soccer Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The USMNT shows mettle, and a lack of depth
The scoresheet will say that the USMNT got a 3-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago. And because it’s the Nations League, and more importantly the qualifying round for next summer’s Copa America, the result lords over all. Manager Gregg Berhalter will probably say something about the patience and fortitud...

Shohei Ohtani's most likely landing spot is the NL West
We’ve come to the end of our tour of the islands of every MLB team’s offseason outlook. We wrap up in the NL West, still the favorite landing place for Shohei Ohtani, as two of the rivals here are going to duke it out to bring him either slightly up the coast or six hours up it. One more time…...

The NHL is going to screw with OT again, even though it’s already a joke
Whenever any discussion of changes the NHL wants to make to its standings system or points system, it has to be remembered that the league has no interest in finding ways to separate the good teams from the bad. The league likes it that very few teams are ever actually under .500 (only 10 of the 32 ...

Is a Netflix docuseries enough to make you care about the NBA In-Season tournament?
Word on the street is that the NBA and Netflix could be partnering up on the new In-Season tournament. Maybe Netflix can get fans to care about this seemingly pointless tournament nobody asked for. It sounds like all the risk would be on Netflix while the NBA sits back and soaks up all the publicity...

Oh, look, the right is screaming about Megan Rapinoe again
Death, taxes, and the right screeching about Megan Rapinoe....

Liverpool can't afford to lose Mo Salah
We’re almost a quarter of the way through the Premier League season. Thanks to 38 not being divisible by four, there really isn’t a quarter-mark in the season. After the next round of fixtures after Thanksgiving, we’ll have passed it. ...

Megan Rapinoe goes out on her shield, with a joke and a smile like always
Going to penalties, taking the last one, scoring, lifting the trophy. That’s probably the perfect ending that most had designed for Megan Rapinoe and OL Reign in last night’s NWSL Final against Gotham FC. A chance to makeup, a little bit, for her penalty miss at the World Cup. Maybe even erase, just...

Wake me up when the NBA adds a Champions League or an FA cup
The first NBA in-season tournament kicked off Friday evening. If you were unaware, you’re less informed than most because the gimmick has only been beaten into our brains every day since the season tipped. It’s really a brilliant way to dress up a regular season game, and the courts are so obnoxious...

USMNT gets to tussle with some real teams…kinda
Ah, the fresh hell of yet another international break. Club seasons are put on pause for a raft of qualifiers, be they Euro, or World Cup, that are pretty much foregone conclusions robbed of any real urgency, especially thanks to the expanded field for 2026. If not those, we get a helping of interna...

Arsenal is all grown up
While Arsenal ran Manchester City close for most of the campaign last season, when the chips were down in the spring they got mauled by the Citizens twice, as well as other boneheaded results that eventually left them up the track. It was this version of Arsenal’s first crack at a title challenge, s...

And now, a national moment of silence: The Twins' playoff-win drought is over
Our long national nightmare is over. The Minnesota Twins won a playoff game....

MLS is playing pretty fast and loose with Lionel Messi’s injury
The problem with hinging an entire league’s reputation and financial fortune on one man is what do you do when that man isn’t around? If you’re MLS, you kind of shut your eyes, put your fingers in your ears, and pretend it’s not a problem. ...

VAR performs its coup de moron
Whether VAR is still in its teething stages, and this is season five so it’s really debatable whether or not it should still be having growing problems, it will never be able to escape its fatal flaw. And that is it is still administered by humans. So it’s still going to be susceptible to human erro...

Apparently, it’s Inter Miami fans who are going to foot the bill for Lionel Messi
What, you thought Apple was going to pay for Lionel Messi’s deal? The other MLS owners? C’mon now, you know how this works. ...

Barcelona might prove every fan’s conspiracy theory to be true
You’ve heard that guy at the other end of the bar. It’s impossible to miss, given the volume, and sincerity with which that particular message is always delivered. It’s always along the lines of, “These refs are in the bag!” Here in Chicago, it’s pronounced more like, “Dese jagbag refs are in da baa...

Our national nightmare is over, the San Diego Padres won a game in extra innings
What gets to the heart of baseball, and to the heart of a baseball season, is that 162 games is supposed to be enough for any anomaly or bit of screwiness a long enough timeline to flatten out. Anyone can get hot, but no one can get unreasonably hot for 162 games and six months. Every team is going ...

The Chicago Bears are forever hopeless until new ownership arrives
I’ll never be free of this....

The umpires strike back
There is no longer season than the MLB one, and it’s understandable that just about everyone is at the end of their rope and not ready to deal with any sort of guff from any sort of swine. ...

Talk about Coach Prime all you want, just leave the college football conversation to the actual experts
The seas are parting, the sky is clearing, and the writers and actors are striking at just the right time for college football’s lord and savior to start his ascent....

Here is what we kind of learned from the USMNT’s week
As we and many others stress, international friendlies are weird. Especially when everyone has to fly over from Europe for two games that don’t count for anything while trying to not get hurt. And for the USMNT, there weren’t really too many players trying to carve out a role, or a bigger role, with...