4LL TH3S3 HVM4N3 3ND34V0RS...

all these humane endeavors

feel pointlessly attached to

illusions of accrued wealth

STVDY1NG TH3 SCR1PTVR3S L3FT...

studying the scriptures left

behind by wanderlusting

poets who passed by before me

S4NCT1F13D C0NT3MPL4T10N...

sanctified contemplation

in a world pretending to

spin far faster than it does

S1MPL3 R00T M3D1C1N3S VS3D...

simple root medicines used

to be the tinctures that cured;

we chopped down all the forests

SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Send For The Others

Perhaps America is cancelling itself, as the weight of actual humanitarian needs crush the weak safety nets put in place as performative "freedom" fibers, brightly spray-painted red, white, and blue, but torn and frayed for decades and held together by dollar store duct tape. But also, not really America, so much as the United States, which is a completely different entity entirely. The American continent(s) have existed long before any United States, and likely will exist long after as well, hopefully with people still walking around upon the topside (or at least living in tunnels underneath). There's a shitload of work to be done, you just might not get paid for it, at least not with money. But once we're actually building real shit that ain't just talking shit and referring to brochures from the 1950s, doing work that builds support for every body, that hopefully will be more fulfilling. Because even blessed as a dude who can work from home right now, pretending my job needs to go on, there's a real heart disconnect from what I am bound to call "work". We got shit all backwards.

HVM4N M1NDS 4LL3G3DLY...

human minds allegedly

advanced, yet always pecking

around at outlandish schemes

TH3 S1MPL3 L1F3 P1L3DR1V3N...

the simple life piledriven

into complicated dust -

coltan and cassiterite

4 W0RLD G0T BV1LT 4CC0RD1NG...

a world got built according

to specs that may not have been

beneficial to us all

WH4T'S R3FL3CT3D B4CK D0WN FR0M...

what's reflected back down from

heaven ain't always seen, blocked

by our own fears' pollutions

F1V3 T1M3S 4 D4Y, 1 TRY T0...

five times a day, I try to

cast purposeful intentions

to same sky as ancestors

F1ND1NG SH3LT3R FR0M N4TVR3...

finding shelter from nature,

but none of humanity's

relentless onslaught of fog

4TT3MPT T0 M4K3 TH3 M0ST 0F...

attempt to make the most of

domesticated spirit

but once blaze orange aura's dull

VS3D T0 B3L13V3 1 C0VLD B3...

used to believe I could be

champion of my dreams; don't

sleep deep enough to dream now

4LW4YS S33M T0 B3 RVSH1NG...

always seem to be rushing

between places, none of which

give me much satisfaction

H1ST0R1C TR4D1T10NS 0F...

historic traditions of

pilgrimage and reverence

replaced by raw consumption

T3CHN0L0GY C0NN3CTS M3...

technology connects me

to the rest of the world; still

feel solitary as fuck

1'V3 4LW4YS B33N 4 T0T4L...

I've always been a total

wreck, bashing through median

strips, guardrails, and pine thickets

RVR4L TR4SH 41N'T 3V3R B33N...

rural trash ain't ever been

all that stylish, but somehow

y'all've gentrified skillets

4LM0ST T3N Y34RS S0B3R - WH0...

almost ten years sober - who

I once was seems like distant

cousin seen at funerals

R3TVRN1NG T0 34RTHLY W4YS...

returning to earthly ways,

abandoning the politics

of false progress more and more

PR0L1F1C PR0P4G4T10N...

prolific propagation
of native propaganda
from earliest of ages

1NT3RS3CT10NS 0F N4T10N...

intersections of nation

and individual state -

our fucked up identities

SONG OF THE DAY: Black Bodies & Bullet Wounds

A day full of mind worries, all the while knowing my mind worries are less than other folks’. I hope you don’t have any fresh wounds, and whatever scars you have are healing. I hope no infection is still inside. I hope you are safe, and if so, I hope you are well. Rather than feel hopeless, I’m sowing hopes like these. It bears slowly exponential fruit, in that it’s hardly there, but as we keep sowing this shit, it starts to grow in that way, and all of a sudden despite how all fucked everything might be, we’re overflowing with an ability to be like “fuck it, just gonna do this shit anyways”.

M41NT41N1NG 4PP34R4NC3S...

maintaining appearances

while realizing our culture

is nothing but sand castles

25-Man Metaphysical Roster: WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS FC

{the Holy Spirit of Nuno!!!} 

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football metaphysics methodology utilizing dork methodology of minutes played over the past 100 club competitive club matches to determine which 25 players constitute the strongest psychic force on a club’s current trajectory. Then intuitive analysis is conducted utilizing football metaphysics, performed from an un-American soccer fan’s perspective. We do this every 1st and 15th of the month, cycling through the 20 clubs currently in the English Premier League, because it is the top domestic league based in an English-speaking country, which as un-American miscreants, we were all born to be saddled with this limited, segmented tongue of the global colonizer, oppressor, and capitalizer. Also, it is what comes on TV here in the USA most prominently, where we live. And yet, it is really important we clarify we hate English, and also America. Maybe we hate ourselves. Our panel consists of chairman Raven Mack, director tecnico Paul Robertson, and director rudo Neil Bulson Our individual contributions to this 5000 words of gibberish will be noted by our name at the end of the blurb. If you enjoy this absolutely free internet content from an un-American soccer perspective, VENMO US FOR OUR METAPHYSICAL LABOR @ravenmack23.]


