Soccer Page 164 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Iceland’s New Crest Will Make You Want to Fight the Nearest Bear
The Football Association of Iceland released its new crest today, and to describe it “as the most metal thing you’ve ever seen” does it an injustice. From now on, any heavy metal song will now be described as, “That’s Iceland’s crest.”...

The Premier League’s Upstarts Have Stalled Out
Every team in every league that decided to return to play after the pandemic shutdown was going to struggle to hold onto their form from before the break. Three months without playing, and weeks and weeks of not even training, made everything a crapshoot. For teams that seemingly had something magic...

USA Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Racially Coded Language in Sports
Baseball is America’s national pastime, but the use of racially coded language when referring to players is not a phenomenon that’s specific only to baseball. Certainly, if you’ve heard about an NFL cornerback with “deceptive speed” or an NBA guard with “outstanding leadership qualities,” you can ma...

It’s All Going Wrong for Barcelona and Messi Can’t Save It Any More
It was a big ask for any football club to hang on to whatever they had before the shutdown due to coronavirus. A three-month break is larger than the normal offseason these teams get. When everything was on ground as shaky as Barcelona’s lead in La Liga, it was probably always doomed. The only thing...

Liverpool’s Dominant Title Win Driven By Efficiency
Over the week leading up to Liverpool clinching the Premier League title on Thursday with Manchester City’s loss to Chelsea, NBC wanted you to believe that their 30-year wait was on par with some of the more storied championship droughts in North America. Hell, a great number of Liverpool supporters...

The NWSL Takes a Knee
Twenty-two starters clothed in Black Black Lives Matter T-shirts from the North Carolina Courage and Portland Thorns knelt during the national anthem before the National Women’s Soccer League kicked off their first game of the Challenge Cup Saturday. ...

American Christian Pulisic’s Magisterial Goal is a Must See
Hey, remember back in 1990 when you were super-stoked to watch American John Harkes be a non-factor for non-factor Sheffield Wednesday? He was the first American to play in the English Premier League and we were all amazed. Don’t pretend you weren’t....

As the NWSL Tournament Nears, Utah COVID-19 Cases Continue To Rise
Another bubble is about to burst in the sports world and no, this one’s not in Florida....

Serie A Returns to Plague-Ravaged Italy, Possibly With an Uncomfortable Champion<em></em>
It’ll be everyone into the pool at the weekend, as Serie A returns to the soccer scene as the last of the major European leagues to play behind closed doors. It’ll come back with a very tight title race, but one possible champion that would lead to a lot of collar-tugging around the world. The other...

Premier League Soccer Returns, Goal-Line Technology Apparently Still in the John
The Premier League returned to action this afternoon at Villa Park with Aston Villa hosting Sheffield United. While VAR has been riling fans and media alike most of the season, today it was goal-line technology’s turn to provide confusion, mystery, and vitriol. ...

Champions League Will Return, in a Can
The multiple and concurrent method of competitions in world soccer was always going to be a challenge to restart after the coronavirus shutdown. European competitions, i.e. the Champions League and Europa League, had the added challenge of dealing with multiple restrictions on safety and travel acro...

Premier League Returns: How to Watch, and Everything Else You Need To Know
If it feels like the sporting world is at that point where all the people who were really excited to drink for free are showing up too early to the party, that’s because it kind of is. A month after the German Bundesliga kicked things off by helping to set up the food and arrange the furniture, and ...

Spanish Weeks in my Disco Casino: What to Expect When Liga Returns
The Bundesliga in Germany will no longer have the stage to itself (with all apologies to Poland’s Ekstraklasa). Thursday afternoon, the Seville Derby between Sevilla and Real Betis will announce La Liga’s return to the soccer and sporting scene. So let’s catch you up on where we are in Spain and whe...

MLS Got Its Orlando Tournament! It Will Likely Suck
MLB owners have sucked up almost all of the oxygen for those trying to be greedy shits, so you might not have known MLS owners attempted a lot of the same stuff. They went even one step further than their MLB counterparts, threatening to lockout MLS players during a pandemic, which would have had th...

FIFA Calls For 'Common Sense' Without Addressing Soccer's Ugly Racist Past and Present
It’s a bit overwhelming when you consider the scale of protests against police brutality and institutional and societal racism across the globe we’re seeing. There have been massive demonstrations in London, Brussels, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, New Zealand Ghana, South Africa,, and many other places....

Take a Hike, Morons: West Brom Tells Ignorant Slob To Bugger Off
West Bromwich Albion was in fourth place in the Championship, the second tier of English soccer, and with the season there set to resume later this month, they’ll be doing all they can down the stretch to earn promotion back to the Premier League, where they were relegated from last year....

The Justice For George Floyd Campaign Spreads To Europe
There have been protests across the world today against police brutality to echo those in this country the past couple of days and players in the German Bundesliga have taken up the cause as well over the weekend. Three players had public displays of protest in matches. ...

Morning Drinkers Rejoice: Premier League And Serie A Announce Return Dates
In give-it-a-name fashion, both the Premier League In England and Italy’s Serie A announced today the dates they will resume. The Premier League will restart on June 17, behind closed doors (no fans), with two matches and then a full-slate the following weekend. Serie A will return on June 20....

NWSL Will Be America's First Team Sports League To Resume Play In Pandemic's Wake
Today, The NWSL announced their “2020 Challenge Cup,” which follows the tournament guidelines we outlined last week. ...

Bayern Munich Are Inevitable, Time Marches On, Bells Toll, The Whole Thing
While the return of the Bundesliga has provided something to watch and discuss (and something of a roadmap for how other leagues could get back on the field), what it couldn’t promise was actual drama, especially in its title race. This afternoon, as is their way, Bayern Munich eliminated any chance...