So, soccer. The English kind. Footie, I guess.
One of the things you learn quickly when you decide to semi-ironically become a fan of the most irrelevant Premier League team you can find is that the schedules for this shit are a puzzle and a half. Your team’s got its league, that’s fairly straightforward, and every few weeks they take a break so that the best players can go play for their national teams, which takes a minute to get the hang of but isn’t that wild a concept. Then, though, there are cups. There are so many fucking cups.
I can hear the British now. They’re outside my door. “Wanker!” They say. “There’s only two cups!” But au contraire, mon ami (I’m trying out becoming a guy who relitigates the Hundred Years’ War; as a bit).
If there are only two cups, how do you explain European play?
See, the way I understand this is that your team has its league games and then it’s got a bunch of extra stuff. The cups. The interleague leagues (for the good teams). The friendlies. And that’s without mentioning the youth teams. The extra stuff usually doesn’t matter as much as the league games, with the exception being those interleague leagues? Maybe? I’m unsure. Burnley’s never been in a position during my time to do anything but try and avoid relegation with all its might. Gosh. This is going badly. Maybe I should just list off every piece of extra stuff from least important to most important, from my vantage point. Again, not clear whether your team’s league is more important or less important than the last two on this list but I think it’s more important than everything else. Who knows. Not me.
Friendlies
This is just soccer for “exhibition games.”
International Play
Doesn’t count, it’s not your team. It’s your team’s players, and it’s your country, but that’s a whole different deal.
Various Small Little Regional Cups
These exist here and there. Basically exhibition tournaments between local teams. Or maybe they’re important? Maybe they’re the lifeblood of these clubs? Burnley doesn’t play in one of these, so I abstain. It’s just too much, you guys.
League Cup/EFL Cup/Carabao Cup
You know this is the less important cup because it has the most names. If people can’t agree on a name, the thing isn’t that important. This is the single-elimination tournament between all the teams in the top four tiers of English soccer. So, Premier League, Championship (that’s where Burnley’s at, post-relegation), League One, League Two. Burnley plays its first League Cup match today (I think ‘League Cup’ is the most colloquial way to put it, so that’s what I say [colloquially]).
FA Cup
This one’s more important. Better prizes, more tradition, and it involves the teams all the way down to the tenth tier of English soccer, which gives it a little mystique. I don’t know if those players get paid down there. I don’t have any idea what the names of the leagues are. I think they might be the cultural equivalent of American intramurals after you graduate college. I think that if I were British, instead of playing sand volleyball on Thursday nights I would be playing soccer on Thursday nights with the theoretical chance of winning enough games that I get to play Manchester City at Wembley Stadium. I believe this is how this works.
UEFA Europa Conference League
I may have messed up by putting this as more important than the FA Cup, but see? This is how confusing it is! This is a relatively new league/cup for the third-best group of teams in each European country’s best league, more or less. It’s basically the CBI of European soccer, for the college basketball fans in the room, except instead of taking place at the end of one season, it takes place across the whole next season. The Premier League sent West Ham to this from this past season.
UEFA Europa League
(Ok, between you and me, this is the biggest deal in the world outside of the actual NIT, because it’s the European NIT.)
This is where the second-best group of teams in each European country’s best league, more or less, winds up. So, from this past season England sent Arsenal and Manchester United. Every team in the world wants to win this league/cup/divine-gift-to-man.
UEFA Champions League
This is where the best group of teams in each European country’s league winds up. Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur from the EPL from the end of last year. The English teams in this still all play in the Premier League, too, though. And they also play in the FA Cup and the League Cup. And their players play international games for their national teams. And they play friendlies against other clubs. And their players play friendlies for their national teams against other nations and sometimes against other clubs. This is all so fucked up. Soccer is on cocaine. Oh, also, evidently if you win the FA Cup and you don’t make the Champions League you get to play in the Europa League and if you win the League Cup and you don’t make the Europa League you get to play in the Europa Conference League. And also—this is so fucking fucked—if you get eliminated from the Champions League at the right time you drop down into the Europa League or the Europa Conference League and if you get eliminated from the Europa League at the right time you drop down into the Europa Conference League. Cocaine. It’s all cocaine. Just like the med school residency system.
Rough Day for Joe Kelly
Our guy’s trip to Kansas City didn’t go as planned. Two fastballs got away from him immediately after he entered a tie game, and after a bloop single and a groundball out, he walked in what became the winning run before getting pulled.
White Sox fans are unhappy, I’d imagine Joe Kelly’s unhappy, but as the Joe Kelly expert in the room, I’d just like to remind everyone that this happens from time to time and then he becomes absolutely electric again. Also, if you’re going to walk in a run, at least do it in a way that resembles a tipped over roman candle spiraling out of control. Drilling two guys in a row with fastballs is way more entertaining than walking them on full counts. Not to mention efficient. Joe Kelly is a godsend for pace of play.
In funnier White Sox news, the revelation that Arte Moreno’s going to try to sell the Angels has brought a collective reaction of, “Please! Jerry Reinsdorf next!” from the south siders. The Bears of baseball, everybody.
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Viewing schedule:
2:20 PM EDT: Cardinals @ Cubs – Game 1, MLB TV
8:05 PM EDT: Cardinals @ Cubs – Game 2, MLB TV
I have a proposal here. Cubs fans should, I think, be fine with Albert Pujols. He can stay. We can acknowledge that he’s an all-time great, we all loved MVP 2005, he kicked the Cubs’ ass a bunch but he also hasn’t won a World Series since the last time the Cubs did, and his time in Anaheim was legitimately sad. He’s done a lot for people with Down Syndrome, it doesn’t seem like he did PED’s (and, I mean, Sammy Sosa), Pujols isn’t that bad.
Yadier Molina, though? That’s where we all need to draw the line. The dude wanted to go watch his professional-ish basketball team play in its league championship back in Puerto Rico and the Cardinals said, “Wait, we get a break from dealing with the awkwardness of needing you to intimidate opposing baserunners (until someone figures it out and runs all over the guy) and help us plan our pitching approach while being unable to put you in an MLB lineup with any seriousness? Uhh, yeah, ok, I guess you can go.” What a day to be a Cardinals executive being instructed by Yadier Molina on what Yadier Molina wants and gets to do.
Back to the point, though: Pujols good, Molina bad. And the best part of this is that it might be reasonable enough to get some Cardinals fans to reveal their own insecurities with Yadier Molina.
7:05 PM EDT: White Sox @ Orioles, MLB TV (second screen)
Will Joe Kelly bounce back tonight? No. But that’s only because it’s really unlikely he pitches again right away.
2:30 PM EDT: Burnley @ Shrewsbury Town, Broadcast Unknown (not on a screen, just in our hearts)
So, first off, of everything Burnley’s playing in this year, this is the third most important league/cup. Burnley’s got the Premier League and it’s got the FA Cup and it’s got the League Cup, and this comes third. Just getting that out of the way in case Burnley loses. We don’t need to care about this. They can’t make us care!
In Burnley news, Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson is back. You like to see it. In Shrewsbury Town news…
Shrewsbury Town’s a League One outfit, and they’ve never played in the top tier of English footie. Shrewsbury itself is a medieval town near the Welsh border. Population of 70,000. Think: Bismarck, maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, the team did recently move (15 years ago) from the Gay Meadow to the New Meadow, meaning Ron DeSantis is presumably a big fan of theirs now. Last thing: They have a guy named Jordan Shipley but he’s not the one who used to play for Texas.