We are discussing the metaphysical properties of this Wolverhampton Wanderers club, all the while the world seems to be on a downward spiral into pandemic and depression, as our protocols for productivity do not allow for shutdowns of material consumption, and then our economic systems struggle. The wolves are at the door, waiting on things to fall apart. My own personal life is a clusterfuck of poorly booked dramas that, though I do well to manage, is just a stressful gut punch on a daily basis. It is no coincidence I have the wild esoteric unorthodox priest’s blackberry bush beard, as does Wolverhampton’s manager Nuno Espirito Santo, who has arrived at Wolverhampton a few years back, and brung in an arsenal of fellow Portuguese, who have turned the club’s trajectory entirely around. But this is also in Brexit England, and now with a global coronavirus that only enforces the manufactured border walls of the xenophobic nativists. Nuno’s holy spirit of football, which feels more akin to a Paulo Coelho piece than any Brian Clough-esque managerial tradition. Nuno stalks the sideline like a footballing monk, and Wolves play with a passionate style of a club on a pilgrimage. But here’s the thing that hits all clubs on just such a pilgrimage, from the tiers below, who climb to the Premier League, and rally themselves into Europa League form, but then hit the wall that is the Big Six, which is a financial cartel that doesn’t easily allow new members – what do you do when the pilgrimage hits that wall? There is nowhere left to climb. On top of this, those clubs looking over the wall at you start to poach top players, and you are in no position to deny the riches. This is still a business after all, despite all the supporter talk of glories and building new powerhouses and all the delirious shit we as fans get ourselves into frenzies over. Somebody who owns the actual shit is still trying to turn a million dollar bill into a ten million dollar bill in some backroom or luxury suite overlooking the whole affair playing out in front of them. Most of us are but ants at the periphery, not even real humans as we have no economic value. And as the psychic wolves are at the door right now, pandemics and abstract wealth market crashes and nativist xenophobia all swirling around like a buffet of conditions to give the wolves another empire, another civilization to start nibbling around the edges at, these pilgrimages into the wall become harder. Motivating one’s self in front of an empty stadium takes an entirely different type of human psyche than playing for a large crowd of marks who have paid for the privilege to be a mark in public, wearing the right colors, saying the right chants, performatively creating ambiance. Remove all that and all that is left is raw fucking individual spirit. At the club level, I think Nuno’s a great person to have in charge during such times. But what competitions end up getting cancelled before this is all said and done? Serie A in Italy continues on, but is playing in empty stadiums for the rest of the season. Might they abandon play, to save the amount of money they’re losing? Is the end goal of these massive footballing league productions to have sporting competitions, or to make money? Are we making a pilgrimage to spiritual glory through the football pitch as our mosque, or are we just unwitting pawns being played for someone else’s profiteering, behind the big wall we’ll never cross? And how strong are those walls in actuality? If they are built upon abstract wealth, and the abstract wealth inadvertently crashes, some of these walls will come down too, and others will gain the abstract walls of wealth and put them up. New money marks will take over the old clubs. All of this is incredibly fascinating to me, and I couldn’t think of a better person to be in charge than a weird old footballing poet monk of alchemical gibberish than Nuno of the holy spirit. And here are the 25 men who have been the largest disciples of his in this recent process to make the Wandering Wolves of Wolverhampton FC a snarling challenge at the walls currently erected as Premier League power structures, saying, “WE ARE HERE FOR YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!”… [RAVEN]



#1: CONOR COADY (same as the other two times I did this for Wolverhampton, last time was 01-Apr-2019; thus THREE METAPHYSICAL STARS in his metaphysical crest) – A dude with two assholish names all in one name is someone who has to overcome his parent’s poor choices, and as much as I want to whip up on a dude with a name like this, I can’t, because he’s one of us and by us I mean a Liverpool supporter so he’s a good boy. I know he wants desperately to play for Liverpool and maybe one day he can, but the Wolves are a good place for him for now. It’s like when kids go missing, and they end up being adopted by a pack of wolves and they come back all feral and don’t know how to talk and shit. That is the journey Conor Coady is on. He is running with the wolves, and when he comes back to Liverpool he’s gonna need some time to adjust to the life he wanted as a boy, but he’ll also have a bunch of crafty wolf tricks to bring to the game and hopefully, that’s what will happen here. I know this is gibberish to most of you, but fuck it, it’s important to point these things out and tell you when a dude might be a feral wolf boy. The world is hard for people, but for Conor Coady, he can shed his douchebag name and run with the wolves and discover the wild man inside and then come back and fuck the world right back newborn as a wolf and a man. [NEIL]



#2: JOAO MOUTINHO (up from #9 last time) – A veteran holding shit together for the Wolves as he plays his way into the dust one day, I have nothing bad to say about this dude. He’s been one of Portugal’s stalwarts from the time he was 18 until now, and after doing it up in Monaco which probably was a loaded deal with rich chicks everywhere and young Joao needing to fuck them as the dark and captivating Portuguese athlete, but while that world was probably a dream come true for him, eventually, he probably realized that there was an emptiness to it all, rich girls from all over come and go but poor Joao needed something that would stick around, and that is how he has come to the Wolves. Here, he can know that this isn’t just some mirage that will leave him feeling empty and alone, used while the blondes cavort on daddy’s yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean. Monaco is a trap, a fun trap, but a trap. But now he is with the Wolves and he can have something real here, which he has for the most part. I imagine home is calling in a few short years, but for now, Joao Moutinho is very much a wolf and he has a lot to give before he goes back home. [NEIL]



#3: RUI PATRICIO (up from #11 last time) – One of my favorite goalkeepers in football, probably on the basis of 1) his long (really, really fucking long for a dude just in his early 30s) association with the green and white hoops of Sporting Portugal and 2) his surname reminding me of the San Patricio Battalion. On the first point, show me green and white hoops and I will be in affinity—which extends even to my home state/commonwealth of Virginia choosing to issue incarcerated individuals with green and white striped prison gear. Sometimes on matchdays, I wear Celtic home tops and wonder if state troopers are going to show up and taze me while I’m picking up hummus from the supermarket deli (but only if they got one of those “buy one get one free deals”; otherwise I’ll be getting got by the Man in the seltzer aisle, probably). Meth slinger that climbed the wires at the Nottoway Correctional Center, or internationalist college English professor? Light ‘em up and let the magistrate sort ‘em out. On the second point, in some of that “secret history” they withheld from you in 10th grade public school U.S. history, the San Patricios were a group of mostly Irish-immigrant U.S. soldiers that took part in the invasion of Mexico during the Mexican-American War (1846-48) who, owing to being treated like subhuman trash by their officers (what with being dirty Irish famine Catholic) and being ordered to ravage another rural under-siege Catholic country (Mexico) said “fuck this shit!” and switched sides. And then proceeded to lay a hurting on white-ass U.S. forces until they were mostly captured and then, naturally, mass executed. To this day though, there’s a lot of Irish-love in Mexico owing to this. Throw in the IRA getting very down with FARC, and Che Guevara’s part-Gaelic ass, and you realize that only in America (and maybe Australia) have people of Irish ancestry really sold their souls for that certificate of verifiable whiteness. But Rui here is Portuguese, like most of this contemporary Wolves squad. After doing anything and everything that should’ve endeared him as an absolute Sporting CP legend (400+ appearances), seems he got mauled by some pissed off supporters unhappy at their club’s final league position. I’m going to hope/assume he maybe got hurt trying to protect some other player from getting fucked up, and wasn’t targeted directly by said fan. Rui seems like a solid dude, unworthy of such treatment. Anyway, that got him the move to Wolves (which to be fair, he was maybe already angling for, because you can be a club legend AND want to try something new). Regardless of Rui’s career trajectory in the EPL (which is looking good, to be honest), I really hope the Aztlan movement succeeds and by 2050 there’s a FC San Patricio Liga MX club in Los Angeles (maybe playing in yellow and green hoops, so as not to fully crimp Santos’ style). [PAUL]



