Amazing

It’s a commonly held belief in professional sports that visiting teams automatically have a disadvantage. They have to deal with rowdy crowds who often hate their guts, a dearth of supporters in the stadium, hotel living and sleeping, and the discomfort of planes and buses.

There are a lot of reasons as to why playing an away game is not ideal but just imagine having to play a road game that is 21,303 miles (for our non-American readers, I’ll spare you the mental math calculations and just tell you that’s a whopping 17,142km) round trip. 

Who invented soccer or football or — the more diplomatic approach — association football (soccer for short)? It’s a history lesson that’s often summed up or bastardized with a simple answer: England invented it.

It’s almost time for the new Premier League season to kick off. We’ve had the World Cup to fill most of the offseason, but now it’s that boring part of the summer when clubs play friendlies against considerably weaker teams. Everton won a friendly 22-0, so that’s all you really need to know about preseason.

First things first, I’m not 100 percent certain we’ve agreed on a term for this particular skill. Is it a piece of back heel control? A rabona touch? An inverse rabona? A Nasty Neymar? From henceforth, it should be known as the Ballad of Ahmadzadeh Farshad. 

August is one of the hottest months of the year, and for professional footballers, it's hot with birthdays! We've put together a list of some of the most important soccer players born in August. Get ready to celebrate every single day of the month!

Soccer Players Born In August

*If nationality is listed, they're not on their country's national team

It’s already a few days after the 2018 World Cup, and if you’re like us, you're still hanging on to anything that's related to the best tournament in sports. Whether it be something about the team of the tournament, a debate about Griezmann’s dive or VAR, no one wants to forget the tournament that might have been the best World Cup ever.

Both born in 1998, France’s Kylian Mbappé and the U.S.’ Christian Pulisic are football superstars who, if both continue being great, will be of yet another generation that redefines the beautiful game. The question is, who’s the better 19-year-old?  

If you say it now, you say it without a tone of mockery and without the ability to harvest likes through shit posting: The USMNT is in contention for the World Cup.

The road to Qatar begins in September with six high profile friendlies over the course of 74 days. It shouldn’t be difficult to get excited about tests against Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, England and Italy, but if you’re still having trouble buying into the new cycle, U.S. Soccer is here to help with a beautifully produced series profiling America’s new generation.

A month after Russia thrashed Saudi Arabia to open the World Cup, France took advantage of its chances and was crowned world champions for the second time. Those high-scoring matches bookended a tournament in which there were 169 World Cup goals. With 12 of those resulting from own goals, there were 157 goals where the celebration wasn't marred by an untimely mistake.