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At 16 years of age, Carlos Vela walked onto a soccer pitch in Peru with all the weight of Mexico on his shoulders. The Mexican National Team had finally made it the final of the U-17 World Cup. Not once in Mexico’s history had a Mexican national team made it to the finals of a world tournament. No pressure. No pressure at all for Carlitos, who would go on to lead the young Mexican national team to glory against Brazil, scoring their first of the match and leading Mexico to a 3-0 scoreline against the tournament favorites.

Entire lifetimes have been spent hashing out what qualities give people worth. Those qualities change as often as they are discovered; they can vary as widely as the names of the people they belong to.

In the world of sports, however, society teaches us what to value in a very specific kind of human, an athlete. It teaches us to value only one thing: whether or not an athlete wins. It seems like the ultimate meritocracy: if an athlete deserves to win then they will win, and we will applaud them for doing so. Sometimes it works just like that, but not always.

No doubt soccer is a growing game in the United States. Major League Soccer has invested all sorts of resources in building its league into something that can compete with other major professional sports and, more importantly, be respected in comparison to the other top soccer leagues in the world.

Club de Cuervos, a Mexican soap opera, focuses itself on a family that now must decide who will take charge of the father’s soccer club. The comedy-drama can be found on Netflix and could be a good option for soccer fans who can’t handle the mid-week slump of having no professional soccer games to watch. The comedy may not involve the kind of drama we see on the pitch every weekend, but it does include hilarious scenes that parody soccer and family.

I will admit it. The first international break of the season is usually a huge drag.  The transfer window has finally closed, clubs are finding their footing, and I have finally figured out my optimal fantasy starting XI.  At this point, I don’t want the world’s best spread out to the four corners of the world to play in meaningless games. BUT, this international break is different.

MLS fans have been ramping up the hooliganism lately, mostly in the New York/New Jersey area. This is not in itself surprising, as hooliganism emanates naturally from the New York/New Jersey area.

What is surprising, however is that one of New York's finest deployed a stun gun on a New York City FC fan outside a NYCFC game at Yankee Stadium. It's not entirely clear what the fan did to deserve having thousands of volts of electricity pulse through his body, but it must have been really bad, considering what New York City cops have to deal with on a daily basis. 

Lionel Messi and FC Barcelona have had a weird last ten days.  Barca hoisted the UEFA Super Cup trophy in Tbilisi, Georgia on August 11th thanks to a 117th minute goal from Pedro that defeated a Sevilla team 5-4. Sevilla had clawed back from a 4-1 second half deficit to send the game into extra time.