#4: RAUL JIMENEZ (up from #8 last time) – Because the USA sucks at football, and I watch a lot of Liga MX on my Spanish language sports package (not a euphemism, believe it or not), I gave less of a fuck about that one white dude Christian Pulisic going to Chelsea than I did Jimenez getting hyped for his second season at Wolves. Jimenez is a Mexican national, and featured prominently this past summer in the Gold Cup, winning the Golden Ball award for the competition, scoring five goals in playing in all six of El Tri's matches (which they won). MLS hypes Carlos Vela as the man in Mexico, but Jimenez proved himself to be the actual man. Nuno let my man rest during Wolves Chinese hype trip, and has rolled into action in Wolverhampton big time. Let's compare him and Pulisic, fuck it. Pulisic has 6 goals in 22 appearances on an obviously crowded Chelsea squad. Jimenez has 22 goals in 43 appearances, including 9 in 12 appearances thus far in the Europa League. He had 17 goals for Wolves last season. Jimenez is absolutely fucking lighting it up in England (and Europe) and has to be seen as the biggest offensive star my home continent currently has going on the global stage. So why the fuck are we still worried about what the fuck Christian Pulisic is doing on the bench at Chelsea, or Carlos Vela is doing at fucking LA FC? American-centric football is fucking trash. I have already metaphysically emigrated to the Comarca Lagunera region of Mexico. [RAVEN]



#5: MATT DOHERTY (down from #2 last time) – I think we can go ahead and declare that an Irish fullback (right or left) is an officially-sanctioned footballing archetype upon which one might build a competitive as fuck club. In addition to his long and acclaimed service at Wolverhampton, through three league levels and not looking out of place in the Premiership nor in European competition, Doherty also weighs in with the goals (not necessarily a strong suite of many/most fullbacks). Dude also looks like a complete goofball, which adds to my speculation that he is probably a current Wolves Spirit Warrior, or at least the non-Portuguese one in the team. I can’t tell from photos if he’s purposefully working a ”Donegal” beard (what we here in the U.S. call an Amish beard and what also seems to be favored by harder-edged Islamic folk) or if he just can’t really get a good moustache going. Either way, like the mullet, when sported unironically these beards usually connote a dude you do not want to fuck with. If, on the other hand, it’s some hipster fucker with 19th century seafaring tattoos and a leather messenger bag, take the piss out of him—I suspect that Matt here would. [PAUL]



#6: RUBEN NEVES (down from #4 last time) – So many of these dudes are so young, and beyond the Portuguese connection, it really goes down to the long-term relationships Nuno Espirito Santo cultivated at Porto specifically, where he coached and Neves was a youth player. Neves is only 22, yet he's in his third season under Nuno at Wolverhampton, all the way back to their last season in the Championship. Neves is the vice captain, and if you throw out the sport side of this and consider football club mentalities a cult-like spiritual process, Neves is a key disciple to the spreading of Nuno's holy spirit of football. He's a defensive midfielder in the spirit of distribution of both the ball as well as the spirit. Sure, Neves scores goals, but his job is more to create the environment that goals happen more so than be the guy that does the scoring. Again, how many times do I or Paul or Neil go through one of these clubs, and an aggressive but balanced defensive midfielder ends up being a philosophical key component to this? It's always true when beautiful football is being played, there's gonna be a fucking bad ass international defensive midfielder involved in the process. In fact, if I was a nation that suffers from underperforming from national football identity, which is true for both England and the USA, albeit at different levels, I'd ask myself, "What can we do to encourage more native defensive midfielders?" Fuck it, I might open up a defensive midfielder academy, outlaw style, FUCK US SOCCER SUGGESTIONS, here in the Blue Ridge, for immigrant youth, a hybrid Sufi/Soccer academy in fact, where Ibn al-Arabi's writings are as important as Yaya Toure highlight clips. [RAVEN]



#7: LEANDER DENDONCKER (up from #16 last time) – Leander here is the son of pig farmers, which means that he is just an old Belgian country boy. He apparently has had issues in the past fitting in and accepting the multiculturalism of the urban world which makes him a bit of a shithead. It doesn’t matter if it’s an Arkansas redneck or a Belgian hick, they are all the same idiot. I imagine he has gotten straightened out just by being in contact with all sorts of peoples traveling as an athlete but that inner idiot is almost certainly still there and he probably will fuck up and say the wrong thing to the wrong person and get wrecked because of it but that’s just what happens when you throw these pig farmers into the big city. His ignorance will cost him, but he’ll always have home and the pigs and the country which isn’t a bad thing necessarily but the reality is a lot of those people tend to be ignorant shitheads. My own dad is like this so it’s something I am very familiar with. Sometimes you get lucky and get a dude like me or Raven or Paul who comes from this sort of thing but has a goddamn brain in their head to know that we’re all just people trying to find our way in life and it should all be peace and love. But I suspect Leander Dendocker is just another shithead who will bury that shit of a head in the ground where he was born and he will revel in his own ignorance even as it kills him. Or maybe a teammate straightened him out at some point. I don’t know. I am just a dude writing this gibberish for you and hoping that some wisdom is buried inside of it all. I don’t know what this dude is up to in his head or his heart but I can project on him and that’s what I’m doing. He is an avatar for that ignorant shithead and if that’s doing him bad, so what? He will be fine, a rich dude who will go back to the pigs and his ignorance one day, but for now he is hiding amongst the wolves and pretending to be a dude who gets it. These dudes will seem cool until one day they are just gone, back to the pigs and a life of ignorant idiocy. [NEIL]



