Luis Paez-Pumar

‘Fall Guys’ And ‘Among Us’ Gave 2020 The Parties It Needed

After 360 minutes of knockout play, two penalty shootouts, and three comebacks, England is the back-to-back champion of Europe. Despite losing its first game of Euro 2025 against France, and despite an arduous run to the final that further extended into extra time and penalties, England held off the reigning World Cup winner Spain to […]

While watching the Euros quarterfinal between Sweden and England with an eye toward covering it, I kept changing my mind on what to write about. This is a side effect of my job and my brain, both of which combine to help me begin to see narratives as soccer matches burn through their allotted time. […]

For a series with little by way of story, it’s impressive how many iconic non-player characters Pokémon has spawned. There is of course Professor Oak, who sets the player on their path to be a master trainer in the original games, as well as Brock and Misty, gym leaders who grew to be fan favorites […]

‘The Last Of Us Part II’ Insists There’s Artistry In All Of Its Violence

At our biweekly all-hands meeting, Jasper Wang, our Business Man, will usually share his screen with the appropriate slides. But this week, his computer was bogged down and wouldn’t load said slides. Jasper offhandedly remarked that he was paying the price for not having restarted his computer for a couple of weeks, and I similarly […]

Manchester United is not any good. There’s no reason to think they will or even theoretically could turn things around before the season is out. It will probably take yet another major offseason overhaul for United to even start to address its problems. None of this is breaking news, but what is legitimately stunning is […]

On Monday, Italian soccer club Lazio fired its longtime falconer Juan Bernabé after the 56-year-old Spaniard posted photos on social media of, uh, himself following a penile implant surgery. In a statement, Lazio said “[w]e, and the historic symbol of the eagle, can no longer be associated with a person who with his behaviour has […]

Let’s start with a flaw. Liverpool’s defense is still the best in the Premier League, having allowed 13 goals in 15 matches entering Sunday’s trip to North London for a match against often-feisty but currently-shambolic Tottenham Hotspur. Virgil van Dijk is back to world-beating form, and his various partners in the center—often Ibrahima Konaté, though […]

This is the time of year when the best, biggest, and most ambitious movies come out. Not Oscar season, but rather that stretch when the halls of streaming services are decked with the brightly lit, thinly disguised advertisements that are the year’s new Christmas movies. There are more than 100 new Christmas films to watch […]

Though neither is the other’s biggest rival club, Chelsea and Tottenham always seem to put on fascinating matches, at least for neutrals. Tottenham has the ability to play up to any competition—or, as it may be, play down to any competition; sorry about that jinx, Spurs—and while Chelsea has been on a relative tear this […]

During matchweeks 13 and 14 of the season, the Premier League partners with LGBT charity Stonewall for Rainbow Laces, a campaign to promote LGBT acceptance in soccer, both on the field and in the stands. In practice, this entails some minor cosmetic changes around England’s top flight. The league provides clubs with rainbow corner flags, […]

The hits keep coming for Premier League referee and self-proclaimed Liverpool hater David Coote. After the leak of a video showing Coote, possibly if not definitely zooted out of his mind, disparaging Liverpool and Jürgen Klopp, a new video, published by the often unsavory and sometimes downright evil tabloid The Sun, reportedly shows the now-suspended […]

As loyal readers of Defector know, I am never wrong. I’ve certainly never written an article that was eventually proven to be overly optimistic, overly pessimistic, or overly incorrect. Given my general infallibility, I come today to apologize for my first incorrect thought in at least three years: The new Champions League format kind of […]

In the long and storied history of Barcelona, this past week hardly rates as one of its best. This is a club that has won 27 La Liga trophies, five Champions Leagues, a sextuple, you name it. Two wins in four days is great, and doubly so when considering the opposition, but it’s still only […]

There has rarely been a shortage of drama in this topsy-turvy Formula 1 season, with no truly boring weekends to speak of since the weather turned warm, but Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix stood out, thanks to chaos up and down the grid. It seemed that every lap had a different combination of drivers trying […]

Once again, it is time for the Defector staff to go into seclusion for our annual company meetings and fall frolic. This year we are gathering in Atlantic City, America’s abandoned playground. We decided to hold a mini theme week to keep the site robust and full of blogs while we’re in meetings. This year’s theme: […]

Welcome to Defector Music Club, where a number of our writers get together to dish about an album. Today, Dave McKenna, Luis Paez-Pumar, David Roth, and Lauren Theisen explore Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 cult favorite Nebraska. David: Friends, we are gathered here today to discuss a grim, spare, old album by the foremost living New Jerseyan. The record […]

How will Vince McMahon be remembered? That question drives the new Netflix documentary on wrestling’s most famous promoter. Mr. McMahon is named for the character that the real-life McMahon portrayed on TV starting in the late ’90s, and the documentary tries to untangle the fiction of that character from the reality of the man—a reality […]

This Formula 1 season has gotten so topsy-turvy that it fell on Max Verstappen of all drivers to make a boring Singapore Grand Prix suddenly exciting. Thanks to Red Bull’s shabby performance, mysteriously cratered over the past few months, the excitement came not from the Dutchman’s driving, but from his mouth. At a press conference […]