National Teams

With just over two weeks to go until Juventus travels to Amsterdam to play Ajax in the first leg of its Champions League quarterfinal matchup, Cristiano Ronaldo has been forced off injured with an apparent hamstring injury while on international duty.

In the 31st minute of today’s Euro 2020 qualifier between Portugal and Serbia at Estadio da Luz in Lisbon, Ronaldo went sprinting after a ball on the left wing before pulling up and immediately signaling for a substitution. 

Canada, winner of gold at the 1904 Summer Games, is back on track. With a 4-1 victory over French Guiana on Sunday, the Canucks secured qualification to this summer’s Gold Cup and a spot in League A at the inaugural 2019-20 CONCACAF Nations League. Yes, Canada was expected to blast nations like the U.S. Virgin Islands and Dominica, but John Herdman’s side took care of business, and that’s not something Canada has done since the 2000 Gold Cup.

Uruguay thumped Thailand 4-0 Monday to capture the 2019 China Cup, but the real story of the match was captain Diego Godín collecting his 126th cap for la Celeste, making him the record holder in that department for the two-time world champions.

For those of us that are old, we see a meeting between the Netherlands and Germany sans Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben, Robin van Persie, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Mesut Ozil and Thomas Muller and even more of our already decrepit existence goes to die.

Still, a meeting between Holland and Germany in Amsterdam remains on of the few fixtures on the international calendar that you’re innately drawn to, and today's exercise showed exactly why.

Concacaf Nations League qualifying is coming to a close this weekend with the final round of matches. Concacaf teams outside the top six in the region are attempting to qualify for the Gold Cup (including tiny Montserrat) and determine which league they start in for the Nations League.

Venezuela national team coach Rafael Dudamel pulled off an impressive 3-1 win over Argentina on Saturday in Madrid. 

After the match, he said he was offering his resignation as Venezuela national team coach.

Scottish football has been the butt of the joke in the British Isles for quite some time now. The Scottish Premier League, or SPL, has been trying to fight the stereotype that Scottish football is terrible via an active YouTube page. The Scottish national team has been including new and talented young players that ply their trade in a diverse number of high level leagues across Europe in order to show that Scottish football is indeed quality.

Montserrat — a tiny Caribbean island of less than 40 square miles named by Christopher Columbus, a territory of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants that was wrecked by a volcano 24 years ago, with a team ranked No. 200 in the world — is one win away from qualifying for the 2019 Gold Cup.

The German national team had a shambolic 2018. After losses to Mexico and South Korea knocked Die Mannschaft out of the World Cup at the group stage, a catastrophic performance in the UEFA Nations League saw them relegated to League B in the new competition.

Out of the 13 matches Germany played last year, only four of those were wins.

Chelsea’s youngest star, Callum Hudson-Odoi, has officially received the call to join England’s national team. The 18-year-old will be the youngest player on England’s squad for a pair of Euro 2020 qualifiers, joining the stacked attack of Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling.

Hudson-Odoi has quickly become a fan favorite in London, and supporters are hoping he’ll be a big part of a potential Chelsea transformation next year.