Tuesday cannon fodder: qualifying promotion fighting spirit

Back to the linkpile today!

Next year’s Premier League is fully stocked, now that Huddersfield Town won the Championship playoffs and thus earned their first top tier berth since 1972.

In England, the Championship playoff is described as the “richest game in football” because of the payoff of being in the Premier League. For me, though, give me relegation playoffs any day over promotion ones. You win, you stay in. And Wolfsburg won, so they remain in the Bundesliga next season.

Another season, another coach: Luis Enrique is out at Barcelona, to be replaced by Ernesto Valverde.

Bruce Arena has set his squad for the next round of World Cup qualifiers, which take place June 8 and 11.

51 years after England last won something on the international stage, people are starting to realize that the whole British Bulldog Fighting Spirit thing only takes you so far.

What’s it like playing at Wembley in a promotion final? An ex-player who has been on both sides of a playoff final result talks about it.

I always find the “what is authentic” debate to be one of the most stupid debates in all of sports, but in a league as young as MLS, without a century of history to fall back on, is MLS wrong to try to create rivalries instead of letting them grow organically?