both.

77 min David sends a long ball to Linnane, who's not quite able to control it—but he does win the corner off the legs of Richard Nelles.

77 min GOAL!!!! AGAIN!!!! (Ibrahimovic, 3-2 Pro Vercelli) I don't really know how to describe this moment. "There's pandemonium in the stands," the announcer screams, but that doesn't quite do justice to the thunderous event. Ray Hudson is talking about the oceans swallowing the pyramids and the skies falling and the stars crowning the head of the Colossus of Rhodes, and that's probably closer. But if you're not a Pro Vercelli fan, there's probably no easy way to understand what this means. Ibrahimovic has been simultaneously the idol and the nightmare of the club for years, he's stuck in his worst season in memory, no one knows whether to cheer for him or to pray for the hour of his death, and now he's scored two second-half goals in the biggest match in the club's history and possibly won them the European Cup. I can't even imagine what's happening in Vercelli right now. The fans in the stadium are thirty feet in the air over their seats and I can barely feel my fingers to type this.

80 min Just catching my breath enough to say that it was Sammarco who sent in the corner, and Ibrahimovic once again beat Cairo to the header. Oner was in a position to defend the ball, but didn't react fast enough. Ibra knocked it straight into the ground in the back right corner of the net.

80 min Roma have made two substitutions after the goal, bringing off Oner (who's picked up a knock) for their defensive midfielder Ronaldo (?) and Nelles for their 34-year-old has-been Dino Cuomo (whose strength rating is 5). Not a formidable set of substitutions.

81 min Another Roma substitution: the 6'4" Italy international Roberto Costa comes on for Marcelo Cruz. He's a dangerous player, especially in the air.

83 min We've switched to a super-defensive, game-killing outlook with the entire midfield staying back. The clock is our best friend at this point. I know that's a cliche, but I'm dizzy; that's all I've got.

86 min Kulik is hurt and has to come out of the game. That means moving the Ferj to right back, and sending in 18-year-old Riccardo Caprioli to play centerback. Caprioli's been solid in his 15 or so appearances for us this season, but if you're wondering whether I was planning to finish the Champions League final with three teenagers on the pitch, the answer is no, I wasn't. While I'm at it, I take out Kenji Mogi and replace him with Davide Rubino, a grittier and more defense-minded presence in the center of midfield.

87 min Roma are flinging long balls forward, but the Ferj is cutting them off in the air every time. He's straying a little too far into the middle of the pitch for my liking, but it's working so far…

90 min Near miss for Pro Vercelli! With entire Roma team focused on going forward, Linnane gets free in the area and aims a powerful shot at Cavalli. It's too high, but it's more than Teixeira managed tonight.

90 min Three minutes of added time…

91 min Pavoni scythes down Contini, who…needs a few minutes and a talk with the physio to recover. I'm not asking; I don't want to know. I'm sure he's legitimately hurt. Anyway, Pavoni is booked for the incident. It's no more than he deserves; he's been hacking at Contini all night.

93 min Ostentatiously checking my watch…

94 min OSTENTATIOUSLY CHECKING MY WATCH…But it does no good, as Roma win a late corner!

94 min Pavoni sends in a hanging ball…Contini forgets to mark Reuven, who gets his head to it…and it goes floating over the crossbar. That was painfully close. The stadium is spinning a bit…

96 min Pointing to my watch and berating the sideline assistants…

97 min Pro Vercelli have won the Champions League!

Dazed Initial Reaction. It's almost impossible for me to adopt the perspective of a neutral in this situation. But from the perspective of a neutral…what a match! Roma had a lead and we came back; we had a lead and Roma came back; finally we scored the winning goal through our disgraced ex-captain and former European Defender of the Year. That's drama! Not that I would have been disappointed if we'd managed to win 4-0.

Dazed Initial Reaction, World Media Edition. "The game of football was the winner tonight," the puppet is saying on Snirp.

Final Match Stats. Very close. They had 53% of the possession, but we managed two more shots on goal (11 to 9). We both completed around 70% of our passes. In fairness to our team, we looked more dangerous with the ball more often, and while it was a match decided on a knife's edge, no one can say we didn't deserve to win.

Ibrahimovic finished with a rating of 9 and was named the man of the match. Leandro finished with a 7.2, after winning all eight of his tackles, intercepting the ball five times, and winning one key header (he's 5'6" and has a jumping score of 3, by the way). I'm not sure whose performance I'm happier with tonight.

Postgame. Let's go to the inbox.

VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS TO COME. Check back within the next couple of hours. In the meantime, I have to go congratulate the team, get a medal hung around my neck, and maybe spray some champagne on some people. Thanks for reading. Pro Vercelli are European champions!

—
Very brief song clips: 1. The Raincoats, "Mean"; 2. Sam Cooke, "Sad Mood"; 3. Cotton Jones, "Gotta Cheer Up"; 4. The Coral, "Dreaming of You"; 5. Forest Fire, "I Make Windows"; 6. Merle Haggard, "The Fightin' Side of Me"; 7. Your 33 Black Angels, "Psycho on Your Side"

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2. Pro Vercelli: The Europa League Final
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Because of the strangeness of the Serie A schedule, our last two games don't take place until after the end of the Champions League. So before we know about the scudetto, there's another small/utterly terrifying matter to attend to…

We didn't have any real trouble against Benfica in the semifinal. We went up 3-0 in the home leg before conceding two late goals to make things (sigh) interesting. In the away leg, their striker Rafael decided to kick the Ferj during a stoppage of play and was sent off in the 30th minute. In the 56th minute, a mighty shot from David ricocheted off their right back Yoav Benado and went into the net, and David scored again in the 69th minute to seal the 5-2 aggregate win.

The very, very bad news from the second leg is that Dogan picked up a yellow card literally as I was moving to substitute him, meaning that he'll be suspended for the final. Also, Teixeira pulled his hamstring five minutes into the first leg and hasn't played since. He should be ready to go for the final, but after three weeks on the bench I'm not sure how effective he'll be. And since Vrancken is cup-tied and ineligible for the Champions League, we may not have a viable striker.

The whole team looks slightly shell-shocked at the thought of playing the biggest European game of their lives without their captain—doubly so as Ibrahimovic will be the one wearing the armband—and even though we've historically done well against Roma, I am slow-roasting in anxiety about this match. They're on a high after squashing Milan 2-0 in their semifinal, and I'm not sure our win over them in the Europa League final last season, or even at the Olimpico in February, will have much bearing on the game this Saturday.

Which is right around the corner, so we'll know soon enough. For now, it's time to think about tactics. We've been waiting for this moment for more than 10 years—you could even say 100—and I don't want to let it slip.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Check back around 1pm US Eastern time TODAY for a live blog of the final.

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For those of us Real fans, Madrid is more than a club—it is a way of life. The past few months have kept us up at night, sleepless, restless, and searching for answers. One fundamental question plagues us: what went wrong? I sifted through ancient runes, believing the past holds the key to the future, but no silver bullet flashed into my cerebrum. One night, a strange dream offered me a fresh perspective.

I passed out on my bed from exhaustion, and soon entered a familiar yet uneasy world. I was at the Bernabeu Stadium, in the bleachers, at night, alone, and it was freezing cold. The ominous silence pressed against my face; I reflected. Here was the sight of La Quinta del Butre, of Hugol's torrid tackles and Champions league victories! A hand grasped my shoulder, bringing me back from thought. It was Raul Gonzalez.

Without saying a word, I stood up, he motioned for me to follow him, and I did. We left the bleachers and entered cavernous hallways, with hints of moonlight reflecting on trophy cases replete with gold and silver. We walked past the hall of fame and the Madrid tienda, until we came to a strong oak door, above which a crest read Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. Raul opened his mouth and spoke: "Only the damned may enter here, but feel no mercy for those you see. I will take you as far as I can."

Raul opened the door and we entered a dark tunnel. A warm breeze caressed my face, growing stronger with each step. We soon came to a clearing, a dense forest, and in the distance I saw four men sitting around a table and playing cards. I was shocked to recognize them as Alfredo Di Stefano, Santiago Bernabeu Yeste, Ferenc Puskas, and Emilio Brutageno! Raul sensed my discomfort and put a hand on my shoulder: "The damned cannot hear you, but fear not, these men played before the Angels fell from the sky in 1995. They did not know sin, nor could they have known it."

Raul then again started to walk and I again followed, terrified as we entered the dense forest. I swore the trees had eyes and the pitch black sky had swallowed the stars and moon. I soon heard shouts of agony, and then, suspended in the air, I saw none other than Cristiano Ronaldo! Branches pierced his eyes and held him in the air. Small, beautiful, and blonde valkyries flew about and tickled him incessantly. If he suppressed his laughter, he shook and suffered, but if he opened his mouth, the valkyrie turned into a crow and picked his flesh! Raul again spoke: "God's wrath is reserved for those who waste his gifts, regardless of material success. A wandering eye can do no man good."

