The Bundesliga is ready to go this weekend with TV schedules and a plan. Meanwhile, the Premier League has been given tentative clearance from the UK government to possibly resume on June 1 behind closed doors.
On June 24, Lionel Messi celebrates his 33rd birthday. From a purely sporting perspective, one of the great injustices of the pandemic is depriving us of precious Messi time — after all, conventional wisdom tells us that the Argentine’s peak is now well behind him. Of course, actually watching him tells you something completely different.
As the Bundesliga returns and other top leagues follow suit, we’re bound to have a number of exciting storylines develop. This might be coming from a biased, even desperate, place, but I think a number of young Americans will become part of the headlines that catch many by surprise.
Here are three American players abroad who already stand out at the youth levels of their clubs and are ready to take the next step once their leagues return to action.
Ligue 1 had a difficult time remaining relevant even before the season was canceled and PSG was awarded the title for the seventh time in the last eight years. France’s top flight is often considered the weakest of the big five leagues in Europe or left out all-together.
The Bundesliga will be the first major European league to resume play starting Saturday, May 16. Fans of the league are nothing less than exhilarated to see its return. For those unfamiliar with the league or even the teams, don’t fear.
For a little background, the title chase is being closely contested between five clubs. If you’re unsure who to root for, this Americanized list of the Bundesliga’s top five teams will surely help.
The term “breaking ankles” is when you juke your opponent so bad, they end up on their backside. It’s an act seen lots of times in basketball and sometimes in soccer. It makes supporters and the bench go wild and adds an element of excitement to the game. Conceding a goal or basket is one thing, but losing your own ankles is on another echelon of humiliation. The Lionel Messi goal vs Bayern Munich in 2015 features one of the worst ankle breakers in soccer history. How does it compare to the time Allen Iverson snatched a pair of his own ankles?
With the K League and Bundesliga nearing their respective returns and players flocking to team training facilities across the world for individual exercise, what you see there is a glimmer of light breaking through the darkness. But as Samwise Gamgee once pondered, how can the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened?
As we approach the two-month mark of having no live soccer to watch, I don’t think I’m alone when I say I really want the beautiful game to return as quickly — and safely — as possible.
For seven weeks, the only football we’ve been able to watch falls into two categories: replays of old matches and folks playing the FIFA video game.
While it can be fun and enlightening to return to classic matches years or even decades later, you lose one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching live sports: the uncertainty of what will happen.
LaLiga has a tough decision to make if football can’t resume in Spain to finish the remainder of the current season. In France, Ligue 1 and 2 decided to end the season and award PSG the title. Awarding PSG the title wasn’t too controversial as the French giant was 12 points clear of second place with a game in hand. The logic does seem sound though, the team with the most points when the season ended gets the title. Real Madrid’s Thibaut Courtois doesn’t think so and has a different answer to who should be La Liga champions.
When the 2006 World Cup was over, eight of The Guardian’s 12 correspondents in Germany named it the match of the tournament. That sentiment has lasted 14 years as a recent poll on FIFA’s Twitter — with nearly 45K votes cast — declared it the one game from the 2006 competition that fans wanted to rewatch most.
And all this fervent nostalgia for a match that remained 0-0 over the course of the first 118 minutes of action in Dortmund.