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Basic Information

Let's start with the basics. Both my 70-year-old neighbor and my longtime, once soccer-agnostic college football analytics buddy fell harder for the sport than they anticipated this summer. But it's unclear whether it's the sport they now enjoy, or if it's just that they've fallen head-over-heels in love with Norway's charismatic goal-scoring striker Erling Haaland. Haaland's summer of American love -- combined with Norway's quarterfinals run -- seemed to do more for his worldwide popularity than any of the 162 goals he has scored for Manchester City over the past four years. [... ]

Important Clubs and Players

Barcelona and Bayern Munich are impossibly fun. The best ball might be played in the Premier League, but you can't really say it's the most enjoyable. The tactics are somehow both intense and cagey, and there are times when it feels as if teams can score only via set pieces. You'll know what you're watching is of the highest class, but you might have to go elsewhere to find the most aesthetically pleasing version of the sport. As my annual Watchability rankings can attest, if all you do is watch Bayern and Barça matches, you're going to think soccer is the greatest sport in the world. [... ]

Pacing Yourself

Any given Major League Baseball season lasts around seven months. The NBA season lasts eight. The club soccer season lasts nine months in earnest, but really it lasts even longer than that. The first round of qualification for the 2026-27 Champions League began on July 7, the same day as Argentina's World Cup round-of-16 win over Egypt. Granted, this was for the smaller domestic champions that didn't have anyone active in the World Cup -- winners in the first qualifying round included Azerbaijan's Sabah FC, the Faroe Islands' KI Klaksvik and Ireland's Shamrock Rovers -- but the domestic season began in Scotland and Belgium this past weekend, and the Polish season began even earlier than that. You can almost always find soccer on TV, and you have to understand in advance that pacing yourself is important. We'll see plenty of big-name matchups pretty early in the club season, and the Champions League's league phase will begin in mid-September, but the impact of any given match isn't going to be super important. That's in part why everything else in soccer -- the singing crowds, the rich club histories -- ends up creating so much value. [... ]