The LA Galaxy has been around for 21 seasons now, but it struck me today that never in that time had the soccer club had to fight for attention in its hometown with a local National Football League team. The NFL abandoned the Los Angeles market after the 1994 season, when the Rams and Raiders […]

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The LA Galaxy has concluded a silly but interesting promotion — the LA Galaxy Ridiculous Soccer Challenge. It involved four “games” pitting two Galaxy players against dozens of children on a training field at the club’s Carson home, the StubHub Center. The last matchup to be posted: Steven Gerrard and Robbie Keane against 30 eight-year-old […]

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Trying to remember when it seemed as if Landon Donovan making a comeback on the pitch … pretty much had to happen. It couldn’t have been any later than the first month or two of the 2015 Major League Soccer season. Landon playing more games seemed inevitable, didn’t it? Two powerful currents pushed him in […]

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Megan Rapinoe plays for the U.S. women’s national soccer team, and a few weeks ago she was front and center in the condemnation of teammate Hope Solo. Solo, the veteran goalkeeper, whose description of the Swedish performance in a shootout victory over the U.S. in the Rio 2016 quarterfinals as “cowardly”, was strongly criticized by […]

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Some might opt for England’s Premier League. Others would nominate the Uefa Champions League or perhaps the World Cup or European Championship. But a strong case can be made that the greatest soccer competition is the quadrennial World Cup qualifying for South America’s 10-nation confederation, generally known as Conmebol. And a writer is making that […]

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Only one sport really matters among the citizens of the United Arab Emirates. And, actually, it is a subset of one sport. The men’s national soccer team. Not necessarily the domestic soccer league those guys play in; Emirati fans are far more interested in club soccer in other countries, particularly in England and Spain. No, […]

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Estacio Sants is the main train station in Barcelona. In case you have lost track of where you have stepped off the train from, say, France … the famous local football team has a merchandise store you can hardly miss as you exit the station — one of (by my count) nine such stores in […]

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After the U.S. women’s national soccer team lost a Rio 2016 shootout to Sweden, a game that ended 1-1 in regulation, goalkeeper Hope Solo was not in a diplomatic mood. She rarely is after losing, God bless her. The Swedes got an early lead, then sat back and absorbed pressure, and when they conceded the […]

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Back in December, as long-shots Leicester City led the English Premier League, most of world football figured they would fade badly. Those swollen ranks included Gary Lineker, the host of the BBC review show Match of the Day. Lineker was so sure Leicester would fall back into the pack that he vowed to host MotD […]

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I suppose everyone in the States who cares about such things saw the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremonies via tape delay tonight. It appears to have been the usual four hours of mind-numbing singing and dancing and people whirling in bright colors, including two hours of the Parade of Nations (anyone else old enough to remember […]

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