Lionel Messi and Argentina were scheduled to play their final pre–World Cup warm-up match on Saturday against Israel in Jerusalem, but the game was canceled late last night. Tensions escalated after Israeli authorities decided to move the game from Haifa to Jerusalem in order to, per Israeli Sports Minister Miri…
Beitar Jerusalem received some press Sunday when the Israeli soccer club announced that it would change its name to “Beitar Trump Jerusalem” as a gesture of appreciation for President Donald Trump for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. (Today, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner celebrated the…
The new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem will be opened with a big ceremony on Monday. Ivanka and Jared will be there! I am not here to offer commentary on this development—it is deeply unpopular with basically the entire rest of the world, much like just about everything else the Trump administration has done—but to point…
In September of 2015, soon after the move to Hønefoss, I had spoken with Aaron about future options. I told him I wanted to get back to the United States. He thought that returning to MLS would be an option. Enough teams still knew me and I should be able to at least get a minimum salary offer to be a squad-rotation…
I know I’m warmer than most on the World Baseball Classic, but I think it can only be a good thing that there’s actual, competitive baseball being played right now, after a long cold winter. (My enthusiasm will wane by May, when I’ll be wishing they could just skip ahead to September already. But let’s enjoy this!)
Vocativ has a pretty interesting profile of David Pick, an Israeli-American basketball fiend who exchanges hundreds of WhatsApp messages a day, acting as journalist, agent, scout, and everything in-between. [Vocativ]
Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett has decided not to accompany a group of NFL players touring Israel next week, citing human rights concerns.
At 34 years old, Amar’e Stoudemire doesn’t flex the same explosive, ladder-climbing athleticism he did early on in his NBA career; he’s still fun and destructive on the court, just in a different way.
A large group of Celtic fans waved Palestinian flags before a Champions League preliminary game against Israeli club Hapoel Be’er Shevae last month. This morning, UEFA announced that they would be fining the club €10,000 for the protest because it violated a UEFA rule regarding the use of political symbology.
Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby was defeated by Israel’s Or Sasson in a 100-kilogram match at the Rio Olympics today. It’s customary for judo fighters to shake hands and bow at the conclusion of a match, but when Sasson attempted to shake El Shehaby’s hand, the Egyptian refused.
If these medics really are as incompetent as their Greek counterparts, unable to execute a simple task like taking a hobbled player off the pitch on a stretcher, then they probably shouldn’t have their jobs. If instead this was an elaborate team-building exercise—
It was somewhere around the first bite of m'sakhan and the second glass of arak that I started to think that my panic had been unfounded. "Unfounded" is a strong word. Misdirected, perhaps. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
An Israeli cricket umpire has died after a ball came off a batsman's bat, hit the wicket, and then struck him in the chest and neck region, according to Haaretz. The amateur league umpire—Israel has no professional cricket league—was in the proper position behind the wicket, but unlike in baseball, cricket umpires…
Yesterday's Tel Aviv Derby between Hapoel and Maccabi was called off late in the first half as fans rushed the pitch. But that wasn't enough; supporters of the two sides met up again this morning at a court hearing for those arrested yesterday, and began brawling again. People are fucking nuts.
We will direct you to this David Blatt interview with Israeli newspaper Globes and then back slowly away from the computer. In it, Blatt, the Cleveland Cavaliers' new head coach—and an American Jewish Israeli who once did us the great service of pissing off Coach K—talks about the current wave of fighting in Gaza…
Part of the job of being a governing body for international competition is dealing with the occasional geopolitical nightmare, and deciding how to keep teams from two countries essentially at war from turning a game into a battle. UEFA is nipping that shit in the bud right now, before tomorrow's Champions League draw…
This is what happened at the close of last night's chapter of Israel's biggest rivalry, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv. After a close away win for Maccabi, center Sofoklis Schortsanitis—a former Clippers draft pick—charged into a hostile crowd to try to beat up a Hapoel fan. You can see the fan, in white with a…
Beitar Jersualem, one of Israel's most popular soccer teams, added two non-Israeli players to its roster this year. Zaur Sadayev and Dzhabrail Kadiyev are both Chechan Muslims and are two of the five non-Israeli players to have ever suited up for Beitar throughout the team's existence. Unsurprisingly, a right-wing…
Basketball trash-talking is universal, but there's a line. Guy Pnini, the captain of Israeli basketball's most famous and most successful team, genocided the fuck out of that line on Sunday, as his Maccabi Tel Aviv hosted crosstown rivals Hapoel.
For nearly two decades, Sports Illustrated has stirred the tea leaves to discern a weekly Sign of the Apocalypse. Deadspin salutes the magazine's ongoing effort to cover the end of times but declines to cede the scoop on the biggest event in world history.