#8: JONNY (up from #10 last time) – A Spaniard who spent a lot of years at Celta Vigo, Jonny is one of those one named dudes which is a tough thing to pull off if you can’t back it up. But I guess Jonny has backed it up enough and he is an important part of the Wolves defense. A one named man is someone who has to have a lot of strength and charisma and I imagine Jonny is one of those dudes. But those dudes can also be mercurial and divaish so he has to watch himself or at least he has to have people around him who will check him before he turns into a jackass. But being a rich young athlete with one name is probably too much for anyone to overcome and Jonny will probably have some issues in the future, like getting all coked up and sucking dick in strange places kind of issues. But that’s all in his future, and for now, he is holding his shit together with the Wolves. [NEIL]



#9: ROMAIN SAISS (down from #7 last time) – Damn, I think I really like this Wolves squad. Here again we have a peak player that seamlessly made the transition from the Championship to the EPL. Saiss is the defensive midfield disruptor that is usually instrumental to a team’s metaphysical success—like, if your DM is characterless, soulless, cold and uncontroversial, chances are you’re finishing in the bottom reaches of your respective league. Thinking about this now, I posit that the U.S. in particular cannot produce a DM of any impactful substance for the world’s football. Perry-fucking-Kitchen is really all I need to say. Romain is also going to appeal to me because, in a circumstance we all rejoice over in this project, despite his French birth and raising he chose to represent his ancestral Morocco over the colonial oppressor. I have, on at least one other occasion, emphasized that footballing support is very much about quite literally representing the club (or country) with which you ride to other folk both inside and outside the madness of football obsessiveness. On this point, I am always going to be a Morocco supporter because several years ago one of my wife’s old school friends came to town for a visit with her new husband, Omar, from Morocco. School friend was a very (VERY) white girl from, if I remember correctly, Indiana. She went hard into learning Arabic, and consequently went for an extended learning stay in Morocco, wherein she met and fell in love with our man Omar here. Dude was sweetness incarnate, who left his fucking falafel/kebab stand (it may be called something specific in a Moroccan context, so please don’t mistake my lack of research for cultural callousness) for love, to come to the U.S. and work as a cook in one of those heinous lower-middle-class-night-on-the-town-something-on-the-menu-is-all-you-can-eat chain restaurants. He told me of his laments at not being able to close his shop so he could run down and take a cooling swim in the Mediterranean for an hour or so when that North African midway heat got to be oppressive. Ain’t happening in the North Carolina Triad, my brother. But Omar loved football, born of a father who played for the national team (and I think still has some kind of coaching role at a club) and his own youthful promise as a winger, until some injury he could not come back from ended his career before it could really get started. Anyway, we watched football together, assessed tactics (my man loved a good cross, and humbly conceded that such was his especial skill) and players, around a (very) mild language barrier (“football is the universal language”) and now I back Morocco and players like Saiss—all because of those righteous connections with chill and sincere people. [PAUL]



#10: ADAMA TRAORE (up from #18 last time) – Traore has been an absolute beast for the Wolves, and is built like a New Japan wrestler from 1999. We often babble about spirit warriors, and Traore has shown his ability to occupy that role, but there’s also a separate existence when someone has achieved full beastly mode that suggests spirit warrior, but does not translate when the environment has changed. I kinda think Traore is that, and this unique set of circumstances both in club psyche, manager, and current squad culture has all come together, and Traore can just excel as a footballing barbarian savant in this special way he’s able to do. But it reminds me as a Swansea City fan of the Bony effect too, when Wilfried Bony was a dominant force in the Premier League, and got cashed out to Manchester City, and has never come even close to replicating the magical run he had at Swansea, like never close to it. I can’t help but feel like the exact same thing would happen to Traore, who much like Bony, rarely plays a whole 90 minutes during a Wolves match. This suggests a mental psyche-up that requires a lot of adrenalin and dopamine and all that brain chemical shit that gets us to perform at spirit warrior levels. It’s not a casual process for someone in this beastly mode. So when the environment is switched, the conditions aren’t the same, and the alchemy doesn’t work as well. I’ve been extra conscious of this actually, especially when there was a lot of transfer speculation around Traore in January, which means there’s even more likelihood of that talk this summer, so long as he continues performing well, because I want to see him play as a Wolves squad member up until that time. It’s not going to be the same at all, wherever he goes, and that means we’re seeing a player in his peak mode, right before our eyes. To be honest, as a fan of the beauty of this fucked up sport, it’s a joy to watch him. The whole club though seems to be suffering from a little psychic exhaustion, perhaps the lingering effects of Europa League extra fixtures, or perhaps you just can’t keep doing that – running head on into the financial wall of the bigger clubs that I mentioned in the intro. Even in a pack of wolves, one wolf will be the biggest and baddest as the pack descends upon helpless prey. But they also hit an electrified fence that won’t let them cross, and even the biggest baddest wolf can’t pass. Someone might capture him, and attempt to domesticate him into something he’s not, which is what will happen to Traore, and he’ll make a lot of money in the process. But he’ll never be the same when he leaves Wolves, so enjoy it while you can these next couple months. [RAVEN]



#11: DIOGO JOTA (down from #6 last time) – Diogo Jota is my favorite name in football currently. That shit just sounds nice. This fucker's only 23 too, commandeered from Atletico Madrid on a loan/then purchase deal back in 2018. Like it's easy to be like "oh haha Nuno has just stockpiled a bunch of Portuguese dudes at Wolverhampton," but this is dismissive of how fucking good some of these dudes he has gotten are. DON'T COMMIT ERASURE ON THE BRILLIANCE OF NUNO OF THE HOLY SPIRIT! [RAVEN]



#12: WILLY BOLY (down from #3 last time) – Rappers in the '90s used to say their style was "the Willie Bobo" who was an actual dude who did a lot of great work as a Afro-Latin percussionist on old school jazz funk genres. I can't even look at Willy Boly's name without thinking he's just the result of an old '90s boom baptized hip hop head half-sideways off some codeine cough syrup trying to freestyle "Willie Bobo" but it turns into Willy Boly instead. [RAVEN]



