premier-league Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Man City is running away with the Premier League title, so what can the rest of the EPL teams still win?
Slow starts, midseason swoons, and collapses are ways soccer clubs can blow a title race, but if you’re Man City, those don’t happen. Pep Guardiola’s team beat Chelsea for the second time Saturday, 1-0, and are now 13 points clear of the second place Blues and 14 points clear of third place Liverpoo...
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 ...
The fight for the USMNT’s #9 spot moves to the European theater
As it’s always been (and sometimes it feels always will be) that the one big hole on the US Men’s international team is the one up top, a central striker. You never want to be in a place where you’re wondering if there’s any way to make Jozy Altidore 10 years younger. It’s Jozy Altidore, after all. ...
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...
Aaaand we’re back to the start
This is my last Mourning After of 2021, and in some ways it feels like the first. Not that we’ve been running in place, so much as we sprinted around the track and ended up back where we started. Which is how Jerry Seinfeld described horse racing, I guess. “We were just here! What was the rush?!”...
Hear me out: The NHL should split up its schedule
The NHL schedule has been jumbled by the league’s latest COVID-19 outbreaks, resulting not only in games being postponed now, but the withdrawal of the game’s top players from the upcoming Olympics....
All this fun and you get paid, too!
I’ll level with you. I didn’t really think that much of John Madden as an analyst, at least for most of my experience listening to him. That doesn’t mean I didn’t think his personality or presence didn’t warrant his standing at the top of the broadcasting game. They very much did. And perhaps I’m ju...
It’s fine if Sergiño Dest and Weston McKennie move in January
There was a feeling of triumph when USMNT fans first heard that American players had landed at some of the biggest clubs in the world in 2020. It was something of an arrival, not just for the players themselves but the US program as a whole. When you can place players at Barcelona and Juventus, you’...
The Premier League’s holiday schedule is wonderful, and also needs to be ended
It wasn’t a huge shock that the BIG MEETING today with the Premier League clubs, managers, and assorted captains resulted in no change whatsoever. The Premier League, and those below it, will attempt to plow through the country’s latest COVID spike, as it decimates rosters, to try and preserve as mu...
Liverpool manager makes the case for not shutting down English Premier League — and he might be onto something
With seemingly every major sports league in “This is fine” mode, the prevailing logic on how to calm the spread of the virus is to take a break to allow the latest variant-induced wave to pass so COVID-ravaged teams don’t have to scramble to fill lineups. English Premier League clubs have been hit s...
So, about that pandemic…
The Detroit Lions, finally in the win column after beating the Vikings last week, head into their game on Sunday without 19 percent of their roster due to injuries and coronavirus....
Divock Origi, the club legend who never plays
Every fandom has their cult heroes who seemingly drop in out of the sky and provide a lifelong memory. Phillies fans have Matt Stairs. Bulls fans have Steve Kerr, to an extent (Kerr was a fine player but he does seem an odd choice from the gods to hit a title-clinching shot, no? Then again, he did i...
Management in Europe remains an unclaimed frontier for Yanks
While more and more American players populate the playing squads of clubs across Europe, that hasn’t spurred more esteem for American managers in the game’s bedrock. After today, only Pelligrino Matarazzo of Stuttgart remains in the Big 5 leagues, or really anywhere significant. That’s because, afte...
Man United have the right idea, that doesn’t mean it’ll work
Counting on a horrible blunder to score and holding on for dear life to scrape a 1-1 draw against Chelsea isn’t where Manchester United are supposed to find themselves. But at least admitting that’s what they are is a first step in the right direction in a long time. Having any sort of strategy on t...
Orange ball!
I can’t tell you why I and other soccer fans (which might just be my one friend) love it when the orange ball makes an appearance. Probably because it’s just so rare. Or maybe because it kind of looks like a tiny alien vessel has landed on the field and the players just decided to use it. It feels p...
Tennis player Peng Shuai is missing after accusing a Chinese official of sexual assault
A top-ranked tennis player has not been heard from for days since detailing sexual abuse allegations against former Chinese official Zhang Gaoli. Like the social media post that was quickly taken down, Peng Shuai has also vanished....
Steven Gerrard takes the next step in his journey home
There isn’t anyone involved in Steven Gerrard taking over as manager for Aston Villa that doesn’t know the deal here. The ending that Gerrard wants is that this is the route to land him as manager of Liverpool one day, the club that he — mostly single-handedly — kept relevant for his playing career ...
Antonio Conte solves Tottenham Hotspur’s biggest problem: ketchup
In 2013, Tottenham Hotspur hired a new manager with some unconventional training methods. He introduced NFL-style tackling, encouraged players who kicked the ball over the goal, danced the robot, and asked his players for “60% effort, 1000% of the time.”...
It’s most certainly Hammer time
While Manchester United have done their best to make sure the Premier League doesn’t become completely stratified into just a “top four and everyone else,” and Arsenal and Tottenham have made the idea of a “Big Six” laughable, that only works if there are other teams willing to crash through the doo...
Antonio Conte is Tottenham’s last gasp, but he’s the best last gasp
If you’re getting sucked under the current, you might as well reach for the strongest line possible. Tottenham, after looking completely adrift as a team and club on Sunday against Manchester United, have pretty much done that by hiring Antonio Conte. It’s not a signal of long-term planning. It’s pr...