Soccer Page 240 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Behold, The Most Blatant Handball Of The Year
Chelsea need to beat West Brom this afternoon to clinch the Premier League, but if Jonny Evans keeps this up, forget it. Late in the first half, Evans escaped Cesc Febregas’s pressure with a straight-up karate chop on the ball and he got away with it. ...
Goalie Momentarily Forgets Where He Is, Concedes Very Dumb Goal
Soccer is hard. There are so many other people on the field: teammates, referees, opponents, occasionally the odd dog. One can be forgiven for the occasional lapse. However, this howler from Ottawa Fury FC goalkeeper Callum Irving is a transcendent fuckup....
FIFA Makes Completely Meaningless Ethical Stand
The U.S.-led North American bid for the 2026 World Cup earned 93 percent of the 209 votes in FIFA Congress today. In March, the North American soccer federations requested an exclusive window to begin submitting technical specifications, which would give them a head start in the planning process. Bu...
FIFA Did A Bunch Of Shady Shit This Week
There is a lot of corruption going on in the world, but not at FIFA, no siree. Since numerous top officials were arrested two years ago, and longtime president Sepp Blatter was ousted and replaced by the much chiller Gianni Infantino, one might assume that FIFA now takes corruption and ethics seriou...
Real Madrid Finally Overcame The World's Best Player By Building The World's Best Team
For close to a decade now, Real Madrid have been tasked with solving the most difficult problem facing any club in the whole sport: What do we do about Lionel Messi?...
Karim Benzema's Houdini Act All But Destroys Atlético Madrid's Comeback Dreams
Atlético Madrid had a mountain to climb in order to get back into their Champions League semifinal tie against Real Madrid after losing the first leg 3-0, and it looked for a minute that they just might do it. Atleti jumped out to a 2-0 lead just 16 minutes into the match, needing just one more goal...
Referee Barfs, Receives Red Card
Overcome by some kind of stomach bug, or maybe, as the wonderful Scottish commentator supposes, so offended by the poor quality of this weekend’s Dundee-Kilmarnock match, line judge Andrew McWilliam couldn’t resist the urge to puke, and began blowing chunks out there on the pitch. The head ref took ...
FIFA's Four-Match Suspension Of Lionel Messi Overturned On Appeal
A little over a month ago, some snitches in the Chile soccer federation ratted out Lionel Messi for saying some mildly harsh words to a referee after an international match. FIFA suspended Messi for four matches in response, endangering Argentina’s chances to qualify for the World Cup and threatenin...
José Mourinho Needs To Win The Europa League He Once Disdained
José Mourinho, the manager who just a few seasons ago said, “I don’t want to win the Europa League. It would be a big disappointment for me. I don’t want my players to feel the Europa League is our competition,” is now desperate to win the Europa League. And after today’s 1-0 first-leg semifinal win...
Russian Cup Final Features More Punches And Red Cards Than Goals
That is Lokomotiv Moscow player Ari up there with the leaping right hook, apparently not content with only beating FC Ural on the scoreboard, but also wanting to win the mid-game fight. Unfortunately for the Brazilian, the bout would end in a relative draw, with both teams landing some solid haymake...
Cristiano Ronaldo Gutted Atlético Madrid
Cristiano Ronaldo has a penchant for doing only two or three things in any given game, but those two or three things usually end up being the most important things. That’s exactly what happened today, when Ronaldo scored a hat trick today against Atlético Madrid. His second was the prettiest, when ...
May The Soccer Gods Bless Atlético Madrid, Who Deserve To Win The Champions League
O ye mighty Soccer Gods, how blessed are we, the fans of the sport you so nobly watch over! You’ve given us over a decade of The One, your favorite son, the one and only Lionel Messi, and we have praised you for it! In recent times, you saw fit to grant us arguably the greatest team feat of all time...
Emre Can Smashes Acrobatic Golazo To Put Liverpool Up 1-0
When Liverpool winger Philippe Coutinho was forced off in the 12th minute after taking a knee to the thigh, the club’s all-but-assured win over Watford looked less certain. Right before the half, though, Emre Can got on the end of chip from Lucas and did this:...
Cesc Fàbregas Really Does Have Eyes In The Back Of His Head
If you’ve ever wondered how the world’s most spatially aware players always seem to know exactly where everyone is on the pitch at all times, then this video of Cesc Fàbregas and his rubber neck should go a long way towards explaining that yes, these guys truly can see everything at all times:...
Happiness Is Watching Mario Balotelli Drive PSG Insane
Mario Balotelli’s Nice hosted Paris Saint-Germain this weekend in what was a hugely important match in the Ligue 1 title race. Nice did what they’ve done all year and upset the odds by whooping up on PSG by a score of 3-1, and Balotelli scored a pretty goal to kick off the beatdown. By the end of th...
44-Year-Old Goalkeeper Scores Wild Header To Tie Match In Final Minute
The niftiest goal of the weekend comes from Oscar Pérez, the 44-year-old goalkeeper of Liga MX’s Pachuca. With the club down by one in the final minute of stoppage time against Cruz Azul, it opted for all hands on deck for a corner kick and brought its keeper into the box. The decision worked, as Pé...
FIFA Anti-Corruption Committee Member Admits To Taking Nearly $1 Million In Bribes
Richard Lai, the president of the Guam Football Association and a member of FIFA’s corruption-fighting audit and compliance committee, pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. federal court to fraud charges arising from his admission to taking almost $1 million in bribes. Lest you were wondering if FIFA is ...
Beach Soccer Looks Exhausting
Walking in soft sand is tiring; running in sand is positively exhausting. Playing soccer in sand is fun for about 10 minutes until your legs are burning and you’re drenched in sweat and you need to go dunk yourself in the ocean before you suffer a heat stroke. Watching beach soccer, though, is fanta...
UK Tax Authorities Raid West Ham And Newcastle
Newcastle’s addiction to buying French players has finally caught up with the club. DeAndre Yedlin’s soon-to-be promoted club and Premier League club West Ham are both the subject of an investigation by the HM Revenue and Customs office, the UK’s tax authority, for alleged tax fraud. Newcastle boss ...
Report: Text Messages Show Cristiano Ronaldo Knew About Settlement For Rape Allegation
A couple weeks ago, German paper Der Spiegel released a report that claimed Cristiano Ronaldo had settled out of court with an American woman who alleged he raped her in 2009. Ronaldo’s camp issued a strong denunciation of the report, calling it “journalistic fiction” and denying any ties between th...