Michael Caley

new Expecting Goals blog! The new pace of play rules: they're working incredibly well to speed up play, but one of them may be working a little too well (and why no one's noticed yet) www.expectinggoals.com/p/new-rules-...

"a rift in spacetime causes a complete transformation of human speech patterns into reddit threads"

new Expecting Goals on Harry Kane's Ballon d'Or career -his out of nowhere early breakout as a penalty area finisher -his mid-career transformation into a creator -the Bayern years and what Kane's career numbers might look like in a different team context www.expectinggoals.com/p/harry-kane...

Lionel Messi may have opted out of the Ballon d'Or ceremony but worry not, he did not opt out of making sartorial … choices … at the *checks notes* Messi Cup, naturally in partnership with *checks notes again* Messi Fragrances

Yes you are allowed to care about Brazilian elections. But the fact that US politics have become an MMORPG for right wing Twitter users is actually a negative development. And aren't you, an American, tired of hearing from Canadian Bluesky users about how we're on the verge of dictatorship?

Not that it's the point of this to inform but none of these people really know how elections work

Of course there was lots of stuff like this hitting Trump in 2016 with the difference being Amy Acton not being seen as negatively as Hillary Clinton and Ramaswamy having zero charisma.

it does seem like this moment changed whole election and maybe the modern history of Brazil? crazy stuff

i don't think it's that crazy it's a lot harder to use public money to build a complicated interconnected grid of rail infrastructure than it is to use private money to build a bunch of big warehouses. like i don't think it's great only one of those is possible but what i do not think it is is crazy

good gracious they're actually a business

English Thiago, you're hearing it more and more

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

it doesn't look to me like it was turnout? there were 119m valid votes in the first round and 124m valid votes counted so far 10m other candidate votes in the first round, mostly to conservative candidates, and Bolsonaro only up 3.5m votes total from the first round looks like mostly persuasion?

ok who's got the best realtime feed of brazilian fascist cope

Madrid have been so much better than I expected really the key has been the 40% possession, they've been excellent playing out against the press and not giving Barca the chances in transition they want Tchouameni notably fantastic, Diomande and Guler holding width

hopefully whatever game De Zerbi was running with how Fernandes needs to learn to play for a big club or whatever has now "worked" and he's just gonna start at the 6 from here in

it's almost like curses aren't real

A @doublepivotpodcast.bsky.social on site investigation.

Michael that is the opposite of how umbrellas work

football club sale actually real estate speculation in a trenchcoat

www.ft.com/content/f75c...

really good piece capturing one of the big stories of 2026 the economy is, one could say, converging with popular opinion about the economy -- not collapsing, but now really putting a strain on people's lives in the aggregate in a different kind of way

Title inspired by one of my favorite Sportscenter commercial from back in the day.

the replies are beautiful. brains like egg

when it's going great

at minimum paddlin-adjacent

Inject analysis like this straight into my veins...

new study on the "treatment minute", the new rule in football that players can't return to the pitch for a minute after receiving treatment for an injury it's creating a huge advantage and it'll be a talking point once a big goal is scored in a big game www.expectinggoals.com/p/new-rules-...

there is perhaps no more powerful force in left-lib influencer circles than Audience Capture Miserablism