Soccer Page 185 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Ajax Put Tottenham In An Early Strangehold And Held On For Dear Life
Through 15 minutes, it looked like Ajax were playing a particularly easy group stage match rather than the away leg of the Champions League semifinal. The Dutch Boys showed up at Tottenham’s brand new stadium and promptly put the undermanned London club in a variety of submission moves, moving the b...
Bolton Wanderers' Ownership Disaster Is Now Affecting Actual Games
When last we checked in on Bolton Wanderers, the storied English soccer club was on the verge of ruin after years of mismanagement and ownership incompetence. Not much has changed since: while the nearly bankrupt club has found a potential new owner willing to buy the team, the deal still has yet to...
Leeds Manager Marcelo Bielsa Instructs Team To Give Aston Villa An Uncontested Scoring Chance To Make Up For A Controversial Goal
Up until the 71st minute, the match between Leeds United and Aston Villa had been relatively uneventful. But once the game clock hit 71:20, the English Championship bout decided to make up for its lack of excitement over the next several moments with a debatably unsportsmanlike goal leading to a scu...
MLS Has Turned Carlos Vela Into Lionel Messi
As MLS has pivoted away from importing its star power via aged former greats and toward a strategy of bringing in younger players who, by talent or drive or personality, couldn’t quite make it at the sport’s highest levels, the league has had more success at presenting fans with players capable of r...
Perfection Is Now The Standard In Pep Guardiola's Premier League
The fundamental idea undergirding the pervading ideology of Premier League exceptionalism is that the English league is uniquely competitive. All the manifestations of this exceptionalism—from the holding of the Premier League title above all other domestic league trophies and nearly on par with the...
This Penalty Kick Is So Bad That The Player Who Took It Was Immediately Cut
It’s been quite the whirlwind week for Venezuelan soccer player Bendix Parra. Last Tuesday, he was a starter in one of the biggest matches in the history of his club, Paraguay’s Independiente. This Tuesday, he found himself unemployed when Independiente tore up his contract. All of this for one espe...
Shane Long Sets New Premier League Record For Fastest Goal By Scoring In Seven Seconds
Shane Long wasted literally no time putting Southampton up on Watford today, throwing his body in front of a Craig Cathcart pass and running onto the deflected ball before flipping it over Watford’s keeper just 7.69 seconds into the match, making it the fastest goal ever scored in Premier League his...
Manchester United Need A Complete Face Lift To Rise Again
At various points this season, Manchester United have been dying, dead, buried, on the way back, back again, and lost in the wilderness. It’s fitting, then, that on Easter Sunday, United finally reached its lowest point of the season: a 4-0 loss to Everton, United’s worst defeat to the Toffees in cl...
MLS, Which Is Definitely Not A Ponzi Scheme, Wants To Expand By Adding Three New Teams For $200 Million Each
Are you: A) obscenely wealthy, B) in possession of or willing to form a soccer team domiciled in the U.S. or Canada, and C) looking for a foolproof way to take that soccer investment to the next level? If so, then boy, do I have great news for you!...
VAR Will Ruin Everything
Yesterday, millions around the world watched Raheem Sterling cap one of the wildest matches they will ever see with a stunning last-gasp winning goal, only to be told a minute or so later that it never happened....
Philippe Coutinho And Barcelona Might Yet Have A Happy Ending Together
When Barcelona purchased Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool back in the winter of 2018 for an eye-popping €160 million fee, Blaugrana fans thought they had found their next Andrés Iniesta. It made sense: Coutinho can dribble, create, and score all at elite levels, and though the Brazilian needed to wo...
Ajax Have Slain Cristiano Ronaldo, Giant Of The Champions League
For only the second time in six seasons, Cristiano Ronaldo will not win the Champions League. For the first time in a decade, and only the second time in 13 years, he won’t even appear in one of the four semi-finals. Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who has loomed over the continent’s premier tournament l...
Oh No, David de Gea, What Are You Doing?
Manchester United came into the Camp Nou on Tuesday knowing that two goals would likely get them to the semi-finals of the Champions League. Not an easy task at all, but a doable one. But then United gagged up two awful first-half goals, one from an inexplicable David de Gea boner, and that looks to...
F.A. Panel Says Wayne Hennessey Is Too Stupid To Have Done Nazi Salute
No one could have been more delighted to hear that Crystal Palace goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey is apparently a huge idiot than Wayne Hennessey himself. That’s because the F.A. panel tasked with investigating a photo in which the Welsh keeper appeared to have been making a Nazi salute gesture cited tha...
Leeds Fan Breaks Ankle While Celebrating A Goal, Waits Until After The Game To Go To Hospital
With a tight 1-0 home win over Sheffield Wednesday this weekend, Leeds United took a big step toward sealing promotion to the Premier League next season. In the explosion of joy following Jack Harrison’s 65th minute goal, one Leeds fan exploded his ankle during his raucous celebration, which require...
New York Red Bulls' Kaku Blasts Ball Into A Fan's Face, Gets Sent Off
New York Red Bulls midfielder Kaku was sent off with a red card in the final moments of the Red Bulls’ 2-2 draw with Sporting Kansas City last night, after he kicked a ball in frustration and it struck a fan in the front row. The fan reportedly was left with a bloody face and needing medical attenti...
Lucas Moura's Son Is A Cautious Dribbler And A Very Good Sports Baby
Tottenham handily defeated an already-relegated Huddersfield Town squad, 4-0, thanks to a hat-trick from Brazilian winger Lucas Moura. After the game, he decided to celebrate the moment with his adorable son on the pitch. He put a soccer ball to his son’s feet and told him to kick it to him. Every t...
João Félix Has Arrived
Release clauses in soccer are oftentimes more symbolic than anything else. Clubs with leverage will often drop a sky high release clause (the amount of money they would have to accept for a player, whether they want to sell him or not) on a promising young player mostly just to scare off interest fr...
Cristiano Ronaldo Is Like Clockwork
Cross the ball, head the ball, score a goal. It is the simplest tactic in soccer. It is what practically all teams resort to when the need for a goal is at its most dire. It is a strategy without frills or subtlety. When it works, it is nearly unstoppable. However, it very rarely works—rarely in a s...
Gerard Piqué Is Barcelona's Other Superman
It must be strange, being a defender of historic greatness for a solid decade, starring for arguably the greatest club and national teams of all time, and still winding up somehow underrated. And yet, that is the fate of Barcelona and Spain center back Gerard Piqué—though if he continues to put toge...