For the past few weeks, we’ve focused a lot on Premier League soccer, and that’s great, but there’s way more soccer in the world. The roots of soccer in the United States are relatively unknown, but most historians can agree that the Oneida Football Club was the first football team to come to the United States. The earliest recorded game of soccer in the United States was played on October 11, 1866, in Waukesha, Wisconsin under the 1863 London Football Association laws. (Source: Wikipedia)

That’s all to say, soccer has been around for a bit, so I think it’s time we switch this blog’s focus to soccer in the United States, particularly the MLS (Major League Soccer). I’m not sure if we’ll maintain that focus on US soccer, so don’t be surprised if I do any of the following in the future A.) revert to the original topic of this blog B.) Only focus on MLS soccer C.) Alternate back and forth between MLS & Premier League.

MLS doesn’t use the same conventions as the Premier League, so there aren’t any match days. If you were to search MLS on google, a schedule would appear that’s segmented based on dates not Matchdays, which is an important distinction when following both leagues.

With that said, I’ll employ the same format that I used in the last blog post where I provide the scores of a few of the matches from the last gameday and then provide some analysis on one or two of my favorite games from the week.

Results

Philadelphia Union 1 – NYC 1

LA Galaxy 3 – Minnesota 3

D.C. United 3 – Toronto 1

New England Revolution 0 – Inter Miami 1

Real Salt Lake 1 – Sporting Kansas City 0

FC Dallas 1 – San Jose 1

NY Red Bulls 1 – Nashville 1

Atlanta United 2 – Cincinnati 1

Philadelphia Union v. New York City FC

I’m starting off with this match because it’s near and dear to my heart. Being from PA, Philadelphia Union was one of the soccer teams that I watched religiously. I also had the opportunity to train with their academy teams, so it was (and still is) exciting to hear news about the team.

Similarly, NYCFC has an incredibly unique style of play, so I’d watch their games to learn more about the sport. I distinctly remember spending my lunches with my phone propped up and NYCFC games playing through YouTube, so as I said, both teams are near and dear to my heart.

The game started with pace, as Philadelphia Union’s Kacper Przybylko put a goal in the back of NYCFC’s net at 26 minutes. His goal was met with immediate petition, as the NYCFC players believed Przybylko was in an offsides position. With the rise of technologies like VAR, it was easy to conclude that Przybylko was not in fact offsides. For context, VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee; it’s essentially a means of referees playing back plays to see what may have occurred.

In the 53^rd minute, Taty Castellanos, put one back in the Union’s net, tying the game up at one-one. Overall, it was a great game, and there’s more to come in the next weeks.

Alrighty. I’m going to experiment with a bit of a new blog post structure. In the last few posts, I’ve really been focused on a few matches, rather than the matchday. Consequently, there’s a lot of information that I could be giving, but I haven’t been. This week, we’ll start off with the scores of the matchday and shed some light on a few, particularly surprising and/or important matchups.

Scores:

Southampton v Aston Villa: 1-2                Arsenal v Watford: 1-0

Brighton v Newcastle: 2-1                           Everton v. Spurs: 0-0

Crystal Palace v. Wolves:  2-0                    Leeds v. Leicester: 1-1

Chelsea v. Burnley: 1-1                                  West Ham v. Liverpool: 3-2

Man Utd v. Man City: 0-2                            Bretford v. Norwich: 1-2

I’ve bolded the matches that I’d like to focus on in today’s blog post starting with Manchester United v. Manchester City.

Manchester United v. Manchester City

Manchester United started the match terribly. There’s really not much more to say there. Seven minutes into the match, Joao Cancelo’s (Man City) low cross was converted into an own goal as one of Manchester United’s defenders raced back to clear the ball. As the game progressed, it was clear that Manchester United was struggling. Not to delve too deep into the statistics, but oftentimes, you can tell who will win a soccer game based on possession, and in this game, the possession was seriously one-sided.

As the first half came to a close, Man City was able to put another goal in the back of the net making it 2-0 going into the second half. Despite the changes made to the personnel on the field and tactically, Manchester United could not pull through, and the game ended in a 2-0 win for Manchester United.

Following the match, manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was under intense pressure, as it was said that he was at risk of losing his job. He was quoted to have said, “Some praise has to go to them but we were not at our level. Standards need to be raised, We need to be on the front foot. I can’t look at myself and say this is the way I want Man Utd to play, I have good quiet communication all the time with the club. I want the best for Manchester United. As long as I’m here, I want to do what I can do to improve this.”

