Soccer Page 173 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
New Liga MX-MLS Cup is way cool, and might set up more cool stuff (I said ‘might’… this <i>is</i> MLS after all)
If I were the cynical sort (perish the thought!), I might suggest that MLS realizes its main stream of income, expansion, might be drying up in the coming years. That’s if you go by the “MLS is a Ponzi scheme” theory, which one has to admit has some legs. Charlotte and St. Louis join the league in t...
Can we please get promotion/relegation in women’s soccer now?
The growth of women’s soccer in this country took another step forward with the announcement that the USL, which runs the second tier league on the men’s side, will form a second-tier women’s league in 2023, the USL Super League (are we seriously going with this term now? Whatever.)...
Someone should get Harvey Barnes a GPS, or a sense of purpose
It’s been a pretty woeful start for Leicester City in the Premier League this season after being the surprise package the past two. While both ended in final-day heartbreak, as they missed out on the Champions League at the final hurdle, they were still fun to watch as they sparred with and bloodied...
This biennial World Cup mumbo jumbo is soccer’s next big fight
Last spring, when news of the Super League first started to break, I was pretty dismissive. Heard it all before — that type of leak tended to break on a cycle of every few years or so, and would quickly fade into the background. In reality, it did fade into the background pretty quickly. It just did...
Your 2021-2022 Champions League Guide
Despite the attempt to kill it from Europe’s leading clubs last spring (and UEFA’s eventual success in doing so in the coming years), the Champions League returns today in its usual form. While it has become the nexus point in all that’s wrong with soccer and has certainly widened the gap between th...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
At halftime last night, you could forgive any USMNT fan for thinking they had never left 1997. I know I did. Here we all were, too late on a school night, watching a US team getting paddled in Central America with the crowd going nuts and the American manager looking utterly clueless and his players...
We totally forgot that this USMNT hasn’t played very well
Perhaps I doomed them last Wednesday when I told my editor the US Men’s National Team would qualify for the World Cup easily. The power of the motherfuck grows every day. That won’t comfort anyone, especially me, as the US has certainly stubbed its toe in its first two qualifiers, even if it hasn’t ...
It’s showtime!
It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to dodge the bags of piss...wait, those aren’t the original lyrics, are they? Well, for the USMNT they might as well be. ...
It’s hard to know who’s king twit of dumb mountain between Real Madrid, PSG, and Barcelona
The transfer window in soccer closed yesterday evening, and after Cristiano Ronaldo took his rape accusations to Manchester United, there weren’t too many surprises. Man City didn’t find the striker they were after, Chelsea added to an already ridiculous squad, blah blah blah. Perhaps everyone was j...
So is Ronaldo to United actually going to work?
You’d think if you were going to take on the burden of bringing back a twice-accused rapist to your club, the hierarchy would have to be pretty sure that it would make a huge difference on the field. But you’re not the Glazer family, who are so desperate to get Manchester United fans to stop burning...
Sporting Kansas City and the Rapids were unclear on the concept last night
As I’ve said in the past, I’m still something of an MLS novice. This is the first season I’ve truly tried to work against my “europhile” ways and really get in up to the elbow in America’s domestic league....
With World Cup qualifying imminent, let's check in on how many rakes Berhalter is stepping on
Good God, would someone take the air out Tim Ream’s tires or barricade his apartment door for a couple days so Gregg Berhalter will stop picking him for the national team?...
Hey, Pep — you old scallywag, you old so-and-so — come manage the USMNT
So you need a new challenge in a couple years, Pep? Seven years at Man City will be enough? I agree. Want to try yourself at the international stage? Really all that’s left for you at age 50. Not much left to prove at club level, other than maybe not shitting yourself in the latter stages of the Cha...
Time to take the 2026 World Cup out of Mexico
It’s probably high time to strip the 2026 World Cup from Mexico. ...
Harry Kane decides to stay with Tottenham
It just might not be as violent as we thought. But maybe weirder. ...
'Red' storm rising
The Premier League might be headed for something of a row with FIFA and international teams next week. Yesterday, the league announced that teams won’t be releasing players that have to travel to countries on the U.K.’s “red list,” which is pretty much all of South America and a lot of Africa....
David Moyes must be having a midlife crisis with West Ham
Maybe it was pandemic football that blinded me. After all, it was hard to fully invest in in the same way with the canned noise and lessened verve that each game had. Everything started to look and feel the same, and hence I couldn’t see what was really going on. ...
The Malice South of Paris
There was a-doings a-transpirin’ in southern France yesterday. Perhaps in tribute to the release of the documentary “Malice At The Palace,” fans in Nice thought they would reenact it....
Yeah, this Romelu Lukaku thing is going to be a problem
Well, a problem for anyone who isn’t a Chelsea supporter at least, which the most annoying of my close friends just happens to be. So that’s great. And no, I don’t mean colleague Julie DiCaro, though I’m sure she’ll be rocketing up the list this season. Also great. (Ed. Note: - Blue is the color! Fo...
U.S. Soccer legend Carli Lloyd retiring after an outstanding career
An American legend is riding off into the sunset....