The example of Dave Wangerin — an American Midwesterner who moved to the United Kingdom to get his soccer fix — continues the spirit of When Saturday Comes.

Wangerin, who died at the age of 50 last summer, was given space in the iconoclastic British soccer “webzine” to ramble on about American soccer history, an obscure segment of a sport that has labored in obscurity on these shores for most of its history.

The American game has been derided even worse on the British Isles, especially our when it comes to our use of the word “soccer” over their “football.” But that’s another subject.

Wangerin, who eventually settled in Scotland, didn’t care about nomenclature. His 2006 book, “Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America’s Forgotten Game,” was published as a broader sporting public in America was starting to take note of its present, thanks to wider availability on television that yielded greater mainstream media attention.

To honor Wangerin’s memory, as well as his devotion to the story of the game in the United States, the editors of WSC have created an annual writers competition, open to “those who don’t make their living from writing.”

(The deadline to submit an entry is May 31, and the winner gets a cash prize of £250 and his/her article published in the magazine. Here’s one of the candidates for the first contest.)

That WSC should do this for an American writer who preferred to write about the lost history of the game in his native land speaks to the expansive embrace of a publication that seems as novel now as it did when it first hit the stands in 1986. It was a smart fans’ perspective on the world of English soccer as it transitioned from a being a haven for blatant fan violence to a sport gobbled up through immense, and rapid, corporatization.

Before the the infamy of the Hillsborough and Heysel tragedies had truly sunk in, the audacious creation of the lucrative Premier League enabled some fans to forget, or just to move on with new celebrity footballers to cheer or mock. But the magazine, still edited by co-founder Andy Lyons, hasn’t hewed to any new fashion or sentiment in all that time.

As occasional WSC contributor Barney Ronay wrote to mark the magazine’s 25th anniversary:

“Its longevity is perhaps grounded in the unwavering refusal of its editorial staff to bend with fashion, agree to go on TV, pop up as a talking head in a year-end countdown clip-show, cash in with a series of annoying and hastily scrawled books, or basically extend far beyond their own pages.”

And this:

“It is, though, still perhaps easier to praise WSC by saying what it isn’t. This is the only place where you will find no sponsor-driven interviews with a captive star; no celebrity-driven features, of the Top-10-favourite-player-mucus-expectorating-incidents; no forced gaiety or feigned interest in the passing clouds of the day; and best of all, no barriers.”

For an American who came to soccer in the years following the World Cup in the U.S. in 1994, the tone and approach of WSC was as surprising to me as it was refreshing. Before the slick likes of FourFourTwo came along, WSC possessed — and still possesses — more than a voice, or a point of view: It possesses an honesty that’s rooted in a keen understanding of what a game means to people on more than a consumer level. (Which is why I found it ironic that I could occasionally buy a copy at my suburban Barnes and Noble. After the international mailing costs for a subscription became prohibitive, I was glad to see it on a nearby newsstand.)

WSC was the perfect creative place for Wangerin to flesh out his history of American soccer. His book is straightforward and clear-eyed, never cynical but also not overly celebratory. After all, this is a sport that had few notable “victories” — on and off the field — until the World Cup came here (bearing the chapter title “Revenge of the Commie Pansies.”). But even in the wake of that event, and the forthcoming launch of Major League Soccer, Wangerin exemplified the caution of an historian well-versed in his subject.

The post-World Cup enthusiasm that created some of the first American fanzines and blogs at the dawn of the Internet age was tempered by this sobering reality:

“MLS sensed the opportunity to appeal to the fan as a consumer. In fact, ‘MLS Unveiled,’ as the event was christened, struck many as an outright capitulation to the creative excess of designers, with no one on the soccer side brave enough to channel their creative juices.”

If WSC has remained resolute in its approach, so did Wangerin. While he ended the book concluding that “there has never been a better time for soccer in a football world,” he also remained concerned about how its past was being preserved. In what turned out to be final article of his life, Wangerin sent a rough draft to the then-new Howler Magazine last spring, fretful what the warehousing of artifacts from the closed U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame reflected about the stewardship of the game’s history.