Only the coming games will tell if Solskajer will be able to retain his job.

In other news, next week’s matchups should be very interesting, especially given what they mean for standings. Four teams have changed their managers, so the upcoming matches will be used as assessments of the managers’ ability to successfully direct the respective teams.

Matchups to look forward to:

Liverpool v. Arsenal

Man Utd v. Watford

Leicester v. Chelsea

More to come next week!

This style of blog post is fairly new, so I’ll make sure to give context where it’s needed. For example, today’s blog post features the phrase “Matchday 9/38”. Premier League games are typically played on weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and occasionally during the week, so even though the phrase Matchday seems to indicate one day, the games are played over a series of days. The best similarity might be the NFL’s Week X. That statement is a bit more explicit since all the games are played within the same week, but the idea still holds.

Now with that out of the way, there were ten matches played on Matchday 9, but I’d like to highlight on big match Manchester United v. Liverpool.

Manchester United v. Liverpool

If you haven’t already seen it on social media, Manchester United suffered an embarrassing loss to Liverpool. The score was 5-0, which is unheard of when you’re talking about two teams who have historically been strong competitors.

Going into the game, Manchester United was 7^th and Liverpool was placed 2^nd in the league rankings. Having purchased one of soccer’s biggest superstars, Cristiano Ronaldo, United was/is expected to have a stellar season. Moreover, United’s new manager (onboarded sometime within the last few months) has been on a thin line with fans, players, and staff, as would be expected with a new hire in a volatile environment such as sports.

United’s downfall started quickly with Liverpool netting a quick goal within the first five minutes. After that, United continued to slip with multiple mistakes from all those involved from coaching staff to players.

Following the match, United’s captain Harry Maguire said the following:

“We apologize to the fans; it was nowhere near good enough for this club. They stuck with us right to the end and we appreciate that but as a club we have to do better. I am so disappointed; we gave them so many chances.”

“They were so clinical, we had a lot of chances ourselves, but I am a defender and to concede four in the first half especially at Old Trafford is nowhere near good enough. As a player I know myself. I’ll be looking at myself and my individual performance. We have to stick together, there is no point blaming each other but look at ourselves.”

Maguire’s statements do a good job of representing the scale of United’s defeat. Moreover, critics are indicating that Maguire is at risk of losing his captainship over his role in United’s loss. As a captain and center back (the “main” defender), much of the responsibility lies on him, so it’s a tough situation to be in.

More next week.

The last time I posted in this series was September 23^rd, so it’s been a minute. Again, I don’t think the book needs much of an introduction given how interesting I hope I’ve made it sound, but if not, here’s a recap of both the book and the previously discussed lessons derived from the book.

“As that student seeks out different methods of improving himself, he comes across a “self-help” book titled, How to Win Friends and Influence People. At first glance, the book seems like it’s not something you want to be seen reading, but upon further research, the student discovers how critically acclaimed it is… The entirety of the book is very structured in the sense that each chapter (If I remember correctly) is a different method of influencing people, so I’ll emulate this post after that and potentially split the blog into parts.”

Up to this point, we’ve covered five lessons:

1. Don’t Criticize or Complain
2. Give Honest Sincere Appreciation
3. Remember Their Name
4. Be Genuinely Interested in Other People
5. Know the Value of Charm

If you want to review those lessons, feel free to read about lessons 1-2 here and 3-5 here. Now that the formalities are out of the way, let’s move on to this week’s lessons. Before we start, I’d like to preface this by saying I really resonated with this week’s lessons because they tackle instances that I face in my daily life. That statement might’ve been unnecessarily ambiguous, but I hope for two things: a.) that what I’ve said will make sense at the end of this post and b.) that you’ll also be able to resonate with the lessons from the book.

With that said, let’s begin our discussion of this week’s lessons.

6. Be Quick to Acknowledge Your Own Mistakes

One of the biggest points of contention between people is birthed from our tendency as individuals to not humble ourselves. We often let our pride get the best of us, which inadvertently creates divisions within our relationships. If we want to make others less defensive and more agreeable, we must admit our mistakes and be humble.

7. Don’t Attempt to Win an Argument

I love this lesson because of how well Carnegie describes it in the book. He writes about an experience he had while at an important dinner party with a mentor. During the dinner, Carnegie got the opportunity to talk with an important donor, which led to further discussion about a topic that Carnegie was knowledgeable about.

