While many soccer fans in Mexico will be paying attention to the Liga MX playoffs, which begin Wednesday night, or Tecatito becoming the first Mexican to score in three straight Champions League matches, the biggest news out of Mexican football this week comes not from Mexico or Europe but from Uruguay, where the U-17 Women's World Cup is reaching its climax.
Another day, another piece of evidence to file into the women’s soccer folder titled: “The World Is Catching Up With The USWNT.”
The USWNT U-17 Women's World Cup campaign took a bad turn on Saturday. Featured on FS2 — one of the few soccer matches on TV in the U.S. on a day dominated by college football — the Americans were routed by North Korea 3-0 in their second Group C match in Uruguay.
The U.S. opened the tournament with a 3-0 win while North Korea lost 4-1. Perhaps the Americans assumed they’d have an easy win based on those scores, but that was anything but the case.
The U.S. will be at the U-20 Men’s World Cup. Alex Mendez and Uly Llanez made sure of that on Friday night.
The USMNT is currently playing in the Concacaf U-20 Championship in Bradenton, Florida. After crushing it in the first group stage — five wins with 39 goals for and two against — the U.S. needed just one more win in the second group stage to ensure one of four Concacaf spots at the 2019 U-20 World Cup.
They got that win in style, beating Costa Rica 4-0 thanks to a couple impressive goals from Mendez and Llanez.
The U-17 Women's World Cup kicked off on Tuesday in Uruguay, featuring 16 of the best youth national teams in the world.
It didn’t take long for the tournament to show just how good these young women are.
While the opening match of the tournament finished 0-0 between Brazil and Japan, the second — between New Zealand and Finland — provided an incredible first goal of the tournament.
We’re going to be real here: Unless you live in Minnesota and are tuned in to the youth soccer scene, you probably don’t pay any attention to Minnesota high school soccer.
Fortunately, we here at The18 have eyes on every soccer game everywhere (seriously, when you’re playing your little brother in the back yard, we’re watching; it’s creepy).
So today we get to bring you a stunning highlight from the Minnesota high school soccer Class A championship game — and with good reason.
This past week has been a scary one in the United States. Multiple terrorist attacks were foiled as a number of bombs were sent in the mail targeting former presidents, politicians, actors and philanthropists. Now that the suspect is in custody, the world is learning more about Cesar Sayoc Jr., the man who authorities think carried out these attempted domestic terrorist attacks.
And he’s got some interesting quirks regarding soccer.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time around high school athletics knows the worst part is often the parents. Whether it’s putting too much pressure on the kids or yelling at the refs, they can make a fun game turn into a nightmare for all involved.
Horrible soccer parents were on full display this week during a junior varsity high school match in New Jersey. Hispanic players for Trenton Central High School were the targets of racist comments.
We got our first real glimpse of 18-year-old Real Madrid phenom Vinícius Júnior during Real Madrid’s shock 1-0 defeat to Alaves on Oct. 6, but that appearance (his second for the senior side) was still just a 10-minute cameo.