Game Recaps

Lindsey Horan struck in the 50th minute to propel the Portland Thorns to their second NWSL championship, a 1-0 victory over the North Carolina Courage in the NWSL final on Saturday in Orlando, Florida. 

A crowd of 8,124 watched the final at Orlando City Stadium.

Portland won the inaugural NWSL championship in 2013 and lost in the semifinals to North Carolina last year after winning the NWSL Shield. On Saturday, the Thorns edged the Courage, who themselves won the NWSL Shield this year as the league’s best regular-season team. 

Going into today's Atletico Madrid-Barcelona clash, Barcelona had won every game in La Liga and no opposition player had scored in Atleti's new stadium, the Wanda Metropolitano. Neither of those things are true anymore.

Atleti's Saul Niguez opened the scoring with a beautiful shot after a couple of great saves from Marc-Andre Ter Stegen.

Less than a week after the death of his father, Erick Torres took to the field and helped the Houston Dynamo score a vital 2-1 win over Sporting Kansas City on Wednesday night in Houston. The victory pushed the Dynamo four points ahead of seventh-place Real Salt Lake and San Jose with two matches to play as teams vie for the six playoff berths from the MLS Western Conference.

Tuesday was a nightmare for U.S. soccer, but soccer does not stop because the U.S. won’t be in the World Cup next summer in Russia. In fact, the U.S. is competing at a World Cup right now — the U-17 World Cup in India — and the team is doing quite well.

Lionel Messi, with the hopes of a football crazed nation on his shoulders and the studs of a negative Ecuadorian side in his shins, scored an unfathomable hat trick to send Argentina to the World Cup. What else do you want to hear? What else do you want to know?

The Netherlands were looking for a miracle on Tuesday. As the Dutch stepped on the field at Amsterdam Arena to face Sweden, they knew they needed to win the match by a seven-goal margin, a practically impossible deed. 

On the other side, the Swedes aspired to either qualify directly for the World Cup with a victory, a scenario hinging on a France defeat to Belaurs which never transpired, or qualification via a runners-up finish and the UEFA playoffs.

The worrying, hand-wringing and nail-biting from fan boys across the world can stop. Cristiano Ronaldo will be at the 2018 World Cup. Portugal dominated the UEFA Group B title bout for a surprisingly easy 2-0 win over Switzerland on Tuesday in Lisbon. The result put both teams on 27 points, with Portugal earning the group’s automatic World Cup qualifying berth by virtue of goal differential and the Swiss going to the UEFA playoff. 

France, fresh off a successful albeit ultimately disappointing Euro 2016, secured automatic qualification to the 2018 World Cup after defeating Belarus 2-1 on Tuesday. Goals from Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud confirmed France’s passage from a tricky UEFA qualifying group also containing Sweden, the Netherlands and Bulgaria.

Serbia is back in the World Cup after defeating Georgia 1-0 in its final match of UEFA World Cup qualifying on Monday in Belgrade. The victory gave Serbia 21 points in Group D, enough to finish ahead of second-place Ireland, which edged third-place Wales with a 1-0 victory for a spot in the UEFA playoffs.