Dan Bean

Former DJ & record label exec. Now AI & tech. Opinions on football, sport, culture and everything in between.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

Waiting to be waved through airport security

[Project Football @ProjectFootball]

Reece James’ England headshot 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@Ruffin_Shot @NobletStrength That’s it exactly. And it cuts both ways - the yellow school bus is furniture from a childhood we didn’t have. Ordinary to you, cinema to us

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@Ruffin_Shot @NobletStrength Fair - but we have tourists queuing to photograph phone boxes that don’t contain phones. Mundane is in the eye of the beholder

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@j_macgeever @JMlny27 @jamesallcott A bit of banter? He captained Liverpool to a Champions League and a Prem title, and at 35 he played 32 league games this season - 4 less than Declan Rice. He’s there as experienced cover to see out tight knockout games. It’s hardly asking the mascot to put his shin pads on.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

ITV don't cover football outside of international games and tournaments. They spent a lot of money on their US based set for this World Cup and yet the format feels off and it's only the first game, could be way better than it is. https://t.co/1oQrv1N6XR

[Steven @StevenMcinerney]

This ITV punditry is literally just Neville's podcast. It doesn't work for an occasion like this. Tone is off and it's not an enjoyable watch. I don't want to watch Keane, Neville and Wright bicker at each other.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

Confession from an England fan: there’s one thing in this whole US vs England war the Americans are just better at, and it’s time someone on our side said it.

Not stadiums - Craven Cottage vs MetLife is two different conversations, 130 years of history and a billion-dollar engineering marvel can both be impressive.

Not the football - England is the authority there, the most watched league in the world, where the stars play, same way the US is the authority on baseball whether or not they win the World Baseball Classic.

It’s sports coverage. Any English sports fan who’s been to the States knows the feeling - wall-to-wall sport, endless channels, proper production, and you think: why don’t we have this?

Even our players feel it. Marc Guehi in England camp this week:

“Waking up, turning on the television and seeing ten sports channels in a row is top. It’s amazing.”

And that’s exactly what CBS bottled. The best Champions League studio in the world is American-owned, European anchors - Abdo, Henry, Carragher, Richards - built by a producer who modelled it on Inside the NBA.

They took the thing we envy about American sports TV and pointed it at our game. And it works better than our own product.

The rest - the Tampa pitch outrage (it was a dodgy pitch), the USMNT record graphics (one knockout win ever, lads), the atmosphere wars (you like Coldplay concerts, we like limbs) - is noise.

Let’s argue about something real instead...
World War II.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@kingattorney @jonR1939056 Deadline day is their main course but the rest is so dull imo

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

They've really been working this Freddy kid overtime since that ref wasn't allowed in

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

The funniest bit of the England v USA culture war: Germany won it.

One comment about a dodgy pitch and within 48 hours two countries with a century of shared history were at war over stadium aura.

Meanwhile a German lad posted his big gulps and 1am Waffle House. “10/10, we will be coming back.” US-European relations: fixed. The tournament hasn’t even kicked off.

My TikTok feed is usually wall-to-wall Brits filming their first In-N-Out.
Doesn’t matter.
Eighty years of alliance, reversed over a plate of hash browns.

We’d have said something nice eventually. We were getting to it.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@peterdutton @NobletStrength Yeah I don't bat an eyelid when tourists photograph our buses - I get it. Peppa Pig, Harry Potter, that episode of Friends.

But there’s something etched into the collective psyche of British people about American yellow school buses. It’s furniture for a childhood we didn’t have

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@RickSanchezDJ Respectfully, the numbers say the opposite.

45 touches in their box to their 1 in ours.
28 shots to 1.
xG of 4.63 to 0.03

against a seriously low block. The finishing could do with sharpening but I honestly though we could have had 4 or 5 in the last 30 mins alone

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@Shuttsapalooza This is the Gareth Barry of tweets and I’m Rafa

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@Shuttsapalooza Deadline day dildo, wet taxi window. Heritage content

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@ChrisThorpe_ watching a shootout with joy. Didn’t exist before that night. Southgate’s real legacy.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

Got genuine goosebumps watching this back, which surprised me.

Then I remembered why. That Dier penalty is where it all turned - a World Cup semi and two Euro finals all came off the back of that night.

No wonder I fancy us this time…

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@straight_red @JuliaSF1993 Well exhausting for me too, as I keep on walking in to pointless debates about SoFi vs Anfield or USMNT record against England in the World Cup over 3 games in 70 years when actually I'd love to be out there in the heat, chatting with Americans watching World Cup games.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

Receipts: us Brits aren’t always moaning.

[ITV Football @itvfootball]

This is impressive 👏

Check out this timelapse showing the @InterCo_Stadium pitch draining before England's win over Costa Rica 🌧️

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@straight_red @JuliaSF1993 It's funny how algorithms work because 365 days a year there's Brits on my TikTok timeline literally in awe of a Walgreens or Starbucks drive through.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@fcbtray That record’s real - three games in 76 years and we haven’t beaten you at a World Cup.

It’s also the stat doing the heaviest lifting:

in the same period, England have won the whole tournament.

The USMNT have won just a single game in the knockouts..

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

https://t.co/K0kts7HxwE

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

Useful thing for European fans: someone’s built a spoiler-free World Cup highlights site.

Wake up, pick the match you missed overnight, watch the highlights with no score on screen anywhere.

An independent project by @FPLSportScience - no funding, still being patched and improved as it goes.

That’s the reason to share it. More eyes = momentum to scale it.

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@ShooFlyDBM Yeah my TikTok feed is full of all year round Brits going to America to vlog their shopping and eating. I'm all for it

[Dan Bean @DanBean]

@TroubbleGum Yeah it’s an incredible lesson of how to find a formula and milk it for all it’s worth.