Alan Black

An epic so exciting, you could choke on the popcorn. This was soccer as riveting drama. Picture board this.

Chelsea under siege. An onslaught of Barcelona attacks, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, shelling them incessantly. Chelsea's leader, captain John Terry, commits soccer suicide and is sent off for violent play. His central...

Barcelona has all the possessions. Seventy-five percent of the play, hundreds of passes, gold ingots embossed with Messi and his ilk. All that treasure waiting to be robbed. It's a perfect plot for some good old London gangsters to exploit. On Wednesday, Chelsea burgled the Catalans, stealing the goal in...

USA national team coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, is engaging. His voice has a laid back feel -- he has lived in California for a while. And from there he stares out across a continent of differences, and beyond that, over the sea to Americans playing soccer in foreign lands. From this...

Bad news for all those soccer detractors out there. Ignorance is no longer bliss. Professional soccer is now the second most popular sport in the USA in the key 12-24 age group. The NFL tops the list and Major League Baseball has slipped to fourth behind the NBA. The poll...

The atmosphere inside U.S. soccer stadiums is unique for American sports. Supporters groups, some styled on soccer's Ultras movement, are a big chunk of the core energy driving atmosphere at MLS games. Every year, their numbers grow, there is an evangelical quality to the phenomenon. Attend a game with them...

The Ultras tear up Egypt. How about tearing up the autocracies that run world soccer? The cabal of insiders who determine the structure of the world's game have never been accountable to fans. Start in England -- the home of the game -- run...

CNN's Piers Morgan does a weird thing with his mouth after he speaks. His lips pinch tight. As if the torpedo tube is being sealed until the next salvo. It can be quite intimidating. It fits the style of a man who was previously employed as a tabloid editor in...

The Beckhams will not be setting up their French court much to the chagrin of Parisian society.

The French elites had been predicting which side of the Seine the Court of Beckham would be established. Existentialists in cafes debated whether this important choice would determine whether...

Time for a bit of the armchair psychoanalysis. Take a depressed crowd and lay them on Dr. Freud's couch. These mobs are suffering from a condition known to shrinks as SimonandGarfunkelitis -- symptom: the sound of silence.

Last weekend presented us with an excellent case study in this horrible affliction...

Leave. Close the door on home. Drift to a new world and its possibilities. Here comes spontaneity, adventure, risk, and the one guarantee, transformation. Lucy Caldwell's novel, The Meeting Point, probes displacement when it comes up against discovery, discovery that a trusted partner can pick and choose lies, that the...

Imagine soccer like a campfire in the wilderness. Perennially, the top teams are seated around the fire enjoying the meat of success. Beyond them in the flickering light are teams trying to force themselves into the circle, some surviving on the occasional scraps falling from the winning pot cooking on...

Socrates, the great Brazilian soccer maverick, has died at age 57. Those who saw him play were moved by his style. He glided over the grass, his intelligence working the angles, carving space, inspirational and beautiful. He was unlike the other midfield maestro of his era -- Maradona. The Argentine...

Obviously, a soccer star has two lives. On the field, measures are equal. Off the field, measures are unequal; the star is in control. Watching David Beckham at the press conference in the bowels of the Home Depot Center after his gutsy performance helped LA Galaxy to victory in...

USA goalkeeper Tim Howard jumps, dives and saves, a man of action. When his defenders mess up, he is a man of words. Ouch! That stung. When he is standing in his area waiting for something to happen, he is a dreamer. Television viewers of soccer may have seen him...

David Beckham may be about to write his own Hollywood ending. On November 20, his eyes will focus on the MLS Cup, American domestic soccer's grand prize. His team, LA Galaxy, will take on Houston Dynamo, the winner to be crowned champions of the nation. It may well be Beckham's...

U.S. soccer player, the defender Jay DeMerit, lined up against England's Wayne Rooney when the teams clashed at last year's World Cup Finals in South Africa. The pugnacious striker was expected to inflict damage on the Americans. But DeMerit brought the muzzle and leash and tamed the threat. Flashback a...

Cruelty in song has always been part of the soccer fan, stadium tradition. Before shaved male heads were commonplace and acceptable as an alternative for premature baldness, Baldy! Baldy! was a favorite arrow slung by fan antagonists at players tackled by follicle desertion. Many would have swapped their affliction for...

You are a striker. You are in a goal drought. Without explanation the boots have run dry. In another season, the goals flowed like Niagara Falls. The manager looks to tap the bench. You're dropped. You toss and turn at night dreaming of...

The ground in North London shook over the weekend. No, not due to a fresh outbreak of consumption riots that spluttered forth in the area a few weeks ago. This time the shock came on the soccer field, courtesy of two hungry giants...

When a self-righteous man becomes obsessed with a powerful enemy, flames are almost a certainty. Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho, self-described as "the special one," is setting fire to Spanish soccer with dangerous fireworks that some fear may...