Kylian Mbappe Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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 ...
World Cup 2022 Preview: Group D — Can Denmark be the midnight bomber what bombs at midnight?
If you ascribe to the theory that this will be a truly goofy World Cup — that the short run-up, the injuries everywhere (not clear the amount of injured is all that abnormal but let’s go with it), the odd setting — and that some team from out of nowhere could make a run, you’re probably sizing up yo...
They say a good fastball is still the best pitch
It still amazes me how quickly a baseball playoff series, especially one of the seven-game variety, can pivot. ...
Real Madrid are young and dynamic and it’s annoying
Last season, as Real Madrid went on their bloodless procession to both La Liga and Champions League title, those of us who aren’t decked out in white could console ourselves in the fact that sometimes, there are things you just can’t help. Their league triumph was due to the fact that Barcelona had ...
Kevin Durant Disease is contagious
It used to be that a player would demand out of somewhere when the team he was on no longer — or never — did live up to his talent. It’s when he sought, and maybe deserved, teammates and a front office that matched his skills and ambition, which the current one couldn’t. ...
France warms up for the World Cup by being their normal furiously weird selves
One of the great orators of our time, Eddie Izzard, once said of the French, “They’re a bit…fuckin’ French.” Perhaps there is no greater example than the French national team, and that covers both the men and the women....
So here’s this year’s Champions League group of death
The group-stage draw for the UEFA Champions League is always a strange, exciting, but mostly strange day. The path to European glory becomes more in focus with a straightforward goal: finish in the top half of your group and you make it to the knockout stage that begins next year. If you don’t you’r...
USMNT unveils new jerseys that even the players hate
You know it’s bad when even the players hate the jerseys they’re wearing...
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...
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...
They qualified, so shut up
As mentioned previously this week, the USMNT fan’s natural inclination these days is to turn cold and scornful. It’s understandable, as we all spent so much time watching a team and program that was an utter mess and just twirling around before falling like a child you made do the spin-around-the-ba...
Kylian Mbappé passes the audition but PSG spectacularly fail another test
While the word “narrative” has become something of a cinder block sitting in the intestines of sports, sometimes you just can’t avoid how much it’s beating you over the head. Kylian Mbappé lining up against Real Madrid in the round of 16 in the Champions League was one of those times. Mbappé is stil...
Kylian Mbappé continues to bend Champions League to his will
Kylian Mbappé is only 23, but his plunge into the world soccer scene keeps growing. The French dynamo, playing for his home country’s most successful club over the last dozen years, Paris Saint-Germain, as well as being an integral member of France’s national team, keeps scoring critical goals. Two ...
Olivier Giroud continues to just do the work
It is hard to look at Olivier Giroud and think “grafter.” Because it’s not hard to look at Giroud at all. Ask Leslie Jones. It would be silly to suggest that people don’t make conclusions based on how a player looks. It’s hard to reconcile him as a pure, old-school center forward. Strong, holds up t...
Changing the World Cup to every two years could (but won’t) help soccer’s have-nots
Changing the World Cup to a biennial event is an awful idea. That’s not the most groundbreaking statement, but I wanted to put it bluntly because that’s the point I want you to remember from the rest of this. And if FIFA president Gianni Infantino is to be believed, and the move has a majority backi...
Top 10 sports moments of 2021
Happy New Years’ Eve everybody! I hope you’re getting ready to kiss 2021 goodbye and good riddance, but before we celebrate another revolution around the sun and kick off 2022, I want to take one last look at some cool moments from the past 365 days....
Mohamed Salah is on one
I suppose being as analytic-minded as I can get that I’m going to be hypocritical here. It doesn’t help (or hurt, depending on your point of view) that I love Mohamed Salah in every sense of the word, to an extent that my vulnerability is teetering on “highly damaging.” So take that as you will....
CONCACAF just CONCACAF’d like never before
The most CONCACAF thing happened on Tuesday night, which is an enormous statement to make if you know anything about how CONCACAF works....
Your 2021-2022 Champions League Guide
Despite the attempt to kill it from Europe’s leading clubs last spring (and UEFA’s eventual success in doing so in the coming years), the Champions League returns today in its usual form. While it has become the nexus point in all that’s wrong with soccer and has certainly widened the gap between th...
It’s hard to know who’s king twit of dumb mountain between Real Madrid, PSG, and Barcelona
The transfer window in soccer closed yesterday evening, and after Cristiano Ronaldo took his rape accusations to Manchester United, there weren’t too many surprises. Man City didn’t find the striker they were after, Chelsea added to an already ridiculous squad, blah blah blah. Perhaps everyone was j...