I was sick to my stomach, but followed Raul as we continued on. The trees gave way to a desert, and in the distance a tower loomed. I saw an elderly man running up and down the stone staircase which wrapped around the outside of the tower. Closer, I recognized him as Ramon Calderon! I also saw a single-file stack of pesetas, at least two stories tall. Ramon ran into the tower, came outside, a coin in hand, climbed the staircase, and carefully played the peseta on top. Surely this was no severe punishment, I thought. Then, lightning cracked and the wind grew fierce; Raul grabbed my arm. A vicious sandstorm clouded all sight, but I could hear Ramon's cries. When it cleared, I saw Ramon on his knees, bleeding all over. Pesetas littered the ground. Raul felt no need to speak, and instead nudged me forward.

We traversed the desert until coming to a stream that soon turned into a river. I saw a fairy docked at the other side, with a long-bearded man onboard clutching a pole, and a long line of people on the shore. Raul grabbed my arm, forcing me to walk closely alongside him so as to obstruct the man's view.

I followed his lead, and we eventually came to a dense marsh. I saw a man, half-submerged, feverishly washing a white cloth. As we got closer, I recognized him as Florentino Perez, and he was washing a Madrid jersey. Such a light punishment, I thought. Then, Perez turned over the jersey and bit into the last name sewn on back. Blood soaked the white cloth, but he could not peel off the name. He sobbed and cried. I saw his mouth, toothless and covered in blood. A demon surfaced and violently lashed Perez with his pointed tail. The demon then submerged, and Perez returned to washing the blood red jersey. Raul again motioned for us to continue.

We trudged along the marsh, and mountains rose in the distance. The temperature dropped as we descended through caverns and peaks. We came to a valley, with a large frozen lake in center. Lucifer, with his enormous wings and three heads, sat center. Each head chewed on a person. The left head chewed on Samuel Eto'o, the right head chewed on Nicolas Anelka, and in the center, Lucifer's sharp teeth feasted on Luis Figo as the devil's claws plunged into his back. I was shocked. Figo had left Barcelona for Madrid! Raul spoke. "When the Angels fell in 1995, some chose wealth, some chose sides, but others chose only themselves. To betray a friend for an enemy is wrong, but to betray an ideal for anything, friend or foe, is damnation. Eternal damnation."

Raul then began to scale the steep slope, and I followed. About twenty feet from the summit, he stopped and spoke. "I can take you no further. My sin is not to see clearly to the end—I could walk over a ledge with no knowledge. Do not worry, though, another has come for you." A light appeared in the sky and grew intense, blinding me. When my sight returned, standing at my side was none other than Bernd Schuster! He extended his hand and I took it, tempted by the path to paradise…

Elliott Tucker is the editor of Futfanatico.com.

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But for now, given the impossibility of seeing the future (Ronaldo and Kaká could be brilliant together, as hard as that is to imagine now) and the sense that we're still in the outer rings of what's about to become a very tight and very terrifying spiral, I think all we can say is what Paul Wilson said in the Guardian Sport Blog this morning, with understatement that just about catches the right tone:

one suspects if things ever start to go wrong they could go wrong quite badly.

And maybe this, from Spenser:

With that all mad and furious he grew,
Like a fell mastiffe through enraging heat,
And curst, and band, and blasphemies forth threw,
Against his Gods, and fire to them did threat,
And hell vnto him selfe with horrour great.
Thenceforth he car'd no more, which way he strooke,
Nor where it light, but gan to chaufe and sweat,
And gnasht his teeth, and his head at him shooke,
And sternely him beheld with grim and ghastly looke.

Oh, and this:

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3. Real Madrid Is Like Tottenham, Only Louder

Every season has a personality, and this season has been pressing, hard-nosed, and resolute. Last year was like a race on a beach, not far from civilization—you could see the umbrellas just over the rise. This year's been like forging across some frigid mountain pass at the top of the world and enduring the blows of nature. Scoring's down, injuries are up, defenses are scornful, aspirations are cautious, the immodest are crushed. With five games left, we're winning the league, but it's an airless, precarious existence. Every team has it in for us, and we're grateful for every moment of life.

We've spent much of the season alternating at the top of the table with Milan, but they've become a cautionary example and tumbled into third after reaching for too much, too quickly. They've only lost twice in 33 games, but they've drawn 11 times and have finally been passed by an Inter team that takes its wins where it can find them and knows how to survive, even with five losses. We aren't leading the league in either scoring (fifth-place Parma have 11 more goals than we do) or defending (Milan have allowed just 19 goals in 33 games), but we've clung to the ice with our fingernails and won more games than anyone else in the league.

It's helped that our new striker Albert Vrancken has found the net four times in seven starts, including game-winners against Lazio and Pescara. And it's helped that our young defensive midfielder Paolo Martini has continued his startling rise and is now, at 19, unequivocally a starter for the team (even if he still has the haircut of a Courage Under Fire-era Meg Ryan). The defensive solidity of Ibrahimovic and the Ferj has helped immensely, particularly in our recent stretch of three straight 2-0 wins against Parma, Palermo, and Atalanta.

But ultimately, this year, Pro Vercelli is Michael Dogan. He's leading not just the team but all of Serie A in scoring, assists, average rating, and man-of-the-match awards. He's the only player on the team who doesn't seem weighed down by the extra gravity of this season, and he's used his command of all dead-ball situations to turn in some genuinely astonishing performances: scoring four goals—two penalties and two free kicks—against Bologna; setting up the tying goal for Ibrahimovic from a corner and then scoring the winner from a free kick in a 2-1 squeaker against Atalanta. He and Teixeira have a little routine in which Dogan gets the ball to Teixeira with an incisive pass in the area, Teixeira uses his preternatural ball control skills to win a penalty, and Dogan converts the penalty for a goal. Add in his leadership and his ability to play six positions, and it's easy to see why we're a different team when he's not on the pitch.

The controversial move of the season so far was obviously the Galli sale, but thirteen games later it's still hard to assess the impact. We haven't missed Galli (who was hurt and not all that useful for us through most of the season) but he's been decent for Juventus (three goals and four assists in seven starts), and the players we got in the deal have been mixed at best. Antônio's played a lot but only managed one assist and an average rating of 6.8; Jorge Luiz has not seemed up to the task and has only featured in three games. We'll presumably be able to raise some money by selling them during the offseason, but at the moment, this doesn't seem to be the nail on which our fate will hang.

Speaking of Juventus, we lost to them for the second straight year in the semifinal of the Coppa Italia. Vrancken earned us a 1-1 draw at home, but they went up 2-0 before halftime in the away leg and Martini's goal couldn't make up the difference. Galli played no role in this, thankfully.

The Champions League this year has essentially been the opposite of Serie A; it's goal-mad and frenzied, and we're still alive after a crazy run of results. We played Bayern Munich in the first knockout round, winning 6-4 on aggregate:

Then, fatefully, we drew Inter in the quarterfinals. Dogan uncharacteristically missed a penalty in the home leg, and we needed an away-leg hat-trick from Teixeira to sneak away with a wickedly satisfying 6-4 win:

At least no one's calling these matches boring. We've drawn Benfica in the semifinal, and if we win that, we'll play the winner of Milan-Roma in the final (which is in Portugal, at the Estádio do Dragão, in case Benfica needed any more motivation).

Inter reacted to their quarterfinal loss by crushing Milan and Torino in Serie A, then beating us 2-1 in the 1910 Derby to move within three points of us at the top of Serie A. They'll take the title if we end up on the same number of points, because the head-to-head-results tiebreaker sadly doesn't include the Champions League. Our last five games are against Juventus (hard) and Siena (medium-hard), then Catania, Napoli, and Treviso, the 17th-19th-ranked teams in the league. So the schedule isn't unfavorable, but the atmosphere is forbidding. If we defend our championship and win the double, this could be the greatest season in the history of Pro Vercelli; if we lose, it could be my most devastating experience as a manager. Pray that the avalanche misses us.

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The US is playing Honduras, not Hungary, obviously, but hey—as long as it's not Costa Rica, right?

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We skated through the first few months of the season in roughly the same style as last year, heading directly to the top of the table after Milan dropped points in six of their first eight games. There were some worrying signs—we were scoring considerably fewer goals—but none that were that worrying; we were still winning, after all. By late October we'd already opened up a five-point lead at the top of Serie A and it looked like we'd coast to a second consecutive championship. It's never that simple, of course.

