8 August 2024 — CHAMPO ‘24/‘25 KICKS OFF TOMORROW

My friend Dazzo and I watched Leeds stumble in their bid for promotion in a disappointing 1-0 loss to Southampton, a moment that seems both like it happened yesterday and yet also over a year ago.

It’s been a long, long summer of football: the incomparable performance of Own Goal in the 2024 Euros (someone should sign that guy), the fighting in the stands and racists chants of Copa America (and we also got a battle of former Leeds managers in the 3rd place game between Uruguay and Canada), the Seattle Sounders had a players only meeting and then started winning games (which was awesome), Canada got embroiled in Dronegate and yet the women’s team were undeterred by a six-point penalty at the Olympics and escaped their group (but not much further), Emma Hayes looks exactly like what the USWNT needed after a rough go at the Women’s World Cup and has the U.S. in a gold medal game against Brazil, and the USMNT got absolutely thrashed by Morocco, ending a mixed bag of a tournament. And if that wasn’t enough, the best league in the world — our beloved Sky Bet Championship — kicks off tomorrow.

Perhaps as an apology to Dazzo for forcing him to keep me company while Leeds “did a Leeds,” the football gods have his beloved Blackburn Rovers taking on returning (via promotion) Derby County on day one, along with Preston North End and returning (via relegation) Sheffield United. Honestly, not a bad slate. Blackburn will have to hope Derby County don’t try to emulate upstarts Ipswich who bossed their way from League One to the Premier League in astounding fashion, and Sheffield United will want a strong start to what they hope is another promotion run back to the top flight.

Still figuring out how this little Champo blog is going to look — and may or may not have futzed about a bit too long trying to get this page looking okay — but I guess like this new season, we’ll see how things go, eh?