A lot happened in the time I was gone, including the rise of Twitter. In an effort to keep up with the times, I have established a Culture of Soccer twitter account. I think I’ll mostly use it to post articles of interest to me, but am open to suggestions about how to use this new-fangled tool. Hope you enjoy!

I did a piece for Tom Dunmore’s excellent blog Pitch Invasion today about how I became the obsessed soccer fan that I am. Kudos to anyone who can name a player for the Dayton Dynamo!

First of all, I want to apologize for the sudden disappearance of Culture of Soccer last year. Starting graduate school ate up most of my time, and I couldn’t keep up the site. However, now that I am a couple of years into my PhD, I find myself with a bit more time and I am happy to announce that I will be restarting Culture of Soccer shortly. I will likely do updates about once a week and I hope to regain many of the fans this site had developed previously, as well as attract some new followers. I have many ideas for stories to write and I will come across new ideas as part of my studies, which will focus on the role of immigrant soccer leagues in the United States. I’m also happy to hear suggestions from readers. If you have an idea for something I can write about on Culture of Soccer, please email me at david@cultureofsoccer.com.

Following up on my interview with Andrea Canales a few weeks ago, my interview with her fellow LA reporter Luis Bueno is up now on This is American Soccer (TIAS). Luis writes for Sports Illustrated, MLSNet.com, the Press-Enterprise, in addition to running his Sideline Views blog along with Andrea. Most of my conversation with Luis focused on the role of Hispanics in American soccer. A few interesting quotes are below and if they tickle your fancy, cruise on over to TIAS and read the whole thing.

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This past weekend, I had the opportunity to head up to Los Angeles to speak with a couple of prominent soccer writers there. Andrea Canales and Luis Bueno are the duo behind the Sideline Views blog, and they also write individually for various publications. Both interviews were done as part of a joint project with Adam Spangler of This is American Soccer (TIAS) and will be published there.

My interview with Luis focused on about ways in which US Soccer and MLS are reaching out (or not) to Hispanic players, fans, coaches, etc. The write-up of that interview with him will be up on TIAS in the near future.

The transcript of the full 50-minute Q&A with Andrea is up now on TIAS. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite before you head over to TIAS to read the entire thing.

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Happy New Year to readers of Culture of Soccer. I also want to point out that this is, more or less, the one year anniversary of this blog (well, I did a few posts in the fall, but then got too busy with graduate school applications until after Christmas). I am honored to have obtained a regular readership and although I’m not always able to respond to all of your comments, please know that I appreciate the how insightful they are. I wasn’t able to post as much in the fall due to starting graduate school, but I’m hoping that I’ll be back on a more regular schedule from now on. Again, Happy New Year and thank you.