In our case, injuries struck. In the course of four days between October 31 and November 3, we lost four important players. Mark Linnane, our versatile new attacker, went out for sixteen weeks with a torn thigh muscle after making just nine starts for the club. David, our only other viable left winger, went out for four weeks with a twisted knee. Paolo Galli, who'd already suffered a gashed head during the season, strained his knee ligaments and found himself sidelined for two months. Playing Michael Dogan out of position on the left wing and alternating Teixeira with a series of youth strikers, we hit a slump and soon found ourselves in second, a point behind A.C. Milan.

To be honest, though, it wasn't just the injuries. Ibrahimovic had stopped scoring. His ability to link up with Michael Dogan on corners was one of our most consistent sources of goals last season (along with Dogan's free kicks, Teixeira's "I don't care if there are four defenders between me and the goal or that I'm 20 years old and defined by my team as a backup, I'm f#*@ing scoring now" moments, and Contini's crosses for David on the break). Now, nothing had changed—the 4-3-3 was still winning lots of corners, they were being defended the exact same way, etc.—but Ibrahimovic just wasn't getting his head to the ball. He went from scoring 14 goals in 35 league appearances last year to scoring twice in his first 14 appearances this year. The difference? He was happy now. He wasn't spending all his time moaning about a transfer. Convincing him that he wanted to stay in Vercelli was possibly the worst move I could have made.

So when the January transfer window rolled around, we were in kind of an odd place: still doing well, still in the thick of the title race, through to the knockout rounds in the Champions League (we finished second behind Atlético in our group, then drew Bayern Munich in the first knockout round), but looking a bit stagnant around the edges. So when Arsenal bit on my half-sarcastic counter-offer and said they'd be happy to pay €34 million for Giovanni Magnoni, our recently-arrived young backup defender, I put the idea of continuity and stability in perspective. I didn't want to jeopardize our championship hopes by tinkering with the team at this stage, but Magnoni, though arguably one of the most promising young defenders in the world, had only averaged a 6.8 in the 14 appearances he'd made for us, and I was starting to suspect that his highly physical, not-so-highly mental game was going to be a bad fit at the whatever we eventually decide to call the stadium that replaced the Silvio Piola.

So I bagged the cash and started looking for a defender who might be able to appreciate Michael Dogan's vicious way with a corner. At that point, however, Juventus popped up with an offer for Paolo Galli, who was still out with his knee injury after playing just eight games over the first half of the season (scoring once). If you've been following Pro Vercelli for any length of time, then you'll already know about Juventus: how they're the biggest-spending club in Serie A thanks to the resources of their Chinese oligarch owner Li Yi, how they never make logical moves and consistently struggle for a Europa League place despite having the highest wage bill in the league, how they're generally the picture of overfunded mismanagement. Now they wanted to give me €20 million (spread out over two years, but still) plus two players who were each individually better than Paolo Galli, all in exchange for a striker who'd managed a mighty 28 goals in 112 appearances in Serie A.

So again, I thought about stability and continuity, and I thought, well, not so much. The two players I got in the deal, both Brazilian, were a near-world-class central midfielder (who got no playing time at Juventus) called Antônio:

And a solid centerback called Jorge Luiz who'd fill the void left by Magnoni:

Which meant that I'd still need a striker to fill in for Teixeira, since I had no idea how Mark Linnane would look when he came back from his injury. After a quick afternoon's shopping, I spent a breezy €16.5 million on Club Brugge's 24-year-old Albert Vrancken, henceforth to be known as "the Vranck":

All told, we wound up with €17.5 million more in the bank while gaining an objectively better striker, a probably-better-for-our-system defender, and a midfielder who will at least challenge for a first-team place. And Juventus owe us €875k/month for the next two years. That seems like a huge win, even if none of it was exactly planned and I'm still not sure how it affects the identity of the team. We've won six straight since selling Magnoni in early January, and have moved back into first with a two-point lead over Milan. But that has more to do with old players recovering from injury than with the new look of the team.

So we'll see. I have misgivings about shaking up a championship team in the middle of a season, but at the same time, you don't build up your club by refusing to take the dollar someone offers you for a dime. If Teixeira can stay healthy (13 goals and 10 assists in 17 starts) and Dogan can keep scoring on every other free kick (he's five goals ahead of the second-leading scorer in Serie A…as a left back), we're going to be in the thick of things at the end of the season. Only then will we know how wise any of these decisions have been.

Notes:

In case I haven't made it clear why I love Teixeira and the Ferj, this is why I love Teixeira:

And this is why I love the Ferj:

(You can see our new stadium in the first video, by the way.)

