Its about 10PM ET on Wednesday night as I’m writing this. In 36 hours, the first match of the World Cup will kick off. As much as I would like to devote all of my time watching the World Cup and writing about what I’m watching, I can’t. The readership of 18to88.com deserves better than this and so I have compiled a list of the soccer websites that I turn to regularly for new, insight, and entertainment.
2. Fox Soccer
So, these first three sites aren’t hard to find, but they represent some of the best soccer coverage that traditional sports outlets in the US have to offer. They’ve all ratcheted up their coverage for the World Cup with fancy layouts and loads of analysis. They’ll have all the big breaking news, photo galleries, live game coverage, and all the top ten lists that you could ever want.
4. Goal.com
Goal.com my favorite all-soccer-all-the-time non-blog website. They’ve got coverage of just about every league and cup that you could want to follow, in a seventeen different languages.
Ives Galaracep, a regular contributor to Fox Soccer and a previous contributor to ESPN, runs my go-to blog for soccer news. He has a number of writers that contribute to his site and is timely posting just about any big news.
The Washington Posts’ Steve Goff runs a blog that provides timely news and pretty good analysis. He’s my favorite soccer writer that does coverage for a major newspaper.
This is the best site for tatctial analysis of soccer that I’ve found. ZM does great job of breaking down the formations and tactics used by teams and is doing analysis of alot of the teams in the World Cup. Also check out their series on tactical trends through out the 2000’s.
Pitch Invasion is a great blog that focuses on soccer culture, politics, and history. They don’t do a ton in the way of news, but provide some great analysis of a lot of the controversies and world events that swirl around the game.
The Run of Play is one of the best written soccer blogs on the Net. Its run by a brilliant guy named Brian Phillips. Some of his best work include the fictitious resurgence of the historical Italian powerhouse Pro Vercelli and a serial novel that he’s currently releasing on chapter at a time. He’s writing for a number of other websites for the World Cup. There’s a list of where you can find his current work here. Also, the design on this website is phenomenal.
10. Grant Wahl
Grant Wahl isn’t so much of a website, as he is the best American sports writer covering soccer at the moment. You might recognize his bald visage from his excellent coverage of the NCAA tournament for SI. You can find his soccer coverage here, here, and here.
11. Dirty Tackle
The dirty-tackle-of-the-day isn’t the only reason to visit this site. Editor Brooks Peck has a stable of good contributors that post some pretty funny stuff.
12. Matchfit USA
Pretty good analysis and comment on a broad range of topics in US soccer. Check out their regular Formula XI columns for US National Team analysis.
A British site that normally has lots of good EPL coverage and humor to boot.
14. USA 10 Kit
This site is run by a talented group of soccer journalists from SoccerNet, Goal.com, and elsewhere. The layout isn’t much to look at, but the writing is pretty good.
15. du Nord
There is little original writing on du Nord, but Brucio’s daily soccer news digest is a must read. He must spend hours each day scouring the Net for his content.
16. The Guardian
I think that The Guardian provides the best soccer coverage of England’s big newspapers.
This site gets a little heady, but if you delve in to its archives you’ll find lots of soccer history focused essays. Pretty great reading if you have time for some longer articles.
Not really a soccer website, but lots of World Cup related maps. If you browse the archives, you’ll find lots of baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer maps from all eras.
18. USSoccer.com
The official website of the US national soccer program. One of the better places to find stats from national team games.
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