The FIFA Best Player Award nominees list is out and hopefully Neymar snubbed off the list will mark a new era in football. An era where flopping is only done in a breakdance battle, not on the pitch.
The 10 nominees were selected for their achievements throughout July 3, 2017, to July 15, 2018. You can also cast your vote on your favorite nominee here.
The FIFA Best Player Award nominees are:
Who is the best women's soccer player? Christine Sinclair, or “Sinc” as she is fondly referred to, falls somewhere between the obvious and not obvious choice for this title.
Sinclair is not the kind of name that’s in your face in the headlines all the time like Alex Morgan or Sam Kerr. She doesn’t have the flash or the fan following of Tobin Heath, the individual trophy case of Marta or Birgit Prinz, or the jaw-dropping biggest stage performance like Carli Lloyd. But if you ask who is the best women's soccer player in the world, Christine Sinclair is the answer.
After lifting the 2018 World Cup with one of the youngest squads at the tournament (average age of just 26), there’s been a growing fear that France could turn a bit tyrannical at the international level. That fear was further confirmed today when England’s U-19s were on the receiving end of a 5-0 beatdown from their French peers.
Mesut Ozil has retired from international football at the age of 29, citing “racism and disrespect” from the German football federation (DFB). Ozil had 92 caps for Germany and helped the nation capture third place at the 2010 World Cup before lifting the trophy in 2014. The Arsenal playmaker issued a detailed statement on Twitter with the main contents concerning the fallout of his meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip before the World Cup.
Here are his statements in full, read them (click/tap) before commentating:
The World Cup TV ratings are in for the entire tournament, including the incredible World Cup final on Sunday — and they don’t look good for Fox.
The World Cup final in which France beat Croatia 4-2 averaged 17.2 million viewers across FOX and Telemundo, including streaming numbers — a massive drop from the 26.5 million (TV alone) who watched Germany beat Argentina four years prior.
The 2018 Tournament of Nations is set to get under way on July 26. The competition consists of a series of friendly games between four of the world’s top women’s national teams. Like last summer, this year’s edition will feature the national teams of Australia (ranked 8th by FIFA), Brazil (7th), Japan (6th) and the hosts, the United States (1st).
Yesterday, USWNT coach Jill Ellis released her preliminary list of 25 players for the tournament.
Heimir Hallgrímsson has announced he will be leaving his position as Iceland manager after seven historic years. Hallgrímsson, a trained dentist, helped the national team achieve goals that were perhaps at one point just fantasies for such a tiny nation.
A kids World Cup final reenactment is going viral on the internet.
It's hardly surprising, since the France vs Croatia World Cup final was one of the most entertaining in history.
With a final score of 4-2, the match finished one goal short of breaking the most goals scored in a World Cup final record held by the Brazil 5-2 Sweden final in 1958.
Anytime there’s a new champion on the block, people like to spout off about how the team won and who could follow in its footsteps. After France’s 2018 World Cup championship, it’s nearly impossible to predict who could replicate France’s success as the 2022 World Cup champion, but we'll try anyway.
On Monday, Diego Maradona signed a three-year contract with Belarus’ FC Dynamo Brest. Now, Maradona becomes the bane of Belarus. The man who made cocaine seem like a Kellogg’s product is now the chairman of a club that’s been relegated twice from the Belarus Cup, only won it three times in a span of 58 years (1960-2018) and parades its chairmen in military vehicles.