Humor

The Houston Dash are probably the least popular club in the NWSL. They’re the only team without a USWNT player and they’re seemingly allergic to scoring, with only the dysfunctional Sky Blue having fewer goals. 

So maybe they’re on to something with this basketball thing.

The Dash, all but out of the playoff running in NWSL, practiced basketball on Thursday as Houston was smashed by a tropical depression, making outdoor training impossible.

In today’s world of inundating social media feeds, labyrinthine methods of escapism and banging SoundCloud profiles, it’s not enough to throw a jersey on your club’s star player and expect to move units. You gotta get all the world’s most innovative brand specialists together and hit the people with something so profound that it’d seduce your dad quicker than Billie Eilish working the register at a Bass Pro Shop.

It only took 18 minutes for Ajax midfielder Quincy Promes to score the Dutch side’s first goal of the Champions League season.

Fellow midfielder David Neres saved a cross on the left side, gave it up to Nicolas Tagliafico, who got the official assist sending the ball inside for Promes to head in for golazo.

GOAL! 18’
Quincy Promes
Ajax 1-0 LOSC Lille pic.twitter.com/gDBHetwE2T

On a slow news day, it’s not unusual for us here at The18 to scour the internet to find the most obscure soccer stories for you, our dear readers. In doing so, we found what we initially thought was the funniest soccer announcer ever.

We were wrong. But we didn’t mind being wrong upon further research. 

Despite the fact most everyone in the world has played soccer at some point in their lives, professional footballers — players and managers — possess knowledge far beyond that of the average Sunday leaguer. So it makes to take a football MasterClass from one of these experts, giants of their field. 

We’ve put together a list of the 18 football MasterClass courses we want to see from famous soccer players and coaches. 

It’s almost game time and your fridge is empty, your pantry barren and stomach grumbling. You gotta eat something fast, but you don’t have anything in your house. What do you do? Ideally, you’re not stupid enough to let this happen, but we get it, sometimes you just forget. In that case, we’ve got just the list for you: the best fast food to eat before a soccer match.

We at The18 have done our due diligence to find the best fast-food items to eat before a game, taking into account price, taste and how you’ll feel after, with a little effort toward trying to eat healthily. 

Antoine Griezmann is a highly respected footballer who has won a World Cup and finished as high as third in Ballon d’Or voting.

But in order to really win over the respect and admiration of his new Barcelona teammates, he had to go out and get a Switch. 

Steven Gerrard may still be managing Scottish Premiership club Rangers, but it looks as if he has his next job all but booked up. After a 2-0 defeat to Celtic before the break began, the former Liverpool midfielder managed to forget all about it and enjoy himself while kicking back on the golf course.

When it comes to touchline fashion, the game runs a pretty wide gamut from the track suits favored by the likes of Maurizio Sarri to the beloved hooded cardigan of Pep Guardiola. I believe, however, that we’re on the verge of another major transformation in managerial style — one that would require André Villas-Boas to swap his preferred trench coat for a bean-bag onesie.

FIFA and PES may need to rethink their strategy.

While the EA and Konami games are focused on realistic portrayals of soccer both in terms of graphics and gameplay, these games take the joy of soccer to new arenas.

Here is The18’s list of soccer video games you need to play.

Editor's Note: This article originally ran in 2017 but has been updated to include a few more soccer video games you gotta try. Find the new ones at the bottom below Rocket League.