Published posthumously, “Homeless at 100″ captured the essence of a writer who was unrelenting in his insistence that the story of American soccer be unfurled in full, and not, as many like to trace, with the triumph of playing host to the World Cup:

“One suspects that this, 1994, is the year the federation would doubtless prefer as its starting point: the birth of American soccer as a multi-million dollar enterprise, something to sink marketing teeth into. To say that, from that moment, it has never looked back may reek of cliche . . . Still, as Cicero wrote, not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child—and for all the progress professional soccer has made in America, it is still in the first flush of youth.”

Brian Phillips properly takes the Headmaster of FIFA to the woodshed for his ill-informed remarks about American soccer:

So, OK. What bugged MLS fans about this was pretty much what bugs everybody Blatter decides to distraction-troll; at 76, the dude simply plays with an impossibly well-crafted blend of cluelessness and malice. He’s the Johnnie Walker Blue of grandfatherly, passive-aggressive smack talk. You never know whether he’s misinterpreting facts because he’s unacquainted with them or because he’s working some Big Lie–type long con and it suits him to deny a trend. So, for instance, if he doesn’t know that MLS is now the third-ranking American pro sport in terms of live attendance, or that as league commissioner Don Garber emphasized in his response it has recently signed personal-best sponsorship and TV deals totaling $230 million, or that it’s well along in its successful long-term program of stadium-infrastructure improvement — that’s maddening, because he’s the president of FIFA and he should know stuff. If he knows it and he’s deliberately ignoring it, that’s maddening because he’s the president of FIFA and he shouldn’t be a smug, puffy liar, probably. It’s a mark of the truly great cultural trolls, the Trumps and Becks and Morgans, that they make you hate them for being stupid enough to be as wrong as they are while simultaneously making you hate them for being smart enough to exploit the stupidity of their audience. Blatter takes the confused-moron-but-also-evil-genius routine to a whole other plane, though, because you can’t even say whose stupidity he’s trying to exploit. He’s rousing no rabble — brilliantly. He’s hosting history’s most appalling drive-time talk show for an audience of zero, and somehow he keeps signing bigger and bigger contracts.

(via @MessiStats)

Blogs a Blaugrana devotée, and it appears to be in translation:

Everyone knows that Barça have a very obvious, top-down, self-imposed style. This doesn’t happen a lot in football. Part of the bickering over the cantera in Madrid this season turns on their current lack of a ‘house style’. Castilla [sic] doesn’t play like the first team, Mourinho grumbled, and it should.

While us cules had a quick chuckle at the soap opera for once not playing out in our own house, I wonder if any regular watchers of Barça B felt a tiny shred of sympathy for his complaint. After all, it sounded awfully similar to our own complaints about Barça B under Eusebio, who sticks out like a sore thumb because the rest of the system at Barça strives to replicate the ‘house style’.

Having a long-term plan, a clear way of working towards consistent goals, tends to be a good thing for most organisations. Barça decided years ago that it was going to pursue success through a particular style of play. Setting such a course reduced the chances of short term, drastic lurches, which is a valuable check against our natural tendency towards volatility.

This morning Grant Wahl was sending around this link that Landon Donovan is the latest commitment for next Monday’s “Soccer Night in Newtown” benefit.

Among the other notables are Alexi Lalas, Cobi Jones, Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly, who hails from nearby Wilton, Conn.

Also coming is Marcus Tracy of the San Jose Earthquakes, whose mother once taught at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

While the English gorge on Boxing Day matches today, the soccer stadiums of Germany are locked, the lights shut off and the stands empty.

The Bundesliga and the lower domestic leagues in Germany are novel among the top nations in Europe for not playing all the way through the holidays. It’s one of the many appealing aspects of German soccer, along with the venues, ticket prices and club relations with fans that also elicit winsome praise from the English.