As the donor was talking about the topic, Carnegie noticed that he was incorrect in some of the things he mentioned and tried to correct him. One thing turned to another, and the correction quickly became an argument that Carnegie won. After leaving the venue, Carnegie’s mentor expressed how disappointed he was in Carnegie for trying to argue with the important donor. Why? Well as Carnegie writes, “A man convinced against his will/Is of the same opinion still.”

More to come next week.

Welcome back to my miniseries about Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers. If you don’t remember anything from the previous post in the series, here’s an excerpt describing what the book is about.

“Talking to Strangers highlights the different aspects of our relationships and how many of those aspects often lead to misunderstandings. While the book does reference different situations, its main objective is to provide some level of understanding as to what occurred in the death of Sandra Bland.”

This book followed an interesting structure where stories were used to illustrates different lessons and ideas. As Gladwell talks about the different factors that contribute to our ability or inability to understand strangers, he relays different stories that highlight the presence of those factors in our daily lives.

With that said, I figured the best way to convey the findings from this book would be to discuss them in the context of examples given in the book as well as daily life. If you’re still reading this, and you’re not too impressed with the book, that is ok. I was in your shoes when I first decided to read this book. I also could be doing a terrible job of explaining the book. Either way, I ask that you continue to read through at least this blog post. I hope you find the material as interesting as I did. Here we go.

Lesson 1:  Interacting with strangers is a part of living in society.

This lesson may seem intuitive, however, it’s important to remember the concept of this book. This book highlights the nuances of social interaction, particularly through negative lenses. I’ll go into more depth in a later post but hearing about how inaccurate our perceptions are of truth-telling, another fundamental aspect of social interactions, forced me to reconsider my relationships with others. The next lesson illustrates what I’m referring to.

Lesson 2: We have to trust people we interact with.

Trust is a spectrum. On one extreme, you can choose to trust everyone, and the opposite end is it complete lack of trust. As spectrums go, there’s space in the middle, which calls on individuals to use their discretion with regards to being trusting v. not trusting.

Again, this lesson is based on the fundamental understanding that was not as good at understanding strangers as we think we are. To use the example that I referenced earlier, individuals often believe that they are able to determine when another individual is lying. However, as studies have shown, our “skills” are not as good as we make them out to be.

More next week.

It’s been a few weeks, but the secret plan to take over the world is back. I don’t think the plan needs any introduction after the first post, but I’ll briefly recap.

From the blog post on 9/9:

“As that student seeks out different methods of improving himself, he comes across a “self-help” book titled, How to Win Friends and Influence People. At first glance, the book seems like it’s not something you want to be seen reading, but upon further research, the student discovers how critically acclaimed it is… The entirety of the book is very structured in the sense that each chapter (If I remember correctly) is a different method of influencing people, so I’ll emulate this post after that and potentially split the blog into parts.”

Now that that’s done, we’ll continue with lesson 3.

3. Remember Their Name

We all know how difficult it is to remember someone’s name after first meeting them. Now, picture a time when someone remembered your name after you first met them

(especially those of you with “difficult” names. How did that person remembering your name make you feel? For most people, someone remembering their name makes them feel special and important. In the book, Carnegie writes, “ Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

4. Be Genuinely Interested in Other People

I found this one interesting because it highlighted a nuance of conversation that I didn’t really notice much: soliloquies. I’m not necessarily using that word because it fits the context, but I felt it was the best word to describe the situation. While we may not admit it, we love to talk about ourselves. Consequently, people believe you like them when you ask questions about themselves.

Carnegie writes, “You make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” If you break it down, you should listen 75% and only speak 25% of the time.”

5. Know the Value Of Charm

As college freshmen, we’ve been through numerous experiences that called on our use of charm. I’m sure you charmed your way to a few bonus points back in high school or charmed a parent for some new technology. Either way, we’ve subconsciously recognized the value of charm in all our lives.

With that said, the biggest takeaway from this aspect of the book was that people would rather spend time with someone they want to be around. That takeaway seems incredibly intuitive, but it serves as a constant reminder, especially considering the applications that such a realization has. Take jobs for example, studies show that recruiters would rather hire individuals they like being around and have mediocre skills over individuals they don’t like being around and have superb skills.

On the afternoon of July 10, 2015, Sandra Bland was pulled over on the suspicion that she was involved in criminal activity. A traffic stop became an arrest, and three days later, she was found hanged in a jail cell.

I know I said more to come at the end of the last blog post, but I lied. There is more to come, but not this week. I figured that it’d get boring if I talked about the same book week after week, so I’m switching my focus to Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers.