Also: Our 1-0 home win against Fiorentina in the Coppa Italia quarterfinals came during a milestone in my tenure at Pro Vercelli:

Our record in that time: 267 wins, 118 draws, and 115 losses, with a goal differential of +355. How the time flies.

—
Song clips: "Why Don't We Even Try Anymore?" by The Knitters; "Ace of Spades" by O.V. Wright

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: Fortune Comes in Threes
2. Pro Vercelli: Iron Fine as Sand
3. Pro Vercelli: Offseason Factbook

Many thanks to everyone at EPL Talk, and unsafe levels of "super-thanks" to all of you who voted. Let me know if you ever need someone to administer medicine to your cat while you're off parasailing in Antigua. (I could also take in your newspapers so that thieves will not know you are gone.)

See the full list of winners here.

Related posts:

1. We Die for the Life of Tomorrow
2. First to the Bridge, First to the City

I decided to keep Ibrahimovic. When it came down to it, his character was just too fascinating to lose. I've never seen a player who was so expansively self-defeating or one so capable of turning every moment of triumph into a bellow of despair. It's as if the better he gets, the more he has to betray himself: he's playing for his favorite club, yet desperately wants a transfer; he's playing for his favorite manager, yet spends all his time complaining; he's a born leader, but never had a worse season than when he was asked to be captain. I've come to think of the darkness in him as the mysterious key to his power, and I can't transfer a player who I kind of want to see written up as a Tuesday Portrait. I gave him a contract extension.

Of course, he then immediately started complaining and talking to the press about Liverpool. I thought about the future, and I confess, I wavered. But no sooner had I started talking to Liverpool about a possible transfer fee than Ibrahimovic came out with this—completely unprecedented—statement.

He can't even get the transfer he wants without undermining it the moment it looks like it might go through. And yet he's one of the best players I've ever coached. Anyway, that settled it. He's staying.

II. Immigration/Emigration

There's no reason to stage a revolution the minute after you win a championship. We had a relatively quiet summer on the transfer front, improving the team in a couple of key areas but essentially keeping the existing group intact.

We sold Marcelo, our willowy Brazilian defender who seemed to make a bad mistake every time he played last season, to Lecce for €8 million, and Arjen Servais, our Belgian defender who'd been a stalwart of our Serie B campaign, to Torino for €625k. We also sold Andrea Battaglia, a backup left winger who only spent one season with the club (and who I don't think I ever told you about), to Triestina for €5 million.

We brought in Giovanni Magnoni, a young defender from Sampdoria who'll back up Ibrahimovic and the Ferj, for €6.5 million (Sampdoria are a giant fire sale since they were relegated):

And we bought Mark Linnane, Tottenham's versatile attacker, for €15 million—painful, but he can play on either side of the pitch, covering both Contini and David, and can also fill in at striker if both Teixeira and Galli are out with injuries:

(The funny backstory here is that there's a real-life Mark Linnane who works for SI, and, like a few other SI developers and testers, he's been imported into the game with a random ability set and a bizarre personality description. Click to see the image in a larger size:

If you're playing FM yourself, you can see more of these transcendent figures by doing a search for "faceinthegame." Personally, I just hope the dude can fill in for David.)

Sad news: We also said goodbye to a couple of Pro Vercelli stalwarts this year. Landry Akassou and Miguel José were both at the end of their contracts, and since they've been surpassed by youth players and would never get any playing time, I let them both leave on a free. Akassou (who played 237 times for the club over eight seasons and was our captain for four) immediately signed with Brescia in Serie B, and José (who played 177 times and went with us all the way from Serie C to Serie A) is now playing for Naval in the Portuguese Liga. Godspeed, gentlemen, and thanks.

III. Geography. Festivals & Customs.

The new stadium was finished in mid-June, and on the 30th, we made our final move from the Via Massaua to the Via Dante Alighieri.

We're still looking for a "Highbury name" to use colloquially in place of the soporific "Pro Vercelli Stadium" (more on this soon—be thinking of ideas). In the meantime, we decided to introduce the new ground and pay homage to the namesake of the old one by launching the Silvio Piola Cup, a four-team friendly tournament that we're hoping to make an annual tradition. Among other things, it was a mark of the club's rise in stature that Arsenal, Real Madrid, and Lyon agreed to come to Vercelli to participate.

We beat Lyon 4-1 in the first game, then beat Arsenal in the "final" 2-0. It was a fun event for the fans, we got four sellout crowds at the stadium (where the grass has a cool stripey pattern—no more playing in an Irish sphagnum bog!), and to top it all off, the cup-winning goal was scored by our 18-year-old centerback Riccardo Caprioli.

