association-football Page 16 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Well, at least Americans are in position to blow El Clásico?
It’s always a touch reductive and harsh to boil down a game to a single chance or moment. There are 90 minutes, after all, and you’d like to believe that each team will create more chances and those are allowed to go in as well. But soccer being what it is, there’s only one or two or three goals per...
An existential question for Man U fans ahead of their clash with Liverpool
Consider yourself lucky if you’ve never had that feeling about a coach when he’s not awful and he’s not great, but you’d rather not sack him because you don’t trust ownership to hire someone. I imagine it’s a lot like purgatory when you know you’re damned. You’re just kind of floating there, knowing...
The New England Revs are going to set the league points record, and they’re not going to play any defense to do it
While MLS still has its fair share of issues, the one thing you have to give it credit for is that during the regular season, the league rewards teams that just say, “Fuck it, it’s free cake.” They don’t generally live on in history, because wonky defensive teams get found out by the extremely callo...
Can the Bundesliga ever be competitive again?
I start a lot of these with the phrase, “I knew better.” Whether it’s tuning into Monday Night Raw, or believing in the Carolina Hurricanes, or something else, you say that phrase enough and it becomes clear that, no, I don’t actually know better. I’m just a gullible giblet. ...
Steve Bruce is still thinking about cabbage
Steve Bruce was managing at Aston Villa in the Championship, one level below the English Premier League, when a cabbage was thrown at him from the stands before a 3-3 draw against last-place Preston North End....
The SEC has no idea what fines are for
In the aftermath of the garbage storm at Neyland Stadium that sent players and cheerleaders alike running from the sidelines — and saw Lane Kiffin embrace his inner Odell Beckham, Jr. — the SEC announced on Monday that the University of Tennessee would be fined $250,000 for their fans’ behavior duri...
Mohamed Salah is on one
I suppose being as analytic-minded as I can get that I’m going to be hypocritical here. It doesn’t help (or hurt, depending on your point of view) that I love Mohamed Salah in every sense of the word, to an extent that my vulnerability is teetering on “highly damaging.” So take that as you will....
This is what it can be
It is hard to remember in the moment, especially when that is the first moment of a qualifier like last night against Costa Rica and the USMNT is giving up yet another stupid goal before coming back for a 2-1 win and you haven’t even cracked that beer that you’re firing against the wall, that this w...
The USMNT can’t live without Tyler Adams
When this World Cup qualifying cycle began, we had hoped that the U.S. would surprise us and break new ground on what they could do. And they’ve done that, we just didn’t know it would be showing us how bad they can play at times. ...
Women's soccer players protested sexual harassment and were cheered — great… but that rarely happens when athletes protest racism
Protesting is American as capitalism. However, the support your protest will — or won’t — receive in this country is always determined by the race and gender of the protesters....
Liverpool and Manchester City hurl everything at each other in game of the season
It’s rare that games between the top-table inhabitants of soccer can live up to the billing. They usually cancel each other out, the fear of losing greatly outweighing the benefit of winning, and you might get the odd goal here or there in contests that are high on tension and intrigue but low on an...
NWSL shows how to deliver actual accountability
First, The Athletic reported on Thursday about allegations of sexual coercion and misconduct by North Carolina Courage head coach Paul Riley....
Houdini, thy name is Ole Gunnar
While most every Manchester United supporter you know will scream at you about what a sneaky good manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær is, and certainly never in a tone or volume that will make you think they’re trying to convince themselves as much as they are you, the urge for all of us who don’t support t...
We said depth would be the main thing
If it feels like World Cup qualifiers are boomeranging right back into your consciousness after not much of a break from the last ones, you’re not alone. This is the normal calendar, you just had a year off from it thanks to the pandemic, but just wait until qualifiers are crammed into January and F...
Real Madrid goes down in Champion’s League shocker
The main headlines of Tuesday’s Champions League will be Lionel Messi scoring his first for PSG. But fuck that, Messi scores every goddamn day. The real story is FC Sheriff, from a country that kind of doesn’t exist, in their first Champions League campaign ever, just beat Real Madrid in the Bernabe...
They’re still Manchester Damn City
It’s a little surprising, just a bit, how a team that cantered to the Premier League title and was a Champions League finalist just a few months ago can somehow fly under the radar. But with the noise of Cristiano Ronaldo and his rape accusations landing across town, or Romelu Lukaku giving Chelsea ...
CONCACAF just CONCACAF’d like never before
The most CONCACAF thing happened on Tuesday night, which is an enormous statement to make if you know anything about how CONCACAF works....
New Liga MX-MLS Cup is way cool, and might set up more cool stuff (I said ‘might’… this <i>is</i> MLS after all)
If I were the cynical sort (perish the thought!), I might suggest that MLS realizes its main stream of income, expansion, might be drying up in the coming years. That’s if you go by the “MLS is a Ponzi scheme” theory, which one has to admit has some legs. Charlotte and St. Louis join the league in t...
Someone should get Harvey Barnes a GPS, or a sense of purpose
It’s been a pretty woeful start for Leicester City in the Premier League this season after being the surprise package the past two. While both ended in final-day heartbreak, as they missed out on the Champions League at the final hurdle, they were still fun to watch as they sparred with and bloodied...