The EPL's Newest Stadium 💙

Hail GFOP! 

I type with fingers braced for a second helping of footballing ecstasy. What a weekend lies ahead: Self-sabotaging Spurs limp into aura-back’s Manchester City! “Eze’s Arsenal” gird their loins for those northern upstarts Leeds. Newcastle welcome Liverpool in a game that is the Premier League writer’s version of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” and Everton move into their Grand Budapest Hotel-esque new home. Remember when we told you, “Don’t overreact to just one weekend of football”? Let’s lose our minds over week two together… 

a. Arsenal fans! What an emotional journey of a Wednesday you had. Waking up to the dark news that Kai Havertz was out. Rending your clothing, running round the house screaming it is all for naught. Then ending the day with Eberechi Eze pledging to return to the team he once yearned to play for as a teen and his mural being painted near the Emirates. Remember: Screwing over Tottenham, worth more than any other trophy. 🔫

b. A word on Everton’s new stadium. I write about the state of the club’s football below, but I do want to mark the wonder of it all. We stand here, in the midst of a pivotal transformative moment: new stadium, new energy, a new future in our hands. My highest hope is that our club is crawling into a chrysalis like a caterpillar, poised to emerge as a stunning, soaring beautiful blue morpho butterfly with iridescent cobalt wings. I have seen Everton glory in my lifetime. May we reclaim it in this moment. I will go to sleep Saturday night and dream dreams of Ndiaye arcing in a cross for Barry to nod down, and Beto, beautiful Beto, sweeping home the goal that delivers what we have all yearned for. To Everton glory being no longer an oxymoron. 💙

ii. This has been a remarkable week for me. On Wednesday, my day began with a conversation with Liverpool’s goalkeeper king Alisson, which bordered on the theological, and ended with LA Rams head coach Sean McVay coming on to talk about his love of football in general and friendship with Mikel Arteta in particular. That conversation was so inspirational, even I was ready to bench press 405 pounds and rattle off 100 push-ups inside two minutes. I can’t wait for you to hear it. It wraps up a week in which we dropped bangers with Pep Guardiola (going deep on all the important issues: Cherki, mustaches, Oasis) and Martin Ødegaard (his fitness, Gyökeres’ impact and how well he sleeps). 📺

More: Watch Alisson talk about how long it will take for Liverpool’s backline to gel here. We talked about God and beards too. 🧔🏻‍♂️

iii. One of the joys of my year: yesterday, we launched a brand new show with my good friend Larry Nance Jr., whom you may know as a big dunking, heart-of-gold NBA star, but who I know as a great American who has fallen head-over-heels in love with football to the extent that he has become a co-owner of Leeds United. Larry and I have been talking for years about starting a show in which we go deep on the overlap between the Premier League and the NBA and it was a real joy to put action to words this week with Switch the Play with Larry Nance Jr. featuring a very special guest, the great Bald Mamba Alex Caruso, who is 100% Manchester City. Follow along on Instagram and TikTok and join us on this journey as we speak with one incredible NBA guest after another in that burgeoning community of tall, athletic, serious football fans, to talk about the beautiful game, basketball, and where the two intersect. 🍻

More: Here is some background on Larry and why he is the king of the NBA-EPL crossover.

iv. Best part of last week’s Premier League experience? The conversation in our new Discord Channel, in which hundreds of GFOPs came together to talk through every moment with the kind of joy, humor, and creativity Twitter used to provide back in the day. Come and join me in there now, it is incredibly easy. JUST CLICK THIS LINK and you’ll be with us instantly if you have an account already, or create one and you’ll be added once complete. 🤣

PS - Highlight of my week: News that Bojangles is opening in New York. Man needs his Bo-Rounds.

This Week at MIB HQ 📣

Right about now, you may start to feel your nerves climbing rapidly and every sense in your body telling you to sign off from work and throw your laptop into the sea. That feeling, my friends, means it must be time for week two of the Premier League. With a full slate of games in store, make sure to tune into our Big Weekend Preview on YouTube later today. It’s the perfect way to brush up on exactly what you need to know going into the weekend, so you are fully prepared to lose yourself to football. Come be with us as we look ahead at the weekend’s biggest storylines and make some predictions that will all certainly be 100% accurate. And don’t forget to submit your one big burning question here to be featured in a future episode. 📺

ii. Over at The Women's Game, Sam Mewis and Becky Sauerbrunn broke down last weekend’s NWSL games on Good Vibes FC, including some lengthy weather delays, and talked about how the league needs to fix their schedule. They also highlight their standout players for the MVP, ROY, and Golden Boot race. Then on Friendlies, Sam welcomed former USWNT player and Bay FC co-founder, Leslie Osborne, who opened up about Bay FC’s vision, the historic match at Oracle Park, and her advice on redefining yourself beyond the game. Watch those episodes, plus so much more, on TWG's YouTube channel. ☀️

