Consider this Weekend Watchlist the soft launch.
Soccer is basically operating at full capacity now, college football has arrived with its strange little Week 0 slate and the NFL is wrapping up the preseason. We’re not quite at the point where every television in the house needs to be commandeered for the entire weekend, but we’re getting awfully close.
Pretty soon, these Weekend Watchlists are going to be so loaded that I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to fit everything in one place. That is a problem for future me.
It’s also a very nice problem to have.
So, let’s watch some football.
Friday Afternoon
Primary Screen: Crystal Palace vs. Manchester City — 2 p.m. — USA Network
Secondary Screen: Wrexham vs. Birmingham City — 2 p.m. — Paramount+
I still can’t get over the fact that Erling Haaland chopped all his hair off.
There was something vaguely mythical about the old Haaland, this enormous Norwegian man galloping around the pitch with his blond hair flowing behind him while scoring an unreasonable number of goals. He remains an awe-inspiring athlete, obviously, as well as one of the most terrifying people on Earth to see running toward your goal. But some of the spectacle has been lost. Haaland's clearly never heard of Samson.
Anyway, Manchester City has more important things to worry about than my feelings regarding Haaland’s hair. City entered this season as one of Arsenal’s premier challengers and gets what should be one of the more manageable games on its early schedule against Crystal Palace. Palace appears, at least through the extremely limited evidence available to us, destined to spend much of this season looking nervously over its shoulder at the relegation line.
