We Went There: USMNT Beats Turkey As the World Cup Looms

For Grantland

Why Soccer Tactics Matter: A Player Explains

What makes a team great isn't its tactics as a whole. It's the team's ability to get those thousand parts turning instinctually. The team that wins the World Cup won't do so because it has the best game plan. It would take tremendous balls to say that gegenpressing is inherently better than tiki-taka or a traditional 4-4-2 block, and history has shown us that each game plan can work. The winning team will simply execute whichever game plan that it chooses well. Both Spain and Brazil tried to keep possession with a pass-and-move philosophy in 2010, but Spain's players understood how to pass and move with each other better. "Tiki-taka" means nothing unless the players in the midfield know what space to find to become an option. Tactics demand clarity, a player understanding his role within the tactic at any given moment. The taka has to be there for the tiki.

This is an excellent paragraph.

"So I’ll have a rule—cats are out, sloths are in, focus on sloths because that’s going to be your meal ticket."

You might not know it from her public persona, but Swift is funny; she has a dry, ready wit. I told her about the strange man who was seated next to me at the concert the night before. He looked to be in his early forties and was wearing a Taylor Swift T-shirt covered with Taylor Swift pin-back buttons. He announced that he was alone and had driven to Nashville from Oklahoma for the show; he filmed the whole concert on his phone, mouthing every word to every song with unnerving intensity. “He’s probably in a file somewhere,” Swift said.