Category: "Soccer"

NTSF 112: Misadventures in the land of the Giants

So I spent the weekend traveling into the land of the Giants. As Dickens said, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Hell, I’ve taken trips to Vegas that wound up being less eventful than this weekend. It was my first trip ever to San Francisco, coming three weeks on [...]

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NTSF 111: Freeform from the phone…

Look. I was all set to dive into another full week of news and notes in the 111th edition of this column. But things have been afoul with the cerebral vortex in the Bigalke household lately. It really started a month or so ago, when the high-speed internet we had been getting from Qwest lost [...]

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FIFA puts credibility at risk with December’s 2018 and 2022 World Cup vote

It’s not something you’re apt to see every day — FIFA president Sepp Blatter expressing regret for a decision he has made. But Blatter apparently recognizes that it was a mistake lumping together the bidding process for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Despite his admission that keeping the 2018 and 2022 bids together [...]

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NTSF 110: New challenges on the horizon, the reality of health and sports and more…

The sports world is in another one of those moments in the year where everything begins to crunch together at once for fans in the United States. The NBA joined the NHL this week in starting its regular season. College football enters its stretch drive, while the NFL prepares for its second half of the [...]

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NTSF 109: Shifting allegiances in a digital age, Champions League groups hit halfway point, Olympic medal for sale and more…

Wednesday morning really left me with a lot of time to think, and boy was there plenty to think about. I was up before 4:00 am, waking up to drive my wife to the airport for a week away on business. (Sweetheart that she was, having been up awake all night unable to sleep, she [...]

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Checking on predictions halfway through Champions League group stage

With the conclusion of Wednesday’s games, the UEFA Champions League is officially halfway through its group stage. When the groups were first announced, I made my predictions as to who would be advancing on to the knockout phase of the competition. Ranking every group 1-4, I pretty much laid it all out there on the [...]

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NTSF 108: Uncrowded Commonwealth cause for concern, international competition galore and more…

By the time this goes up on the site, I’ll be somewhere en route to California to the Bioneers conference in San Rafael. The coffee company my wife’s family owns and operates needed a few extra bodies to man their trio of locations at the event, and so I was conscripted for active duty. It’s [...]

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NTSF 107: Thoughts on losing versus failing, the Contador saga and more…

My voice is still hoarse five days after the fact. Saturday saw the eyes of the nation turn toward Eugene, and I had the pleasure of being amongst a crowd that numbered just under 60,000 to witness the Oregon Ducks take on Stanford in a matchup with more than just Pac-10 implications. Perched 14 rows [...]

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