#13: RYAN BENNETT (down from #5 last time) – Bennett got himself a little loan to Leicester this past transfer window, mostly because Romain Saiss suddenly established himself as a fucking 6-foot-3 monster of a center back, after having mostly been a defensive midfielder last season. This is a pretty shocking development actually because as recently as Europa League group play, Bennett was not only defending competently but adding in goals as well. You don't often let a center back who can occasionally score go on loan, with an option to buy, which is likely what Leicester City will do with Bennett. But that's what Nuno has done here. [RAVEN]



#14: RUBEN VINAGRE (up from #20 last time) – Dude has not even turned 21! It's like there was a cultural logjam behind Cristiano Ronaldo at the Portuguese national team level, and all these amazing dudes were standing outside the practice facility, waiting to be admitted to the national team, and Nuno was just kinda circulating, handing out business cards, saying, "Hey, you wanna go to Wolverhampton? It's a place in England." [RAVEN]



#15: PEDRO NETO – The 7 and 6 of Pedro Neto and Bruno Jordao are a tandem in a deep sense, having both been with Braga in their native Portugal, both having been loaned to S.S. Lazio in Italy for two seasons, and then both coming to Wolves this past August. The two were both in Braga’s youth system together before being adults. Neto is the more initially promising of the two, functioning well as a speedy young winger for the club, feeding off their spiritual attack for 2 goals in his initial Premier League campaign, as a 20-year-old, when English wonderkids at the Big Six clubs are still getting loaned out to Derby County or Preston North End. But also Neto literally just turned 20 this week, and was born in the year 2000. That shit’s wild (with my old ass). [RAVEN]



#16: MORGAN GIBBS-WHITE (up from #19 last time) – This dude is a baby with the whole world in front of him still. He has come up through the Wolves system from the time he could first dribble a ball and while this probably won’t be the only place he makes his name it will always be home for him. He is a native born wolf and that is something to be commended and respected. He actually has done some damage internationally playing as a teenager, scoring a couple of goals against the United States which is something to be proud of for sure. Apparently, he was racially heckled by some dipshit Spanish fans during that same international tour which has to suck and I can’t even begin to understand how shitty that must feel. People are fucking awful and will make you feel bad about yourself if you let them so I hope that young Morgan doesn’t let those assholes get to him as he fucks the world through his twenties. Fuck the haters and the racists Morgan, the world is full of love and is just waiting to be fucked. [NEIL]



#17: JOHN RUDDY (down from #12 last time) – Possibly the only non-Fraser Forster English goalkeeper that I like, owing to his jobbing away at Norwich City, which I think of fondly because of their pleasing kit colors and association with Paul Lambert. I think for a while I also had it in my head that Ruddy was Scottish, because I figured that surname was some kind of Anglicized derivation of “Ruaidh” (which “ruddy” is anyway). John here also doesn’t have that aforementioned military-school white boy look of the high profile English keepers like Hart and Pickford—just some bullethead bald dude with some scruffy facial hair and no pretensions. Ruddy here is at goalkeeper peak-age, so I doubt he’ll want to stay Patricio’s backup past this season and the end of his contract. Thought surprisingly for a keeper in his early 30s, he’s already making noise about getting into coaching. Especially if they go down (which seems a foregone conclusion), he’ll probably be back at Norwich. [PAUL]



#18: MAX KILMAN – The child of two parents who are both half-Ukrainian/half-Russian, who wears the #49, as a defender in the Premier League. Max is short for Maximilian, which is what I'm contemplating changing my last name to - Raven Maximilian from now on. All in all, I don't really know shit about this dude, but he's got a quality young swirl of metaphysics going on. I think what he could really use is a half-season loan in Istanbul, preferably on a club with a GK from the Yugoslavian diaspora, who yells at him during matches all the time in a mangled English they both barely share before realizing they both speak Russian too. [RAVEN]



#19: PATRICK CUTRONE – I’ve actually been watching a bit of Serie A this season on the ESPN+ shit I got that goes with that Disney+ shit I got for the kids, and Cutrone already got crowded out of Wolves squad – I guess he wasn’t Portuguese enough – and has returned to Italy on loan to Fiorentina. Even before Serie A suspended fans attending matches, I watched a couple Fiorentina matches in front of sparse crowds at best, and Cutrone actually took over one Coppa Italia match I watched. Maybe that’s why the crowd was gone, as that’s Italy’s FA Cup. Nonetheless, that one showing gave me the false impression that Cutrone wasn’t fucking around at all, and just stomping on bitches in the Italian league. But his stats suggest that was a one-off situation, because he hasn’t scored otherwise for Fiorentina. What the fuck? How can you be a brutal bastard who is kissing your crest and mocking opposing fans sparsely attending a mid-week tilt, but not be doing that across the board? What’s the fucking point of excelling in a low moment, but just sort of shiftlessly wandering around the rest of the time? No wonder he got shipped the fuck away from the Portugese embassy in England. [RAVEN]



#20: JESUS VALLEJO – Damn, how did this dude even make the list? Real Madrid stockpile youth player (who’s not youth anymore) that got a loan to Wolves and proceeded to unimpress Nuno Espirito Santo [why haven’t I typed that more in these write-ups? There is no better manager name in football right now]. Now loan-shifted on to Granada midseason in La Liga midtable, where I’m guessing if he plays well enough they’ll buy him off of Real as his contract winds down. I’m so used to writing about mildly-hyped but ultimately forgettable interchangeable English central defenders that I neglected to account for the existence of mildly-hyped but ultimately forgettable interchangeable Spanish central defenders. [PAUL]



#21: HELDER COSTA (down from #13 last time) – Costa got loaned for the whole season this season to Leeds United, which is interesting because in the intro when I was talking about the wildness of Nuno as a manager, I had thunk briefly about how much I hope Leeds United gets promoted (which it looks like they might) because Marcelo Bielsa is a fuckin' kook too, albeit a different variety than Nuno. Costa had been a solid contributor to Wolves two seasons ago, but started taking less of a role last season, thus the loan move made sense. He's gone back to his productive ass self with Leeds too, even in a non-entire role, 4 goals in 40 appearances, and the biggest chunk of that has come in the past couple months. I guess Bielsa's nuttiness is partially displayed in his personal fitness standards he demands of his players, and it took Costa a while to get up to that. But holmes has played the full 90 for the majority of Leeds recent fixtures, even in the intensely congested Championship schedule, which makes this an interesting loan with possible permanent move, because if he's getting up to Bielsa speed the same time Leeds might get promoted. Costa could be back in the PL next season, in a different kit, and making noise around the middle of the table. And man do I fucking love the notion of a middle of the table full of kooks like Nuno and Bielsa and Graham Potter and those types who will never be acceptable at the big clubs managerial spots but can thrive in the middlings. [RAVEN]



