It’s the World’s Most Popular Sports League. Nothing Else Comes Close. Why Has It Been So Hard for Me to Enjoy It?

The Slatest This isn’t the first time I’ve tried, but this time will be different. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Luke Winkie? Aug 28, 20263:28 PM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images. This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day. Happy Friday, everybody. This is Luke Winkie. I’m filling in for Ian today, so let’s take a break from the usual ignominies we cover on the Slatest to talk about something completely different. By the time you read this, I will be at a bar cheering on Crystal Palace FC—an English Premier League team founded in 1905—which I have been a fan of for exactly two weeks now. This is my latest attempt to turn myself into a European football fan after far too many false starts to count. To my horror and delight, I fear that it’s actually working this time. I don’t have a good reason for why it’s taken me this long to make the leap. I’ve never been one of those churlish, anti-soccer American chuds. My dad is from England, and naturally there are a number of photos of me wearing a hand-me-down West Ham United jersey to elementary school. I have a distinct childhood memory of being shocked awake at 3 in the morning during the 2002 World Cup—the one that was held in Japan and South Korea. I thought the house was on fire; instead, England had just scored on Brazil. (The team would go on to lose 2–1, a tradition that was just reconsecrated in July.) But the particularities of the sport outside its elegant, digestible, quadrennial national context were always too byzantine to wrap my head around. What the hell is a “transfer fee”? How is there any drama in, say, a league where Bayern Munich has 34 of the 63 championships? Why are there so many different tournaments? I still don’t know the answer to these questions. It’s going to take me years to become fluent in all the nuances of the sport. But so far, I’m having a lot of fun. Patrick Reis, Slate’s politics editor and EPL sicko, tells me that Crystal Palace has recently sold several of its best players, which is a thing he said I ought to get used to, as it tends to happen a lot. That sounds about right to me. I chose my beloved Eagles (that’s their nickname; I had to Google it) because I enjoyed the juxtapositional sumptuousness of the name—surely there is nothing resembling a “crystal palace” in deep South London—and because I was tickled by the fact that the organization is owned partly by Woody Johnson, chairman of the New York Jets. Johnson has apparently instituted a number of USA-style flourishes into the program. (For instance: Crystal Palace is the only team in the Premiership with cheerleaders.) And, most importantly, as a washed-up hipster living in central Brooklyn, I am surrounded by fans of Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur—two teams I also know nothing about—and I simply refuse to conform to that coalition. Being an Arsenal fan and being into the band Geese is the same type of thing. Here is where I must mention that I grew up in San Diego, the Arctic of the American sports landscape. I have spent most of my life rooting for anonymous Padres and Chargers squads that nobody in the national media cares about. As such, when I saw that Crystal Palace had the lowest number of subscribers on its subreddit of any side in the league, I felt a natural kinship. Today we are playing Manchester City, the nouveau riche heavyweight in the EPL. (It is estimated that City is paying something like 200 million pounds for its roster. Crystal Palace is somewhere in the 70s.) Similarly, in the offseason it was frequently rumored that Manchester City coveted Crystal Palace star midfielder Adam Wharton, whose verve and creativity pops off the screen even to my untrained eyes. This is the ugly part of European football: the irradiated hypercapitalist hierarchy perpetually preying on the weak in a way that makes college football look meritocratic in comparison. Historically, this has been my greatest barrier to full-throated soccer fandom. Americans are sold a linear understanding of professional sports. There is this idea that through market-controlling systems like the draft and the salary cap, any team, no matter how minor or shabby, may stumble into a transcendent talent and anoint a dynasty. Tim Duncan played 19 years in San Antonio! Those principles simply do not apply in the EPL. My wide-eyed aspirations need to be lowered significantly. Yes, you still may savor the glory of a great player wearing your colors, but there’s a good chance they’ll be packing up shop by the time they’re 25. This means that in order to truly appreciate European football, one must find a different way to be a fan. And, frankly, maybe it’s healthier to develop a version of fandom that isn’t maniacally obsessed with the illusive hope that with the right stroke of luck, the San Diego Padres will one day win the World Series. That such a destiny is written in the stars, or that it ought to be guaranteed through the sheer gravity of my angst. Years ago, I was talking to my cousin—also English—about how one could find the Premiership compelling when only a small handful of upper-crust blue bloods ever have a shot at winning. He told me, with absolutely no artifice, that what he finds more interesting about the championship is whether Hull would face relegation or if Leeds could finish in the top half of the table. Relatedly, my cousin is a fan of the Wolverhampton Wanderers, a team that finished in last place in 2025 (three wins, 11 draws, 24 losses!!!) and has spent long stretches of its existence in the wilderness. I got the sense that he was less capable of getting disappointed by those failures than I would be. This is the attitude I intend to take with me to the bar today. Come On, You Palace! Let’s at least beat the spread. Tolga Akdoğan When you’re done watching Crystal Palace’s dominance (again, a reminder that I wrote this this morning), we have some recommendations for an enjoyable way to spend your evening. If you relish reading a critic pan a bad movie, then you’ll love Laura Miller’s scathing review of The Whisper Man, a ridiculous new thriller starring Robert De Niro and Michael Keaton. If you want to dig into an internet mystery: Nitish Pahwa tells the tale of the hunt for a mysterious Instagram-famous rapper who turned out to not really exist, and explores what it reveals about how popular accounts are making their posts go viral. If you pride yourself on your knowledge of current events, see if you can beat a Slate senior editor’s score in today’s news quiz! (A sample question: Which member of the U.S. government made a secretive four-hour trip to Moscow this week?) If you could use a dose of wonder in your life: From the archives, take a trip with Dan Kois to Ohio’s mysterious UNESCO World Heritage site, a monument that is said to be on par with the pyramids. That’s it for me. Ian will be back Monday. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.