A Kylian Mbappé profile and a big new project
The posts have been infrequent here (apart from the occasional treatise on Arsenal Derangement Syndrome) as I’ve gotten a bit swamped at the day job, this past week in particular. I worked on a profile of Kylian Mbappé that published online Tuesday and immediately set off a wave of discussion across French talk shows, newspapers, and comment sections. The French public is debating their superstar captain’s comments about his right to speak out as a citizen like anyone else, all while the far right goes on the attack.
That will be a cover story for Vanity Fair’s Sports Issue, for which I also edited Lindsey Vonn’s first interview following her horrifying crash at the 2026 Olympics. Plus: Franklin Leonard’s report on what the World Cup truly means after he went down to Guadalajara, Mexico to watch three teams—Jamaica, New Caledonia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—scrap for one last spot at this summer’s tournament. It’s all in the new issue, on newsstands May 26 here in the U.S.
It’s been busy enough that a project that’s dear to me was put on hold for a while. I went over to London in January to report the next three episodes of the CATHEDRALS series on the world’s great football stadiums. After the first three took more of a magazine feature form, this next batch will release in a docuseries format on The Football Weekend’s YouTube channel.
You can check out the first of them now, a mini-doc on Fulham’s Craven Cottage. It’s a special place, steeped in the history of genteel West London, and you’ll be transported to another time if you choose to sit in the Johnny Haynes Stand along Stevenage Road:
Here are those previous three editions of CATHEDRALS:
Besides all that, I’m just white-knuckling my way through the final three games of the season. That’s all that stands between my beloved club of 20 years and unprecedented glory. If Mikel Arteta and the lads can pull it off, I’ll try not to be too insufferable—unless you’ve been talking that trash, in which case, you had to know you’re getting it back.
But first I’ll have to watch multiple matches through the gaps in my fingers. That was certainly the case last time out at West Ham: