soccer Page 27 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
FIFA president claims biannual World Cup will solve immigration, poverty, and maybe mortality?
Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, is still campaigning for his biannual World Cup, a mythic destiny/personal quest to bathe the organization’s execs in even more cash, gold, and swag bags. However, you can’t campaign for this ridiculousness on the platform that it will make the rich even rich...
The USMNT heading to the arctic seems just a touch chicken
It’s been beaten into the ground and then shot repeatedly, but it’s hard to stress enough how different and weird this World Cup qualifying schedule is. Just the three-game windows, spread over just seven days, make for nearly impossible logistics. ...
Let both offenses touch the ball in playoff overtime
I feel like we have this conversation every other year. When a beloved team loses in overtime without their offense ever taking the field, NFL fans get divided into two extreme camps. ...
For one evening, Mohammed Salisu was Gandalf
Usually, when one player dominates a game, bending it to his will, you think of hat tricks and thunder-bastard goals and everything offensive. After all, soccer is judged on who scores and who doesn’t. And that goes for pretty much every sport....
There would be a beautiful symmetry to Newcastle getting relegated
It’s unusually harsh on Newcastle supporters, who are one of the more tortured fanbases in any sport you can find. Imagine if Pirates owner Bob Nutting owned a soccer club, that’s what Newcastle fans just went through. Mike Ashley was not only a raging asshole, but incredibly cheap when it came to t...
Man City is running away with the Premier League title, so what can the rest of the EPL teams still win?
Slow starts, midseason swoons, and collapses are ways soccer clubs can blow a title race, but if you’re Man City, those don’t happen. Pep Guardiola’s team beat Chelsea for the second time Saturday, 1-0, and are now 13 points clear of the second place Blues and 14 points clear of third place Liverpoo...
The women are coming for baseball
It’s probably too early to call it a new era, but with names like Rachel Balkovec and Genevieve Beacom making the headlines, America’s pastime is definitely due for a change-up. Earlier this week, Balkovec was hired as the new manager of the Yankees’ minor league affiliate the Tampa Tarpons. This hi...
AFCON gets some CONCACAF refereeing
The African Cup of Nations gets a rough ride from most of the soccer world, and it’s mostly because of its place in the calendar. It deprives several clubs in Europe of some of their best players for most of January every two years, which isn’t exactly met with acceptance and gratitude. So it can ac...
Let’s use the Girlfriend Transfer Portal Theory to figure out where Caleb Williams is headed
The transfer portal is college football’s most controversial, unpredictable, and ever-changing tool. After a 2021 rule change that eliminated the requirement for transferring athletes to sit out a year before being eligible to play again, this postseason portal activity is exploding....
You’ll never believe this, but U.S. Soccer is actually considering going backwards
If ever there was an organization that embodied “one step forward, slip in your own vomit and fall back,” it’s U.S. Soccer as it can’t ever seem to keep everything flowing smoothly at the same time....
There’s no getting around it, the NFL despises women
There was a time in my life when nothing was as exciting as the start of the NFL season, the Bears season, here in Chicagoland....
The fight for the USMNT’s #9 spot moves to the European theater
As it’s always been (and sometimes it feels always will be) that the one big hole on the US Men’s international team is the one up top, a central striker. You never want to be in a place where you’re wondering if there’s any way to make Jozy Altidore 10 years younger. It’s Jozy Altidore, after all. ...
Changing the World Cup to every two years could (but won’t) help soccer’s have-nots
Changing the World Cup to a biennial event is an awful idea. That’s not the most groundbreaking statement, but I wanted to put it bluntly because that’s the point I want you to remember from the rest of this. And if FIFA president Gianni Infantino is to be believed, and the move has a majority backi...
IDIOT OF THE YEAR: The worst of 2021
Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...
Madden NFL paved the path for other video game sports franchises
When you think of video games and sports, you think of John Madden. (Thank god this is written, and I don’t have to try to do the voice.) The first sports video game I ever played was Madden NFL 92 when I was 6, and even though it’s not my preferred game anymore, there’s no doubt it’s still the de f...
It’s fine if Sergiño Dest and Weston McKennie move in January
There was a feeling of triumph when USMNT fans first heard that American players had landed at some of the biggest clubs in the world in 2020. It was something of an arrival, not just for the players themselves but the US program as a whole. When you can place players at Barcelona and Juventus, you’...
The IIHF thinks women are more contagious than men
In theory, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) isn’t a for-profit agency. Much like FIFA. This is a laughable farce, of course. But there is relief that the facade of shepherding the game and promoting its growth crashed to the sidewalk long ago. They’re barely trying to hide it anymore....
IDIOT OF THE YEAR: 40 of the dullest tools from 2021's shed
Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...
2021 was an incredibly fun year for the USMNT, let’s never do it again
As stated many times before, what the USMNT attempted, and really accomplished, in 2021 is unheard of in international soccer. Turning the entire roster over to children at once just isn’t done. Usually, teams are trying to blend generations, mixing in the aging vets (around 30) with those in their ...
IDIOT OF THE YEAR 2021: Party rolls on with Gerrit Cole, John Stockton, and Mark Davis
Happy holidays, you filthy animals, and welcome to Deadspin’s annual IDIOT OF THE YEAR extravaganza. Within these hallowed slides are 50 of the year’s least bearable dorks, whose transgressions range from “just kinda silly,” to “dangerously stupid,” to “Trevor Bauer.”...