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The biggest World Cup upsets of all time
As Saudi Arabia shocked the globe by defeating Lionel Messi and World Cup favorites Argentina on Tuesday, it provided the most recent example of a tremendous upset victory at the quadrennial showcase. Argentina was No. 3 in the FIFA rankings and Saudi Arabia was the second-lowest ranked team to play...
Messi, who? World Cup favorites Argentina suffers shocking upset to Saudi Arabia
Most American soccer fans went to bed Monday night ready to skip Tuesday’s opening game. Better to get some sleep than watch a blowout when Argentina is going to be in the tournament for a while right? Saudi Arabia entered Group C’s opening match as a +1800 underdog (per BetMGM odds) to win and gave...
World Cup 2022 — Group H preview: Yes, Portugal can win this and no, it won’t be pleasant if they do
Let’s get the main reason out of the way. No one outside of Portugal wants to see giant pain in the ass, huffing his own farts, twice-accused rapist Cristiano Ronaldo — who has denied the allegations — hoist the trophy. It was bad enough in 2016 when he left the final injured that he made sure every...
It’s no less a referendum on Neymar — World Cup 2022 Group G preview
This World Cup is setting up as either a treatise or a coronation for Lionel Messi. He recently collected his first major trophy with Argentina — 2021’s Copa America — but still needs the World Cup to stand on the same pedestal as Diego Maradona in most’s eyes. He’s coming to Qatar with unquestionab...
Your 2022 World Cup safe bets
While every World Cup is unique in its own way, and this one especially, there are certain happenings you can count on. They come about every tournament. The pressure, the coverage, the overall oeuvre of the whole thing just drives people into the same patterns. Over the next month, you can look for...
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 ...
Albiceleste of Steel? World Cup 2022 Group C Preview: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Poland
OK, I’m stretching to get a Rush reference into these. But the heart wants what it wants. ...
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...
C.B. Bucknor drags everyone down with him
It was yet another banner day for C.B. Bucknor behind the plate, as we watched in real time while he lost sense of the strike zone and perhaps indeed any sense of direction at all. The plane which the ball must pass through to be called a strike is imaginary, of course, and tough to judge from a pos...
How can Steph Curry be the petty king when that’s already Kevin Durant’s lane?
Steph Curry’s new moniker, The Petty King, feels contrived. He’s on this post-Finals MVP mission to call out everyone who’s ever slighted him. Cool, man, your legacy is as pristine as they come. Why didn’t this persona come out before his long-sought Finals MVP, when you were still vulnerable? ...
The next stop for Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo knows he hasn’t got much time left in his career. He has likely one more shot at a World Cup in Qatar, unless Ronaldo waits until he’s 41 for a chance in 2026 when the showcase returns to North America. At the club level, success at an older age is easier to attain with more option...
Messi to MLS could be a reality
For most of his career, it was impossible to picture Lionel Messi in any other jersey than the blue and maroon of Barcelona. Nine months into his stay with Paris Saint-Germain, transfer talk for one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots is surfacing once more, with a report coming out on Tuesd...
USMNT in the knockout round! An Argentina-Brazil semifinal! Oh, Canada! (and more World Cup predictions)
Instead of a World Cup taking place in the summer, we’re waiting until the late fall for the festivities to start to get to a manageable playing temperature in Qatar. The 2022 FIFA World Cup draw took place a few weeks ago, giving a path to the 37 teams still in contention to lift the trophy. Four w...
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...
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 ...
Aston Villa shows ambition by signing Philippe Coutinho, but for what exactly?
It may not be possible to feel sorry for someone who got to rake in tens of millions of dollars to live in Barcelona (with a brief sojourn to Munich) and not have to do much. And certainly Liverpool supporters won’t have any sympathy for Philippe Coutinho given the way he exited Anfield for the Nou ...
Perhaps it’s time for Barcelona to recognize what they are
It couldn’t end any other way, especially when you bone it and get zipped by Rayo Vallecano to fall to ninth in the La Liga table....
Real Madrid goes down in Champion’s League shocker
The main headlines of Tuesday’s Champions League will be Lionel Messi scoring his first for PSG. But fuck that, Messi scores every goddamn day. The real story is FC Sheriff, from a country that kind of doesn’t exist, in their first Champions League campaign ever, just beat Real Madrid in the Bernabe...