The American soccer community suffered a blow earlier this month when Grant Wahl, a veritable legend in the field, was abruptly fired after over 20 years at Sports Illustrated. As a member of that community, as well as a person with a healthy sense of solidarity with my fellow worker, I was enraged. Here was an established writer who was presented a boot to lick, refused to do so, and was kicked in the teeth for his temerity. For management to try and force a permanent pay cut on a writer, then smear him afterward, is absurd and unprofessional.
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Illustration by Chris Thompson
What an actual six-year-old's drawing of the new Pescara kit might look like, by Billy Haisley
Earlier this week, Italian soccer club Pescara unveiled their new kit for the 2020–21 season that may or may not happen. The kit was the winning entry of a contest that asked young supporters to dream up their ideal Pescara jersey. The colorful shirt made waves because its artist, Luigi, is 6 years old. The jersey’s legitimate coolness is able to overshadow the immediately obvious fact that no 6-year-old could possibly put together something this good.
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Emblem of Saudi Arabia by Anus Kafm, terrible seahorsies by Billy Haisley
It’s been a typically circuitous route, but all reports say Mike Ashley’s latest deal to sell Newcastle United has all but crossed the finish line. As Sky Sports reports, the contracts have been drawn and signed, the deposit has been deposited, the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. All that’s keeping PCP Capital Partners from acquiring the club from Ashley is the Premier League subjecting the new ownership group to its acquiescent owners’ and directors’ test. That means we’re probably mere days away from Newcastle going from an infamously mismanaged club, with no realistic hopes of success, owned by a blundering idiot, to being impossibly rich, having better future prospects than ever before, owned by murderers.
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Illustration by Billy Haisley
Ladies, break out those vibrators, fellas, squeeze you out some lotion, because when you see this photo of a half-naked Skip Bayless that the man himself tweeted this morning, you’ll not want to waste any time yanking off your pants and fiddling your bits while thinking about the barely hidden treasure that lies at the carefully shorn point of those V-cut abs:
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Illustration by Billy Haisley
Erling Haaland announced himself to the world last spring when he bulldozed Honduras at the U-20 World Cup, scoring nine of Norway’s goals in a 12–0 blowout. Anyone who considered that record-breaking nine-goal afternoon a fluke had a harder time hand-waving away the striker’s 16 goals in 14 league matches for Austrian club Salzburg over the first half of this season, and especially the eight goals he scored against the likes of Liverpool, Napoli, and Genk in the Champions League. And today, after his third-consecutive multi-goal day for Borussia Dortmund–his new club as of January–it’s impossible to believe this 19-year-old is anything other than the realest of deals.
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