Those times have passed and hopefully will be revisited at a later date, but thankfully now I am lef...

A summertime experiment to manage rising expectations - a note from the editor

It has been just over a month since I left the shores of Barcelona and my five months of travels and studies throughout Europe ended. The experiences from my trip will never leave, from playing calcio with children in Cinque Terre to kicking around at Praia do Guincho with Dominic Vieira to being a part of the Barcelona Independent Fútbol League on Saturdays for the Ovella Negra pub team (my transfer fee was an Estrella Damm) to seeing the Amsterdam ArenA with the best Ajax fan around.

Those times have passed and hopefully will be revisited at a later date, but thankfully now I am left with this wonderful summer. A summer full of opportunity. July is here and later this month A Football Report will turn two years old. The support this site has from our readers like you is felt everyday and we are proud to have shared some incredible pieces with you from unbelievably talented writers based around the world. We’ve pushed our potential to new heights, however, summer is here and it is time to reflect on what we have done and what we can do better.

On a personal level, I wish I could churn out excellent, well-researched articles on a daily basis. However, given that I am, like most of the AFR team, a student, my time is limited. We all love football here, but our lives extend beyond the game. We are studying, we are working, we have internships, we are traveling. In truth, sometimes finding the time to create high-quality content can prove to be a burden. A burden that we’re happy to tackle, but it needs to be with moderation. We love football and we love writing. Those two things should never provide stress and my experiment this summer is to make sure it doesn’t.

A Football Report is unique as it not only has such a talented group of writers, but also because it has helped create and inspire a community of passionate and intelligent football fans on Tumblr, which is where the majority of our audience resides. Our following on Tumblr is larger than we could have ever dreamed, though many expect of you us to write about all sides of football, all the time. In the past week, I have received messages asking “why aren’t you covering the transfer market?”, “why are you only posting one article a day?”, and “why are you refusing to give any attention to the Women’s World Cup?”. Simply put, the success of A Football Report has not been without increasing, even unrealistic expectations.

So here’s to a summertime experiment: Giving you more with less. The focus of AFR will always be high quality writing and we will continue to give you that. However, this summer the pieces that take hours to research and produce, the “Philosofooty”-esque pieces, will be accompanied with high-quality writing in snippets of a solid paragraph or two. I’m not well-informed enough (nor do I have the time) to give you eight paragraphs about France’s Louisa Necib, however, I can easily tell you how her Iniesta-like style of play is quickly making her one of the stars of the tournament in a paragraph. So I will. Maybe some of the other writers on the team that are crunched for time will join me. That’s the experiment this summer. The longer posts will be tagged “Philosofooty” and can be found on the sidebar in the Philosofooty logo. Most of them will also be “Featured” on the sidebar as well, so don’t worry about the quality of the site fading.

We’ll see how this goes. Should be fun.