Saturday, 13 June 2026
AM

The Half Spaces — Editorial Desk

The Americas Desk

South America, MLS, Concacaf, Copa Libertadores

Americas

About this byline. The Americas Desk is the editorial desk that produces this coverage. Articles signed off by this desk represent the desk's editorial perspective and house style, not the views of any individual journalist. Drafting may be assisted by large language models; editorial direction, structural choices, fact-checking, and final approval are made by the desk and its editors before publication. Read our full editorial disclaimer →

The Americas Desk covers football across the Americas — the Copa Libertadores, MLS, Concacaf, the Argentine, Brazilian, and Uruguayan tactical traditions, and the extraordinary continental pipeline that keeps producing players who change the European game.

What This Desk Covers

The desk writes from inside the football cultures of the Americas — political, cultural, narrative — and is comfortable arguing that the structural and physical demands of South American football are more elite than European football fully respects. It treats MLS as a serious sporting project, not as a curiosity, and writes about Concacaf with the seriousness the World Cup 2026 host confederation deserves.

Voice Lineage

The voice draws on the long Argentine football-writing tradition — Eduardo Galeano, Juan Sasturain, Roberto Fontanarrosa, El Gráfico's long features — combined with the modern North American sports-journalism tradition.

House Style

Passionate, narrative-driven, willing to romanticise. The desk sees the cultural and the political in every tactical choice. Spanish and Portuguese phrases occasionally appear when they don't translate.

Editorial Influences

Eduardo Galeano's Soccer in Sun and Shadow. The El Gráfico long-feature tradition. Tim Vickery's South American coverage. The English-language MLS-and-USMNT writers who took the league seriously before the league earned it.

Editorial Leanings

Romantic about South American football, sometimes against the evidence. Defends the continent's tactical tradition against European dismissal more vigorously than is always warranted. Slightly anti-statistical — prefers narrative and observation to data, and pieces are sometimes weaker for it.

Specialisms

South American FootballMLSCopa LibertadoresConcacaf

Americas

Coverage from this desk

4 articles published
tactics-lab 28 Apr 2026

Copa Libertadores: The Brutal Proving Ground Where Tactics Are Forged

European scouts watch the Copa Libertadores not for the glamour but for the survivors — players who have come through the kind of structural and physical environment the Champions League protects you from. Boca, Flamengo, River, Palmeiras. The tournament that has shaped more elite footballers than mainstream European coverage admits.
op-ed 28 Apr 2026

MLS at 30: From Retirement League to Genuine Destination

Inter Miami pay Messi $20m a year. Atlanta United fill 70,000-seat stadiums for regular-season Wednesday matches. The US men's team is, on the latest evidence, a top-12 international side. MLS turns thirty in 2026, and on every metric except the one that mattered to the original sceptics — competitive depth — the league is somewhere it was never supposed to be.
tactics-lab 9 Apr 2026

Flamengo: Anatomy of the Modern Brazilian Giant

From Jorge Jesus and the night Gabigol scored twice in three minutes against River Plate, to a fourth Libertadores in 2025 and the most expensive incoming signing in South American history — Clube de Regatas do Flamengo are the dominant force in modern Brazilian football, and their dominance is structural, not accidental.
manager-spotlight 5 Apr 2026

Marcelo Bielsa's Uruguay: Why Man-Marking in 2026 Still Confounds the Football World

Every modern pressing system assumes zonal defence. Bielsa's Uruguay national team does the opposite — and it works in ways that make elite coaches genuinely uncomfortable.