Soccer Page 176 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

If nothing else, the MLS Cup final is full circle for Crew fans
It’s dishonest to say that any sporting event can have a feel-good event right now. While sports can be a healthy distraction or unifying force for a community, these days they basically act as a perfect sketch of just about everything wrong with the country’s handling and response to the pandemic, ...
![Basaksehir and PSG players walk off field after official accused of racial slur [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/j7p9xwuhyqk1kpcie2lq.jpg)
Basaksehir and PSG players walk off field after official accused of racial slur [Update]
In a stunning scene on soccer’s biggest stage, players from PSG and Basaksehir walked off the field at Parc de Princes in the first half after an assistant coach for Basaksehir, former player Pierre Webo, accused the fourth official of calling him the n-word....

Is this disrespectful goal soccer’s equivalent of the bat flip?
The celebration debate rarely comes to soccer, mostly because it’s so damn hard to score that you can hardly begrudge anyone for how they choose to commemorate such a feat. Rarely do you get to stretch out the ceremony. Depending on how you view it, serendipity shined on Stuttgart’s Silas Wamangituk...

Racist dirtbag costs Utah fans their NWSL team
Usually when a fanbase is stripped of their team because of their owner, it’s because the owner is simply unconscionably greedy, Modell-like stupid, or both. They can’t leverage their city into a publicly-funded larceny for a new stadium (or at least not as big of a theft as their black heart desire...

Will the latest Champions League revamp stave off a Super League?
It is one of the eternal fights in the world of soccer, pitting UEFA and the biggest clubs in Europe against each other every few years. The former attempts to thread the needle of appeasing the latter while also preventing them from running roughshod over the entire continent (or moreso than they a...

Edinson Cavani doesn’t learn from history
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Uruguayan striker bursts onto the Premier League for a team in red that plays in the northwest of the country, gets in hot water for using the term “negrito,” claims it is a term of endearment where he’s from, and then might get suspended anyway while his clu...

See Messi’s tribute to Diego Maradona
Today FC Barcelona beat perennial La Liga lightweight CA Osasuna 4-nil. But that’s not the important part. Lionel Messi, in the 73rd minute, danced and pranced through a forest of defenders before easily depositing the ball in the upper corner of the net, sort of like another Argentinian superstar u...

WWII bombs found at Roma training ground, Dick Cheney slaps forehead
We’ve seen sports and teams have their normal operations upended and canceled far more the past year than we ever have before. Even the hint of positive COVID tests can sideline not just a whole roster, but an entire organization’s running as headquarters are cleared out. ...

USWNT takes knee, dons Black Lives Matter jackets in solidarity 'to affirm human decency'
Meanwhile, the United States got back into action with its four world championship jersey stars, and every starter except Julie Ertz and Kelley O’Hara took a knee for the anthem, while the whole team wore Black Lives Matter warm-up jackets....

On Maradona, his life, and the most famous two goals in soccer history
This story was taken from an episode of Julie DiCaro’s now-defunct sports history podcast, Stick to Pods, and originally aired on July 13, 2018....

Maradona, the best human to ever do it
When you discuss the greatest to play any sport, there’s definitely a mythical edge to it. Jordan, LeBron, Gretzky, Lemieux, Mantle, Mays, Payton, Sanders, whatever your names are, it always feels like you’re talking about some sort of separate being. Something bestowed upon the Earth, unknowable in...

The Zlatan has AC Milan atop Serie A, and what’s old is new again
There is something about seeing AC Milan in first in Serie A that stirs long dead emotions. At least to those of us of a certain age (namely, those who still listen to GNR). The Rossoneri atop the table harkens back to the last days of Italy being home to the world’s best league, where all the legen...

When did Manchester City get so boring?
Every story about the Premier League, and really European soccer as a whole, has to start off with just how weird the circumstances are. The shortened preseason, the glut of matches in a reduced window of time, the injuries, the positive tests, no crowds, all of it has combined for some truly goofy ...

English soccer player honks opponent’s penis twice, giggles as refs do nothing
You wouldn’t think that anyone would want to join Brad Marchand on the list of athletes who commit in-game sexual assault, but nothing is out of reach by the world these days. Preston North End’s Darnell Fisher has seen Marchand’s mere foreplay of licking people and raised to this direct action on S...

Orlando emergency keeper's game-winning save is soccer's 'position player pitches perfect inning'
Rodrigo Schlegel is a defender for Orlando City SC … and now the most legendary goalie in franchise history....

Leverkusen keeper puts foot in mouth with botched kick leading to hilarious own goal: See it!
Lukas Hradecky is a Slovak-born goalie who plays internationally for Finland and professionally in Germany with Bayer Leverkusen. Isn’t it odd, then, that his problem on Saturday was putting too much English on the ball?...

The MLS playoffs are already borked and they haven’t even started
As if it wasn’t hard enough to navigate a team or sport through a pandemic, and some would rightly suggest it’s impossible and stupid to do so, soccer has to add onto that an international break. So not only do you have strict protocols and testing and basically have to cross your fingers and clench...

Through the fog, there’s finally some light for the USMNT
Maybe having 10 months off from each other is exactly what the U.S. Men’s National Team and their fans needed. The last time we saw the national squad, they were hacking, gagging, and stumbling through the Gold Cup or attempting to play out from the back in another friendly with Mexico with truly di...

Sergio Ramos’s No Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day
Sergio Ramos might be the biggest villain in European soccer, but part of the reason he is that is he’s already won, and you know it. He’s got two European Championship medals, a World Cup, a murder of Champions League trophies, a handful of La Liga titles, and will go down as one of, if not the, be...
