Billy Haisley

1 month ago | defector.com | Billy Haisley

Knockout-tournament soccer is the best soccer because of how it amplifies the sport's essence. The magic of the game lies in the tension between unpredictability and mastery. On one foot, the game is so difficult, so low-scoring, and played over such a relatively short timespan, that in 90 minutes truly anyone can beat anyone.

1 month ago | defector.com | Billy Haisley

Unless you're a fan of one of the big clubs that needed a late Nottingham Forest collapse to help mask your own team's piss-poor season (we're looking at you, Man City and Chelsea), you have to feel for the Trees. Forest maintained its over-performing underdog act so long and so admirably this year, and it was just starting to look like the team might avoid the Icarian fate that usually befalls the (relatively) low-spending high-fliers of any given Premier League season.

2 months ago | defector.com | Billy Haisley

Eight minutes into the match, after Eberechi Eze had calmly side-footed the ball over an undefended goal line to give Crystal Palace an early lead, I had for the first time this season the feeling that Manchester City really might not get off the mat. Throughout City's season from hell, it has always felt like the squad was too strong, the manager too great, and the team too experienced to end the year in truly disastrous fashion by finishing outside of the Champions League places.

2 months ago | defector.com | Billy Haisley

Brazilian funk, at least out on the radical, thrilling, ear-frying, brain-scrambling fringes, is primarily a producer's genre. It's not that the songs are mostly instrumental. Vocals are a critical part of the sound, the defining examples being the endlessly repeated stabs of short words or phrases—"Vai, vai"; "Toma, toma"; "Fode, fode"; "Pega, pega"; "Vuk vuk" (maybe don't look up what those last few mean in English if you're at work)—that basically are to funk what the hi-hat triplet is to trap.

Mar 26, 2025 | defector.com | Billy Haisley

Soccer in Spain is defined by the rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona. It's what stirs Spanish hearts (one study found that some 57 percent of Spaniards support either Real or Barça), captivates the world's imagination (El Clásico is hands down the biggest rivalry match on the planet), and therefore drives the attention, passion, and economics that are the lifeblood of the sport. What Spanish soccer is, it is in large part directly due to Real and Barça.