bundesliga Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Arsenal, Liverpool, and cycles
There’s always an urge, and sometimes a directive from websites and Twitter and whatever else, to attach meaning or statements to any match or result. Sometimes, two teams just play each other and the score is the score and that’s your story. It’s not an overarching comment on systems, managers, or ...

USMNT’s Gregg Berhalter is going to have to get over himself
All right, I’m gonna be Sammy Sunshine about the USMNT. It’s not easy, but there’s a lot of dark clouds after the team went 0-for-180 minutes in scoring goals, or looking like they could get a goal, or even looking like they were interested in scoring a goal, in their last two friendlies before the ...

What if Christian Pulisic isn’t that good anymore?
Also, he might be kind of a prick, but we’ll circle back to that....

Which USMNT players punched their ticket to Qatar?
The United States men’s national team has zero minutes of game time remaining before it lines up against Wales at the FIFA World Cup, the country’s first contest on soccer’s biggest showcase in eight years. Tuesday’s scoreless draw against Saudi Arabia gave us one final look at the Yanks before head...

Is there actually hope in the Bundesliga? Well no, but it’s fun to pretend
On the opening day of the Bundesliga season, when Bayern Munich were getting in up to the elbow on Eintracht Frankfurt, just the defending Europa League champions, the joke on Twitter was that the league title was already decided. It was only half in jest. Munich have piled up the last 10 league tit...

der Fußballbundesliga?
The partnership between the NFL and the German Bundesliga, the top tier of the country’s professional soccer scene, is an interesting pair on its own. They both dominate their domestic markets. Dirk Nowitzki and Leon Draisaitl have come from Deutschland to dominate in North America. Steve Cherundolo...

The thing about Barcelona’s wackiness is it just might work… on the field at least
This is where you’d stick the video of Jesse Pinkman screaming, “He can’t keep getting away with it!” That depends on how you’d define “getting away” and also ignore the fact that Jesse was just a whiny loser. But the feeling is familiar to all, the lamentation that there are just some forces or bei...

For one day, Yann Sommer channeled the spirit of Ron Tugnutt (wait Ron Tugnutt isn’t dead, right?)
Most soccer analysts, especially those who really get in up to the elbow in the analytics, say that the sport is pretty random. Most games are only decided by a single moment (or rarely more than a handful), and those moments can bounce any which way no matter what the trends of a match or a season ...

The system doesn’t work with this Virgil van Dijk
This isn’t my beautiful house....

MLS becomes the first to go full streaming
Well, someone was going to do it. ...

Miles Robinson’s injury leaves USMNT in a bind
The conversation can’t be delayed. Procrastinating about specific personnel decisions that will expose Gregg Berhalter’s future at the helm of the United States men’s national team are now harmful to delay after this weekend. Miles Robinson went from World Cup lock to out of the 23-man roster being ...

FIFA forgoing $150 million annually to pursue delusions of grandeur
Like people who are addicted to Coca-Cola products, gamers can spot a knockoff within the first three seconds of tasting one. Try giving a Coke lover a Pepsi, and they get offended. A waiter responding to a request for a Coke with, “We only have Pepsi. Is that OK?” is met with a laugh more often tha...

Jesse Marsch and Leeds might be in serious trouble
It’s hard to judge just how important it is that an American manager finally “makes it” in Europe. It would certainly be cool, but for what it means for men’s American soccer overall trails by miles to how players make it in the world’s best leagues. The US needs a load of players making a fist of i...

Women tries, fails to glue herself to NBA floor
The animal rights protestors never fail to keep us entertained (remember when they wanted to rename the bullpen in baseball?), and Glue Lady is no different. Late in the second quarter of the play-in game between the Timberwolves and the Clippers last night, the cameras cut away from a Minnesota fre...

So what will MLS do about its TV ratings?
When setting up for the current MLS season, which started the last weekend of February, one of the major themes was the league locking in its new TV deal sometime in March. MLS’s TV deal has been paltry when compared to the other sports leagues ($90m a year), and there was a feeling that while the n...

And we all thought Barcelona was done big-game hunting
We didn’t really get as big of a window to laugh at Barcelona as we thought or hoped. Proving the life lesson that you need to celebrate anything worth celebrating at that time and that place or you’ll miss the opportunity. Barça is roaring in La Liga right now, all the way up to second after winnin...

Who are we taking to Qatar?
The USMNT punched their ticket with a true let’s-not-fuck-this-up-royally performance in Costa Rica. So now the attention turns to who are the 23 souls that Gregg Berhalter will be putting on the plane for the tournament. Our intrepid soccer goofuses Sam Fels and Eric Blum have some ideas....

The fight for the USMNT’s #9 spot moves to the European theater
As it’s always been (and sometimes it feels always will be) that the one big hole on the US Men’s international team is the one up top, a central striker. You never want to be in a place where you’re wondering if there’s any way to make Jozy Altidore 10 years younger. It’s Jozy Altidore, after all. ...

Man United have the right idea, that doesn’t mean it’ll work
Counting on a horrible blunder to score and holding on for dear life to scrape a 1-1 draw against Chelsea isn’t where Manchester United are supposed to find themselves. But at least admitting that’s what they are is a first step in the right direction in a long time. Having any sort of strategy on t...

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. ...