Our other friendlies came against Legnano (whom we beat 2-0) and at the Camp Nou (where we lost to Barcelona 2-1).

IV. Alliances

With an eye on completing the rare reversal-of-patronage maneuver, I asked the board to make Sampdoria, our ex-parent club, our feeder. Sampdoria must really be in a panic about their relegation, because to my surprise, they agreed:

V. Gross Domestic Product

At the start of the summer, I was named Serie A Manager of Year, Michael Dogan was named Foreign Player of the Year (Ibrahimovic finished third), and Gabriele Contini was named Italian Player of the Year. Teixeira finished second in the Top Goalscorer race (he scored the same number of goals as Francismar, but Francismar did it in two fewer starts). Dogan, Ibra, Contini, and Teixeira were all named to the Team of the Season. Jacob Larsen finished second in the Goalkeeper of the Year poll.

At the end of the summer, we won both the Supercoppa Italiana (played between the winners of Serie A and the winners of the Coppa Italia—in this case Juventus, whom we beat 2-0) and the UEFA Super Cup (played between the winners of the Europa League and the winners of the Champions League—in this case Milan, whom we beat 2-1 at the Stade Louis II in Monaco).

Neither competition was a burning priority for us, but it's nice to beat Milan in anything, and nice to pick up a couple of shiny objects for the trophy room at the new stadium.

VI. Projections

So all in all, it was a really enjoyable summer. As a last bonus, the revamped training program we adopted a year ago seems to be getting results. We now have a few youth players who are providing some legitimate squad depth, as well as a couple who are knocking on the door of the first team. Probably the most notable is Paolo Martini, an extremely promising defensive midfielder who came to the club from Milan last season. He gained 53 total ability points last year and is now featuring semi-regularly in the first team.

Start of last season:

Start of this season:

So at the moment, everything looks good. It's impossible to predict the future, and this could easily be the scene in the movie in which the fatcat leans back with a cigar in his mouth and says, "What could possibly go wrong, on this day of all days, October 24, 1929?" But I like the cut of this team's jacket, and I like where it's going. We're not tousle-headed innocents anymore; we are players on this stage, and we are ready to defend our championship.

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: This Longue Durée
2. Pro Vercelli: The Moment
3. Pro Vercelli: From the Vercelli Soccer Express, Amazon Kindle Edition, 29 August 2017

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1. The Tuesday Portrait: Gareth Barry
2. Michel Platini Has a Plan to Save Manchester City
3. Manchester City, A Club Where Everything Is Going Completely According to Plan

That's true at the very top, and it's true at the very bottom. Last season, the sharp end of the league, the best player on the best team, was Cristiano Ronaldo in the full cry of his shining, vapid, godlike un-significance, and he blazed through the league to the point that his superficiality itself became some kind of decryption key for modern soccer. This season, he scored 13 fewer league goals and was arguably surpassed by a 35-year-old substitute as Manchester United's best player. At the other end of the league, last season gave us Derby County, who set records for self-immolation, finished with 11 points from 38 games, and left their own fans celebrating their relegation, because at least the humiliation would stop. This season, West Brom finished with three times as many points, and fought out an utterly unexciting relegation battle in which all the teams managed to be very bad without ever quite losing their respectability.

One of those relegated teams, Newcastle United, gave us a "Geordie messiah returns" story both last year and this year. Last year we got Kevin Keegan, a cryptic fax, giddy recollections of "I'll love it if we beat them!" and a catastrophic endgame involving something called the "Cockney mafia." This season we got Alan Shearer, who was calculating where Keegan was crazed, who hedged on his dramatic promise, then failed to keep it, then waffled on whether to stick around. At the other end of the league, Chelsea went through two managers both this season and last season. Last season we had the sensational firing of Mourinho and Avram Grant's furious quest to retain his job; this season we had the meek exit of Phil Scolari and Guus Hiddink's tidy, faux-modest bowing-out.

Most of the league's best teams were slightly weaker than the season before (Liverpool were the exceptions); the champions, who ran people off the pitch last year, survived this year on a ration of 1-0 wins that led to a lot of bogus stories about the greatness of Edwin van der Sar. Last season we had a title race that was genuinely somewhat exciting; this season we had a more or less pretend title race that the media was able to play up only because the teams involved in it hadn't played the same number of games. Last season had genuine surprises in the cups (Tottenham and Portsmouth); this season we had Manchester United and Chelsea.

