Soccer Page 211 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Vancouver Whitecaps Are Sorry For Mishandling Abuse Allegations Against Ex-Youth Coach, But Not Everyone's Satisfied
Since February, MLS’s Vancouver Whitecaps have been mired in a scandal centered around their handling of allegations of abuse made against former girls youth coach Bob Birarda. Fans have protested, and after the team issued an apology, the Whitecaps community criticized it for a lack of transparen...
Valencia Condemn Fans' Nazi Salutes And Monkey Gestures Towards Arsenal Supporters
Another week, another incident of supporter racism in soccer, this time in jolly ol’ London. After Valencia crumbled away to Arsenal 3-1 in the first leg of the Europa League semifinal, Telegraph journalist Tomé Morrissy-Swan captured a handful of Valencia supporters throwing up the Nazi salute and ...
Liverpool Couldn't Finish, And Now They Are (Probably) Finished
Liverpool were the better team. That might feel impossible after a game that saw Lionel Messi ruin the nights of millions of already angry Scousers, but it’s true. Through 90 minutes at a hostile Camp Nou, Liverpool shook off a hesitant start and brought the game to the Spanish champions, keeping Ba...
André-Pierre Gignac Scores Scissor Kick Beauty In CONCACAF Champions League Final
The CONCACAF Champions League may not generate the buzz of its European counterpart, but the competition has (usually) been the battleground upon which the top Mexican clubs stake their claim as the region’s best, and as such is a solidly entertaining tournament. Mexican sides are enjoying an exten...
Old Man Messi's Still Got It
If you wanted evidence of time’s inevitable erosion of even the most resistant of talents, you would’ve found it just before halftime of today’s Barcelona-Liverpool Champions League semifinal. It was then that Lionel Messi intercepted a backpass just past the halfway line, found himself essentially ...
Liverpool Fans Shove Old Man Into A Fountain, Generally Wreak Havoc At Barcelona Plaza
This should go without saying, but if you are part of a group of traveling soccer fans, please do not push elderly people into fountains. That’s a lesson not learned by a group of Liverpool fans in Barcelona for the Champions League semifinal, who played true to stereotypes by rampaging through the ...
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...