Soccer Page 167 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Romelu Lukaku is the best striker in the world
Few fixtures suffer from the lack of fans more than the Milan derby, especially this latest iteration. A split stadium, 80,000 fans baying for blood and justice, tifos galore, all in service to a top of the table contest, it would have been an epic occasion. Inter Milan came into this leading Serie ...

SEE IT: Surprising goal is why you don’t ever sleep on Sunderland
It’s still a long way back to the Premier League for Sunderland, the club whose fall from the top flight to the third tier of English soccer was chronicled in the Netflix documentary Sunderland ’Til I Die....

It only takes Juventus a minute to give up the dumbest goal
It hasn’t been a vintage season for Juventus, who look like they might surrender the Serie A title for the first time in 10 years. Their pursuit of the Champions League the past few years has moved beyond obsession, which led them to pay $120 million for Christiano Ronaldo a few years ago. That has ...

Kylian Mbappé ends Barcelona as we know it with hat trick
There really isn’t a better wielder of the axe that struck the final blow on this era of Barcelona than Kylian Mbappé and his three-goal night. While it’s been Lionel Messi’s world for so long, any minute now it’s going to be Mbappé’s to do with how he sees fit. That is, if it isn’t already....

The Champions League returns this week... all over the place
One of the rites of...well, not spring exactly, but a rite of reminding you that spring might actually arrive at some point before the light within you has completely extinguished, is the knockout stage of the Champions League. It drops into the sporting scene at the end of February, right after you...

Alisson kicks Premier League to Manchester City
Two and a half months ago or so, I wrote this. I certainly wasn’t the only one, and perhaps I let my red-colored view of the world get the better of me just a touch as well. While Pep Guardiola was coming under more fire than he ever had while in charge of Manchester City, possibly at any of his sto...

Market correction has come for Liverpool … violently
There’s a lot to pick through in the rubble of Liverpool’s season at the moment. It’s a good thing they’ve left so much rubble to house all of it. A team that was top of the Premier League on New Year’s Day has landed back to Earth with such a thud over the past month that even Wile E. Coyote is tug...

Another armada of soccer-playing Yanks is heading to Europe
The January transfer window closed yesterday — sometimes it closes in February, sometimes it snows in April — and a plethora of American players left their MLS digs behind for European riches. Some will be back, some are real longshots, some have very bright futures. The fact that this has become so...

SEE IT: Liverpool go double Air Coryell to score second against West Ham
It looked to be a pretty tricky game for Liverpool. Only three days after a win at Tottenham that might have saved their season, they had to be back in London just three days later to face one the Premier League’s in-form teams in West Ham. Making it worse, Sadio Mane couldn’t make the bell with a m...

Jizz Hornkamp does Dutch team dirty on pitch, finds longer-than-four-hours of fame on social media
If you’re playing against Den Bosch in Dutch soccer’s second division, you have to be ready for them to come hard from behind....

MLS is all grown up, on the verge of its very own work stoppage
Can you be a legitimate league in North America and not have a work stoppage? Apparently MLS doesn’t think so, as it is on the verge of careening into their first one in their 25 years of existence....

$1.5B in debt, Barcelona are broke-ass broke — and royally FC'd
We’ve spent the past year casting doubt upon American sports franchises’ claims of just how much an effect the pandemic had on their finances. They claim “biblical” losses left and right, while never bothering to provide any information to confirm that. Well, thankfully, unless you’re a Barcelona su...

Frank Lampard could do the first job, but he couldn’t do the second at Chelsea
The thing about getting a dream job is that most likely it’ll turn into just another job, i.e. it won’t feel like a dream after some time, and you’ll probably get fired. The latter is even more likely in sports, even more so in soccer, and yet even more so at Chelsea. They cycle through managers lik...

SEE IT: Newport County keeper scores from Narnia, sets new record
There’s few things hockey fans love more than a goalie goal. You might get one per season, and they’re met with joyous celebrations, as we’ve all just seen something rare and beautiful. Like the perfect breakfast sandwich where the egg yolk runoff is still contained within the sandwich (yes, I’m hun...

Mesut Ozil and the death of the #10
If it feels like the Mesut Ozil and Arsenal soap opera has lasted longer than most actual soap operas, you’re not alone. It’s been over three seasons, spanned two managers (and an interim one), a couple different Arsenal regimes, and certainly countless social media posts and anonymous whispers from...

Liverpool, Manchester United draw to leave door open for Manchester City
Perhaps no match felt weirder without fans than the biggest rivalry in English football. Usually the atmosphere for a Liverpool-Man United match can be described as overly passionate, vitriolic, psychotic, poisonous, and/or blood-thirsty. Without the 55,000 baying until their lungs shriveled and fil...

American Matthew Hoppe scores Bundesliga hat trick
America’s future is brighter than ever!...

Royal Antwerp striker goes full Costanza, dons rival's kit in (failed) bid for transfer to Greece
Didier Lamkel Ze has had enough of Belgium and wants to go to Greece....

Is time up for Frank Lampard at Chelsea?
It felt like it was lining up for Chelsea today. After some disappointing results around Christmas, they were getting Manchester City at home after the latter’s training facility had been closed for days, had its last game postponed, and certainly hadn’t had the best preparation for such a big game....

PSG sacks Thomas Tuchel, could save us from Mauricio Pochettino doing actual work
If you lay out Thomas Tuchel’s accomplishments with PSG, but remove the team name, even the most casual soccer fan would think he was some sort of Belichickian legend. Two league titles in two seasons, last year’s domestic treble (league and both cup competitions), as well as a Champions League fina...