soccer Page 210 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Soccer Fans Who Ought Least To Go Shirtless Always Do
The UEFA Champions League playoff is like a very long series of NCAA Play-In Games Opening Round Games; scrappy champions of small leagues and barely-qualified major league losers clash heads for the right to face the real "Champions" in the group stage....

Man City Accidentally Put In Bid For Lionel Messi Literally Because Of The Telephone Game
According to former Manchester City chief executive, Gary Cook, the offer was made in 2008 while the club was in the process of being purchased by Sheikh Mansour. Cook copped to the mistake in the directly-named book "The Manchester City Years."...

Newcastle's First Goal On The Season Was This Curling Strike From Demba Ba
Demba Ba was slow to start his 2011-2012 campaign and then disappeared entirely from Newcastle United's scoresheet after the month of February. It deprived us glorious goals like this one he scored against Manchester United in February....

Who Is The World's Most Recognizable Athlete?
Saw this photo over at TBJ, of Kobe Bryant making an appearance on his annual Nike tour of China, and it's no surprise. China loves Kobe. Loves him. That's a billion people who go nuts at the very sight of Bryant, a global superstar for 15 years now. It got me thinking: who's the most recognizable a...

After 75 Years And 25 Matches, The U.S. Men's Soccer Team Finally Wins In Mexico
No one really expected much from the USMNT tonight in a friendly at Estadio Azteca against Olympic gold medal-winning Mexico (and its super-creepy mascot), but an 80th-minute goal from Michael Orozco Fiscal—and some incredible goaltending goalkeeping from Tim Howard—gave the US a historic 1-0 win ...

Mexico's Official Soccer Mascot Will Haunt Your Dreams
This is Kin, the official mascot of the Mexican national soccer team, which faces the USA tonight at Estadio Azteca. Mexico is 23-0-1 all-time against the USMNT on its home soil, though I'm thinking it's the hideous sight of this monstrosity and not the extreme altitude or exuberant fanbase that's t...

French Soccer Stars Will Face Charges For Sexing 16-Year-Old Prostitute
Bayern's Franck Ribery and Real Madrid's Karim Benzema got into a spot of trouble in 2010, when a Paris prostitution ring was busted and their names popped up in a little black book. Even worse, it turned out they had paid for sex with then-16-year-old Zahia Dehar, who, in the players' defense, didn...

How New York's New MLS Stadium Heralds The Return Of The Cosmos
Top-level soccer hasn't been played within New York's city limits since 1976, when the Cosmos packed up for Giants Stadium and took the country's brief love affair with domestic pro soccer with them. The drought might be close to over, as MLS and local politicians seem intent on returning a team to ...

New York City Is About To Get A New MLS Team That Might Be Owned By A Rich Dude From Dubai
The New York Post reports today that the city is on the verge of approving a deal for a $300 million stadium that would be little more than a corner kick from CitiField and Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park....

Watch Some Poor Sap Miss A Wide Open Goal Twice
We can argue for days about what miss is "the worst miss ever." This one is on the list. It is so terribly unthinkable, in fact, that the play-by-play man believed the sure thing goal was waived off for some reason, perhaps offsides....

Soccer Player Hits Referee, Match Abandoned After Referee Flops To The Ground
Benfica defender Luisão (wearing number four in black) punched or shoved or hit referee Christian Fischer during a match between Fortuna Dusseldorf and Benfica which resulted in the match being abandoned. Sure, the officials should never be physically battered, or assaulted for that matter, but th...

Mexico Leads Brazil 1-0 At The Half Thanks To This Goal 29 Seconds Into The Match
Oribe Peralta put Mexico up 1-0 on Brazil in today's men's soccer gold medal match, and the score's remained that way ever since. The big news is that Brazil subbed on MOTHERFUCKIN' HULK (we're a big fan of his, remember) despite him being about the least-popular athlete in Brazil at the moment. Di...

The <i>New York Times</i> Tries Its Hand At Animated Gifs. It Does Not Go Well.
If Buzzfeed and the Times made a baby, and it had epilepsy, it would look like this: "10 Animated GIFs From London 2012." These gifs are different—they're constructed from rapid fire shots taken by the Times's photographers, rather than from actual moving pictures. It sort of defeats the entire purp...

Sporting KC Wins U.S. Open Cup In Shootout Described As "More Dramatic Than Tyler Perry Or Shakespeare"
That GolTV still exists is a miracle in itself; the soccer cable net recently lost its cash cow Spanish Liga contract to Al-Jazeera's new beIN Sports channel. It also lost popular analyst Ray Hudson, he of the orgasmic goal calls, which means GolTV's George D. Metellus served in the color commenta...

Tony Hibbert's First Career Goal Leads To An All-Out Celebration Riot
Defender Tony Hibbert was born in Merseyside, home to Everton FC, in 1981. He won a championship with Everton's youth club in 1998 and has played with the English Premier League team since 2001. But the most critical thing you have to know about Tony Hibbert is that he had never scored a goal. Eve...

Columnist Who Says Canadian Soccer Should Stop Whining Admits He Turned Off The Game After 35 Minutes
Tuesday's Olympic semifinal between the U.S. and Canada was one of the most thrilling, dramatic games you'll ever see. It also had some damn curious refereeing....

Canadian Women's Soccer Players May Face FIFA Discipline For Claiming Yesterday's Semifinal Was Rigged
Members of the Canadian women's national soccer team are under fire for comments they made after yesterday's thriller of a match won by the U.S. with seconds to spare....

Alex Morgan's Header In Added Time Of Extra Time Delivered Team USA To The Gold Medal Match
After a brutal battle that included a hat trick from Canadian captain Christine Sinclair, Alex Morgan headed home a cross from Heather O'Reilly and delivered an invitation for the U.S. women to face Japan at Wembley Stadium in a rematch of last year's Women's World Cup final. The goal came 2:30 i...

Canada Is So Salty About American Women's Soccer Dominance
Canada and the U.S. will square off at Old Trafford in the women's soccer semifinals on Monday. On Sunday, Canadian head coach, John Herdman whipped out the western hemisphere's smallest violin and played a little ditty for the officials....