Soccer Page 280 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Watch Messi Break The All-Time La Liga Scoring Record
Lionel Messi became the top scorer in La Liga history with this 72nd minute goal against Sevilla, his second of the game. It was Messi's 252nd league goal, which topped Athletic Bilbao legend Telmo Zarra's 251, who did most of his damage in the 1940s. A few minutes later Messi got his hat trick, s...

Here's Wayne Rooney's Cute Little Son Doing A Cute Little Cartwheel
After his second goal in the England-Scotland match earlier this week, Wayne Rooney celebrated by doing a cartwheel. Today, he revealed the inspiration behind the move by posting an Instagram video of his son Kai's favorite new move:...

Zinedine Zidane No Longer Has To Pretend Not To Coach Team He Coaches
A couple months ago, we told you about how Zinedine Zidane, manager of Real Madrid Castilla, was under investigation for not having the proper coaching qualifications. The Frenchman had two ways to fight the impending punishment: either cadge up the qualifications or deny that he was actually the ma...

Xabi Alonso Forced To Apologize To Ronaldo For Stupid, Fake Controversy
Remember that dumb story Real Madrid pitched to their stooges at Marca yesterday, where some milquetoast statements of Xabi Alonso's were folded, kneaded, and ultimately transformed into direct insults to former teammates Cristiano Ronaldo and Iker Casillas? Well, it worked....

Shitty Swiss Team Cuts 11 Players After Youth Team Blows Them Out 10-0
FC Grenchen, of Switzerland's fourth division, suck at soccer. In their last nine matches, they've collected all of zero points while shipping 66—yes, 66—goals, 10 of which came at the feet of FC Luzern's youth squad. Following that horrific result, Grenchen's sporting director decided to cut 11 pla...

Wigan Owner Doubles Down On New Manager's Racism And Antisemitism
Wigan Athletic courted controversy this week by hiring Malky Mackay, who is under investigation by the FA for assorted bigoted and offensive text messages that were sent more than a year ago but came to light over the summer. Wigan owner Dave Whelan spoke with the Guardian today, and offered a defen...

DC Comics Claims Valencia's New Crest Looks Too Much Like Batman Logo
Holy intellectual property law, Batman, why are you beefing with this Spanish soccer team?...

Ivory Coast Fans Mob Pitch As Team Qualifies For Africa Cup Of Nations
Ivory Coast took on Cameroon at home in Abidjan today, in their final match of 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualification. With three minutes of stoppage time left, and both teams assured of qualifying with a 0-0 draw, Cameroon was content to let the Ivory Coast pass the ball around unmolested....

French Club Suspected Of Bribing Opponents With Cases Of Wine Mid-Match
French officials have arrested the club presidents of newly promoted Ligue 1 side Caen and Ligue 2 club Nîmes for their suspected involvement in fixing a match at the end of last year's Ligue 2 season. What did the Caen players receive for their services? According to one report, cases of wine deliv...

Despots, Serial Killers, And Dick Jokes: <em>Football Manager</em>'s Banned Names
From the sheer number of funny names assigned to the randomly generated players in Football Manager, you may have assumed there is no filter on name combinations. And while you may have seen a "Willy Pinas" or two, you haven't seen a "Adolf Hitler," "Tim McVeigh," or a "Dick Licka" for a good reas...

German Football League Threatens FIFA Over Unreleased World Cup Report
FIFA finally released a summary of their report into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody it basically cleared Qatar, Russia, and current FIFA officials of any wrongdoing. The 42-page report was written by FIFA ethics committee judge Hans-Joa...

Argentine Club President Runs Up In Players' Homes 40 Deep, Robs Them
Jorge Abib is the club president of Argentina's Textil Mandiyú. He is insane. Why, just last night, multiple Textil players accused a possibly drugged-up Abib of rolling up to the players' apartment building with around 40 club ultras, busting into dozens of rooms, and breaking everything in sight w...

Chart: The Average Player Salaries In Soccer Leagues Around The World
A lot of what we talk about when we compare different soccer leagues, from arguing which one's the best to which one's the deepest and even which plays the most attractive style, comes down to how much money is spent on players. In that sense, this Sportsmail chart listing the average salaries of pl...

MLS Is Still Pissed Off At Jürgen Klinsmann
It was obvious at the time that MLS commissioner Don Garber's tirade against Jürgen Klinsmann last month was about much more than the innocuous statements they were ostensibly in response to. Sure enough, ESPN FC is reporting that MLS bigwigs remain "irate" at Klinsmann—this time for what they see a...

Chelsea And Spain Are Locked In A Dumb War Neither Can Win
Even by the standards of dick-measuring contests, the one ongoing between Chelsea and the Spanish national team has been awful for months. At some point, though, this sort of thing stops being merely dumb and threatens to become actually harmful to the players each side should be trying to protect—a...

New York FC's New Kits Look Like Hand-Me-Down Manchester City Ones
A league of hand-me-down players wearing hand-me-down jerseys? Sounds about right....

How To Dumbfound Two Defenders With One Dribble, By Brazil's Willian
You see this little move right here, where Willian drags the ball one way with the outside of his boot, before that lightning-quick flick of the foot in the other direction, nudging the ball in the opposite direction of where he was moving while completely freezing the two Turkish defenders? Yeah,...

Spoiler Alert: After FIFA Probe, Qatar Gets To Keep Its World Cup
The summary of a year-long investigation into the bidding process for the next two World Cups will not be released until tomorrow, but the gist has already leaked via the English press. Basically: everyone involved was corrupt, but the 2018 and 2022 tournaments will not be taken away from Russia or ...

15-Year-Old Wonderkid Added To Video Game After Dad's Tweeted Permission
The real point of career modes in soccer video games is to snatch up a grip of the world's most hyped youngsters and slowly build a juggernaut. Fans of Football Manager—that impossibly detailed, life-consumingly fun computer game—were dismayed to find Norway's new starlet Martin Ødegaard missing...
