This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day.

Happy Friday, everybody. This is Luke Winkie. I’m filling in for Ian today, so let’s take a break from the usual ignominies we cover on the Slatest to talk about something completely different. By the time you read this, I will be at a bar cheering on Crystal Palace FC—an English Premier League team founded in 1905—which I have been a fan of for exactly two weeks now. This is my latest attempt to turn myself into a European football fan after far too many false starts to count. To my horror and delight, I fear that it’s actually working this time.

I don’t have a good reason for why it’s taken me this long to make the leap. I’ve never been one of those churlish, anti-soccer American chuds. My dad is from England, and naturally there are a number of photos of me wearing a hand-me-down West Ham United jersey to elementary school. I have a distinct childhood memory of being shocked awake at 3 in the morning during the 2002 World Cup—the one that was held in Japan and South Korea. I thought the house was on fire; instead, England had just scored on Brazil. (The team would go on to lose 2–1, a tradition that was just reconsecrated in July.) But the particularities of the sport outside its elegant, digestible, quadrennial national context were always too byzantine to wrap my head around. What the hell is a “transfer fee”? How is there any drama in, say, a league where Bayern Munich has 34 of the 63 championships? Why are there so many different tournaments? I still don’t know the answer to these questions. It’s going to take me years to become fluent in all the nuances of the sport. But so far, I’m having a lot of fun.

Patrick Reis,........

© Slate