Kylian Mbappe Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Is there any point in playing this Champions League?
Nope, not really! But my editors and management insist that these posts are longer than three words, so I guess I’ll have to explain. If Manchester City waltzed to last year’s trophy, only really sweating in the final for about an hour against a stubborn Inter, they very well may never get out of a ...
It's one franchise QB, how much could it cost? $10?
Sports has reached a level of spending that makes Joe Burrow’s record contract look cute. The Cincinnati Bengal quarterback’s $275 million deal is laughable if it wasn’t all too real. English Premier League clubs spent $2.97 billion in the most recent transfer window. Tiger Woods was reportedly offe...
Arsenal are the Premier League’s new chaos masters and Chelsea can’t buy goals
It used to be Jürgen Klopp’s first Liverpool teams, and possibly the current one, that were considered the most raucous chaos merchants in the Premier League. They were equally capable of the most destructive football, going in both directions, equally capable of howitzer-ing their opponents or thei...
Saudi money putting an expiration date on soccer stars’ charisma
There’s a weird gray area for soccer stars after they turn 30. They’re still good, maybe not great, yet are so established that they command larger sums of money than a younger player or two who is not yet a household name and could Moneyball their teams the same production. In past instances, those...
Giannis Antetokounmpo sounds more excited to play in Saudi Arabia than Milwaukee
Giannis Antetokoumpo is already the savior of pro basketball in Milwaukee. Bucks ownership was threatening to relocate to Seattle while the city hedged on providing the funding for a stadium upgrade before The Greek Freak singlehandedly yanked them out of basketball purgatory. Nearly a decade later,...
Juan Soto provides the perfect metaphor for the Padres season, and Neymar ends up where he was always meant to be
The San Diego Padres are running out of time. They seemed to know it, as Juan Soto blew up at them last week after another dispiriting loss. It’s clear that something is amiss below the surface for San Diego, and Soto was doing his best to try and get everyone focused on what really matters, closing...
Saudi Arabia poaching NBA talent is possible, but unlikely
In a jocular response to the Saudi Public Investment Fund offering a record $1.1 billion to PSG and Kylian Mbappé for the French icon to play one season in Saudi Arabia, two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo offered up his services to the Al Hilal club. ...
Here we go with this Kylian Mbappe nonsense again
Some transfer/trade/free agency stories go on for years, which is what it appears Kylian Mbappe is intent on creating. We all knew about LeBron James’s first free agency three years beforehand as ESPN turned it into its own Odyssey. And his second one a couple years before. Kevin Durant’s next desti...
The USMNT wins its last game in the pre-Balogun era
International soccer, especially this season, is highly weird. So while the USMNT’s 1-0 win over El Salvador to clinch a spot in the semifinals of the Nations League doesn’t look like much — and it isn’t — one must consider that most of the squad has been run ragged with their club teams, had a Worl...
Here's what you need to know as the Champions League returns
It only feels like the Champions League is late in returning for its knockout stage, but this is the normal time of year. What isn’t normal is cramming a World Cup in between the group stages and the knockouts, which makes it seem like this season has already gone on forever even when most leagues a...
Lotta goals in the desert - World Cup Daily Diary: The Final
How do you chuck the trophy away twice and still walk away with it?...
Exploring how a 1-0 advantage in soccer compares to leads in other sports
The World Cup comes to a conclusion this weekend with the third-place game wrapping up earlier today — Croatia defeated tournament Cinderella Morocco 2-1 — and the finals between Argentina and France taking place tomorrow. Lionel Messi’s legacy is on the line, meanwhile, Kylian Mbappé is attempting ...
Leo's legacy is on the line
After Argentina easily dispatched Croatia in the World Cup semifinals, the prophecy of Lionel Messi lifting the one piece of hardware that’d separate him from many of soccer’s other all-time greats is one win away. He’ll have that chance in what’s likely his final game on the sports’ biggest stage. ...
World Cup 2022 Diary: Day 25 - Morocco's historic run comes to an end
What if you just Morocco’d Morocco?...
You love roughing the passer penalties
It’s a visceral feeling. We all go through it. Team A fails to convert on third down, and yet the flag alert on the score bug pops up, and you get this sinking feeling (unless you’re a fan of Team A, that is. I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never seen Justin Fields get a roughing the passer call). The came...
Maybe Neymar is just unlucky
While this World Cup has had its share of great stories, the overarching one that started well before the tournament was Lionel Messi. This is his tournament, whatever Argentina does. Either it’s the last great failure of him (it’s never by him when it comes to Argentina). It’s always that the rest ...
World Cup 2022 Diary: Day 21 - It's no Kane do for England again and Ronaldo walks off a loser... again
First things first: As the sport of soccer mourns, take a moment to remember Grant Wahl, a journalist of the highest order....
The worst kind of punditry
Obviously, I’m biased. I don’t much care for Alexi Lalas, which I’ve made clear. But this isn’t about him exactly. It’s just that he’s the type of media analyst that dabbles in this kind of horseshit all too often to justify his existence. We can thank First Take for this, the idea that debating abo...
Lotta goals in the desert - World Cup Daily Diary: Day 15
Today was about England and France eyeballing each other over their respective opponents, with the only drama being whether or not they would get caught looking too far ahead. They most certainly did not, engaging in a “Anything you can do..” dance that set them up for a glossy quarterfinal on Frida...
World Cup Daily Diary Day 3: Whoops!
Saudi Arabia manager Herve Renard might be the most handsome manager at this tournament, and he certainly didn’t have a problem taking a page from another handsome manager, Jose Mourinho. If you recall the cold war that Barcelona and Real Madrid had when Mourinho was at the helm at the Bernabeu, th...