iii. COLUMBUS…come join us in celebrating your city. On Monday, Sept. 8, we’re bringing Men in Blazers to KEMBA Live for a special USA Matchday Eve celebration, presented by the GFOPs at Purina. I’ll be joined by Clint Dempsey and fellow MiB Media Network host Herc Gomez for a night that breaks down the USMNT and salutes Columbus’ legacy as American soccer’s fortress. And that’s not all… we’ll be joined by Crew royalty in inspirational manager Wilfried Nancy and the Vibes CEO, Frankie Hejduk. It will be an evening of football, laughs, and raising a glass together in one of the great soccer cities in America.

🎟️ Tickets are available here. Come be with us Columbus. 💛

📬 Enjoying The Raven? Check out our other Men in Blazers newsletters:

☀️ The Women’s Game: Everything you need to know about women’s football, sent straight to your inbox each week.

🇺🇸 USMNT Only: Your weekly update on the most important topics in the U.S. men’s game, all leading up to next year’s World Cup.

To the Football 🍻

Manchester City vs. Tottenham (Saturday, 7:30 a.m. ET, USA)

The best of times, the worst of times at Tottenham Hotspur. As GFOP Gil Rutledge wrote, “I swear, St. Totteringham's Day comes earlier each year. How did Spurs manage to lose a one-horse race for Eze?” I ache for their fans for the jackknifing of emotions they have experienced from the second the Europa League final whistle blew. Proof that feeling of glory we all chase is fleeting. How did we get here since then? Ange! Sonny! Morgan Gibbs-White! Now Eze! The long-term injuries to Maddison and now Dejan Kulusevski make it all feel 10x worse. A club suddenly in the Natalie Imbruglia position – cold and shamed, lying naked on the floor. To travel to a newly Tijjani Reijnders-propelled Manchester City feels cruel. Expect the wounded memories of Gibbs-White and now Eze to feel like phantom limbs, to collide with the ghoulish specter of the defenestrated memory of Ange Postecoglou to haunt low moments. So much now rests on the shoulders of Thomas Frank, who ever more, seems like the last sensible man in a world of dark chaos.

Rogstradamus 🔮: Amidst the darkness, Thomas Frank is a canny shining light. And Richarlison is a flashing blade. This game going to be closer than we think and feel. City 2-1. 

Newcastle vs. Liverpool (Monday, 3 p.m. ET, USA)

Carabao Cup Final Two: Electric Boogaloo? The team everyone wants to play for visits the club who feel about as popular as Carrie, Boo Radley, and Chris in “Everybody Hates Chris.” Expect this to be an absolute knife fight. The Toon squad is close knit and will be ready to vent. Frimpong is out for Liverpool with a hamstring knack, but if Arne Slot’s team attack Newcastle with half the energy Alexander Isak is attacking Newcastle with, this game is gonna be a barnburner. His row with the club has gone “nuclear” with accusatory social media posts and counter posts. I got to hand it to Isak, he is an excellent writer. 

Rogstradamus 🔮: At least two red cards. Hand-to-hand combat. 2-2.

Fulham vs. Manchester United (Sunday, 11:30 a.m. ET, USA)

No team felt more swaggering in defeat than rejuvenated Manchester United. The Cunha and Mbeumo partnership needs a nickname, but has given United fans the feeling that poetry may soon replace prose. United have an eight-match league winning streak at Craven Cottage, which is where they should play all their home games.

Rogstradamus 🔮: United fans deserve happiness too. Cunha and Mbeumo both score. Šeško gets a late shinner. 3-0.

West Ham vs. Chelsea (TODAY, 3 p.m. ET, USA)

It feels like it is a lifetime ago that Graham Potter managed Chelsea. His West Ham tenure is at the seven-month mark, the exact same time he lasted at Stamford Bridge, and already feels flatline-bleak. World Champion Chelsea were rusty in their opening game, going goalless despite splurging $258.5 million on four attackers this summer. 

Rogstradamus 🔮: I see a darkness. A game which is low on quality, ends with a sublime João Pedro moment of poetic violence. I ache for Graham. 

Arsenal vs. Leeds (Saturday, 12:30 p.m. ET, NBC)

Even if Arsenal do end up winning a trophy, I do not think the texts I will receive from my Arsenal-supporting fans will approach the joy that accompanied the news of Eze choosing them over Spurs. A dozen friends all sent me the same meme: A screenshot from WebMD entitled, “What should I do if my erection will not go down?” The memory of the clumsy opening day performance against Manchester United has been tossed aside. As has the loss of Kai Havertz. How emboldened, physically strong Leeds will seek to piss in the punch and win their opening two Premier League games for the first time since 2003.

