A grudging and growing acceptance that maybe Leeds might have some good Americans… Yorkshire doesn’t take easily to change. But walking around the city center or down Elland Road on gameday there’s no avoiding the signs of a growing American influence. Leeds United fans wear Major League Baseball caps and US men’s national team jerseys. Americans’ names have earned their ways onto on the backs of replica kits, and stars and stripes bedeck (perhaps even spangle) the souvenir scarves of manager Jesse Marsch — proud son of Racine, Wisconsin. On the stadium concourse, Mark Russell wore a San Fr ..read more

And not in a good way. 3:00am: Awakened “Ridiculous! Disgraceful!” A heavily accented voice shouts into his phone. “I’ve never felt so cheated in my life. I’ve already emailed FIFA. I’ve told them. I’ve let them know this is unacceptable. I want a full refund! $200 a night…for this?” Welcome to FIFA’s Quetaifan Island Fan Village.  The voice rings out through the night. I attempt to play my favorite game: “Where is this person from?” I’m unable to place it. Saudi? Miami? Argentina? I’ll never know.  Wherever he’s from, he is not happy. This is not up to his standa ..read more

Howler is happy to have Matthew Shaddock as its Foreign Correspondent for the duration of the tournament. Today’s dispatch, complete with photography, represents the first of several messages he’ll share from Qatar—where the atmosphere isn’t quite like World Cups past. It might look right on TV, but it doesn’t feel right in the streets. Qatari leaders have taken a Field of Dreams approach to the World Cup: “If you build it, they will come.” Newly constructed developments sprawl north of the city, one after the other. Massive, unimaginable sizes and shapes. The skyscrapers seem to ..read more

“BLACK WORLD CUP WINTER” Where FIFA fails, Howler delivers. They didn’t give us a Group of Death, so we made one. “Black World Cup Winter” is the first of four face-melting metal anthems (provided by San Diego-based metal band Beekeeper). It’s our way of saying if we have to watch it, at least we’re going to scream about it.  Critically, this is a fundraiser for Soccer Without Borders’ All Girls Program. All merchandise proceeds go to the organization.  Buy “Group of Death” merch and Support Soccer Without Borders GROUP OF DEATH CREDITS ———– Brand: Howler Agency: Howler Stu ..read more

A reluctant but thorough preview of one of the strangest tournaments ever. Buckle up and get ready for this year’s edition of a tournament we’ve been raised to love. A (GROUP A) While it looks like a walk in the park for the Dutch, each side’s unique style could make every match a tough adjustment. Ecuador’s athletic defenders make them dangerous from set pieces, Qatar will receive the home crowd bump, and AFCON champions Senegal may not have star Sadio Mané but their speedy attackers will cause headaches.  Qatar The hosts appear in their first ever World Cup ever and while it ..read more

Howler is proud to celebrate the release of Christine Sinclair’s Playing the Long Game, a memoir (written with Stephen Brunt) of her phenomenal and record-breaking career. Our excerpt is from Chapter 13, on her pursuit of Abby Wambach’s record of 184 international goals—it’s an engaging welcome into a striker’s mind and an intriguing insight into a superstar’s personality. Heading into the 2019 World Cup in France, I was close to breaking Abby Wambach’s record of 184 career goals. It’s weird. I like to think of myself as the biggest team player. I will do anything to help my team win. I wil ..read more

A writer and illustrator with deep roots in the game craft a story for soccer’s future stars. In 2017 Sam Cronin—not to be confused with her husband and former MLS All-Star Sam Cronin—wrote the initial manuscript for Leave a Little More, a children’s book with a nucleus of soccer and empowering the everyday decisions we make.  “I think when I was writing the book I was talking to myself just as much as anyone else. You don’t have to be doing something so obviously great in order to be making an impact,” said Cronin.  The seed for the story was planted for Sam (the author) after ..read more

Soccer’s a lot of things. But even when it looks like just another day in the park, it’s never just another day in the park. Tío Lobo says that anyone in the business of running fast should avoid cutting their toe nails. Cutting keratin, the protective protein that extends from one’s feet reduces, Lobo theorizes, the amount of friction between the futbolero and the pitch. He has told us, the cousins, this over and over again. Every time though, he acts like it’s this new thing he just uncovered. He leans in and in a hushed tone asks us if we know the secret to running fast. “Si, Lobo,” we ans ..read more

This extraordinary remembrance of soccer pioneer Arthur Pember originally ran in slightly different form in Howler 10, Spring 2016. It’s longer than most web pieces, and we considered running it in two or three parts, but it deserves to live here in its remarkable entirety. ARTHUR PEMBER titillated Victorian New York with his muckraking journalism, but there is one episode he never wrote about: serving as the first president of the English Football Association, under which the rules of soccer became enshrined. STANDING ON A SLOOP off the southern tip of Manhattan on a pleasant April morni ..read more

This past summer, I was running around Gdańsk, Poland desperately looking for a bar showing the Women’s Euro Cup match between Sweden and Portugal, all while thinking, in the words of the Talking Heads, “Well, how did I get here?” I used to be a traditional American sports fan. I would watch an ungodly amount of football, baseball, and basketball and, if I had additional free time, I would make fun of hockey. That all began to change with the offer of free tickets to the 1994 World Cup. That’s right, I fell for the same methodology used by crack dealers and the company that sells those mini ..read more