Long Beach Poly has one of Southern California’s top prep football programs. The school has won 19 regional championships at the top level of competition and has sent more than 60 players to the NFL and hundreds to college football. But this year Long Beach Poly does not have enough kids out for football to […]

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The NBA has fans outside of North America, but not tons of them. So the stunning similarity of what soccer’s Neymar has done and what the NBA’s Kyrie Irving wants to do may have gone largely unnoticed in the vast realm of global sports. In short, it is this: Each is is a star, each […]

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If it sometimes seems as if American sports tend to cycle through the same few dozen coaches … well, it’s pretty much the case. How else to explain Larry Brown, Buck Showalter, Marty Schottenheimer, et al? But international soccer coaches take it to a whole ‘nother level. Some of these guys have coached at 10, […]

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This post was inspired by a piece that appeared in The Telegraph, a British newspaper, in 2015, during the Fifa Women’s World Cup. In it, the author came up with “11 reasons why women’s football is better than men’s” I have been watching women’s soccer for the past few weeks, and thinking about it, as […]

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Not long after Landon Donovan was pushed into giving up international soccer, by U.S. national soccer’s blundering coach Jurgen Klinsmann, I took a look at Landon’s record 57 goals for the U.S. national soccer team and broke them down by categories. That parsing of his production appeared on this blog on August 9, 2014 (along […]

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Things got weird in the U.S. versus El Salvador soccer match in the Gold Cup last night a game won 2-0 by the Americans. Both Jozy Altidore and Omar Gonzalez alleged they were bitten by Salvadoran players and Altidore said he also had his nipple twisted by his biting attacker, Henry Romero. (Embedded at this […]

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I remember the 2009 Confederations Cup, in South Africa, where the U.S. national team nearly won a global competition. Bob Bradley’s Yanks shocked world-No. 1, unbeaten-in-35-matches Spain 2-0 in the semifinals (go back and read that again), then faced Brazil in the championship match and led 2-0 at half … before losing 3-2. I noted, […]

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This depresses me — the notion of legal betting on sports in most, if not all, U.S. states. It could happen, perhaps as soon as next year. The Supreme Court this week decided to hear the state of New Jersey’s appeal on legalized sports gambling — which Jersey, always a leader in taste and good […]

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It was the biggest week in U.S. national soccer history. The 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa. In this order: (And we are not messing with you here; this actually happened.) U.S. 3, Egypt 0 U.S. 2, Spain 0 (!) U.S. 2, Brazil 0 — at halftime of the championship match. It ended Brazil 3, […]

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After the road trip came the game, the reason former colleague Damian Secore and I drove a rented Chevrolet Chevy to the Mexican capital for a 2006 World Cup qualifying match. Anyone who is a soccer fan should see a game in Azteca Stadium, if they get the chance. I have been there three times, […]

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