Rogstradamus 🔮: Got to be 1-0 to the Arsenal. Set piece goal. Only question is, which defender scores it?

Everton vs. Brighton (Sunday, 9 a.m. ET, USA)

What a way to throw an Everton housewarming. The club have dreamed of this historic move for years. The dawn of a new era. The opening of the quite magnificent $1 billion Hill Dickinson Stadium. A 52,769-capacity, state of the art, stunningly architected, magical kingdom that replaces the shabby wonder of Goodison Park with the beautiful angles of Tony Stark’s Razor House. We arrive with Everton stumbling in, confidence in tatters, after a self-soiling performance at Leeds, which ended in defeat courtesy of the stinging injustice of a controversial penalty. If Everton are sliced and diced by Brighton (who smashed us 3-0 in this game last season), expect the pride of the pre-game moment to be replaced by fumes in the blink of an eye. Everton, aren’t we. 

More: Everton’s new home set to turbo-charge change.

Rogstradamus 🔮: Brighton 3-1. Come for the glorious fan pageantry before the game to be replaced by boos at full-time. Most Everton thing that ever Evertoned.

More Football, Did Ya Say? ⚽️

• Napoli gird their KDB-bolstered loins to defend Serie A championship. Good season preview here.

• On the joy and challenge of Birmingham City’s American transformation. 

• Rory Smith on transfer rumor journalism. A banger. Speaking of Rory…

The Correspondent w/ Rory Smith, Issue #2: First Impressions Count, Especially on TV 📺

Rory writes: One of the unfortunate drawbacks of football’s unrelenting embrace of data is the creeping tendency to judge players solely by their output. Just as there are, famously, no points for artistic impression, it is impossible to deliver a conclusive victory in a social media argument by citing the thrill of wonder that some players inspire, or to quantify for a video game the feeling of boundless possibility innate to others.

It is far easier to cite what is, in effect, a gauge of their productivity: presenting their G+A – the goals they have scored and the goals they have created – has the air of being scientific, inarguable, a solid island of cold, hard fact in a teeming sea of opinion and guesswork and uninformed impression. Players are reduced to what they have done.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Tijjani Reijnders’ G+A from his Premier League debut. He got one of each as part of Manchester City’s warning-shot rout of Wolves on Saturday: a smartly taken goal, speared expertly across José Sa with his left foot in the first half; an artful assist, teeing up Erling Haaland with a disguised cutback in the second. One goal, one assist. Not a bad start at all…

Read the full newsletter here 📧

More Great Football Around the World 🌎

Bayern Munich vs. RB Leipzig (Today, 2:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+) 🇩🇪

The Bundesliga is back, baby! No league in Europe matches Germany’s elite division when it comes to goals per game, and that’s probably not going to change with Bayern Munich’s 2023 FPL dream frontline of Harry Kane, Michael Olise and Luis Díaz playing keep away against helpless defenses. In Germany, Vincent Kompany’s champions and the Meisterschale are a pairing as synonymous as bratwurst and beer, but RB Leipzig, even without the departed Benjamin Šeško, are a production line of talent who will be determined to improve on last season’s seventh-place finish. Come for the superstar players, stay for the magnificent spectacle Bayern’s fans will concoct in the Allianz Arena.

Levante vs. Barcelona (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+) 🇪🇸

Right now, there is no prospect in world football more daunting than encountering a hungry and well-rested Barcelona frontline of Lamine Yamal, Raphinha and Ferran Torres, all of whom scored in last weekend’s 0-3 La Liga curtain-raiser against Mallorca. Now what if each could be replaced by Marcus Rashford, Dani Olmo and a potentially returning Robert Lewandowski? You can imagine the sleepless night Levante manager, Julián Calero, is about to have. Hansi Flick’s champions are already top of La Liga and will plan to stay there until May, as Real Madrid try to adapt to the demands of new manager, Xabi Alonso. 

AC Milan vs. Cremonese (Saturday, 2:45 p.m. ET, Paramount+) 🇮🇹

Nobody said post-Tijjani Reijnders life would be easy, because AC Milan’s midfield without him is akin to the Ibiza Final Boss without a bowl cut, but the Rossoneri started strongly last weekend in the Coppa Italia under the second reign of Massimiliano Allegri at the San Siro. His mission is to make Milan win trophies again, a feat that is feasible if Christian Pulisic can replicate something close to the 29 goal contributions he hit last season, and if Luka Modrić, weeks away from his 40th birthday, can still be one of the best midfielders in the world. Cremonese are one of Serie A’s three promoted sides, and after crashing out of the cup last weekend, a heaving San Siro might be the last place they’d fancy visiting for their top-tier return.

