Ladies and gentlemen, EPL Talk is now World Soccer Talk.

I’ve decided to rebrand EPL Talk to a name that is more appropriate to the breadth of soccer coverage that we’re bringing you.

Several months ago, an executive at a major TV soccer network in the United States mentioned to me that he was interested to seeing what the next chapter EPL Talk would evolve into. It was a comment made in passing, but it stuck with me and made me think long and hard about the site’s future.

Without telling him anything, I had the same question in my mind. With the growth of the Premier League globally and nationwide, the amount of news, analysis, podcasts and video coverage had grown by incredible leaps and bounds since the time when EPL Talk started it in 2005. It’s harder to differentiate when everyone else is doing the same thing.

But where I believe EPL Talk stands apart is its independent coverage of the world’s game. Since we’re not part of a mainstream company, we don’t have to be fearful about what we write. We don’t have to brown nose soccer federations in order to make sure we don’t lose media access or credentials. We can be opinionated when we want without fear of reprisals. Bottom line, we can speak our mind. We are soccer fans just like you. And that’s where I see the difference.

Over time, our interests have changed. In 2005 when EPL Talk launched, the amount of soccer coverage on television was tiny in comparison to today. Nowadays, we can watch live matches from all of the major soccer leagues around the world, so having a name like EPL Talk is too limiting. If we want to cover the World Cup, Gold Cup, Confederations Cup, Champions League or other cups or tournaments (or leagues), we can now more easily do so with the World Soccer Talk name instead of EPL Talk.

Let me be the first to say, though, the quantity and quality of Premier League coverage that you’ve been accustomed to from EPL Talk won’t change. We’re still going to be covering the league as we have always done in the past, and the majority of articles will still be EPL-focused.

The only difference is that when there are topics from other leagues or tournaments that we feel are worth covering, we’ll write about them. We’ve already been doing that in the past few months under the EPL Talk name with articles about Real Madrid’s new kit, coverage of the all-German final in the Champions League, news about new teams in Major League Soccer, open threads for the games featuring the US Men’s National Team, etc.

If you look at the navigation bar at the top of the page, there’s a drop down for ‘Leagues,’ which includes news and articles for many of the top leagues from around the world. Instead of having the seven sites in the EPL Talk network before, we’ve consolidated all of the sites (BundesligaTalk.com, ChampionshipTalk.com, ChampionsLeagueTalk.com, LaLigaTalk.com, MajorLeagueSoccerTalk.com and SerieATalk.com) into one, World Soccer Talk.

Two more things. First, the EPL Talk Podcast will remain the same. Once the new season is getting ready to kick off, we’ll be back. That won’t change. And second, we have more exciting developments to share with you, but we’ll announce those as soon as they’re ready, but rest assured, they’ll be developments that you’ll be very excited to see.

Thanks everyone for your loyalty and patience, and feel free to post your feedback (as always) in the comments section below.