A Note to My Readers (All Seven of You)

If you regularly check this blog, you will have noticed that there hasn’t been much posting going on since November came around. Part of this is due, as I have explained, to the fact that I went to Italy for a good chunk of the month. But since I’ve been back, I’ve hardly blogged, except to detail the Rome riots. That’s because I’ve decided to close down the blog, at least temporarily, and maybe permanently.

I started the footballfan-atic blog on January 1 because I wanted to write about football, and I wanted to write stuff that was published instantly. (I write lots of stuff for magazines that are published four months after I complete them.) On both counts, I had fun writing about the beautiful game.

The point of the blog, or its point of view, perhaps, was that of an American who was a fan of the worldwide game. That was why I tried to talk about the big stories from all over Europe and South America, and also why I published the “games of the weekend” column every Friday: to help an average American like me get more out of the sport and the joy of watching it.

This was fun, but as the summer turned into fall I began to realize more fully the obvious: that the world game was simply too much for one blogger. Hell, some of the great football blogs (like theoffside.com) have dozens of staffers doing the same thing. And as a result, they are doing it much, much better.

This has combined with some changes in my personal life (all good ones, thank goodness) which has made it more difficult to blog regularly. When I started footballfan-atic, I vowed that I would only do it if it was fun. I would not maintain a blog simply for the purpose of “trudging on” or seeing how long I could keep the posts up. Well, because I am questioning the purpose of this, and because of time constraints making it less fun, I am going to stop maintaining the site. For now.

I am going to be effectively taking the rest of the year off from football bloging, and reassess where I am in the New Year. I am strongly considering retooling the site and making it much more specialized, such as being centered on a particular team like Fiorentina or my local team, the New England Revolution. I could also focus more tightly on particular players or even competitions. (I admit I am getting more and more into Series A and Italian football in general.) Or, I may just hang it up. We’ll see what happens in the New Year.

I want to thank all of the readers who checked out what I had to say over the last year, and also thank my buddy Matt for his generous posts on the EPL.

Finally, I do want to let everyone know that just because I am giving up this blog (at least temporarily) does NOT mean I am giving up on football. On the contrary, I am actually more into football than ever. I lead a fairly busy life with work, family, friends, and various writing projects on the side. When I have a moment of free time, I am almost always watching or reading about football, and that is one of the main factors that prevents me from writing about it more often. Right now I don’t feel like I will ever be able to let go of this game.