Amazing

After a dramatic 18-day search and rescue mission resulted in 12 members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach being saved from the Tham Luang cave complex back in July, the group has now made their first studio since the incident, appearing on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in Los Angeles.

Didier Deschamps was a pretty good player in his days. He won a World Cup with France in 1998, won Champions League titles with both Marseille and Juventus and also appeared for Chelsea and Valencia in a lengthy, trophy laden career.

Anyone who grew up in the ‘90s has an affinity for the Simpsons. Your parents probably didn’t let you watch it, but you watched it anyway, and you loved it. Sure, the series has had its ups and downs — who among us hasn’t by the time we reached 30? — but it’s an iconic show in American culture. That’s why we absolutely love these soccer players drawn as Simpsons characters.

During the 2016-17 Bundesliga season, Thiago Alcântara led all players with a pass success rate of 90.2 percent. During an injury plagued 2017-18 campaign, that number climbed to 91.8. Seven matches into the new season, he again sits at a success rate of 91.8. This is all to say that Thiago is an absolute monster when it comes to his passing technique and on-the-ball quality. 

Back in another life, when I was a sports writer for a daily newspaper, I spent a weekend on holiday at the PAX South gaming convention in San Antonio. At an after-hours party at a nearby bar I met a girl who had just reached a milestone as a Twitch streamer and was quite proud of herself. 

When I told her what I did for a living, she responded: “Oh, so I’m kind of like email and you’re kind of like snail mail.”

On a rainy night on Thursday in Cary, North Carolina, the U.S. women’s national team blasted 59 shots toward the goal of Saundra Baron, a 24-year-old former East Carolina University goalkeeper. The Trinidad and Tobago net minder blocked a Tim Howard-esque 15 shots and was saved by the post countless other times in a heroic performance.

And the USWNT still scored seven goals and probably should have had many more.