There's a photo of me as a child, lost in an eager but very serious reading session of L'Équipe, France's sports daily. Back then, my hands were too small to hold the whole paper, as the pages laid carefully on my grandparents' leather sofa show. The photo is blurry and badly framed, and yet it's the one I wanted next to this text, because it explains better than I could why I always wanted to create The Take.
I grew up moving to a new country every three years. For a long time, L'Équipe, Canal+ and RMC were my only regular connection to France. But every new country also had its own sports and its own rivalries. My first football match in a stadium wasn't in France: it was Aberdeen against Dunfermline, at Pittodrie. I never found a better way to get to know a place than to take an interest in what its people cared about at the weekend. Then YouTube came along. I no longer had to wait for the paper to see the weekend's goals, and later discovered shows that talked about sport the way friends do. Listening to them, I wanted in on the conversation.
That's why The Take is an opinion outlet. Every piece argues a clear position, written in black and white in its opening lines. We then give you the facts that led us to that take, so you can make up your own mind and, if need be, prove us wrong with the facts in hand.
Sport has its dynasties, its scandals, its trials and its players we love to hate. Inside The Take you'll find investigations into the affairs that shape it, as well as lighter, openly subjective predictions about a sport or a personality.
The kid in the photo read the results to feel at home, whatever country he was living in. The Take comes from the same place: wanting to share sport with people who love it as much as I do, and to argue about it with them, especially when we disagree.
Thank you for being here for this first issue, and welcome home.
Hugo Fargeas, founder