soccer Page 123 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

This New Year, Resolve To Ignore Abby Wambach's Bad Opinions
Last week, USWNT legend Abby Wambach played the final match of her career with the national team. This should have been time only for rapturous praise of her long and illustrious career, with everyone acknowledging everything she’s done for the sport as she rode off into the sunset (or whatever coun...

Bad Soccer Man Savagely Kicks Opponent Straight In The Face
This disgusting act of wanton violence is brought to you by Mehmet Değirmenci, a Turkish amateur soccer player. As you can see in the video below, moments before Değirmenci so cruelly smashed this poor guy’s head like a teed-up football, he became upset when the ref showed him a red card for the rec...

Sepp Blatter Banned From Soccer For Eight Years
FIFA president Sepp Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini have been barred from the sport for eight years, over a 2011 payment of about £1.3 million that the FIFA ethics committee said was in exchange for Platini’s support of Blatter in an upcoming election. It feels almost like Al Capone and ta...

Tim Roth: I Starred In FIFA's Awful Propaganda Movie For The Money
Tim Roth is a real and talented actor who has been nominated for an Academy Award, among other recognitions of his good work, which made it very strange to see him starring as Sepp Blatter in the FIFA-financed propaganda film about the organization’s history, United Passions. FIFA spent about $27 mi...

The Anatomy Of A Bogus Soccer Rumor, Starring Wayne Rooney
As any sports fan knows, rumors of trades, signings, suspensions, and lineup changes—almost always vaguely attributed to sources—dominate sports media reporting, and therefore our conversations about sports. (Perhaps the causal arrow points in the other direction?) But what the American sports fan m...

Abby Wambach Exits To Standing Ovation As USWNT Lose At Home For First Time Since 2004
Abby Wambach left her final United States Women’s National Team game tonight to a thunderous standing ovation, but was unable to score the storybook goal her teammates were so desperately trying to assist. The USWNT’s 1-0 loss to China in New Orleans—coming at the end of their long World Cup victory...

Jonathan dos Santos Denies Report That He's Gay, Blasts Media For Discrimination
Mexican national team player and Villarreal midfielder Jonathan dos Santos denied a report today that said he was in a relationship with teammate Mateo Musacchio....

Spectacular Long-Range Xabi Alonso Strike Saves Bayern Munich
Despite sending out a very strong lineup against SV Darmstadt 98 in their DFB Cup round of 16 match, Bayern Munich struggled mightily against the Bundesliga newbies. The best team in the world dominated possession and unleashed 16 shots, but only three of them were on target, and Bayern Munich strug...

How Gerard Deulofeu Unleashed Romelu Lukaku
If you’ve watched more than a few Everton games this season, you’ve been witness to one of the more exhilarating sequences the Premier League has to offer. That would be Gerard Deulofeu toying with a defender on the right wing, readying a cross with his giant striker, Romelu Lukaku, lurking in the b...

UEFA Didn't Think Through This Twitter Campaign
Tickets went on sale today for next summer’s European soccer championship, and to help promote the sale UEFA is running a Twitter campaign that lets users create a “supporter’s badge.”...

Chicharito Is On Fire
Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez’s move away from Manchester United and Real Madrid off to Bayer Leverkusen probably seemed like settling, an acknowledgement on his part that he wasn’t cut out for the biggest, most ambitious teams in the world. But the first half of his debut Bundesliga season has been...

Lionel Messi And Marvin Plattenhardt Score Identical Free Kick Goals
Leo Messi hitting geometrically ambitious free kicks is about as unsurprising of a sporting development as Boogie Cousins getting fed up and pouting. And yet, this geometrically ambitious free kick was spectacular and deserves to be brought up and seen. Messi is so good that this has commonplace, an...

Kuwaiti Soccer Team Engages In Mass Referee Beatdown
So one Al-Jahra player shamelessly kicks an opponent, gets sent off, another Al-Jahra player shamelessly kicks that ref in response, also gets sent off, a goddamn Al-Jahra club director hops onto the pitch and berates the refs before smacking one, and by the end the match had to be canceled after pr...

Soccer Players And Coaches Celebrate Season Finale By Pummeling Each Other
Well, this is certainly one way to mark the culmination of the Bolivian league season. Not the best way, mind you, but one way....

Rogério Ceni, The Goalkeeper Who Thought He Was A Striker, Retires
In his over two decade career, Rogério Ceni scored 131 goals in 1,256 matches for club and country. A goal once every 10 games or so would be a piss-poor return if Ceni was a striker, but he wasn’t. He was a goalkeeper....

Match Canceled In Chile After Fans Storm Field And Go Apeshit
This has just about everything you get from horrible soccer fandom: A bunch of idiots on the field, indiscriminate wielding of metal poles, flares, chairs being used as weapons, riot police, and a match ruined because the guys in the stadium would rather demonstrate their superiority mano a mano rat...

Report: FBI Investigating Sepp Blatter's Role In $100 Million Bribery Case
According to a new report from BBC Sport, the FBI is looking into Sepp Blatter’s role in a $100 million bribe paid to FIFA by now-defunct sports marketing company ISL. Former FIFA executive Joao Havelange apparently wrote in a letter to the FBI that Blatter was well aware of the corruption within FI...

Goalkeeping Boner Gives Portland A Goal 27 Seconds Into MLS Cup
Steve Clark got way too casual with this backwards pass from Wil Trapp and gifted Diego Valeri and the Portland Timbers a goal to start MLS Cup. At 27 seconds, this is easily the fastest goal in MLS Cup history....

Report: Swiss Authorities Raid Same Hotel As Last Time, Arrest More FIFA Officials (UPDATED)
Remember six months ago, when Swiss authorities raided a luxury hotel in Zurich to arrest a number of FIFA officials, on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department? Luckily for those of us who want to see the incompetent and corrupt world soccer organization brought to its knees, it’s happening again!...

Most Of The Venezuelan National Soccer Team Threatens To Quit
Fifteen members of Venezuela’s national team threatened to stop playing for their country unless top Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF) officials resign, according to a letter team captain Tomás Rincón published on Twitter yesterday....