#22: IVAN CAVALEIRO (down from #14 last time) – Nuno Espirito Santo seems like he favors a smallish squad, judging by the Wolves senior team list. I myself believe in a rigid 25-man, no more, no less, senior squad—every position duplicated, with a third keeper, a fifth central defender, and a fifth striker. Cavaleiro here, after a respectable (but not standout) EPL season with Wolves in 2018-19, went on loan to Fulham and then joined them permanently at the start of the year, leaving Wolverhampton with only one natural right winger (though he wasn’t getting played there anyway). Likely he was looking for more playing time, but it’s doubly confounding because of Ivan’s Portuguese repping (although he hasn’t made a competitive senior appearance yet, and there’s still time to go with his father’s Angola). [PAUL]



#23: DANIEL PODENCE – This dude has a lot of darkness following him but that doesn’t mean he can’t turn it around and be a warrior of light. He was abandoned by his Portuguese parents and was raised in the football system almost like how monks would take in an abandoned child and make him one of their own order back in the day. I don’t know if they still do that but it would be kinda cool if they did. But poor Daniel didn’t have monks. Instead, he had dudes who would kick a ball to him and he would kick back and I guess that’s how an orphan finds love in Europe. He played for Sporting CP which was probably all the family he knew until one day when the team was attacked by their own supporters. I don’t know the details but apparently, Daniel and his boys were jumped by their own posse which is some messed up shit especially for a dude who was abandoned by his parents. This dude must have serious trust issues and probably can’t let anyone get close and can you blame him? Parents leave him and then his surrogate family that cared for him through sports jumps his ass and sends him on a journey alone through the world, finally ending up with the Wolves who he hopes won’t eat him and can teach him to love again. And really, that’s all any of us can ask for. I hope young Daniel gets to be loved and doesn’t get fucked over again and again by people. It’s a fucked up world and people are shitty, but sometimes you meet the right people and everything works out. Hopefully, that is the story with Daniel and his wolves. [NEIL]



#24: TAYLOR PERRY – Young (18) midfielder who mostly appears in League Cup ties thus far, but did pop in as a sub against Besitkas in the Europa League. Dude has been at Wolves as a youth academy member since age 7, deeply steeped in this club's culture, and incubated in Nuno's effect since the arrival of the holy spirit. He got to play in the Premier League Asia Trophy competition, including the final against Manchester City, where he scored in the penalty shootout which gave the Wolves that friendly global marketing trophy. This is truly a club built with the possibility of a number of years of quality play, so long as they can keep it together. I'm sure they'll sell some shit off, but something wonderful has been put into place, that feels larger than just a single guy or two. [RAVEN]



#25: BRUNO JORDAO – Godly number 7 who arrived with that dude Neto by way of Italy's S.S. Lazio, which means they escaped early coronaviral quarantine vacations. The question remains, will football help deliver the coronavirus across the globe, passing it around like a triangular offense hellbent on full distribution? Perhaps the European Champions League, with its global cast of superstars, will be the breaking point for global capitalism. Perhaps its fitting it shall be in Ataturk Stadium on the European side of the Bosporous Strait in Istanbul where we've always pretended some sort of giant chasmic divide exists, between continents or cultures or ways of life. Virus and football recognize no border, and the ones we establish are always proven to be arbitrary at best, and require constant bureaucratic maintenance to stay in place. But even after empires fail and Premier League's lose their luster, football will remain. Pele was right, Africa will one day win the World Cup. In fact, there may be a day where Africa is the only continent competing. Who the fuck knows what winds shall blow the football pass that is history from the present to the future? [RAVEN]

F0LKS 4LW4YS CR0W1NG 4B0VT...

folks always crowing about

how tomorrow's gonna be

another day, for fresh starts

SONG OF THE DAY: Calling Planet Earth

Maybe when people started believing in a flat earth again it was because the earth had been left out to long and all our tingly spirit like carbonation had been released so we were all just stumbling along, not correcting fucked up shit because there’s no real point to doing so as it’s just going to get done wrong right away at the next stop down the path, so fuck it. We just sit here, waiting for the inevitable, on an earth flattening of spirit, and some people can’t distinguish between metaphysical and real and they just assumed the earth was flat and made a bunch of youtube videos and shit. Anything being proven on youtube or a reddit thread is not being proven at all. And I say that with the simultaneous acknowledgement that our scientific community is full of shit and built on a foundation of false premises as well. All of this points to a flat earth. We need more motherfuckers like Sun Ra to pump some round to it again, all over the earth, in every corner, which of course is a poor metaphor BECAUSE THE EARTH DOESN’T ACTUALLY HAVE ANY CORNERS.

R3FL3CT1NG B4CK 0N B3TT3R...

reflecting back on better

days - our romanticizing

erasing the negatives

H1ST0R13S H1DD3N 1NS1D3...

histories hidden inside

our hands' cracks, callouses, scars,

and natural crevices

1'M FR0M V1RG1N14, WH3R3...

"I'm from Virginia, where

ain't shit to do but cook" - rap

along rushing, late for work

W0RK1NG CL4SS 1D3NT1T13S...

working class identities

manufactured for the clout;

folks working inside of clouds

14-Man Micro-Metaphysical Roster: SEATTLE SOUNDERS FC

{I hope they know true futbol supporters have to fight III %ers to the death by 2024}

[14-Man Micro-Metaphysical Roster is a football metaphysics methodology calculating minutes played per the last 50 competitive matches for a North American football club, weighting that shit more heavily for most recent matches, and using them calculations to list the 14 players constituting the strongest psychic force on a club’s current path. This is done at Football Metaphysics Space twice a month for the Premier League clubs in England, and now I’m doing it for the top clubs in North America, two per month. Pay me for my emotionless labor paypal.me/dirtgod or venmo @ravenmack23]

We get to our first North American club north of the Mexican border, and it allows me to contemplate through words what exactly is the difference between the professional football in America versus Mexico. Liga MX is split into two half-year seasons, but the regular season equals the same amount as MLS. And we saw a lot of the top clubs from both leagues in these past few weeks first knockout rounds of the CONCACAF Champions League. So why does MLS feel so half-speed compared to Liga MX, in both actual speed as well as intensity? Is it the lack of deep local soccer culture that filters through classes? There's something performative feeling about MLS - that it's a giant cosplaying event more than actual sport at times. But some places got passionate about it, and Seattle has been one of those spaces, with their downtown stadium right at the edge of Chinatown being a bonafide destination for a somewhat progressive urban base. Maybe that's the end result of gentrification though. How many of the folks living in tents underneath the I-5 are thinking about Sounders matches?

