Soccer Page 159 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

St. Louis City chasing history in Vancouver

St. Louis City already have clinched the top seed in the Western Conference, but the expansion franchise has further accomplishments in mind....

High-scoring Galaxy aim to continue playoff push in Seattle

The LA Galaxy haven't had trouble finding the net recently....

LAFC look to build head of steam for playoffs, host Minnesota United

Los Angeles FC will be in search of a jolt of energy on Wednesday when they face visiting Minnesota United, who will make one last-ditch bid at qualifying for the playoffs....

Orlando City eye No. 2 seed with trip to Nashville on deck

Orlando City and host Nashville SC will renew their rivalry on Wednesday to start a two-match week as the playoff field continues to solidify....

VAR performs its coup de moron

Whether VAR is still in its teething stages, and this is season five so it’s really debatable whether or not it should still be having growing problems, it will never be able to escape its fatal flaw. And that is it is still administered by humans. So it’s still going to be susceptible to human erro...

Barcelona might prove every fan’s conspiracy theory to be true

You’ve heard that guy at the other end of the bar. It’s impossible to miss, given the volume, and sincerity with which that particular message is always delivered. It’s always along the lines of, “These refs are in the bag!” Here in Chicago, it’s pronounced more like, “Dese jagbag refs are in da baa...

First rule of team social media: Don’t s**tpost your own player

It didn’t take long for SSC Napoli to crash from the dizzying heights of their third-ever Scudetto last spring. First, manager Luciano Spalletti left the club and eventually took the Italian national team manager’s job. And then the team got off to a very wonky start this season in Serie A, collecti...

Darwin Nunez may be figuring it out

The overriding factor in judging Darwin Nunez last year had nothing to do with him. He had the misfortune of being a big-money forward purchased at the same time as Erling Haaland. ...

Is there any point in playing this Champions League?

Nope, not really! But my editors and management insist that these posts are longer than three words, so I guess I’ll have to explain. If Manchester City waltzed to last year’s trophy, only really sweating in the final for about an hour against a stubborn Inter, they very well may never get out of a ...

Manchester United are doing that thing again

Yes, we have been here before. It was the beginning of last season that Manchester United started like ass, got utterly thwacked by Brighton, manager Erik Ten Hag made them run a few more miles in training, and then it was fine for a while. It was mostly fine because Marcus Rashford turned into the ...

Here is what we kind of learned from the USMNT’s week

As we and many others stress, international friendlies are weird. Especially when everyone has to fly over from Europe for two games that don’t count for anything while trying to not get hurt. And for the USMNT, there weren’t really too many players trying to carve out a role, or a bigger role, with...

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are still the heroes in <i>Welcome to Wrexham</i>, even when they’re the villains

The problem with Wrexham becoming such a story within the soccer world, thanks to the efforts of Ryan Reynolds, and Rob McElhenney making them so, is that the suspense is kind of removed from Season 2 of Welcome To Wrexham. We know how this one ends. Wrexham win the National League, and get promoted...

Oh right, Gregg Berhalter returns to USMNT this weekend

Mostly, the international break is just a water break for fans. Qualification for various tournaments doesn’t really matter until the end, or to a handful of countries on the bubble, if it matters at all. That’s doubly true for the USMNT, who don’t have anything to play for and anyone to play right ...

Lionel Messi coming to MLS has had the effect you’d think

One of the bonuses for both MLS and Apple TV having an exclusive streaming deal is that they’re not forced to tell us how it’s going. Or they can decide what they want to say. Without usual ratings to gauge how the revolutionary deal is fairing, we’re usually left guessing. There were whispers that ...

Arsenal are the Premier League’s new chaos masters and Chelsea can’t buy goals

It used to be Jürgen Klopp’s first Liverpool teams, and possibly the current one, that were considered the most raucous chaos merchants in the Premier League. They were equally capable of the most destructive football, going in both directions, equally capable of howitzer-ing their opponents or thei...

Saudi money putting an expiration date on soccer stars’ charisma

There’s a weird gray area for soccer stars after they turn 30. They’re still good, maybe not great, yet are so established that they command larger sums of money than a younger player or two who is not yet a household name and could Moneyball their teams the same production. In past instances, those...

Luis Rubiales' mom locked herself in a church and is on a hunger strike

Newcastle keeps being Newcastle, which isn't quite good enough

What Newcastle’s “problems” are depend on what their own expectations are. While they’ve certainly cemented themselves as one of the land’s biggest clubs, they’ve rarely, if ever, been touted as potential title challengers this season. Certainly none of that noise is coming from within. It appears t...

Christian Pulisic is having fun

If you’ve found yourself lost on soccer Twitter the past week, and it is a haven for the truly wayward as we’ve all had our brains addled by too many pre-dawn wakeups and day beers, you’ve probably seen a lot of “Pulisic is so back!” tweets and hashtags. Whether Pulisic is actually “back” is another...

Luis Rubiales finally resigns over forced-kiss of Jenni Hermoso [Updated]

UPDATE Sep. 10, 5:20 p.m. EST...