On June 24, Lionel Messi celebrates his 33rd birthday. From a purely sporting perspective, one of the great injustices of the pandemic is depriving us of precious Messi time — after all, conventional wisdom tells us that the Argentine’s peak is now well behind him. Of course, actually watching him tells you something completely different.
For basketball fans, “The Last Dance” has been a welcome reprieve from a total lack of hoops action over the last two months. The Michael Jordan-centric Chicago Bulls docuseries has been a rating bonanza for ESPN.
But there is no real like-for-like equivalent for soccer fans to dive into during this pandemic.
Update May 9: Alex Morgan gave birth on May 7. Read all about it here.
It’s a good thing the 2020 Olympics were pushed bacl to 2021, because it would’ve been mighty hard for Alex Morgan to return to playing shape given how long it’s taking her baby to arrive. The latest Alex Morgan baby update showed the USWNT superstar riding her bike while 41 (!) weeks pregnant.
The term “breaking ankles” is when you juke your opponent so bad, they end up on their backside. It’s an act seen lots of times in basketball and sometimes in soccer. It makes supporters and the bench go wild and adds an element of excitement to the game. Conceding a goal or basket is one thing, but losing your own ankles is on another echelon of humiliation. The Lionel Messi goal vs Bayern Munich in 2015 features one of the worst ankle breakers in soccer history. How does it compare to the time Allen Iverson snatched a pair of his own ankles?
Jose Mourinho has done it all throughout his illustrious career. He’s won eight league titles across Portugal, England, Spain and Italy, won the Champions League with Porto and Inter Milan and even helped underdog Manchester United win the Europa League. But only one match ever made Jose Mourinho cry.
While many professional athletes have used this recent downtime from sports to relax, hang out with family and stay out of the limelight, one soccer star is doing just the opposite. More than perhaps any athlete over the last two months, Megan Rapinoe has been raising her profile in nearly every way possible.
At this rate, she might just become the next Oprah.
Despite the fact that no soccer is being played right now, our annual pre-game playlist is now ready for when the sport returns. The Fall 2019 playlist served us well, but 2020 has already produced some quality songs.
We all know the true worth of a footballer is measured by how they perform against the best of the best, when everything is on the line. In men’s soccer, there is no stronger barometer of greatness than how one fares against the U.S. men’s national team. So to resolve the Ronaldo vs Messi debate once and for all, here’s a look at how the two GOATs have performed against Michael Bradley and Co.
When the 2006 World Cup was over, eight of The Guardian’s 12 correspondents in Germany named it the match of the tournament. That sentiment has lasted 14 years as a recent poll on FIFA’s Twitter — with nearly 45K votes cast — declared it the one game from the 2006 competition that fans wanted to rewatch most.
And all this fervent nostalgia for a match that remained 0-0 over the course of the first 118 minutes of action in Dortmund.
The life of a defender can be a brutal one. Your strikers and midfielders score the glorious goals and get the attention while your goalkeeper makes the amazing saves. Unless your name is Virgil van Dijk, the majority of the players in the back line don’t typically bask in too much glory. In honor of those in defense, here is a list of the 10 best goals by defenders.