Introduction Hail! Unfortunate Accidental Readers and Great Friends of the Pod. The volume you have in your hands was designed to be many things: 1. The final nail in the coffin of the long-floundering publishing industry. 2. Living proof that it is possible to write a worse book than Does God Love Michael''s Two Daddies? by Sheila K. Butt. 3. An ill-advised attempt to journey into the inky dark, unexplored depths of the Men in Blazers universe, every detail of which we have created hand in hand with our masochistically loyal listeners over the past eight years, pod by pod, show by show, tweet by suboptimal tweet.

To achieve the first two objectives, we chose to focus solely on the third. This task demanded we wallow in the history and culture of football, the sport we both love. With its pantheon of heroes and villains, moments of glorious ecstasy and searing despair, dodgy haircuts and surplus neck tattoos, it has empowered us to experience emotions other people seem to feel in real life, to which we are both inured. No telenovela could provide soapier story lines to keep us hooked like football . a game with plot points that unfurl live without a safety net, as the whole world watches. *** Witnessing the game we love grow and grow in America, the nation that we love, has been the thrill of our lifetimes. We both arrived on these shores as innocents, equipped with full heads of our own hair, in the early 1990s. Back then soccer had seemingly forever been cast as America''s "Sport of the Future," its recent past little more than a collection of false dawns and hyperbolic predictions that it was about to become the Next Big Thing.

We well remember the day when FIFA announced its intention to host the 1994 World Cup in the US, prompting panicked former-AFL-quarterback-turned-US-representative Jack Kemp to declare on the floor of Congress: "I think it is important for all those young men out there who someday hope to play real football where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands a distinction should be made that football is democratic capitalism whereas soccer is a European socialist sport." Yet, slow and steady wins the race. We have watched with wonder, World Cup to World Cup, as the game''s profile has inexorably risen to the point that the sport''s profile has taken its place alongside seersucker, cheesesteaks, and the collected works of Raymond Carver as a symbol of American freedom and democracy. Indeed, our obsessive love of football and Men in Blazers'' very existence has been possible only because it was powered and reinforced by that surging rise of interest, as well as by the fact that you allow bald men on television in the United States. The question is often asked as to why, season to season, week to week, game to game, more and more Americans have fallen under football''s poetic sway. Many theories have been advanced. Just as baseball thrived in "the Golden Age of Radio," and the NFL was the perfect televisual sport, soccer''s rise has been driven by the Internet in general, and EA Sports FIFA in particular, which have enabled fans in Los Angeles or North Dakota to experience and follow their teams as closely as supporters in Leicester or Newcastle. Also, alcohol.

If a gent is in a bar drinking a beer at 7:30 in the morning, society deems him to be an alcoholic. If Liverpool are losing to Bournemouth on a television in that very same bar whilst that afore- mentioned beer is being quaffed, we consider that man an American soccer fan. If we have learned only one thing during our Guinness-stained Men in Blazers odyssey it is this: Never underestimate the extent to which Americans adore an excuse to drink during the daytime. Ultimately, we like to believe football''s American boom has been made possible by a realization that sporting audiences here have made en masse--that when they experience soccer, they might not be watching home runs, end zone dances, or tomahawk dunks. They are glimpsing life itself unfold before their eyes. The legendary Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger once articulated this best when he said, "Football is like real life but in a more condensed way, more intense. At some moments it catches you suddenly and it can be very cruel." As two men, we could not be more different.

One of us is an optimistic Londoner who believes everything is possible. The other, a negative Liverpudlian who sees Cossacks lurking behind every door. Yet we are bonded by a mutual understanding that soccer in all of its forms--men''s or women''s, international or club--as long as it is played by bipeds, is the key to understanding human existence. As George Eliot once said: Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. If you substitute the word "football" for "art" here, it could not be better said. This book, then, is for readers who believe that, or would like to. Fans old or new, young or old, deeply knowledgeable or neophyte. An encyclopedic collection assembled at great loss of life, of the greatest games, most legendary characters, soaring moments, salty chants, and the occasional self-indulgent yet critical detour, that make up everything you need to know about the game.

Reading this cover to cover might not improve the way you play the sport, but it will, we hope, make you better human beings, which is arguably, almost as important. Courage. Rog and Davo Argentina: Not to go all Paul Krugman on you, but one of the most admirable things about Argentina''s consistency as a world footballing power is that while Germany, Brazil, and Italy all rank among the world''s ten biggest economies (and between them, they''ve won 13 of the 20 World Cups) Argentina is the economic outlier. The team that defies the correlation between a nation''s GDP and their ability to win the big one. Stylistically, Argentine football has patented a long tradition of violent beauty. Their fans crave both the Gambetta, a slaloming style of dribbling run described by the poet Eduardo Galeano as strumming "the ball as if it was a guitar," alongside a cunning guile and physicality that is known as La Nuestra, or "our style of play." Thus, Argentine players are able to undo opponents with clinical pace, or by pinging the ball around their box, but if a groin or kidney presented itself for a good punching along the way, they could be easily persuaded to give it a thunderous jab. Thus their great team of the 1950s were known as the "Angels with Dirty Faces.

" This is a team who will stop at nothing to win, stooping even to handing opponents spiked water bottles during breaks to drug them in game. When England finally worked out how to beat them in 2002, thanks to a penalty won by a flopping from Michael Owen, the Argentine media merely nodded their approval at his deceit and willingness to cheat to win. "THEY''VE LEARNED!" was one headline. Yet, Argentina have always been far more than Al Davis-era Oakland Raiders. Their team always had to be both admired and feared due to their production line of visionary, creative playmakers, El Diez, "The Ten": Juan Román Riquelme, and now Lionel Messi. Victory leads to sainthood. Lose, and it is all their fault. As mighty as they have been in the past, Los Albicelestes have gone over two decades without winning a trophy.

Dakota Fanning was not yet born when they lifted the 1993 Copa America. Their teams have been talent-stocked, yet their biggest problem was how to get the best out of Lionel Messi. As revered as he was, Argentines remained suspicious of the man who moved to Barcelona aged fourteen, viewing him as a foreigner, El Catalán, who never shone in an Argentine journey and even retired briefly from international football with tears in his eyes after misfiring in a doomed penalty shootout loss after 2016''s Copa America Centenario final. Despite their ongoing agony, the Argentinians find reason for optimism. The pope, Francis, was born in Buenos Aires and is football mad. Their fans draw solace from his support. "If one Argentine can do what he does," they say, "just imagine what twenty- three can do." Best Day of the Season: The first morning of any Premier League season is among the finest days of the year.

Up there in our book with Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Yom Kippur, Independence Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Churchill Day. Squads have been refreshed. New players have arrived. Everyone has a fresh new haircut. The ink on their recently acquired neck tattoos has barely dried. Few occasions in football carry such a sense of collective anticipation and hope. Three hundred eighty games lie ahead of us over 228 days. Each an unknown voyage of discovery within which everything feels pure and possible.

Rationally, the Premier League may be a set of mini leagues within a league (six teams battling for top four, four for mid-table obscurity, the rest to avoid relegation), but on the first day of the season every fan suspends disbelief and listens to their fast-beating heart which assures them that their team''s newly acquired striker will hit the ground running and score 25 league goals, that injury-prone play- maker will have the season of his life, and the young loanee from Seville whose name is un-pronounceable will reveal himself to be a diamond in the rough. The moment before the referee''s whistle blows is one thick with prayer. A ball has not been kicked. Dreams.