US soccer facing a major battle for acceptance

Not for the first time, I’m holding my hand up to acknowledge that America is chipping away at what I used to hold dear.

There was once a fella who looked like me with a little more hair — this is almost 10 years back — and he would spend monthly Friday evenings with buddies who also liked to fill the time before kick-off at Turner’s Cross by selling FourFiveOne fanzines on the Curragh Road.

I was angry about football and driven to tell the carefree Premier League what it could do with its overpriced sanitised version of a game they’d branded beyond all recognition.