If you pay $1 for a cheeseburger, you don’t expect a gourmet experience. If you buy a $600 car, you shouldn’t be surprised if it dies before the next oil change. If you spend $30,000 on a house, it’s probably a fixer-upper. If you put down $5 million for a striker, you won’t win the Premier League.
If you spend $20 on match fixing, you can’t expect to win the match. Nchalo United in Malawi found that out the hard way.
In the United States, it’s ubiquitous. Whether it’s the Super Bowl or a high school basketball game, the national anthem will be played before a sporting event. So why don’t European soccer teams play the national anthem before matches? The answer lies in the history of America’s own devotion to the Star-Spangled Banner.
The list for the players with the most official appearances in the history of soccer stretches from players who played in the 1940s to the present day. Goalkeepers like Iker Casillas and Gianluigi Buffon have both entered the top 20, but there are still many players ahead of the two active legends.
According to Footballdatabase.eu, English goalkeeper Peter Shilton has accumulated the most official appearances with 1,390.
The U.S. U-17 World Cup Roster was released Thursday and it is loaded with talent, starting with forwards Tim Weah and Josh Sargent. The roster includes four players who are already playing abroad, not including Sargent, who signed with Werder Bremen on Wednesday.
The final match in the U.S. Men’s National Team’s quest for a World Cup berth will be played in a 10,000-seat stadium. Trinidad & Tobago announced Friday it would host the Americans at the Ato Boldon Stadium in Couva instead of the nation’s normal ground in Port of Spain. The match will be played Oct. 10.
FIFA has approved Sofia Huerta’s request for a one-time change of national association, switching her allegiance from Mexico to the United States after appearing competitively for El Tri at the U-20 level. Huerta was born and raised in Boise, Idaho, and currently plays for the Chicago Red Stars in the NWSL.
With “El Tri” officially qualified to the World Cup, will we see a full-strength Mexican starting lineup facing Trinidad and Tobago and Honduras in October? Or will Osorio make the kind of wild, unexpected and at times outright illogical lineup changes he has gotten us used to?
With only two more matches to be played, Mexico aim at securing the first place in the qualifiers and don't have much to lose. For the rest of the teams, however, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
FIFA, the organization whose scandalous bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups revealed rampant institutional corruption, has opened disciplinary proceedings against England’s Dele Alli for his obscene gesture on Monday.
Want the definition of a miracle? Take Peru, a country that hasn't qualified for a World Cup since 1982 and is now closer than ever. Want the definition of a catastrophe? Take Argentina, who in recent years has lost a total of three finals and could get left out of next summer's World Cup in Russia entirely.
South Africa beat Senegal 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier last November, except for they didn't.
The match will have to be replayed because the referee from November, Ghanaian Joseph Odartei Lamptey, has been found guilty of match-fixing and banned for life.
Was there a dodgy penalty in this match that the referee might have called for match-fixing purposes? Reader, there was, though FIFA hasn't released the exact details behind Lamptey's ban.