the-world-cup Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
France warms up for the World Cup by being their normal furiously weird selves
One of the great orators of our time, Eddie Izzard, once said of the French, “They’re a bit…fuckin’ French.” Perhaps there is no greater example than the French national team, and that covers both the men and the women....
The sports figures we've lost in 2022
Here’s a look at the athletes and sports figures we’ve lost in 2022....
Don’t do it, Christian
The transfer window is closing soon, and that would normally mean a pretty furious avalanche of rumors, requests, bids, and stories. Deadline day has become the sport’s free agency day in the NHL or NBA (or even election night), with masses of reporters spread out across the European continent breat...
Welcome to Blah-gust, the worst time of the sporting calendar
Mark it down: 9:35 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10. We’ve reached the peak (nadir?) of sports’ slow season. You know it’s the doggiest of dog days when ESPN is killing time with Little League World Series coverage. No disrespect to the youth, but I’m not going to subject myself to watching children’s athlet...
Brenden Aaronson is going to be just fine
Amongst the excitement of any US player heading overseas, there’s always a tremor of trepidation (I’m usually anti-alliteration but here we are). This angst is sure said player will fail, and will cast a pall over any future Yank moving to that team or even that league. We’re probably past that, giv...
Will Liverpool’s season be defined by children?
It depends on how you define drama whether or not you find any in the Premier League season. We pretty much know that either Manchester City or Liverpool will win the title. Some combination of Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, and maybe United will fill out the other Champions League places. Perhaps Newcast...
A serene Tottenham Hotspur will take some getting used to
It’s pretty obvious a team has a habit, even a reputation or history, of being a fuckaround when its very name is used as a definition of that. “Spursinees” has been a term thrown around since just about the Premier League’s beginning, which makes it clear what everyone thinks of Tottenham. No matte...
The crypto crash makes its way to sports
It didn’t take much of a connection with the stars to figure out that the whole crypto thing was a bubble that was going to burst. You tend to know when rich assholes are pushing bullshit on those with not much money so the former can take what little the latter have left that something’s afoot. Con...
Bring Brittney back: Griner needs to return to the U.S. ASAP
Brittney Griner is not forgotten, as she sits in a Russian jail cell after pleading guilty to having a tiny amount of cannabis oil in her luggage after playing basketball for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the WNBA offseason....
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....
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 ...
It’s Hollywood FC now
The idea of MLS as a retirement home has been a misnomer for a while. While the league might not pull in the biggest players in the world in their prime, it certainly isn’t waiting around until they can’t move anymore, for the most part (those watching Douglas Costa for the Galaxy might disagree). T...
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...
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....
The Celtics are so weird
I suppose, when it’s all over, if the Warriors close this out, this Finals will be billed as an example of just how much experience in the championship round matters. It’s the easy-to-reach conclusion as the Celtics sure look like the better team most of the time. And yet they find themselves down 3...
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...
The biggest thing to happen to the USMNT this weekend was not becoming the villain
The USMNT played two friiendlies this week, and in a normal year these would be the “World Cup Sendoff” games where the roster would basically be finalized. They would have been a lot more intensely watched by both Gregg Berhalter and fans alike, with the final cuts following soon after. The matches...
Canadian soccer up in arms
Speaking of political issues and sports, the protesting soccer team phenomena has spread north of the border. The Canadian men’s national team refused to take the field against Panama for a friendly on Sunday after a dispute with Canada soccer over how exactly the funds from their upcoming World Cup...
Landon Donovan: Fall World Cup could hurt USMNT
Part of the charm of every FIFA World Cup is how it takes up a large chunk of summer. It either coincides with the tail end of the NBA and NHL playoffs, or misses it all together and only has to share sports airwaves with baseball’s slow ass. And it’s much more palatable to sit through a pair of 45-...