Daily Archives: June 13, 2025

Ranking the best and worst Club World Cup home kits: Divorcee vibes, pixel madness and flawless Tunisian flair

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“The revamped Club World Cup is effectively a brand new tournament and with a fresh competition comes a selection of mostly new kits. For this summer’s 32-team extravaganza in the United States, teams are allowed to play in new looks, whether that be special-edition tournament-only strips or what they’ll be strutting their stuff in for the entirety of the 2025-26 season. Or, should they wish, they can carry on wearing the same shirts as they have done already this year. Whatever the approach of each of these Club World Cup competitors, nothing can spare them from the critical eye of The Athletic’s Nick Miller, who has ranked all 32 home strips from worst to best. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

The offside law, Bill McCracken and, a century on, the decision that changed football forever

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“One hundred years ago today, at a meeting at 22 Rue de Londres, Paris, association football — soccer — changed forever. The International Football Association Board voted that Law 11 of the game, the offside law, would be altered from season 1925-26 so that two players would need to be between an attacker and the goal line to remain onside, not three as it had been previously. This was arguably the most significant rule change since football was professionalised in the mid-1880s. It is possibly the most significant until the introduction of the back-pass rule in 1992. It may even have a claim to be the biggest moment in the history of the professional sport. Every organised match played since 1925 has had its geometry defined by the June 1925 offside law. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Chelsea players react furiously after referee GC Denton rules out a goal for offside

Who is the real Gianni Infantino, FIFA president and ‘the king of soccer’?

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“… Gianni Infantino threw his head back in laughter before smiling and nodding along, looking delighted by the United States president’s description of him. It was the same a couple of months earlier at the launch of a White House Task Force for the 2026 World Cup, when Donald Trump described the FIFA president as ‘my great friend’ and ‘sort of the king of soccer… I guess… in a certain way’. He is. Sort of. I guess. In a certain way. As the head of FIFA, football’s governing body, Infantino is the most powerful figure in the sport, able to make what sound like wild, off-the-cuff proposals — a 32-team Club World Cup, a 48-team World Cup — and make them a reality while travelling around the world on a Qatari private jet, rubbing shoulders with sporting superstars and heads of state, sharing his adventures with his three million Instagram followers and frequently resembling the excited child of Trump’s description. …”
NY Times/The Athletic