soccer Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
World Cup Day 1: It’s their party and they’ll win if they want to
And we’re off. World Cup 2023 finally kicked into gear, and while it’s a bit disorienting to watch an event on a cold winter night from a summer morning locale as the sun comes up, we here tend to do our best work when we’re disoriented. Both hosts started the tournament, and both exited the day wit...
How to completely crap on your legacy, by Jordan Henderson
It’s my fault. I know better than to buy into it, but being so cynical, and assuming that every athlete that seems like he’s above the usual morass isn’t much of a way to live. I wanted to believe in Jordan Henderson, and still do in a lot of ways. ...
World Cup Group H Preview: Why can’t there be more like Morocco?
The women’s World Cup should be, and still is in a lot of ways, a celebration of how far the game has come from where it was even just four years ago. The attention is more, the players, and teams are better, the quality of play keeps rising, the anticipation grows, as does the appreciation when it ...
Cupcakes aren't just reserved for American football
We see it in American sports every year. Usually in the first few college football games of the season, powerhouses take on an FCS team to inspire confidence and have the entire roster see the field and get in-game experience. Oddly enough, that matchup for Alabama takes place as the penultimate gam...
Deadspin predicts the Women’s World Cup
How was the USWNT’s Megan Rapinoe being thrust into the forefront of sport and society while helping the United States women’s national team lift a second straight World Cup title four years ago? No matter how long ago it feels, the next edition of the global showcase is here, with 32 teams competin...
Shout out to SUNY Morrisville for getting attention by being asinine
SUNY Morrisville and Catholic University had better hope for rain or early fall for their noon kickoff in Morrisville, N.Y. on Sept. 16. If there are any remnants of summer in the atmosphere then their cleats had better come with air conditioning because the field is going to feel like hot coals....
Everyone wants to love women’s soccer without taking any responsibility for it
It wasn’t quite the theater of the idiotic that his pre-Qatar speech was, but FIFA president Gianni Infantino had to get in front of a mic before the kickoff of the women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and certainly wasn’t in any more of a mood to take any responsibility for problems with ...
Women’s World Cup Group G preview: Italy and Argentina, you're in the middle of the ride
There’s a clear top and bottom in Group G. Sweden is No. 3 in the world and has every bit of skill needed to win the whole tournament. It’ll be a minor miracle if South Africa picks up a point before a return flight to Johannesburg. The most important game of Group G will be contested by the two tea...
Wiz Khalifa continues Pirates tradition of pitching while totally zooted
While the Pirates will never build him a statue, Dock Ellis has made sure that the greatest accomplishment in sports was performed by a Pirate. That was throwing a no-hitter while on LSD. Perhaps as our country continually lessens its aversion to drugs it’ll get the display it deserves at PNC Park, ...
The next Olympics will be held without Russia and Belarus, but maybe not Russians and Belarusians
World sports fans in search of a natural antagonist for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris will have to find countries other than Russia and Belarus to root against. The IOC has decided not to invite the countries due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which started mere days after the Beijing Winter Oly...
Women’s World Cup preview: The Americans will run into trouble in Group E
The most deceiving thing about the United States women’s national team’s chances of a three-peat isn’t that it has a major target on its back and therefore is part of the game plan to knock out from every other nation in Australia and New Zealand. That was true for the 2019 showcase in France. How’d...
An MLB postseason without suspense is like a ham no burger
Be it actual, or unspoken, the rules change for most postseasons. Hockey leaves its 3v3 overtime format in the regular season so game No. 57 doesn’t last forever, but reinstalls the old rules for the playoffs, leaving open the possibility for four-hour marathons. What is and isn’t a foul changes in ...
Saudi Arabian money is bleeding into the sports world
In 2017, one of the top chess players in the world announced she wasn’t going to play at the World Championships this year in Saudi Arabia. Anna Muzychuk cited the conditions that women would have to play in on her Facebook post, she explained she didn’t want to be accompanied by a man when she trav...
World Cup Group D Preview: Can England complete the set?
The question in all sports has been that once you break through and win, does winning again become easier? Is the mental block gone? Or does the pressure simply build even more, as triumphs go from hoped for to expected? This is only one of the few things that England will be wrestling with at the W...
The Gold Cup was never about lifting another trophy for the US
The reinforcements won’t be coming from this group. Outside of goalkeeper Matt Turner — whose status as the unquestioned No. 1 goalkeeper for the United States men’s national team didn’t change after five games in this year’s CONCACAF Gold Cup — what player from this American squad that only defeate...
Women’s World Cup preview: Can the Japanese bookend the American’s dominance from Group C?
This should be pretty straightforward. It’s a matter of whether Spain or Japan advances from Group C as the winners, and who heads to the knockout stage as runners-up. That leaves Costa Rica and Zambia leaving Oceania early, but does anything exactly go to plan on the world stage? Group C has as cle...
Keep an eye on Adam Silver’s words when it comes to 'sovereign wealth funds'
Never say never. Earlier this week, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver almost said never when he declared that there isn’t a pathway “in the foreseeable future” for sovereign wealth funds to become the controlling owners in the NBA....
The NBA's mid-season tourney is coming — and the league is better for it
After years of flirting with the idea, Adam Silver finally did it. He finally implemented the in-season tournament he’d teased for years. Frankly, the NBA’s in-season tournament setup could have been worse. Richard Jefferson cheesing his way through an over-the-top infomercial like a Buick salesman ...
World Cup Group B Preview: It’s time for Sam Kerr to take this itty bitty world by storm
We spilled some ink in these parts about Mallory Swanson by herself making the USWNT a threat to win the World Cup, before her unfortunate injury. But the US isn’t the only team with a player who is capable of grabbing a short tournament by the haunches, and the co-hosts Australia may have the bigge...