About Soccer Stories. And about me. And about Soccer Stories and me.

Hi! My name is Leander Schaerlaeckens. I was born in the Netherlands, raised in Belgium and went to college in England before getting married and settling in Upstate New York. I spent more than 11 years as a full-time soccer writer with ESPN, FOX Sports and Yahoo Sports. I’ve written for the New York Times. My work was noted in the Best American Sports Writing anthology three times. I covered North American soccer, European soccer, World Cups, you name it. I reported from four continents. Mostly, I just told stories that happened to be about soccer.

That’s what my newsletter was: me, telling unexpected stories.

Alas, it didn’t quite work out and I’ve stopped publishing new stories. But I hope that you’ll enjoy the ones I wrote.