The False Dialectic of the Video Assistant Referee in Premier League Soccer

At the beginning of the current Premier League season, the Football Association (FA), English football’s governing body, officially implemented the instant officiating replay system known as the Video Assistant Referee. The Video Assistant Referee (affectionately called VAR) had already been in use in the Spanish and Italian leagues, as well as the UEFA Champions League and the FIFA World Cup. Many fans of the game heralded the arrival of VAR as the end of refereeing controversies, especially

Will Capitalism Doom Professional Soccer's Competition?

For the first time in years, this season’s January transfer window for European soccer clubs seemed to slip by without any big-name transfers or outrageous fees. The result of this relatively inactive January period is that the upcoming summer transfer window will likely break spending records. If Paris Saint-Germain’s star forwards Kylian Mbappé and Neymar choose to leave the French, both could command fees around of £200 million. Similarly, Italian hegemon Juventus is rumored to be plotting

Reflections and Predictions on the Premier League

The 2019 – 2020 Premier League season has been anything but ordinary: there’s the promise of a new champion, an impending relegation dog fight and a race for fourth place that no one seems to want to win. The story of the season is undoubtedly the rampant success of league-leaders Liverpool. It’s difficult to describe just how ruthless the Reds have been; they’ve won 22 of their 23 games, claiming 67 of a possible 69 points — the most ever claimed by a European club in the first 23 games of a

Opinion: Elite CDMs win Premier League Titles

With the 2019-2020 Premier League season almost a third of the way over, enough time has passed to start analyzing some of the key trends in English football. While much attention has already been paid to the role of the fullback, this mostly comes from the meteoric rise of Liverpool’s duo Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson, who have been heralded as the reason for Liverpool’s recent dominance in Europe and England. Instead, I believe the position that is defining this and recent seasons

What Amherst’s Secular Chapel Sessions Mean to Me

Earlier this semester, Jen Manion, professor of history, and Michael Kunichika, professor of Russian, struck up a conversation about Serena Williams’ recent performance at the U.S. Open. “During our conversation, I realized that I have so much to say about Serena Williams,” Manion said. “And then I thought, ‘Why don’t I have a place to talk about Serena Williams?’” From this brief conversation arose an idea for a new community-building event, which the two called Secular Chapel. It would be a s

Youth Players the Right Way Forward at Chelsea

As a Chelsea fan, I have to admit that despite recent successes — including winning a Premier League title in the 2016-2017 season, the FA Cup in 2018 and this past season’s Europa League title — an overall air of frustration has marked the past few years at Chelsea Football Club. The 2015-2016 10th-place finish (the team’s worst since 1996) comes to mind as an example of the up-and-down nature of the team’s performances, while the premature sale of players like Mo Salah, who went on to win tw

Brexit at Home: How the Politics of Britain Affect Students

June 23 will mark the three-year anniversary of the “Brexit” referendum vote, when voters in the United Kingdom chose to leave the European Union after months of tumultuous campaigning. Since the vote, there have been countless debates in Parliament, several failed solutions and one snap general election, but the path forward for the United Kingdom still remains murky. After Parliament rejected all of Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposed deals, the European Union granted the United Kingdom a ne

For the Millions Who Can't, You Must

On Nov. 6, the nation will head to the polls for the first midterm election since President Donald Trump took office, with all 435 House seats, 33 Senate seats, 36 state governorships and thousands of state and local offices up for grabs. Voters across America will have the opportunity to not only reject the GOP’s agenda, but to replace it with one that is progressive, inclusive and representative of who we are as a nation. The Republican Party now controls both houses of Congress and the presi