Talking to Strangers highlights the different aspects of our relationships and how many of those aspects often lead to misunderstandings. While the book does reference different situations, its main objective is to provide some level of understanding as to what occurred in the death of Sandra Bland.

The officer that pulled Sandra Bland over, Brian Encinia, was known for performing pretextual traffic stops*. On that fateful day, Encinia began following Sandra, accelerating on her rear at one point, causing her to change lanes. Gratuitously, Encinia pulled Sandra over for a failure to signal while changing lanes. In the series of events that followed, the interaction between the two became heated and Sandra was arrested. That was on July 10.

On July 13^th, Sandra was found “in a semi-standing position” hanging in her cell.

The summary I’ve given of the story is very curt, but I believe I’ve provided the main aspects: Sandra, a Black woman, was pulled over, the interaction between herself and the officer became heated, and Sandra died while in prison. There are a myriad of lenses to analyze this series of events through, namely racism and bad policing, but Malcolm opts to analyze these situations through our inability, as a society, to understand strangers.

Why did Officer Encinia create unsafe driving conditions? Why didn’t Officer Encinia use his training to analyze the situation at hand? The list of questions that this sickening situation produces is endless, but in the coming blogs, I’ll focus on the questions that Malcolm covers in his book.

See you next post.

* When an officer pulls over a motorist for a minor traffic or equipment violation and then uses the stop to investigate a more serious crime. (Pewtrusts.org)

I think this is appropriate…

Imagine a student in the sea of academically driven peers suppressed by the turbulent waves that are looming college deadlines. It’s junior year, and this student wants to do whatever he can to improve himself. Improvement for his sake of course and maybe a little bit for the sake of college applications.

As that student seeks out different methods of improving himself, he comes across a “self-help” book titled, How to Win Friends and Influence People. At first glance, the book seems like it’s not something you want to be seen reading, but upon further research, the student discovers how critically acclaimed it is.

Fast forward two years, I’ve read the book, and I still reference the notes that I took while reading it. If I’m being honest, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is one of the best books I’ve ever read, so I’ve decided to share some of my insights as well as the lessons I derived from the book.

The entirety of the book is very structured in the sense that each chapter (If I remember correctly) is a different method of influencing people, so I’ll emulate this post after that and potentially split the blog into parts.

Now, the part you’ve all been waiting for… HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE! Honestly, after all these years, I cringe every time I read that title, but that’s fine.

1. Don’t Criticize or Complain

As someone who grew up in an academically competitive environment, criticism was commonplace. It was important to show everyone that you had knowledge or that someone else did not. In retrospect, that sounds kind of cruel, but I guess that was just the unfortunate reality.

Dale Carnegie showed in his book was that nine times out of 10, criticism causes a person to become defensive. In fact, about where a person may be coming from when providing criticism, their criticism often leads to regression (where they may have been looking for progress) and feelings of resentment.

In summary, anyone can criticize. It takes a person with the self-restraint to be able to recognize situations when they should and shouldn’t be criticizing. The same goes for complaining.

2. Give Honest Sincere Appreciation

We’ve all been in situations where we felt the need to offer up some sort of insincere flattery. If you’re reading this as a part of Dr. O’Hara’s honors English class, I’m 1000% sure you’ve been in those situations before.

This lesson really speaks for itself, which is incredibly strange considering how often we partake in providing insincere appreciation. The best way to really exemplify this lesson is to picture yourself on the receiving end of appreciation. Would you rather interact with someone who displays a genuine appreciation for your actions or someone who’s insincere?

Ralph Waldo Emerson is noted to have said, “In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that, I learn from him.” my takeaway from that quote is that everyone can grow through their interactions, so express yourself in a manner that represents that growth potential.

More to come…

I’m killing it with the post titles…

Passion’s a funny thing because it entails recognizing that you’re attached to something. That might seem like a dumb statement but hear me out. I’ve always had a lot of interests, so saying I’m passionate about one of them almost feels like I’m neglecting the others.

However, quarantine offered the opportunity to do some reading, and I really got into “self-help” books. Ideally, that translates to reading a chapter from a “self-help” book and analyzing it through the lens of my personal life, social expectations and current events.

Another idea would be to document my experience at Penn State in a tourist-type manner. Doing so would force me to experience all that PSU has to offer from tailgating at football games to flying chicken at Pollock.

I’ll probably end up doing the first one though lol.