Winterpause wasn’t mentioned by The New York Times in this takeout on the renaissance of the German domestic game, which focuses on the overhaul of its youth programs, the advantage of being in a more economically stable European nation, and an aesthetically pleasing style of play:

“ ‘Once the Germans have decided to transform, to reform, they do it,’ Emmanuel Hembert, an expert in the business of soccer at the consultancy A. T. Kearney, said. ‘It has been the case for the labor rules; it’s the case for football where they changed their model; and it’s had a very positive impact.’ ”

But for as industrious as Germans are, they are just as savvy about observing the importance of dialing it down. Even before the German break, Borussia Dortmund proved startling in the Champions League, advancing over English champion Manchester City and self-immolating Real Madrid.

When Dortmund returns to the fray of the Bundesliga and Europe in mid-January, it will be well-rested. That’s not always a guarantee for success in the second half of a grueling season. But it’s sane and utterly civilized and a needed counterpart to the endless, almost joyless grind of the Premier League, where the end of it all, somebody from Manchester is going to win.

As Grant Wahl points out, the Bundesliga needs a better TV deal in the U.S., but that’s all that seems to be missing.

The announcement Monday that the Women’s Professional Soccer league was suspending operations for the 2012 season didn’t surprise many in the American and women’s soccer community, for both the financial and legal issues that have plagued it.

Frankly, having covered WUSA, the WPS predecessor, I’m not that optimistic the league will return in 2013 or beyond. My doubts are centered as much on the general viability of a fully professional league as much as the current travails.

As much as I respect Julie Foudy’s insistence to the contrary, I just don’t think there’s a spectator audience big enough to sustain what both WUSA and WPS have attempted. (I blogged in December about an proposed overhaul to the U.S. professional women’s professional development system by Peter Wilt, a former MLS and WPS executive, and that is worthy of serious consideration.)

During this time of uncertainty, which will include the London Olympics this summer, I do believe a critical opportunity for the women’s sports community is presenting itself here.

Instead of women’s sports supporters constantly hectoring the public to embrace female athletes, their leagues and their games as social causes, cheerleading about the need for girls and women to participate in sports and banging the drum ever so loudly for Title IX, it’s time to address the cold hard bottom line about the fragile state of women’s professional sports.

For this is the next frontier for women’s sports, at least in the United States, where the desire to participate in sports is hardly the issue that it is in, say, Saudi Arabia. Or Iran.

The tough sell of women’s pro sports here is a reality that is often stated, but very little in the way of workable ideas and creative thinking seem to emerge, from athletes and coaches, activists and media types (pleading nolo here myself). This is new stuff for those whose sporting lives have revolved around Title IX activism and breaking through barriers of discrimination.

It’s far easier to identify the problems at hand, which are left to WPS owners and investors, who opted yesterday not to play while they fight a combative ex-owner in court. This is an ugly, bitter battle that is draining the league of time, energy and financial resources needed to keep its enterprise alive.

Besides Wilt, only former WNBA president Val Ackerman is identifying practical future steps. Like Wilt, she writes from experience. Her columns on espnW ought to be heeded, and not just read, especially her prescriptions for sustaining women’s pro sports.

In the unforgiving world of sports business, niche ventures living on the margins don’t have much time to ponder drumming up fan support based on societal concerns that will never sell tickets or attract corporate sponsors.

I was looking forward this summer to watching young Canadian-turned-American sensation Sydney Leroux play nearby, about 15 minutes from my house, for the Atlanta Beat. Surely she would have helped sell tickets. I hope she and other stars of WPS will get another chance.

While the feuding parties in WPS will be in court on Wednesday, women’s sports advocates will be whipping up an old, familiar narrative that will not substantially address these concerns. Wednesday is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which may pay some lip service to what’s transpired with WPS.

But in tomorrow’s post, I will explain why this day is no longer needed.

Goalkeepers rarely score goals. But the way that Everton’s Tim Howard, the U.S. national team starter, did this Wednesday against Bolton Wanderers is something to marvel.

