Happy New Year everybody. It is a milestone day. Not just because it is the first day of the year, but because today marks SBI Soccer’s 14th birthday.

We launched SBI as an independent website back in 2008, and as we head into our 15th year of operation we will do our best to remain one of your go-to sites for coverage of soccer in the United States and beyond.

The 2021 calendar year was a difficult and challenging one as the world continued to cope with the Coronavirus pandemic, but there were some positives and improvements after a very tough 2020.

American soccer enjoyed a memorable year, particularly with the success of the U.S. men’s national team, which won the Concacaf Nations League title and Gold Cup, while also enjoying a strong start to Concacaf World Cup qualifying. A pair of wins against Mexico made the year all the better, as did the continued success of American players making moves overseas.

We watched Christian Pulisic lift the UEFA Champions League trophy, and Weston McKennie impress at Juventus. New stars emerged, such as Ricardo Pepi and Yunus Musah, and other players took their games to new levels, like Matt Turner, Miles Robinson and Brenden Aaronson.

SBI went through its own changes as well, with a shift over to becoming a subscription-based website. We still do provide free content for readers who aren’t ready to subscribe, or who don’t plan to, but we are working to deliver more quality content exclusively to those of you who support us with subscriptions. You can expect much more on that front in 2022.

We are also looking to bolster the SBI squad, so if you are a writer, editor, social media expert, graphic designer or videographer and are interested in producing content covering American soccer, definitely reach out to us at SBISoccerMail@gmail.com .

Please feel free to share with us what you would like to see more coverage of, what coverage you are enjoying, and things you would like to see us improve. Our readers have always been a big part of helping us improve and sharpen the work that we do, so thank you for your continued support and feedback over the past 14 years.

Thanks to all of you who have spent all or part of the past 14 years reading SBI. We are ready to make 2022 an even better year, with even better coverage, so stay tuned.