Should Soccer Make Space for Other Sports?

Erling Haaland’s summer included a tour of the United States. Next up? The Charity Shield on Saturday.You’re reading the On Soccer With Rory Smith newsletter, for Times subscribers only. News and analysis, on and off the pitch.

For almost half a century, the BBC’s broadcast schedule on a Saturday afternoon was both startlingly simple and comfortably unchanging. It amounted, in fact, to just a single word, one that somehow conveyed everything while telling viewers absolutely nothing. That word was Grandstand.

As anyone who has ever tried explaining the idea of a landline telephone to a teenager will know, the speed with which technology has shifted has rendered certain concepts not just…