premier Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Liverpool pulled another rabbit, but its pixie dust might only last a week
While I really shouldn’t let my frustration with how MLB has sullied their regular season into my soccer coverage, it was hard not to think about how Rob Manfred just discarded those moments during the regular season that portended to more down the line as I watched Darwin Nunez dig out a Liverpool ...
An ode to the enigma that was Paul Pogba
With the news that Paul Pogba has been suspended for four years (pending appeal), it almost certainly ends his career. Should he have to serve the full four seasons, he’ll be 35 and not have played in forever. The question of whether he’s a legend or left far too much on the table would depend on wh...
The ATP tour and Saudi Arabia agree to another round of woke pandering
We need a more menacing term than sports washing because it’s not working. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the ATP tour agreed to a five-year sponsorship Wednesday, with courtside ads slated for the season-ending ATP Finals, Indian Wells (of course), Miami, Madrid, and Beijing....
Have the Premier League’s financial rules kept Newcastle from being Newcastle?
While the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules might have lost a shade or two off their teeth with the news today that Everton have had their 10-point penalty reduced to six on appeal (though they have another charge to dodge), that doesn’t mean they’re not having an effect. The desolate...
Ranking the major sports networks from most elitist to Fox Sports
Prestige and journalism shouldn’t go hand-in-hand together. Sure, there are outlets with enough history and money to have ethics departments, fact-checkers, and paying subscribers, but the omnipresent tier — the ones controlling the rights to the big sports — are cost-cutting corporate slugs like th...
We are all lying to ourselves about Man City
It’s at this point in the Premier League season where fans of any competitor of Manchester City’s starts to pile up the lies to themselves. Especially after watching City never really get out of second gear to see off Everton, 2-0, and even more so in trying to ignore the symbolism in Erling Haaland...
In soccer, yellow mixed with orange now equals . . . blue?
There is a throughline to some joke about a player in the future being shown a blue card and then having an arduous and impatient wait to be released out of a penalty box/sin bin. I’m clearly too mature to make such a joke. ...
Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker saved Arsenal’s season
We spend a lot of time trying to unearth the little tactical nugget, or superlative performance from one player, or decoding the 3D art that most soccer matches at the highest level usually are to figure out why one team won or lost and why this team is higher in the table than the other. But someti...
Hey, let's give Chelsea a swift kicking while they are down
Far be it from me to kick Chelsea while they’re down after a 4-1 fustigation at the hands of Liverpool . . . wait, that’s precisely what I’d do! So let’s get to it! It’ll be fun!...
I hope Gio Reyna is ready to run
“Where In The World Is Gio Reyna?” appears to have an answer, as reports this morning say that he is in England to wrap up a loan deal with Nottingham Forest. You know when you get the “Here We Go!” from Fab that it’s official. ...
Liverpool finally find a win in third gear
The Premier League finished up their split round, in what constitutes their winter break. So let’s run through every game that went down Saturday and Sunday, which doesn’t even allow us to get to our usual five bullet points! It’s our break, too, we guess. And sorry to any Brighton or Wolves support...
Soccer’s had load management for some time — now there just might be more of it
As if on cue, one of soccer’s biggest stars on one of the world’s biggest clubs went down with injury in the Africa Cup of Nations. While there’s not a diagnosis yet, Mohamed Salah limped off just before the half in Egypt’s draw against Ghana on Thursday. This comes a day after Kylian Mbappé warned ...
Gio Reyna knows he needs to justify the noise
The funny thing about Gio Reyna, and more to the point, all the noise about him – the controversy with his family and Gregg Berhalter, the anticipation of any appearance with the national team, the confidence that he’s the country’s most talented player – is that it is built on such a tiny foundatio...
The Man City monster rises from the sea
The Premier League has reached the portion of the season when it paws at having a winter break, splitting up the 21st round of fixtures over two weeks to give half the teams the week off this week and half the teams the week off last week. Unless they have a FA Cup replay. Or a League Cup semifinal....
Soccer stars who took Saudi blood money looking to bail on league
The idea of the Saudi Pro League being a looming threat always felt just a touch out there, even if it had come to more prominence last summer. What it certainly looked like was a fertile dumping ground for clubs to offload players who were coming around to an age where a significant transfer fee wa...
Sometimes the magic of the FA Cup is getting your teeth kicked in
Every sports fan likes to complain. That’s the main point, really. I’m a Chicago Bears fan, for God’s sake. I’m made of gripes now. But we have it pretty good over here in the States, when compared to what you might go through in other parts of the world. What we would have all gone through had we b...
Without Mo Salah, Liverpool could be screwed
I have nightmares that I’ll be seeing this in my sleep for the next decade:...
NBA signs off on Cuban's sale of Mavericks
The Dallas Mavericks officially have a new owner as the NBA approved Mark Cuban’s sale of the franchise to Miriam Adelson and her family on Wednesday....
Turns out, the Super League is only mostly dead
If the image of Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and Barcelona president Joan Laporta taking a fireplace bellows to the Super League this morning makes you giggle, just know to get it in now because it’s going to get a lot more annoying at some point in the future. Yes, the Super League, that ...
Halfway point for the Premier League can only mean a couple (or a million) things
We’re now into the Premier League fan’s favorite time of year and it’s symmetrical that it lines up with a child’s favorite time of year, given both’s penchant for inexplicable screaming and crying. It’s holiday time, which means children and fans alike don’t have to do anything but sit around, neve...