soccer Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Women's World Cup 2023: The USWNT isn't a championship squad
Portugal’s headed home looking happy. The flight back to Lisbon should be filled with post-elimination joy and realizations of long-term progress knowing how they held the former undisputed world champions in check. And that’s all you need to know about how the United States women’s national team pe...
World Cup Day 12: Speed kills, and so does a lack of it
We had our clash of teams that have looked most dominant so far, and we can pare that list down to “one team that’s looked dominant so far.” And in something of a surprise, Canada got their leaden asses booted back to the Great White North. Let’s get in. ...
World Cup Day 10: Sweden want you to know it’s not messing around
To open this year’s World Cup, Sweden hoped for a straightforward contest against, on paper, the easiest team to beat in Group G in South Africa. It didn’t go that way, with the Swedish escaping that contest Wellington by the skin of its teeth with a win. Sweden needed a 90th-minute Amanda Ilestedt ...
So this is what it feels like to be a howling soccer fan at the World Cup?
There’s a unique frustration to watching Team USA men’s basketball in the Olympics after the world caught up. Yes, America has a better collection of raw talent, and when motivated, and conducted like an actual team, they can come away with gold. However, it’s always a slog at some point, with savvy...
World Cup Day 8: The Aussies step in it
This tournament started with how every organizer wishes it would, with both hosts getting wins to up the energy and buzz around the whole thing. World Cups and big tournaments are just better when the hosts are relevant and getting the home fans excited. But now both Australia and New Zealand are up...
The USWNT gets out of medium security jail
The pregame chatter mostly centered around Netherlands manager Andries Jonker’s quotes in the Matchday -1 press conference. It certainly had USWNT followers getting a little tight in the seat. In full:...
Lionel Messi’s quick start for Inter Miami has MLS’ detractors quiet
The shouts about Major League Soccer at large from other parts of the sports world get repetitive. Stating it’s a retirement league was always a jaded view. Perhaps it was the league with the most publicity that was willing to take big names past their prime. And while a lack of promotion and relega...
World Cup Day 7: It’s easy when you’re big in Japan…and Spain we suppose
After Group A decided to keep everyone alive with some truly weird (and awful) soccer on Monday night, it was time to send some teams to the land of wind and ghosts on Tuesday, as Costa Rica, Zambia, and Ireland will make it home before the postcards. Let’s make it happen, captain!...
Saudi Arabia poaching NBA talent is possible, but unlikely
In a jocular response to the Saudi Public Investment Fund offering a record $1.1 billion to PSG and Kylian Mbappé for the French icon to play one season in Saudi Arabia, two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo offered up his services to the Al Hilal club. ...
World Cup Day 6: Linda Caicedo is ready to be soccer’s next big female star
Group H was always going to be a battle between the teams not named Germany for who would advance alongside the European powerhouses. There were thoughts that Morocco could go from unknowns to the knockout rounds, then it lost 6-0 to Germany. The last two teams to play their first group stage game w...
World Cup Day 5: We cannot run from who we are
Day 5 of the World Cup was probably the most rewarding, and a great example of how football is football no matter who is playing it, no matter where they come from. We do our best to not compare or relate the women’s game to the men’s, as they’re two different sports. But Sunday night’s fare was per...
World Cup Day 4: Not much more than a feeling
If the story of the first three days of the World Cup was that the tournament favorites were kind of inching their way through their first matches, nothing changed on Day 4. Sweden, Holland, and especially France all had an air of trying to figure out what all the buttons do and what the lights mean...
World Cup Day 3: A demolition to start the United States’ three-peat campaign didn’t happen
The last time the United States women’s national team opened a World Cup, it scored 13 goals against Thailand. That pile-on isn’t typical and wasn’t a drubbing for the sake of sticking it to Yul Brynner. There was no downside to putting up the unanswered baker’s dozen for the sake of goal difference...
World Cup Day 1: It’s their party and they’ll win if they want to
And we’re off. World Cup 2023 finally kicked into gear, and while it’s a bit disorienting to watch an event on a cold winter night from a summer morning locale as the sun comes up, we here tend to do our best work when we’re disoriented. Both hosts started the tournament, and both exited the day wit...
How to completely crap on your legacy, by Jordan Henderson
It’s my fault. I know better than to buy into it, but being so cynical, and assuming that every athlete that seems like he’s above the usual morass isn’t much of a way to live. I wanted to believe in Jordan Henderson, and still do in a lot of ways. ...
World Cup Group H Preview: Why can’t there be more like Morocco?
The women’s World Cup should be, and still is in a lot of ways, a celebration of how far the game has come from where it was even just four years ago. The attention is more, the players, and teams are better, the quality of play keeps rising, the anticipation grows, as does the appreciation when it ...
Cupcakes aren't just reserved for American football
We see it in American sports every year. Usually in the first few college football games of the season, powerhouses take on an FCS team to inspire confidence and have the entire roster see the field and get in-game experience. Oddly enough, that matchup for Alabama takes place as the penultimate gam...
Deadspin predicts the Women’s World Cup
How was the USWNT’s Megan Rapinoe being thrust into the forefront of sport and society while helping the United States women’s national team lift a second straight World Cup title four years ago? No matter how long ago it feels, the next edition of the global showcase is here, with 32 teams competin...
Shout out to SUNY Morrisville for getting attention by being asinine
SUNY Morrisville and Catholic University had better hope for rain or early fall for their noon kickoff in Morrisville, N.Y. on Sept. 16. If there are any remnants of summer in the atmosphere then their cleats had better come with air conditioning because the field is going to feel like hot coals....