soccer Page 20 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
USWNT-England exhibition set as specter of NWSL abuse scandal looms
There’s no doubt about it. Friday’s far-from-friendly, friendly between the United States women’s national soccer team and the Lionesses from England is the biggest glorified exhibition in American soccer history, regardless of gender. It’s the first women’s soccer match — non-World Cup edition — to...
Sports would be all right if it wasn’t for the organizations that run them
Yesterday was just a banner day for the governing bodies of sports. We know that people in power will do just about anything to protect what little fiefdom they have. In the grand scheme of things, having a seat on the organization running whatever league or game is a pretty small fiefdom. But that ...
Tear gas fired inside Indonesian stadium resulted in one of the worst soccer tragedies in 50 years
Professional soccer is all too familiar with tragedies attributed to overzealous fans. Saturday’s disaster in the city of Malang in East Java, Indonesia following a match between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya’s match, was not one of those instances. Instead, incompetence and a blatant disregard fo...
Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney don’t have any answers for hooliganism either
We already went over how Welcome To Wrexham spent the first four episodes of its first season basically extolling how charming, funny, and nice Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are. The show isn’t meant for footy diehards, which is fine — it’s really meant for anyone who is already in love with thes...
USMNT’s Gregg Berhalter is going to have to get over himself
All right, I’m gonna be Sammy Sunshine about the USMNT. It’s not easy, but there’s a lot of dark clouds after the team went 0-for-180 minutes in scoring goals, or looking like they could get a goal, or even looking like they were interested in scoring a goal, in their last two friendlies before the ...
Which USMNT players punched their ticket to Qatar?
The United States men’s national team has zero minutes of game time remaining before it lines up against Wales at the FIFA World Cup, the country’s first contest on soccer’s biggest showcase in eight years. Tuesday’s scoreless draw against Saudi Arabia gave us one final look at the Yanks before head...
Qatar is conscripting its citizens to be security for the World Cup, so this is definitely going to go well
Here’s the thing about Qatar hosting the World Cup in about six weeks: Even if you could ignore the disgusting and egregious human rights abuses that built the infrastructure for it (which you can’t), or if you could ignore the country’s homophobia and sexism as state policy (which you can’t), or th...
Don’t worry USMNT fans, England have been even more ass
As we discussed yesterday, the first half of the last batch of friendlies for the USMNT could really not have gone worse or been more discouraging. Against the B-team version of Japan, a squad that’s just about on the same plane as the USMNT, the Yanks laid a foul-smelling egg that also doubled as a...
Beck, you can’t possibly need the money from this ad that badly
I know that I’m supposed to waive the white flag on the fight of any musician selling their songs and work for commercials. Most of them do it, the industry doesn’t work the way it used to, and it’s probably a necessary evil these days. This is just the way the world is, everything is for sale, no m...
The USMNT still have a Weston McKennie problem, but it might not matter much
One of the many complications of a winter World Cup, though far down the list, is the death of the pre-tournament friendly. Normally, teams get together for a couple weeks after the domestic season and then get two or three ramp-ups before the tourney starts to establish rapport, try some new format...
At least Matt Turner played well
It’s never a good sign when the biggest pro from the United States men’s national team’s Friday debacle full of cons — a 2-0 loss to Japan that doubles as the Yanks’ penultimate FIFA World Cup tune-up — was goalkeeper Matt Turner. The Arsenal summer signee was called into action frequently and made ...
Look what happens when you believe
I’ve always thought Phil Dunster, famous for playing Jamie Tartt on Ted Lasso, and Manchester City’s Jack Grealish looked alike. Now, they can square off in FIFA 23, as the world of AFC Richmond will be part of soccer’s preeminent video game. EA Sports announced the decision to include the fictitiou...
Juventus is pretty garbage and it’s pretty wonderful
While one traditional power of European soccer might only be in a temporary blip, there’s another that has fallen off its horse and then had that horse piss on them. Bayern Munich will most likely recover. Juventus, on the other hand, might be headed to the muck for a while....
It was a good day for karma
Sports fandom is a series of choices. You have to tell yourself a lot of things that might be a fudging of the truth, or outright lies to get through to the next game, the next season, whatever it might be (remember I’m a Bears fan). So yeah, there are shithead fans everywhere, and something that go...
Is there actually hope in the Bundesliga? Well no, but it’s fun to pretend
On the opening day of the Bundesliga season, when Bayern Munich were getting in up to the elbow on Eintracht Frankfurt, just the defending Europa League champions, the joke on Twitter was that the league title was already decided. It was only half in jest. Munich have piled up the last 10 league tit...
der Fußballbundesliga?
The partnership between the NFL and the German Bundesliga, the top tier of the country’s professional soccer scene, is an interesting pair on its own. They both dominate their domestic markets. Dirk Nowitzki and Leon Draisaitl have come from Deutschland to dominate in North America. Steve Cherundolo...
Berhalter’s shortcomings on display with September roster omissions
Mark it down now. John Brooks, one of the two Americans in any severity of contention to claim one of the 26 United States men’s national team spots on the plane to Qatar, will be watching the games on a TV screen. Brandon Vazquez, the 23-year-old FC Cincinnati striker with 16 goals this season, won...
Who the hell let Ray Hudson in the house?
CBS has mostly been a gift to soccer fans. Unlike Turner when it bought the Champions League rights, forgot about it until the day before the tournament started, and then dusted off some closet and called whatever former USMNT members were within an hour’s flight of the studio, CBS has taken its cov...
Do Americans really care about soccer? We’ll find out
The unbearable heat of Qatar pushed the FIFA World Cup out of the summer months for the first time in the tournament’s history. In 2022, the quadrennial footballing soccer showcase won’t crown a new champion before jackets come out of closets across America. The upcoming global event will run from N...
Relieved to miss the redemption arc we didn’t need
It certainly speaks to the world’s ability to completely turn over and surprise you that Nick Kyrgios was installed as the favorite to win the U.S. Open after he pretty much paddled Danil Medvedev and Francis Tiafoe overturned Rafael Nadal. This is Nick Kyrgios after all, who never needed more than ...