Real Oviedo vs. Real Madrid (Sunday, 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+) 🇪🇸

Real Madrid’s new manager and club legend, Xabi Alonso, said after his side’s narrow win via a Kylian Mbappé penalty against Osasuna on Monday, “We haven’t prepared well.” Los Blancos arguably have the world’s most demanding fans and board, so these words may raise some eyebrows in a way not seen since Don Carlo Ancelotti left the Bernabéu, as it becomes clear that it may take time for a smorgasbord of Galácticos to become accustomed to their new manager’s intense demands. Newly-promoted Real Oviedo and their 40-year-old icon, Santi Carzola, are one of football’s enduring stories of romance and intrigue, but after losing their first match back in La Liga 2-0 to Villarreal, the reality of their current peer group will be abruptly setting in. They have home advantage on Sunday, but Alonso’s superstars and a baying fanbase don’t want silverware this season, they require it. 

NWSL - San Diego Wave vs. Racing Louisville (Sunday, 8 p.m. ET, Paramount +) 🇺🇸

The stealth story of the season? San Diego sit second in the league after a 2-1 win last weekend against Bay FC. Following their Shield win in 2023, the Wave spent last season dropping points, losing star players, and cycling through managers. After finishing 10th, departing Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall joined the club in January and has since turned them into an efficient, high-scoring outfit, unbeaten in their last five outings. They welcome a Louisville side nearing the end of a run of tough games, having faced the Current, Spirit, and Orlando in August alone. 

MiB Mad Libs 📝

This week’s phrase is: “Eberechi Eze choosing Arsenal over Spurs is the equivalent of __________”

Email me your submissions to be in contention to win a coveted MiB patch.

There were loads of incredible entries this week, but there can only be one winner: Jeff Cooper.

“My team, Arsenal, will have a very successful yet disappointing Premier League season because THEY'RE FECKIN' ARSENAL!”

Jeff. I love a dose of big dreaming realism. Give me all that joy. With a side of a kick in the down belows. Where do I sign up? Send me your postal address and we will send you a patch. 💙

Introducing Pet FC’s Newest Member: Digby 🐶

We have partnered with the two-legged people at Purina to create Pet FC, a new initiative where we will be featuring YOUR four-legged friends that show a true love of football on par with their human counterparts.

This week we’re celebrating Digby, who lives with his QPR-loving family in Oxfordshire, UK, where he's a local celebrity – joining in on football matches with kids at the park. His talent on the ball might be better than some PL attackers. 😉

Do you have a great football story involving the dog or cat in your life? Click the link below to submit your pets and pet stories, and we will be regularly featuring the best of the best here in the Raven and on our social channels. What's more, we have Purina prize packs for every pet featured.

Submit your Pet FC stories here 🐾

Not Football and All the Better for It 📖

• Why Is Martha’s Vineyard Going Vegan? It’s All About Tick Bites. I have a touch of the alpha-gal syndrome myself.

• Shawn Hatosy Understands the Power of The Pitt. As do I!

• A truck driver, a hotelier, and an art conservator walk into a bar...Saving a New Orleans Banksy.

• The United States Is Southern Now whether y'all like it or nawt! (gift link!)

• "I kept telling my neighbour it had to be squirrels, if only to avoid admitting it could be something else." The Great French Fry Mystery.

• This song helped me through the week: “Nothing at All” by Mac DeMarco.

• I read this book and enjoyed it:“Sheepdogs” by Elliot Ackerman. Elliot is such a prolific writer and each book feels like a different challenge to him. I have loved his military non-fiction writing and geopolitically-charged novels. Here, he turns his hand to a beach page-turner and it is bang on. I admire his productivity more than I can say.

A GFOP Writes… ✍️

Jonas Hart, a sociology student at James Madison (the university, not the injured hunk of a player) wrote to us last year that he was working on a sociology of religion textbook and was planning to include a Men in Blazers quote, which was a very humbling prospect. He wrote: “There have been many occasions that the pod has been an excellent reminder of the ways in which sport functions in so many ways like religion, for so many people. Especially during the height of the pandemic, the passion and need for human connection, for community, for meaning, and all that was put on hold was something you regularly made clear to your listeners.”

This week, Jonas sent through the paper, and do I need to tell you, it is a page-turner. It includes a section on our work with American soccer bars. It concludes that Durkheim would be hard-pressed to define the American football bar (or any serious sports bar) as anything other than a church.

Jonas, I am very moved to have our suboptimal crap be given such lofty coverage. It is a huge relief for all of us at MiB to be added to the storehouse of knowledge and to have made academia jump the shark. Savor your football as you do your studies. I dedicate our Alisson interview with its religious overtones to you, you king. 

Keep sending your stories and questions to [email protected].

To Better Days Ahead for All.

Let’s not take a moment watching football together for granted and make great memories.

Big Love.

Courage,
ROG

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