epl Page 18 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Premier League Top-Four Race Is Now Hotter Than Hell
If the past couple years have been the Premier League’s Golden Age, thanks to the league’s development of top-to-bottom quality and a powerful Big Six, making it the one domestic league all soccer fans practically must follow, then this season might just be this Golden Age’s Golden Year. All season ...
VAR Is Making A Mess Of The Champions League
However we got here, we’re certainly here now. When the Champions League announced that it would introduce VAR—Video Assistant Referee, essentially soccer’s answer to the instant replay challenge—midway through this current campaign, the system brought years of baggage with it. Its deployment at las...
This Beautiful But Needlessly Complicated Goal Is Sadio Mané In A Nutshell
Sadio Mané is the kind of player who tends to make easy things look unnecessarily difficult and impossible things look effortless. It’s hard to find a better encapsulation of this than the goal he scored today in Liverpool’s match against Watford:...
This Beautiful But Needlessly Complicated Goal Is Sadio Mané In A Nutshell
Sadio Mané is the kind of player who tends to make easy things look unnecessarily difficult and impossible things look effortless. It’s hard to find a better encapsulation of this than the goal he scored today in Liverpool’s match against Watford:...
Brendan Rodgers Is Back In The Premier League, And It's Almost Like He Never Left
Brendan Rodgers lost his job at Liverpool after a couple disastrous months to start the 2015–16 season. Yesterday, the Northern Irish manager announced his return to the Premier League as the new manager of Leicester City. And while more than three years and a couple interim seasons of outrageous ma...
Paying Coaches And Administrators Is Ruining College Sports
The New York Times’ opinion section published an extraordinary piece today. What’s extraordinary is not the content, which is dull and dulling and dishonest, and has been published in basically this exact form for the better part of the century. What’s extraordinary is that we now have hard evidence...
Mamadou Sakho Is Crystal Palace's Dap Master
This video, in which Crystal Palace defender Mamadou Sakho walks around the team cafeteria casually rattling off a series of intricate and unique handshakes with eight different teammates, could only be improved if at the end manager Roy Hodgson walked up and the two pulled off the most complex one ...
David De Gea Is Proof That Goalkeepers Should Embrace The Kick Save
You can not read the book on goalkeeping because the book does not exist, and that is for the better. A book might be helpful for outlining fundamentals and common techniques, but it might also be an anchor drowning effectiveness in a pool of orthodoxy, a dagger sacrificing creative problem-solving...
Tottenham Are A Fairy Tale In Search Of A Happy Ending
When will Spurs quit messing around and finally win something? That is the question flying around North London like an arrow aimed at Mauricio Pochettino and Tottenham’s upper-management this week after the club fell out of both domestic cup competitions, succumbing to the injury crisis even the mos...
Football Needs Blown Calls
To head off the inevitable whataboutism: Yes, the Rams got hosed too, by multiple missed penalties. But none of those were as blatant, as obvious in realtime, or as directly would have changed the outcome of the game, as the missed pass interference by Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman on Saints...
There's Only One Way This Could Get Worse
It is absolutely rotten that the Saints’ season was ended at least in part by two blown pass interference calls, including an inexplicable one in the last two minutes. Rams corner Nickell Robey-Coleman, who smashed Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis in the head while the ball was in the air, said of the...
It's Beginning To Feel Like Manchester United Are Back
There’s not a chance in hell Manchester United win the Premier League this season. The odds of them accomplishing what should be the bare minimum for the richest club in the world—finishing in the Champions League places—are better, but hardly great. Barring multiple calamities on the part of a coup...
VAR Shat All Over Yesterday's Tottenham-Chelsea League Cup Match
Tottenham beat Chelsea in the first leg of their League Cup semifinal tie yesterday by a score of 1-0 thanks to a video replay-awarded penalty decision that was so comprehensively terrible that it had both managers trashing VAR after the match....
Bears Complete 30-Yard Pass For No Gain As Officials Recover Fumble
The Eagles-Bears game got weird right before halftime when Eagles cornerback Cre’Von Leblanc wrested the ball from Bears receiver Anthony Miller in an impressive display of strength. The play was initially ruled an incompletion, but the inhuman standard of slow motion showed that Miller caught the b...
Refs Cost Chargers And Ravens Touchdowns On Consecutive Plays
A bizarre sequence came to the cosmically correct ending in the Chargers-Ravens game. Refs and replay officials arguably blew at least four separate calls at the 1-yard-line before the Chargers finally punched it in for a 20-3 lead....
Manchester City Beat Liverpool And The Shit Just Got Real<em></em><em></em>
The act of playing soccer is so impressive because it involves 11 individuals combining their very specific and often disparate skills to create a amoeba-like whole that can progress a ball up and down a large field and into a goal using only its 22 feet while a competing body tries to stand in its ...
Is ESPN's Big Year-Long Love Letter To College Football Going To Suck?<em></em>
ESPN announced today that it will be running a year-long feature “on every platform” that is meant to act as a celebration of college football. The introductory story, written by ESPN senior writer Ivan Maisel starts like this:...
Time To Check In On Jim McVay And His Ridiculous College Football Grift
Today the Washington Post published a story on Jim McVay, the guy whose only job is to run a lower-tier college bowl game, and the million dollars he makes for doing it. The report, which points out how the $1,045,000 McVay made in 2017 “ranks as extreme” even in the bloated business of college foot...
Manchester City Suddenly Have Their Backs Against The Wall
Halfway through the Premier League season, a stylish team from North West England has distinguished themselves as the sole front runner for the EPL title, holding a six-point gap over a flawed team from London. Also, Manchester City are in vague contention....
Jordan Pickford's Manuel Neuer Impression Ended In Disaster
Tottenham pantsed Everton something serious this afternoon, scoring six goals on the hapless Toffees. Their attack was ruthless and Everton never seemed to get up to speed. Son Heung-Min banged in the opener with a well-placed shot, though really, the story of that goal is Everton keeper Jordan Pic...