Lists

Sergio Ramos has had his best idea since deciding to pull a Panenka on Rui Patrício at Euro 2012. The Real Madrid captain said he believes there should be two Ballon d’Or trophies, thus eliminating that tiresome argument over whether the award should simply be given to the best overall player on the planet (always Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo) or to the player who performed most influentially over the strictly defined duration of a season (usually Messi or Ronaldo, but sometimes a little less clear).

For fans of Major League Soccer, the offseason is entirely too long. It’s a point that Vancouver Whitecaps manager Marc Dos Santos was recently fined for expressing with some decidely colorful language.

“Players at the top level, they have three weeks, one month maximum, on break,” Dos Santos said. “I’m telling you, three months and a half of a break in a soccer season is Mickey Mouse. It’s amateur. It doesn’t happen in the world.”

The 2010s has been a decade. I can’t say it was great nor will I say it was bad. It was 10 years and as I write this it’s almost over. 

In 10 years, the soccer world saw Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo absolutely dominate the Ballon d’Or, winning all but one since 2008. Real Madrid won a bunch of big-eared trophies, Spain finally won a World Cup and few teams played more beautifully than Barcelona. Perhaps most shocking, England actually fielded a decent team at a World Cup, but Liverpool still hasn’t won a Premier League title. 

The biggest news of the Major League Soccer offseason so far has been the Chicago Fire’s new logo. For many, it was a bigger shock to the system than seeing Giovani dos Santos score goals for Club América.  

Named for the greatest story our city can tell - its own legend.

@grahamparkerfc https://t.co/zVr2cWbs0d

The 2019 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup came to a close on Sunday with Portugal lifting the trophy following a 6-4 victory over Italy in the final. The Azzurri’s Gabriele Gori finished as top scorer for the second-straight tournament with 16 goals in six games, but it was Japan’s Ozu Moreira who received the Golden Ball award as the World Cup’s best player. 

Most Major League Soccer teams have been busy negotiating contracts and striking deals across the league . . . but not D.C. United.

Instead, this MLS original has decided to assign every MLS team a type of candy, and well, it's pretty amusing.

Here are some of the best:

hi @FCDallas pic.twitter.com/1bNVkziPUt

Scoring a hat-trick in Europe’s premier club competition is no mean feat, especially so as an adolescent teenager between the ages of 13 and 19. The list of players to have accomplished the goalscoring achievement reads like a who’s who of the world’s greatest talent since the tournament’s adoption in 1992. 

In fact, only 19 players have multiple Champions League hat-tricks to their name, with both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo having accomplished the task a staggering eight times. Nobody else has recorded more than three.

We’re just six days away from the 2019 MLS Cup Final between the Seattle Sounders and Toronto FC at CenturyLink Field, and although the entire capacity of the 68,740-seat stadium will be open, the match is already a sellout and the cheapest tickets you can find on the resell market are for $300 up in the 300-level.