Central & South America

The Best FIFA Football Awards 2019 went down in Milan today, and you can rest assured that The18 tried its best to watch on YouTube, but good lord, this stuff is mostly unwatchable. It's remarkably drawn out, full of self-aggrandizing nonsense from FIFA and the forced banter between hosts Ilaria D'Amico, Ruud Gullit and the guests makes you search for the mute button while your skin crawls.

But other than that it's pretty good! 

Let’s go to the green carpet for some select photos before the ceremony. Here’s Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe looking fly. 

Warning: This article contains graphic images

Athletico Paranaense won its first ever Copa do Brazil on Wednesday, beating Internacional 3-1 on aggregate to add another trophy to its recent successful run that includes the 2018 Copa Sudamericana. A Brazilian soccer fan supporting the club, however, lost a hand in the process.

We’re a week away from the FIFA 20 release across all platforms, so the majority of the questions we have surrounding the annual video game — What are the new features? What are the player ratings? How does it compare with PES? — have already been largely answered.

Cuba’s national team left Toronto on Saturday having not only lost its opening Nations League match to Canada 6-0, but having lost five of its players permanently.

| #MLS | [La Presse][French]Five Cuban players defect after the loss to Canada https://t.co/gAMGPcwFC5

It’s getting serious. FIFA 20 is set to drop in just over two weeks (Sept. 24) and we’ll soon get our hands on the demo (rumored for Sept. 12). In the mean time, FIFA is set to reveal the ratings of the game’s top 100 rated players tomorrow. They’ve revealed the 100 players over on EA.com, but they haven’t revealed any of their stats yet.

Neymar returned to the pitch for the first time since June in a friendly against Colombia on Friday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida. He had a goal, an assist, nearly died and even saved Dani Alves’ life.

It was just another day in the life of Neymar.

Being a national team coach in a landscape where you rarely get to see your players must be difficult, and Costa Rica manager Gustavo Matosas has said to hell with it after less than one year in charge.

Matosas, the head coach, said that he gets bored with the amount of downtime he has compared to the amount of time he actually has to train and work with his players. He felt “unproductive” with so much down time, even though he spends loads of it studying film so that he is prepared to get the most out of the little time he has with his players.

These days, sadly, the Amazon Fire is more than digital media player. The Amazon rainforest is burning and Neymar wants to preserve it. 

The #PrayForAmazonas hashtag has been trending this week as the Amazon burns at scary rates. The dire situation has caught the eyes of a worried global community — and notable Brazilians such as football superstar Neymar.

No club has won the Brasileirão more than Palmeiras, which makes it odd that five Brazilian clubs — São Paulo, Grêmio, Santos, Cruzeiro and Internacional — have all achieved more success in South America’s premier club competition, the Copa Libertadores. Palmeiras has only won the title once, and that happened all the way back in 1999. 

It’s that time of year again: FIFA has announced the 10 finalists for the annual Puskás Award, the trophy given to the player, male or female, “judged to have scored the most aesthetically significant, or ‘most beautiful,’ goal of the calendar year.”

This most certainly wasn’t the case last year when Mohamed Salah scooped the award after Liverpool and Egypt supporters spammed the fan vote. The goal Salah scored against Everton back in December of 2018 hadn’t even won the Premier League’s Goal of the Month, so it was an awful joke to see it given the prestigious Puskás Award.