Looking for something a little more real and a little less tired than José Mourinho’s fourth Premier League “debut” this weekend? We know just the thing: The 2019 Copa Libertadores Final takes place on Saturday, Nov. 23, with defending champion River Plate (ARG) playing Flamengo (BRA) at Estadio Monumental in Lima, Peru.
Diego Maradona is quitting Gimnasia, and we don’t mean the gym. (We’re pretty sure he quit that long ago.)
Rather than stay to fight relegation, Maradona, 59, resigned from Gimnasia La Plata in the Argentine Superliga after just two months as head coach. Gimnasia currently sits in 22nd out of 24 clubs but in worse shape facing relegation. The club lost Maradona’s first three matches in charge but had won three of the last five.
Eternal South American rivals Argentina and Uruguay put on quite a show in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Monday night in a friendly match that featured fine performances from Luis Suárez, Edinson Cavani, Lucas Torreira, Lionel Messi, Sergio Agüero and Paulo Dybala.
Mexico pushed Brazil to the brink in the final of Sunday's 2019 FIFA U-17 World Cup, but late goals from Kaio Jorge and Lázaro sent a raucous crowd of over 15,000 into raptures in Brasília. Inspirational captain Eugenio Pizzuto had provided the assist on Bryan Gonzalez’s opener for El Tri in the 66th minute, but Brazil’s ferocious comeback began in the 84th with Kaio’s VAR-assisted penalty and ended — just before the match was headed straight to a shootout — with Lázaro’s stunning winner with only one minute remaining in stoppage time.
Argentina’s 1-0 friendly victory over Brazil on Friday — thanks to Lionel Messi’s goal in the 13th minute — created quite the conversation on Twitter. From Messi telling Brazil manager Tite to shut up after he believed Messi should’ve been given a yellow card to penalty misses from both Gabriel Jesus and Messi, it was quite an entertaining match.
Gabriel Jesus and Lionel Messi both missed first-half penalty kicks. Only Messi followed it up with a goal.
The Brazilian hit his PK wide moments before Messi had his effort saved by Alisson, allowing the Argentine to poke home the rebound in the 13th minute. Messi notched his 69th career international goal for Argentina to propel his side to a narrow 1-0 win over rival Brazil in a friendly on Friday in Saudi Arabia.
The latest FIFA World Ranking has been released, and it comes as no surprise that the USMNT has taken a slight tumble. Any good grace that was earned with a 7-0 beatdown of Cuba was subsequently withdrawn following a nightmarishly disjointed performance against Canada, and the U.S. has fallen two places to a global ranking of 23.
We’re a little over a month away from the 2019 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup in Asunción, Paraguay, but the defending champion has just delivered a timely reminder of its mastery of the sand. The World Beach Games wrapped up yesterday in Doha, Qatar, and it was Brazil that captured the men’s beach soccer title following a 9-3 victory over Russia in the gold medal match.
It’s easy to get cynical about the Brasil Global Tour sponsored by Chevrolet, which is simply adspeak for the series of globetrotting friendlies that the Seleção contests in between Copa Américas, World Cups and World Cup qualifying.
In the preposterously bloated football calendar, nobody likes a meaningless friendly. But what’s Brazil supposed to do during the international break with no qualifying stage for the 2020 Copa América and with 2022 World Cup qualifying matches not beginning until March of 2021?
It’s been nearly three years since the LaMia Flight 2933 disaster claimed the lives of 71 people, including 19 members of the Chapecoense soccer team. Of the six surviving passengers of the flight, three were Chapecoense players: goalkeeper Jakson Follmann, center back Neto and left back Alan Ruschel.