Last season, Seattle stumbled into the MLS playoffs, but took off from there. And being the metrics used for ranking North American clubs includes domestic league, domestic cup, and continental Champions League, there was no doubting Seattle would place high, as they've won the MLS Cup in 2016 and 2019, and been dominant in the US Open Cup, having won it four times (2009, 2010, 2011, and 2014). It's weird though, because their coach, Brian Schmetzer, simultaneously represents all that is wrong as well as right with U.S. soccer. He looks like your everyday dork set up with a Macbook Pro in a nitro brewed coffee shop somewhere. But he's also the son of an immigrant who played in the German Third Division, who grew up in Washington, and due to knowing the true professional traditions of soccer, didn't play in college and instead chose to join the Seattle Sounders club that existed in the North American Soccer League back in 1980. He even played on an indoor soccer club by that name, and then was still active when the modern version of the Sounders started in the 1990s at the lower levels of U.S. soccer. He was manager of that USL club when it was legally dissolved in 2008 to create the new corporate MLS entity by the same name, and he moved down to assistant underneath Sigi Schmid. He served dutifully in that capacity, and the club prioritized trophy successes (not always something done in U.S. soccer, or large leagues in Europe for that matter), and the new MLS version of the club won the U.S. Open Cup three years straight. When Schmid left the club by mutual agreement in 2016, Schmetzer took back over, guided them to an MLS title, and repeated that feat last season, meaning in just under four seasons in charge, he's won two domestic league titles (and was runner-up in one of the other seasons). So few clubs have the actual tradition over decades in multiple levels of soccer as Seattle Sounders, as well as the successful history in terms of winning trophies the past decade, as well as a fan base that's actually pretty supportive, with the club having a regular attendance of 30,000 plus, and even setting records with a couple key matches with well over 60,000 in attendance. The club has a supporter marching band, which leads a procession of supporters from a nearby park into the stadium before each home match, and generally speaking, though there's a certain amount of cosplay involved in U.S. soccer, Seattle Sounders supporters have done it to such a level that it's taken actual root, and is hard to dismiss as idiotic bullshit to be honest.

So here are the 14 men who have had the most impact in terms of playtime the past 50 competitive matches for the club…



#1: STEFAN FREI – Stefan Frie Seattle's longtime Swiss GK, who actually has been with the club since their USL days, and previously featured with such storied American football clubs as the San Francisco Seals and the San Jose Frogs. He played college soccer at Cal, which is how he ended up in the Bay Area, and it's weird to think how many US soccer players waste four years of developmental time at the collegiate level, which doesn't prepare them all that well for professional soccer. Fuck it though, Frei is the club's vice-captain, and I kinda dig the fact that both their manager and a couple major players not only existed with the club for a while, but did so before the club was an MLS club. That's of course an argument for relegation and promotion and not forcing minor league clubs to sell themselves to a new MLS entity to be an MLS club, but a corporate cleansing of the club's full history is kinda antithetical to football metaphysics. But hey, that's why America fucking sucks at soccer.



#2: CRISTIAN ROLDAN – Roldan is American-born and bred, a California kid who had gone the normal route of college soccer at Washington, while also playing in the Premier Development League for the Washington Crossfire. In 2015, he was signed to the Generation Adidas thing that allegedly supports the growth of young footballers in America, but fuck, looking at the list of them historically, not many of them really catch on in any real way. A lot of them seem to actually play here at University of Virginia where I work, which makes sense, because this place is hooked up to American soccer illuminati, with both Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley being coaches here in the past. No wonder American soccer sucks. Anyways, Roldan got drafted by the Sounders, and has been part of either their second team or senior team for the past five years. He also has appeared with the USMNT regularly, beginning with the 2017 Gold Cup.



#3: KIM KEE-HEE – Kim Kee-Hee had roamed the defensive side of things for the Sounders the past two seasons, having come to America from his native South Korea. But the past year has seen the Sounders bolster their central defense with South Americans, so Kim has returned home, having been signed by Ulsan Hyundai a few weeks ago. He’s been a mainstay on the Sounders starting XI, so it’ll be interesting to see how they adjust. Of course, it’s football, and people come and go all the time, so fuck it. We are all replaceable, no matter how important we think we are to this world.



#4: KELVIN LEERDAM – Kelvin Leerdam is a rare example of strange geopolitical metaphysics often seen in football, but not quite as much in America. He's from Suriname, which is a South American country, which had been under Dutch rule as a colony, and yet somehow is part of the North American confederation. Just like Mexican clubs played in the South American continental competition, and Mexico often went to CONMEBOL tournaments, there's a couple of South American nations like Suriname and Guyana that aren't up to the level of South American football, so they play in North America. That's just how it is. But because of Dutch rule, Leerdam qualified for the Dutch national team, and was good enough to play for them at the U19 and U21 level, but chose to represent Guyana at the senior level. This also means he made himself irrelevant to European football. So that means he ends up going to Seattle Sounders after getting released by Vitesse in the Netherlands, after having played nearly a decade in the Eredivisie, and has grown into a major force on Seattle's squad. Last season, even as a defender, he got 6 goal in 33 appearances, including the opening goal in their 3-1 MLS Cup title win over Toronto FC last November. And despite that long history in Europe, he's still only 29. And having an offensive-minded brain at right back, with top flight experience in Europe, now combined with the South American central defenders you'll read about elsewhere on this list, Seattle actually has pretty solid metaphysics at that back line. By American standards (which are low), the rest of the starting XI can flounder a little with such a solid defensive line. Hopefully the coronavirus doesn't wipe out Seattle though.



