Historically, Scots crossed their southern border to set fire to England but when the fuel ran out, they took up posts as coaches of England's soccer teams.

Manchester United's Sir Alex Ferguson and his heir, David Moyes, hail from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, famous for its kissing between clashing foreheads.

"We really must eradicate the blot on our reputation," said Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who died last week. The Iron Lady was referring to English soccer hooligans as if they were enemies of the state.

Stitch the sociology pattern. The Iron Lady ripped up Britain's post-war social...

"I am a fascist, not a racist," said Paolo Di Canio in 2005, the new head coach of English Premier League club, Sunderland, after he was photographed giving a straight-arm salute to supporters of Italian team, Lazio. Di Canio sports a tattoo admiring Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist...

I immigrated to California from Scotland in the late eighties. Exposure to soccer went behind a cloud. Gridiron and hardball broke the new horizon. I traded abusing the soccer ref for shafting the umpire miscalling a strike. The path to being American was laid.

But on Sundays, the coals of...

Now that David Beckham has played his last act in an American soccer role, what is next for the Englishman abroad? Having spent the last five years in Hollywood making friends (Tom Cruise and Russell Brand are mates), casting agents must be wondering if Mr. Beckham desires the spotlight of...

You run a top-flight English club. You are bleeding points. Leaks are everywhere, players pissed off, morale thin, and the puddle deep with fans abusing the idiot you hired last year to bring success. The investors never intended their wealth to be on the Titanic. What to do? You send...

Major League Soccer (MLS) has its versions of the Yankees and the Dodgers. The Red Bulls in New York; the Galaxy in Los Angeles. Star power in the east is Frenchman, Thierry Henry; David Beckham lights up Sunset Boulevard. Money talks. MLS places high value on these brands. Expectations are...

Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson, of Treasure Island fame, penned a novella that many consider to be a foundation stone of modern fiction's addiction to substances, transformation and death -- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll liked to swallow chemicals, turning himself into something unpredictable,...

It's a soccer rivalry like no other. USA vs. Mexico. History layered on bunches of grudge. It tumbles across the soccer plain every four years during World Cup qualifying. There is a landfill of trash talk, desperation to win.

Gringos at the Gate is a new documentary that takes us...

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...