Soccer Page 152 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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...
The Frenkie De Jong transfer saga shows what a mess both Manchester United and Barcelona are
There’s always one transfer story that never dies every summer. It starts in June, and usually takes until somewhere around the window closing at the end of August to come to a conclusion one way or the other, though it feels like years have passed when it does. Even by the time teams return for pre...
Kalvin Phillips may be a more important signing for Man City than Erling Haaland
We all think that the Manchester City machine just keeps rolling on. It may slightly change here and there, update a part or get something cleaned, but the overall automaton basically looks the same as a whole year after year. You may keep waiting for the team to age out of its dominance, or for Pep...
A lot happening in women's soccer
First, England did unspeakable things to Norway in the Women’s Euro 2022, recording the largest win in the tournament’s history, 8-0. These kinds of scorelines are generally used by knuckle-draggers to try and highlight why no one should watch women’s tournaments. But this wasn’t some minnow making ...
USWNT qualifies for World Cup, but we still don’t have all our answers
It’s hardly a surprise, but the USWNT walloped Jamaica 5-0 in the CONCACAF Women’s Championship to qualify for the 2023 World Cup, where they carry the heavy but illustrious burden of being two-time defending champs....
Todd Boehly knows Chelsea aren’t the Dodgers, right?
Chelsea fans knew it would be a bit of a comedown from the ownership of Roman Abramovich — though from dubious-at-best roots he did turn Chelsea from basically an also-ran to a world power beyond all of their dreams — to whoever came next. American ownership of Premier League teams has always been v...
The Yanks are marching into Elland Road
Normally, when you’re a manager and you save a team from certain relegation, you’d be given a key to the city and have a welcome mat anywhere (and let me tell you from experience, having that in Leeds can lead to a lot of rough mornings). Jesse Marsch isn’t that guy, even though he did save Leeds fr...