Minnesota United is halfway through its 2018 season, and so far, the first half of 2018 has been just as bad as either half of 2017. For 1500 ESPN, I identified three areas that need to improve - and if things don’t get better, I am expecting consequences.

For the Star Tribune this week, I wrote about the knockout round of the World Cup, and the expected favorites.

Unexpectedly, the paper also asked to print my picks. I leave them for posterity here:

Quarterfinalists: Uruguay, France, Brazil, Belgium, Spain, Croatia, Switzerland, England

Semifinalists: France, Brazil, Spain, England

Final: France 1, Spain 0

(I also wrote about 100 words why each team would win in the final; I’m sure whichever unlucky soul had to edit it laughed bitterly as he had to cut it down for the actual space alloted, which was about 20 words per team.)

Near as I can tell, Mexican soccer and American soccer are the same. Same challenges, different languages. And so at Soccer Insider today, I wrote about how Mexico beat Germany - and how the United States might have the same in its future.

The World Cup is on right now, and two of Minnesota United’s players - one of whom I admit I forgot about - are playing in Russia. At 1500 ESPN, I wrote about what this tournament might mean for those players, and for Minnesota.

I remember being unsurprised, when the United States got out of its group at the 1994 World Cup. I knew very little about soccer, but I’d seen the Olympics, and I was pretty used to Americans winning at everything. Plus, it wasn’t like the rest of the tournament was filled with countries with huge soccer reputations. Bulgaria? Norway? The United States was in a group with Romania and Switzerland. Who even knew they had teams?

Since then, of course, I’ve learned a lot about the history of American soccer. How the team qualified for the 1990 World Cup, but only as an accident. About how the United States got hammered at that tournament. About how everyone expected them to get hammered again in 1994.

Into this stepped Eric Wynalda, who even then was brimming with confidence. His free kick goal against Switzerland, in the first game of the tournament, not only earned the United States a 1-1 draw - it was what launched everything that came after. That moment was the beginning of pro soccer in the USA.

Along with Minnesota United beat report Megan Ryan, I made my 2018 World Cup predictions in today’s Star Tribune.

I am not the first person to turn against instant replay, in soccer or anywhere else. A year or so ago, I was all in favor of using replay to help blunt the effect of refereeing mistakes on the outcome of games.

I was very wrong! It turns out that in soccer, just like every other sport with refereeing, introducing a video referee just doubled the number of chances refs had to screw up - all while also taking a huge part of the entertainment away from the game. Soccer needs to act fast, soccer needs to act now. Kill VAR before it kills soccer.

I recently turned in a draft of a book about soccer stadiums around the world, which needed to include an American stadium. I chose Providence Park in Portland, not because it’s the nicest soccer stadium in the United States, or the most comfortable, but it’s absolutely the best to watch soccer. This week’s Soccer Insider relates to my trip to Portland, and the goosebumps I got there.

How in the world did Liverpool make it back to the Champions League final? This week’s Soccer Insider looks at Jurgen Klopp, the wildly likeable and irrepressible coaching genius behind Liverpool.

Just about every big European soccer team has at least a few Minneapolis-St. Paul fans. The most popular team of all, though, might be Tottenham, which has more than 500 people in its local fan club. Soccer Insider looks at why Minnesotans might feel so connected to their North London bretheren.