#5: NICOLAS LODEIRO – Lodeiro's a Uruguayan scoring threat who built a huge name for himself in South America before coming to America for the Sounders in 2016. MLS clubs are allowed three players to be designated which don't count against the league's salary cap, and not only is Lodeiro on that list - he's the second longest player to be on that list in MLS, only behind Jozy Altidore with Toronto FC. He also appears to have the fifth-highest guaranteed salary in MLS (so far as I can tell, but 2020 dudes like Chicharito or Cristian Pavon don't show up yet). Lodiero also spent two seasons as a young player in Europe, with Ajax, where he played with fellow Uruguayan and amigo Luis Suarez (of Liverpool and Barcelona fame). In his three and a half seasons with the Sounders, he's gotten 26 goals already, and added 7 in MLS playoffs, including 2 in 3 matches last season. He's a key to the club's successes, and honestly one of those players who sort of plays down to the competition sometimes. When he performs as he's capable of, he can be dominant in MLS, but also is about to turn 31, which only further suggests that MLS is a second tier domestic league where great footballers go to play when they're again out of top tier domestic leagues.



#6: RAUL RUIDIAZ – Another designated player, and a Peruvian who was a longtime star for that nation's biggest club, Universitario, before plauying in Liga MX in Mexico for Morelia two seasons. He's been an absolute goal-scoring beast in every season he's touched in North America, far more than he did while still competing in South America. He had 20 goals both seasons in Liga MX, and despite only having 16 appearances the second half of the 2018 Seattle season, he got 13 goals in that time. Adding 15 last season, and got the final match-sealing goal in the MLS Cup final against Toronto last November. Few clubs in MLS have the one-two upfront threat as Lodeiro and Ruidiaz. Ruidiaz is a tiny dude though, nicknamed "The Flea".



#7: JORDAN MORRIS – A homegrown player for the Sounders, who played with them as a youth academy kid, and then spent his collegiate career at Stanford. He won an NCAA title while there, then returned to the professional ranks at the suggestion of USMNT manager Jurgen Klinsmann, who rightfully felt the college game would hold back his development. His been their go-to scorer the past couple years, when healthy, with 33 goals in 103 appearances, but 13 for 30 last season, and already has 3 goals in 3 appearances this young season. Shit, if I keep fucking off on finishing this write-up, he might have two more by the time you read these words. Lolol, ain't nobody reading these words.



#8: GUSTAV SVENSSON – A Swedish defensive midfielder, which I guess is progress above American since he previously played in his native country, China, and the intense orld of Turkish football. But it's still a pretty strong sign that there's ground to cover in terms of football metaphysics in America. Use of a defensive midfielder is a quality move philosophically, but you need an African defensive midfielder, preferably West or Central African, but if you got you a good viciously stylistic Algerian or Moroccan or Egyptian, that'd probably be good too. Scandinavian is better than no defensive midfielder though, and this will be Svensson's fourth season with the Sounders.



#9: BRAD SMITH – An Australian left back who was in the Liverpool youth academy, and spent time contracted to them, getting loaned out to lower level clubs for a while. He came to America to play for Seattle in 2018, on loan the second half of the 2018 season. But a season-long loan from Bournemouth, his parent club at that point, carried him through the first half of Seattle's 2019 season as well, and he became a crowd favorite because of how he pushed forward out of defense, much like Leerdam on the other side, so the Sounders negotiated keeping him through the end of 2019. Once he returned to Bournemouth in January, they loaned him out for the rest of this season to Cardiff City.



#10: JOEVIN JONES – Joevin Jones is a Trinidadian and Tobagon, whose national team is called The Soca Warriors, because soca music is incredibly popular on the island nation, and hardly anywhere else on Earth. He was a star for W Connection, which is the biggest club on the island nation as well, who feud at the professional level with the other big club on the island, Joe Public, which is owned by that corrupt ass dude who got in trouble as part of the FIFA scandals under Sepp Blatt. Jack Warner was his name, and he was like this hemisphere's ringleader in FIFA corruption.



#11: JORDY DELEM – Delem has a very non-traditional entry into professional soccer, coming from the Caribbean island nation of Martinique. I don't know if statistics from that nation's clubs are sparse, or he didn't play much, but there's not much record statistically of his years spent there, before Seattle signed him to be part of their USL second-team. He performed well enough he moved to the senior club in March of 2017, so he's spent three full seasons on the A-team squad, with 59 appearances stretched across that time, and getting up to 27 appearances last season, including 10 starts.



#12: XAVIER ARREAGA – Arreaga's a defender who came straight from his native Ecuador, where he'd become a domestic league star at Barcelona SC (not that Barcelona). Arreaga had been a designated player last season, but somehow is not this season. On top of this, the club added Colombian Yeimar Gomez Andrade to pair with Arreaga as a northern South American central defending tandem to lock shit down on the defense. It didn't help prevent them from getting waxed in the first knockout round of the North American Champions League though.



#13: ROMAN TORRES – Roman Torres is a fucking monster, and one of my favorite MLS players. he had one of the most important moments in North American football's recent history, during the last round of World Cup qualifying in 2018, when the US squad was failing to beat Trinidad & Tobago in the Caribbean, and at the same time, Panama was trying to beat Costa Rica to steal that qualification spot. With 3 minutes left in the game, Torres scored the game-winning goal, ran straight off the field, ripping his jersey off, and celebrating in front of the Panamanian crowds going wild. The nation qualified for their first ever World Cup, the next day became a national holiday in celebration, and Torres will always be remembered. The nation did not do well in the World Cup, and Torres announced his retirement from international football after that World Cup, though he also accepted a later call-up for a friendly. He was a similar beast for Seattle over the past four seasons, but his minutes were in decline. He moved to David Beckham's upstart Inter Miami club this offseason, and hopefully will give that new monstrosity of a club some sort of soul, if possible.



#14: HARRY SHIPP – I figured for certain a name like Harry Shipp meant some middling Englishman who had stumbled his way to America, but it turns out he's a kid from Illinois who played football at Notre Dame (the less popular football), and simultaneously was signed to the Chicago Fire's premier development club at the same time, since he'd been a player in their youth system. I'm not even sure how American youth clubs work at the professional level? Are you recruited for it, or do they just sort of adopt the best kids in their metropolitan region? Weird thing is, since I used to go to UVA soccer games, I might've actually seen this fucker at some point. I don't remember him if I did.