One of the biggest struggles in American soccer, both at the amateur and the professional level, is the lack of quality, soccer-specific fields.
The only options are sharing a field with every other notable mid-level sports team in the city or playing on a forsaken piece of grass with significant wear and minimal seating.
And yet we wonder why we struggle to produce high-quality soccer players.
Three weeks after OGC Nice ultras stormed the pitch against Marseille, another incident with a fan has gone down in France. On Monday during a Ligue 2 game, a bizarre Khalid Boutaib red card was given out after the Moroccan found himself in an altercation with a fan.
No sport punishes players for in-game infringements more harshly than soccer. Imagine if American football, basketball or baseball forced a team to play a man down because one player made an ill-advised foul or lost his cool at the wrong time. It all makes the most bizarre red card I’ve ever seen all the more painful, especially since it was kind of my fault.
Whew. That was a close one. Facing the prospect of two points from its opening three World Cup qualifiers, the USMNT rallied for a big 4-1 win on Wednesday night in Honduras, salvaging a decent showing over the September international window. It wasn’t great, but the Americans avoided disaster, which makes our USMNT player ratings (and coach rating) all the spicier.
The Panama World Cup qualifying campaign is smooth sailing after the first three games. This is the exact opposite of what we predicted here at The18.
In our Concacaf World Cup qualifying predictions, six out of seven people predicted the Panamanians to finish dead last in the group of eight teams. Only one person had Panama finishing higher than eighth. That individual had the Central American country finishing seventh.
In August, we put out a guide for how to watch USMNT World Cup qualifiers in the United States. Based on Twitter replies to the @USMNT account, it seems we need to revisit, specifically how to watch USMNT Honduras on Wednesday, Sept. 8. Even USMNT players can’t figure out how to watch the game.
Prometía ser una linda tarde de fútbol con un Brasil vs Argentina por las Eliminatorias Sudamericanas en el menú, pero al final millones de personas terminaron viendo un papelón.
El siempre esperado partido debió ser suspendido cuando el reloj apenas marcaba cinco minutos y luego de que oficiales sanitarios de Sao Paulo ingresaran al campo para intentar deportar a cuatro jugadores de la Albiceleste.
I can’t tell if José Mourinho is trolling Arsenal’s Granit Xhaka, trying to encourage him to do the right thing or both, but the Mourinho Xhaka comment on Instagram has brought something to my attention I did not expect.
Xhaka tested positive for Covid-19 ahead of the international break, keeping the midfielder out of his Switzerland’s friendly with Greece on Wednesday and putting his availability for World Cup qualifiers against Italy and Northern Ireland into doubt.
England bounced back from a disheartening loss in the Euro 2020 final with a resounding 4-0 win over Hungary in 2022 World Cup qualifying on Thursday in Budapest. On the pitch, England was superior. Off the pitch, England was superior. After fans hurled projectiles and racist abuse toward England players, the Three Lions’ mockery of Hungary fans was the best moment of the week.