Even the compulsory "Harry Redknapp, miracle-worker" story (Portsmouth's FA Cup run; the turnaround at Spurs) and the obligatory "Steven Gerrard in weird trouble" story (running over a small boy with his Bentley and then holding his hand in the street till the ambulance came; attacking a club DJ for refusing to play a song) seemed brighter and less cynical last year.

This season did offer a plucky overachiever of note (Fulham) and a better upstart run in the big four than anything we saw last year (Aston Villa's, though it turned out to be anticlimactic). I'm optimistic about next season. In some ways, it feels like we spent nine months watching the pieces slowly move to a combination of squares that can finally make the game interesting: Liverpool's ongoing metamorphosis into a plausible football team, Chelsea's entrance into a dark pact with Carlo Ancelotti, Arsenal's no longer deniable arrival at a no longer deniable crisis point, Manchester United's gradual hourglass slide. It could be that everything's coming to a head in a way that will make this year feel like a necessary prologue. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to turn the page.

…

But this is supposed to be a farewell to the season, and this season didn't belong to the Premier League. It belonged to Barcelona. Barcelona weren't just the letters-of-fire masters of Europe this year (right down to Chelsea's sense of violated spleen), they were a force so powerful that the drama of their own self-fulfillment became more compelling than their actual games. Before the Champions League final, the symbolic underpinning of the tournament seemed like Barcelona v. the Premier League, and so it was, to the extent that that kind of conflict can ever really exist. But rather than the Man Utd game offering us a chance to see that opposition crystallized, it instead went to prove that anyone Barça played, even the rulers of the by-default Greatest League on Earth and the defending champion of Europe, would be turned into generic antagonists. What mattered was always whether Barcelona's greatness would be sanctioned, or whether, like so many other beautiful teams in the lore, they'd be pushed to one side by the tyranny of the result.

At the moment, I'm less concerned about the meaning of their style or what influence it will have on other teams than about the question of raw legacy: where will they rank among history's greatest teams? That's a crass, unsubtle topic, but it matters, not for the taxonomy or the future Sun slideshow, but because how those questions are answered shapes the way we think about the history of the sport. Cruyff's Ajax, the Magical Magyars, Real Madrid under Puskás/Di Stéfano, Brazil under Pele/Garrincha, and so on, all the way back to Preston North End in the 1880s, play an interpretive role in the chronicles, like features of the landscape that help us orient ourselves.

I'm not sure if one season is ever enough to establish a team on that level, and it's impossible to predict what will look meaningful to observers in 50 years. But Barça set a task for themselves that was almost impossible to fulfill—they had to be amazing, consistently and mercilessly, or they were nothing—and they fulfilled it. At the very least they deserve to be considered. And I'd rather have this era remembered with them as the highlight than with whatever Man Utd/39th game/Asian markets/"recession-proof!" alloy would have been inescapable had Barça not won that game.

…

In any case, looking ahead to the close season, we've got some exciting stuff lined up, including actual, live (nonfictional!) reports from the Confederations Cup, some design changes, and the return of Dr. Chesapeake Marchpane. New posts may be a bit scarce at times, but Pro Vercelli updates will appear as usual. And as always, the only transfer gossip we publish will be that which is first converted into poetry-grenade form. Count on that.

Related posts:

1. Champions League Quarterfinal Draw: Liverpool-Chelsea, Again, Again, Again
2. Chelsea 1 – 1 Barcelona: Opaque Like Thin Air
3. Barcelona 0 – 0 Chelsea: Doubt, Chance, and Mutability

That is to say: It's been months—months—since Chelsea welcomed a new manager who seemed so perfectly poised between glory and disaster. And since I happen to think Chelsea are at their best—at their purest; at their most interesting—when they're coping with unimaginable pressure and waging a heroic struggle to stand beneath the chip on their own shoulder, I'm as excited about this as I have been about anything they've done in a long time. I don't even know what I want to happen. I just can't wait to watch.

Related posts:

1. Big Phil at First Light
2. Carlo Ancelotti Correctly Gauges the Martyrological Temperature of the David Beckham Transfer Saga

This concludes your 2017/2018 Pro Vercelli season.

Related posts:

1. Pro Vercelli: The Europa League Semifinal, Second Leg
2. Pro Vercelli: The Europa League Semifinal, First Leg
3. Pro Vercelli – Roma: The 2019 Champions League Final, Live from the Estádio do Dragão [UPDATED WITH VIDEO]