Soccer Page 144 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
For one day, Yann Sommer channeled the spirit of Ron Tugnutt (wait Ron Tugnutt isn’t dead, right?)
Most soccer analysts, especially those who really get in up to the elbow in the analytics, say that the sport is pretty random. Most games are only decided by a single moment (or rarely more than a handful), and those moments can bounce any which way no matter what the trends of a match or a season ...
So here’s this year’s Champions League group of death
The group-stage draw for the UEFA Champions League is always a strange, exciting, but mostly strange day. The path to European glory becomes more in focus with a straightforward goal: finish in the top half of your group and you make it to the knockout stage that begins next year. If you don’t you’r...
The system doesn’t work with this Virgil van Dijk
This isn’t my beautiful house....
Arsenal are looking pretty tasty
Last August, Arsenal lost their first three matches, by a combined score of 9-0, including ultra-humbling ass-whoopings by Chelsea (just about the only time Romelu Lukaku looked menacing with Chelsea) and City. The Gunners would recover, of course, only to break their fans’ hearts in even more agoni...
Don’t do it, Christian
The transfer window is closing soon, and that would normally mean a pretty furious avalanche of rumors, requests, bids, and stories. Deadline day has become the sport’s free agency day in the NHL or NBA (or even election night), with masses of reporters spread out across the European continent breat...
Chelsea and Tottenham is why we watch
After yesterday’s fracas (it was certainly more than a game,) the temptation is to call Chelsea-Spurs the best rivalry going in the Premier League. Liverpool-City might have more quality, and the best quality in Europe arguably, but everything is pretty civil and they’re too respectful of each other...
I don’t know what Man United is supposed to be
As one of my oldest, closest friends likes to point out whenever ribbing me about something (those closest to you cut the deepest), the saying, “Don’t kick someone while they’re down” makes no sense. After all, they’re that much closer to your foot. ...
Brenden Aaronson is going to be just fine
Amongst the excitement of any US player heading overseas, there’s always a tremor of trepidation (I’m usually anti-alliteration but here we are). This angst is sure said player will fail, and will cast a pall over any future Yank moving to that team or even that league. We’re probably past that, giv...
Barcelona are still very much clown shoes
If you had been asleep the past year and a half to two years (and we’re all jealous if you were), this past summer probably looked pretty normal in the soccer world. The big clubs were all warring over various players from smaller clubs, and Barcelona won most of those races. They beat Chelsea to Ro...
Now it’s time to get on the Brandon Vazquez train for USMNT
Yeah, I know. We do this every few months. Have for basically our entire lives, except for maybe that brief Jozy Altidore interlude…right until he popped his hammy in Brazil. And we’ll continue to do this every few months for the rest of our lives, pinning our hopes for a genuine No. 9 for the USMNT...
Never mind the draw, just enjoy Darwin Núñez’s first EPL goal for Liverpool
It took Darwin Núñez 13 minutes to notch his first goal in the English Premier League, but it came at the 64th minute because he was brought on as an £85m super sub during a swirling match at Craven College that saw Liverpool and newly promoted Fulham finish in a 2-2 draw. This is the first game of ...
Will Liverpool’s season be defined by children?
It depends on how you define drama whether or not you find any in the Premier League season. We pretty much know that either Manchester City or Liverpool will win the title. Some combination of Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, and maybe United will fill out the other Champions League places. Perhaps Newcast...
A serene Tottenham Hotspur will take some getting used to
It’s pretty obvious a team has a habit, even a reputation or history, of being a fuckaround when its very name is used as a definition of that. “Spursinees” has been a term thrown around since just about the Premier League’s beginning, which makes it clear what everyone thinks of Tottenham. No matte...
How far can Brighton go?
The question almost every soccer fan gets from non-soccer fans, which is healthy, is, “So which team should I support?” You never mind hearing it, because it means your friend/acquaintance/bookie wants to become a fan, but it’s also an impossible question to answer. Your football club usually finds ...
It came home
It took scoring one of the more beautiful goals in any final, giving up one just about as good, and then winning it with one at the opposite end of the artful spectrum, as scrappy as you can get. It took wading through just about every narrative that England’s women’s national team had to carry into...
It had to be Germany
Most English fans, if not all of them, would have been nodding their heads when the final whistle of W Euro 2022’s second semifinal sounded. Because it signaled that Germany would be waiting at Wembley in the final for England and the only thing between the English and the women’s team’s first major...
WTF! A backheeled nutmeg winner at Women's Euro 2022
It is not very English to win semifinals at major tournaments. Glorious defeat is kind of their thing, and has been for decades....
American keepers who found success in England
If there’s one position where American soccer players have routinely found success overseas, and not had any “Yankee” stigma follow them around, it’s at goalkeeper. Several United States men’s national team goalkeepers have had long stays in Europe, especially in the Premier League....
Darwin Núñez’s courting of Liverpool holdouts is underway
It must be a slow period for sports in the U.K. as well. There’s not a dart league or a cricket game (match?) going on either? It could be the record-breaking heat that’s made fans more irritable than normal. Whatever it is, overreacting to a player’s preseason debut during a couple of friendlies is...
Christian Eriksen's next miracle: Trying to revive Man U
The quadrennial UEFA European Football Championships had to wait five years for its most recent edition, with three years separating the delayed 2020 event to its regularly scheduled 2024 showcase because of the coronavirus pandemic. As the Euros got underway after a 365-day delay, it was a celebrat...