In addition to a whopper of a kick — not a goal kick, but on a short back pass, mind you — Howard also got the best-ever bounce in the history of English soccer, and maybe the world. On a cold, hard turf, it had just the right touch for him to beat his opposite number:

<a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/video?vid=fac369d7-cda9-4662-a062-1b4b3af67df7" target="_new" title="" onclick="urchinTracker('/outgoing/msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/video?vid=fac369d7-cda9-4662-a062-1b4b3af67df7&amp;referer=');">GOTD: Howard scores amazing Goal</a>

This is no attempt at objectivity. I know that others will point to the ugliness — in particular the Penn State tragedy — as the biggest sports story of 2011, at least in the United States.

In Canada, it well may be the deaths of professional hockey players and a long concussion-related layoff to Sidney Crosby, the game’s biggest star that triggered debate about the future of fighting in the sport.

Around the world, I can’t imagine anything topping Lionel Messi’s continued brilliance for Barcelona.

As for me, I can’t get enough of this, and probably never will:

I blogged about the significance of this moment earlier this week. A couple of weeks ago, there was plenty of debate here about the professional prospects for women’s soccer, and I do hope they get brighter eventually.

That marvelous day in Dresden resonates for me more than anything else that happened this year, because of what I write about on this blog most often.

This week I’m reposting some of my entries from this year that not only are my favorites but that I thought really resonated as well.

The U.S. women’ s soccer team captivated the nation for a few days last summer with its run to the Women’s World Cup finals. But unlike the 1999 team, this one wasn’t touted for being role models for young girls, nor was it presented primarily for the benefit of the “ponytailed hooligans” from 12 years before.

(Nothing wrong with any of that, but the travails of women’s pro soccer since then have shown that it takes a lot more than a feel-good story to make a professional venture stick. As I wrote recently, too many of the wrong assumptions and sentiments are still being cited.)

This past summer, these American players were fully adult, edgy, even controversial women, some of whom were trying to rid themselves of a painful past. All they did was put on a hell of a good show. It was a quintessential example of great sports entertainment.

Red-blooded American men who normally wouldn’t pay much attention to women’s sports or soccer tuned in as if it were the Super Bowl.

From July 20: Free at last: letting women’s sports grow up.

Enjoy.

An eight-game suspension and $63,000 fine handed Liverpool star Luis Suarez for the racial abuse of another player this week had barely set in when similar allegations — criminal charges, in fact — were leveled against Chelsea’s John Terry, who also happens to be the captain of the England national team.

Suarez is being defended to the hilt by his club as he pledges an appeal, causing further rankles from some black players in the English Premier League. Likewise at Chelsea, where Terry is denying the charges he hurled a racial slur at Anton Ferdinand of Queens Park Rangers.

These are two critical players on two of the best teams in England, and having them sidelined due to lengthy bans during the height of the season could certainly be devastating to their aspirations in the league and in European competition.

For years there have been black players, primarily in Europe, complaining of racial abuse from other players. It prompted some visible anti-racism campaigns such as Kick It Out. But little has effectively addressed the problem.

Fans hurling banana peels at black players have gone largely unpunished. When he was playing in Belgium, American defender Oguchi Onyewu sued a fellow player he accused of racial abuse. Nothing came of it. Former French national team star Patrick Vieira was fined by UEFA in 2003 for complaining that the European governing body for soccer wasn’t doing enough.

And for all of its bluster about trying to “stamp out” racism, FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, isn’t offering much in the way of serious solutions. Indeed, FIFA boss Sepp Blatter last month rendered himself an even bigger mockery by suggesting that players involved in a racial fracas patch up their differences with a post-game handshake. Even David Beckham publicly objected.

Criminal charges may seem heavy-handed against Terry for something he said. But when the appropriate soccer authorities drop the ball, all that may generate proper attention is the threat of a big-name star having more to lose than a few games on the bench.