One Year of the Tactics Free Zone™
Launching a newsletter was a pretty good idea
First things first: I don’t really have Tactics Free Zone trademarked. I just think the little ™ is funny.
As for the serious1 part of this post, I just wanted to note that we’re a little over one year into the existence of this newsletter, which began for real on December 18, 2024 with a post titled “A new way to get my coverage.” Ostensibly this was part of my long-desired move away from micro-blogging into something less brain-rotty, but in actuality it was just… more writing. Because I, in fact, have not actually moved away from micro-blogging all that much – those of you who follow me know that I’m still very (too) active on BlueSky.2 I have the poster’s disease and I have accepted that it’s terminal.
But the “more writing” part has been good because it’s allowed me to do the two things that I really wanted to get out of this project in the first place:
Collect links to all my work – my written stuff for MLSsoccer.com, as well as my podcast and video appearances both on official MLS channels and elsewhere – in one spot. As the world of digital media has gotten more and more diffuse, it’s become essential for writers to build a one-stop-shop repository of their work. As a bonus, this newsletter has reliably driven traffic to my MLSs stuff, as well as places like the Soccerwise and Cooligans Youtube channels.
Keep the quill sharp. The recent Offseason Guides series3 is a good example – it forced me to spend a lot of time with each team, thinking about their roster build and goals from both short- and long-term perspectives.
All of which is to say that I am happy with the way things have gone over the past year, and happy that you are here with me. It’s been validating watching the line go up and to the right; for any creator, there is always the fear that you find yourself, one day, shouting into the void, and that the only one shouting back is an echo. Hasn’t been the case here – every bit of feedback you leave is read and appreciated (even if I haven’t quite kept my promise of responding to everything).
That is all. There is no soccer post this week, nor will there be a column on MLSs. I’ll have one or two coming next week and will, as always, makes sure to link them here. So no, this will not be the final newsletter of 2025.
But it’s a heartfelt one. Thanks for sticking around, as your presence here has made what started as been a tough year, professionally speaking, into a pretty good one. I hope, for my part, that I’ve delivered on what you were hoping to find when you clicked that “subscribe” button.
Happy holidays.
