As the ultimate international sport, one might expect soccer would offer all sorts of odd and interesting connections. This guy played for that guy, and later became coach of this team that I covered … It really is rather amazing, in a sort of “three degrees of separation” way. And I have noticed a few […]

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The U.S. national soccer team has played in the past seven World Cups and qualified for six of them. The Yanks hosted the 1994 World Cup and did not have to qualify. From the outside, it looks like light work. A massive country of 300 million people needs only to finish in the top three […]

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You bet. Start worrying now, if you are not already doing so. Only four days till the U.S. national team plays host to Panama, only eight days until an away game with Trinidad & Tobago, as Concacaf hexagonal qualifying for the 2018 World Cup concludes. At stake, the U.S. streak of seven consecutive World Cup […]

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Catalonia took another step on the road to sovereign status in a referendum today. And, as we typically do in reflecting the world of sports, we make it about us. To wit: “If  Catalonia leaves Spain … what does this mean for FC Barcelona and the Spanish league and the Spanish national team?” The short […]

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For all I know, journalists covering major sports events these days have an ID chip in their arms. Nobody gets into the media areas unless the sensor picks up your biometric data. At minimum, credentials for an Olympics or World Cup  or French Open, over the past decade or two, have featured increasingly sophisticated and […]

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The United States and Syria and their national soccer teams. Concepts never before found in the same paragraph, on this blog. Each hoped today for a victory. Each would be crushed by a defeat. Each will settle for draws, late in the making, draws that keep each team on a road to the Russia 2018 […]

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We like to think sports are above and beyond politics. We know that is not true, has never been true and never will be true. Political imperatives often threaten fair and free sports events, and anti-competitive forces tomorrow have one of the greatest opportunities in modern times to take the narrative in a pre-ordained direction. […]

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Well, this is alarming. The United States national soccer team played host to Costa Rica tonight at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey in a 2018 World Cup qualifying match. USMNT fans gathered to see what they expected would be a spirited riposte aimed at the Ticos for a 4-0 thrashing they gave the Yanks […]

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The United Arab Emirates national team came up big. On the same day I said the Emiratis would lose 3-0. And maybe worse. Needing a victory over Saudi Arabia to keep alive its ultra-slim chances of qualifying for the Russia 2018 World Cup, the UAE got goals from two of the greatest forwards the country […]

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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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