It’s sɒkər time! Club play is back across Europe, so I’m going to begin organizing my own thoughts (and limiting myself) with one soccer match to watch today on TV for Monday, August 24, in the Year of our Maradona 2026. I’ll post this and then come back with some thoughts in a postscript because I’ve got some real hot ones after the weekend.
But the one soccer match to watch today on TV for Monday, August 24, is Fulham vs. Chelsea at 2 p.m. CT on USA Network and Universo. It’s Monday Night Football in the Premier League, and this one is coming from Craven Cottage on the banks of the Thames in West London; magic hour.
Fulham’s now managed by former Real Madrid fullback Álvaro Arbeloa, who served as Los Blancos caretaker after Xabi Alonso was dismissed last season, and he’s brought a couple players with him from the Bernabéu (why not add Gonzalo García to your FPL team, again I ask you why not?) to compliment the team’s one true galáctico: Antonee Jedi Robinson.
Xabi has landed on his feet as Chelsea boss with an immediate dictate of showing sure signs of improving on last season’s dismal 10th-place finish. The Blues have had another active summer transfer window, so I really don’t have a goddamn clue who plays there at this point.
I know they’ve got Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson now, and those are the kinds of moves that assure me Todd Boehly is playing this thing just like I would in Manager Mode.
It should be a real jaunty time.
POSTSCRIPTPARTY
I want to talk about my love for Cole Palmer, which speaks directly to what makes this the world’s most democratic sport. What would Cole Palmer be doing if not for football? How have the Palmer men of old employed themselves?
On the pitch, he is a wisp, the whisper of a disembodied spook squeezing past you out the closet door. Off the pitch? I get the feeling he’d be cloistered away at a secluded monastery, handed the task of cleaning the side of the castle that gets sprayed with shit when people are taking massive, spluttering dumps after being constipated with smoked turkey leg and lukewarm ale.
Here’d come Palmer, his hair cut just like it is now; somehow fashioned in a way best suited to keep the excrement out. He’s got a mop. He’s had to engineer and fashion it himself out of some loose scraps of leather scrounged from the tannery and a large stick.
Look at medieval Cole Palmer go, out to scrub the flying flakes of shit out of the mortar of the castle walls, saving us all from the plague. Bless him. That boy will just have to wait for the advent of football to break this long, hard family cycle.
The North End 
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