My World Cup viewing has been nothing but clips, a selection of seconds excerpted from a 90-minute game and uploaded to one social-media platform or another. A clip, writes Corley Miller, excises “the exhausting valiant constancy, the refining and hindering of designs”—the raw material of the majority of the game. The dynamics of soccer can make it a lackluster sport. (“Usually,” writes Miller, “it doesn’t work.”) And yet those dynamics sometimes coalesce, suddenly and unexpectedly, into a few astonishing seconds of play. I could care less about soccer, truth be told. But I was thoroughly charmed by Miller’s consideration of World Cup clips, and whether they might preserve and bolster the game’s fleeting moments of grace.
Soccer relies on its antimonies—the joy and the difficulty, seemingly opposed, depend on one another. A game with no goals is mostly thwarted running; a game with no thwarting is closer to basketball. In this account, the clips are liars. Like other short videos, the life hack or minute craft, they elide mere toil to show a carnival of triumph.
More picks about soccer (or, for most of the world, football)
Turfin’ Safari
“Growing grass for the 2026 World Cup has been a years-long science project. Here’s how it’s going, from B.C. to Tennessee.”
Life, Death, and Total Football
“My Dutch friend Lars taught me to appreciate the most radical team in World Cup history—and how their tactics could be meaningful far beyond the pitch.”
H-Town United: An Unlikely Soccer Power Rises in Texas
“Coach Vincenzo Cox discovered an untapped vein of global talent at a southwest Houston high school—and mined it to create one of the best boys soccer programs in the country.”
