Giving up the ghost on Substack

TacticsFreeZone™ is moving to Ghost

Over the past two years we’ve seen a bunch of the best American soccer journalists migrate to Ghost. Publications like SounderAtHeart, or the Backheeled gang, the whole Blazing Musket crew, Ben Wright & Co. with SixOneFiveSoccer, Mike Arace at The Disrespected, the MenInRed97 team… the list is long, distinguished and growing.¹

And it’s past time I joined them. I’ve been hearing you very loud and very clear on that over the past few months – that there’s a community on Ghost, and I should be part of it. Thus this, folks, is the final TacticsFreeZone dispatch from Substack. All further correspondence² will come via TacticsFreeZone.ghost.io.³

The good news is that Ghost’s integration of the mailing list is seamless, so you don’t need to create a new account or re-subscribe. They’ve taken care of the heavy lifting. Emails come from me and hit your inbox as usual.

That’s where there might be some light lifting on your part: Since the emails will be coming from a new house, your email provider (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) might bin them. To make sure that doesn’t happen, please do the following:

1. Check your Spam/Promotions folder: If you don’t see Tuesday’s email in your primary inbox, it might be hiding there.

2. “Mark as Not Spam”: If you find it in the shadows, move it to your inbox.

3. Add my Ghost account to your contacts: Adding that email address to your “Safe Senders” list is the best way to ensure they don’t get flagged in the future.

Two other points I want to make here: Ghost is an open-source non-profit, which I like.⁴ And it’s faster, cleaner, and more customizable, which I think will come in handy in the weeks, months and years ahead.

That is all! Thank you for signing up and sticking around over the past year. More good times to come.

1. I know what movie line you’re quoting in your head. Grow up!

2. That will start with tomorrow’s column looking at big tactical/formational questions for all 30 teams.

3. Once I figure out how to make it so it just comes from TacticsFreeZone.com, and everything redirects… well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

4. This is why so many of you were telling me to move shop. For those reading who are a little bit lost/behind on this part of the discourse… Substack is a tech behemoth, and tech behemoths have a nasty habit of changing their model mid-stream in order to squeeze a few more pennies out of as many places as possible (including some I don’t like at all!). In the process, creators get left behind.

The best example going right now is how YouTube has changed their algorithm over the past couple of years in a way that has, frankly, punished high-quality content and privileged slop. That’s beginning to happen here, too. Bottom line is I don’t want to be reliant on this place when the slop tidal wave hits.