Sponsor: The EA SPORTS FIFA 14 Guide to Soccer Legends

Our sponsor this week is the brand-new EA SPORTS FIFA 14, the latest installment of a game that has been killing productivity at Longform HQ for years now. FIFA is, without question, our absolute favorite way to waste time. We would be playing it right now if we weren't writing this.</p>

To honor this week's release—you can pick up your copy on Amazon—here's a collection of great soccer writing from our archive.</i>

Cord Jefferson is the West Coast editor at Gawker.

"I consider myself to be a sincere human being. And I think that the way the internet carries itself, the way the internet has dialogues, is often insincere. That concerns me. I don't ever want to lose my sincerity. I don't ever want to lose my ability to feel emotional about things that I write about. I don't ever want to have a distance from everything that I write. I think that can be a danger of writing too much for the internet, that you develop this elitist distance from everything. That nothing really matters, you know?"

Thanks to TinyLetter and Hulu Plus for sponsoring this week's episode.