Inter Miami began preseason training for the 2022 campaign this week, and Brek Shea was back with the club after signing a new deal on Wednesday. At 31, Shea is a versatile winger/wingback/left back with international experience and a couple of trophies on his shelf. He’s an artist on and off the pitch. He’s also a Texan who isn’t afraid of snakes.
There was a bizarre Ricardo Pepi quote making the rounds in Germany this week. Thankfully, the fine folks at FC Augsburg were kind enough to dispel it as fake. But we still have so, so many questions.
Freddy Adu needs no introduction. After Sierra Mist told everyone he'd fix the ozone layer as a 14-year-old boy wonder, he instead went on to play professional soccer for 15 years while representing his country 17 times. A lot of people still aren’t happy about that and want him to get up there and fix that damn part of the stratosphere, but we say leave him alone.
After a five-minute burst of fútbol champagne against Mazatlán a week ago, Chivas' fans felt their team was the best in the entire universe. Dreams were big. A title on the horizon? For sure. But a couple of nights ago, the balloons of hope popped, putting the Chivahermanos in misery mode again.
Pachuca was the team delivering the reality check with a 2-1 victory.
The story of Matchday 1 across AFCON was probably Sierra Leone's unlikely 0-0 draw with tournament favorite Algeria last Tuesday.
Watching Ricardo Pepi make his first Augsburg start on Sunday against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga, I realized that either Pepi's performance was exactly the same as the debuts of Clint Dempsey with Fulham, Christian Pulisic with Borussia Dortmund and Tyler Adams with Leipzig or that I have a tendency to see exactly what I want to see when hugely talented Americans finally grace the field in Europe.
Coming off a disappointing 2021 season in which Minnesota United clearly took a step backward, there wasn't much joy to be found among Loons fans at the start of the offseason.