soccer Page 22 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Darwin Núñez’s courting of Liverpool holdouts is underway
It must be a slow period for sports in the U.K. as well. There’s not a dart league or a cricket game (match?) going on either? It could be the record-breaking heat that’s made fans more irritable than normal. Whatever it is, overreacting to a player’s preseason debut during a couple of friendlies is...

Carl Nassib came out to help a movement push forward
When Ryan O’Callaghan decided to come out as openly gay, for him it was supposed to be the end of the world. He thought that he would lose everything. His family, his friends, his career, it would all be over with so his plan in 2011 was to kill himself after the conclusion of his NFL career. ...

We fixed the college conferences... you're welcome
The irony of all the bellyaching about constant player movement and the free market from the NCAA and its institutions is that they aren’t even loyal to their conference partners. Those same athletic programs get a buck dangled in front of them and dive into a national conference transfer portal of ...

USWNT qualifies for World Cup, but we still don’t have all our answers
It’s hardly a surprise, but the USWNT walloped Jamaica 5-0 in the CONCACAF Women’s Championship to qualify for the 2023 World Cup, where they carry the heavy but illustrious burden of being two-time defending champs....

Demaryius Thomas’ CTE case a stark reminder that all football players, regardless of position, are at risk
No one is shielded from CTE exposure once they first put on the pads and a football helmet....

Todd Boehly knows Chelsea aren’t the Dodgers, right?
Chelsea fans knew it would be a bit of a comedown from the ownership of Roman Abramovich — though from dubious-at-best roots he did turn Chelsea from basically an also-ran to a world power beyond all of their dreams — to whoever came next. American ownership of Premier League teams has always been v...

The Yanks are marching into Elland Road
Normally, when you’re a manager and you save a team from certain relegation, you’d be given a key to the city and have a welcome mat anywhere (and let me tell you from experience, having that in Leeds can lead to a lot of rough mornings). Jesse Marsch isn’t that guy, even though he did save Leeds fr...

Which players have played on the most teams in each sport?
Adjusting to the environment around you is key to success in any sport. Even with NBA rosters having the smallest maximum roster size of the big four North American leagues with 15 players, there are personnel changes all the time. Imagine having to deal with that in new cities with new teammates an...

USMNT Under-20 men’s team brawls with Costa Rican team
The United States men’s national under-20 soccer team’s initial celebration for qualifying to the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup lasted all of five seconds. They got into a fight with Costa Rica. The American’s CONCACAF U-20 Championship quater-final was heated throughout, with plenty of those mass confro...

This isn’t good for Christian Pulisic
Stages of development aren’t linear, and not every stage as you move along the line are pleasant. As the USMNT has more and more players making their mark in the biggest leagues in the world, one stage before they are main stars on the biggest teams is that they’re going to be shuffled around a bit ...

Girls’ high school sports: The most impactful legacy of Title IX
One of Title IX’s most significant triumphs in the last 50 years has been the soaring number of women competing in high school sports. The number of women in sports grew more than tenfold, from 294,015 in the 1971-72 school year to 3.4 million in 2019, according to a Women’s Sports Foundation study....

Man U chairman’s trip to the pub confirms Glazers don’t care about the fans
I’ve always been fascinated by the difference in sports fandom here in the colonies and abroad. Specifically, how soccer fans still feel like they have some control and say in how their clubs and sport is run (and in Germany they most certainly do). While here we have a more just-take-it mentality. ...

LGBTQ+ representation in women’s athletics is more than just something men’s sports can aspire to
So much inclusion in sports can be attributed to Title IX. The passing of that law gave women inroads into sports, and they have used those routes to bring added representation of not only women but also women who identify as LGBTQ+. From Megan Rapinoe and Abby Wambach in soccer to Diana Taurasi, Su...

If you want to drink or get laid at the World Cup, this is not your year
Qatar has gone the way of Catholic parents before prom, enacting a ban on sex for the biggest party the city has ever thrown in the 2022 World Cup. If the lethal heat, deadlier working conditions, strict rules concerning alcohol, and summer-ruining schedule change wasn’t enough rain (sunlight of a h...

The most exhausted pro athletes are…
The funny thing about sportswriters complaining about how a professional season is too long is if you ask a person if they’re overworked, how many are going to say no? Any amount of work is too much. Interview me after a long shift or following a session with a therapist, and I’m ready to chase get ...

The U.S. Men’s National Team are focused on the big prize
To stay physically and mentally fit with zero setbacks for a grueling, 10-month soccer season is impossible. Truly putting on the blinders from the outside world for a month, maintaining your peak condition both on the field and away from training was the treacherous, yet not impossible goal. Curtai...

Make it a best of 13
Usually, especially in a Stanley Cup Final, you need at least a few games before the level of play truly takes off. Coaches and teams want to try different things, chase their matchups, or keep things tight as they can to preserve already exhausted players until there is absolutely no choice. No one...

What, if anything, do we take from the USMNT draw with El Salvador?
Let’s start by not overreacting to a 1-1 draw against El Salvador. It was the same result that kicked off the United States’ Octagonal round of World Cup qualifying. That matchup from last September mattered way more to the US. And the Yanks didn’t score in that game....

MLS becomes the first to go full streaming
Well, someone was going to do it. ...

In this edition of ‘Should That Be a Statue?'
Imagine if your lowest moment was so abysmal that people would want to build a statue to it? No, I’m not talking about the Southern part of the United States, I’m referring to Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final that earned him a red card before France fell to I...