champions-league-final Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Jurgen Klopp and the importance of Now
“It’ll never get better than this.”...
Wake me up when the NBA adds a Champions League or an FA cup
The first NBA in-season tournament kicked off Friday evening. If you were unaware, you’re less informed than most because the gimmick has only been beaten into our brains every day since the season tipped. It’s really a brilliant way to dress up a regular season game, and the courts are so obnoxious...
World Cup Group H Preview: Why can’t there be more like Morocco?
The women’s World Cup should be, and still is in a lot of ways, a celebration of how far the game has come from where it was even just four years ago. The attention is more, the players, and teams are better, the quality of play keeps rising, the anticipation grows, as does the appreciation when it ...
Previously out of work Frank Lampard is back at Chelsea for the interim
Chelsea FC have literally been the definition of average in the Premier League this season. For a club that was crowned European champions less than two years ago, being considered average at anything might as well be worse than relegation. The Blues have close to the same number of wins, draws and ...
Antonio Conte wants to get fired more than anyone has ever wanted to get fired
It only takes a matter of hours after becoming a soccer fan to hear the term, “Spursy.” It only takes a couple more after that to completely understand that. It refers to Tottenham Hotspur and that no matter the situation, or the seeming unlikeliness, something weird will happen to the club, and in ...
The 2026 World Cup is swole as fuck
Despite being shoved into the middle of the season and in a country that was in no way up to the standards of hosting such a thing, the last World Cup ended up being a hit for what went on on the field. Exciting conclusion to the group stages, classic games in the knockout stages, and a memorable wi...
The casual American soccer fan's guide to the best international players ahead of the World Cup
For the fair-weather soccer fan, and let’s be real, that’s 99 percent or more of American sports fans, the World Cup is the one event taking place over multiple weeks where general interest is at a high. The United States men’s national team didn’t make the world’s best 32 in 2018, and a huge chunk ...
France may be without their spine at the World Cup, and they won’t be alone
Crowbarring a World Cup into the middle of the club season in winter was always a dumb idea, probably equal to the idea that the tournament ever could have been held in the summer in Qatar, which is what the country and FIFA were originally selling when they awarded it to Qatar (and it was literally...
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 ...
Qatar is conscripting its citizens to be security for the World Cup, so this is definitely going to go well
Here’s the thing about Qatar hosting the World Cup in about six weeks: Even if you could ignore the disgusting and egregious human rights abuses that built the infrastructure for it (which you can’t), or if you could ignore the country’s homophobia and sexism as state policy (which you can’t), or th...
The system doesn’t work with this Virgil van Dijk
This isn’t my beautiful house....
The most exhausted pro athletes are…
The funny thing about sportswriters complaining about how a professional season is too long is if you ask a person if they’re overworked, how many are going to say no? Any amount of work is too much. Interview me after a long shift or following a session with a therapist, and I’m ready to chase get ...
Icarus can kiss my ass
Perhaps there’s no bigger showcase of Lucy yanking the football away than Liverpool chasing The Quadruple. Because as it got closer, it only became harder and only felt further away. Which sounds stupid, because no team has gotten closer. But fatigue was clear for the last few weeks, and the more ma...
Real Madrid shouldn’t have even been there
We’ll likely never see a UEFA Champions League run like the one Real Madrid just completed. If only quality of play decided Los Blancos’ quarterfinal and semifinal two legged-ties, as well as Saturday’s one-game final against Liverpool, they would’ve lost each one. Real Madrid trailed late in each s...
Kylian Mbappé is PSG’s only hope
Let’s be fair, it isn’t much of a sacrifice or even a hard choice to make more money than a lot of countries’ GDP and live in Paris. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and something 95 percent of the world would opt for (with the other five percent either already living there, making millions somewhere bette...
Lost in Liverpool’s pursuit of a quad is Man City’s potential treble
With Tiger Woods falling out of contention and Sunday at Augusta turning into a sleepy 3-year-old crashing off of sugar, wake yourself up by flipping on probably the biggest game of the English Premier League season. Man City sits atop the table but only barely. Liverpool, still chasing a potential ...
Duke-North Carolina at the Final Four is already one for the ages
It’s already an instant classic and the ball won’t be tipped for four more days. The greatest rivalry in college basketball, one of the fiercest in all of sports, heads to the Final Four. Duke squaring off with North Carolina is a momentous, must-watch occasion when it takes place under routine circ...
We all know Liverpool can’t win the Quadruple, but what my book presupposes…
To say winning the Quadruple–the League Cup, the FA Cup, the Champions League, and the Premier League–is a dream isn’t accurate. No fan ever really thinks of it before a season starts, or really before even February. It’s beyond fantasy. It’s not something you’d ever give the time of day. Perhaps En...
U.K. finally gets around to sanctioning Chelsea’s Roman Abramovich
Roman’s got to go. Hand in your keys to the club before you do more damage to those who don’t deserve it. As it turns out, plenty of people who said politics had no place in sports really meant politics that they don’t agree with had no room at the table. Loud banishment of policy came at the inters...
Fedor Smolov is that guy
After years of political tension between the countries, Russia officially invaded Ukraine on Wednesday, bringing swift sanctions and reaction from around the world, as countries almost unanimously opposed the actions spearheaded by Russian President Vladimir Putin....