Off the Pitch

Ted Lasso is coming back.

Saturday Night Live alum Jason Sudeikis is reprising his role as the clueless American coaching Premier League soccer in London with the return of his character Ted Lasso in an upcoming Apple TV+ series. 

Jason Sudeikis first portrayed Lasso in 2013 as part of a promotional series for NBC Sports, which had just obtained the U.S. TV rights to the English Premier League. Lasso was a stereotypical American football coach who had no idea what he was doing coaching Tottenham Hotspur.

These days, you’re not a football star if you don’t have a statue. Whether it’s been possessed by a demon or part of a prank, everyone from Cristiano Ronaldo to David Beckham has one. So of course, there’s a Zlatan statue now.

The Houston Dash are probably the least popular club in the NWSL. They’re the only team without a USWNT player and they’re seemingly allergic to scoring, with only the dysfunctional Sky Blue having fewer goals. 

So maybe they’re on to something with this basketball thing.

The Dash, all but out of the playoff running in NWSL, practiced basketball on Thursday as Houston was smashed by a tropical depression, making outdoor training impossible.

Meet the Malabar giant squirrel, or Indian giant squirrel (Ratufa indica), the world’s cutest Barcelona fan.

Photos captured by wildlife photographer Kaushik Vijayan and posted to his Instagram page show a squirrel with blue and dark-red coloring that looks a bit like the blaugrana uniforms of famed football club Barcelona. 

SK Austria Klagenfurt, a second-division Austrian club, has temporarily been kicked out of its 32,000-seat Wörthersee Stadion. 

This isn’t the case of a big rock band coming through or stadium renovations. Instead, Wörthersee Stadion has been turned into a temporary forest.

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Turkish side Galatasaray made some big moves in the transfer market this summer, signing a total of 12 players. The biggest name on its new signing list is Radamel Falcao.

The 33-year-old Colombian striker, while having some low points in his career, has been one of the top strikers in the world over the past decade. And now he is playing for one of the best teams in Turkey.

I would be pretty excited if Falcao signed for my team. But these Galatasaray fans have gone above and beyond. Just watch how they welcome "The Tiger" to their stadium.

How does one celebrate winning a second Women’s World Cup? Shotgunning a beer naked, naturally. 

Kelley O’Hara helped the USWNT win the 2019 Women’s World Cup over the summer. Afterword, she was asked to pose for ESPN’s Body Issue, becoming the latest in a long line of footballers to appear in the annual issue.

O’Hara, however, had one stipulation for appearing naked: She wanted a celebratory shot. 

The post-World Cup USWNT lovefest continued at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards on Monday. Women’s World Cup winners Alex Morgan, Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger were invited to present one of the VMAs and weren’t a bit out of place among music’s biggest celebrities.

And you know they brought style and class to the whole operation.

Fans of soccer and reality television had someone to really root for on this season of Big Brother.

That was, they did until Day 65 came and Analyse Talavera, a former forward of the Nevada Wolfpack soccer team, was evicted.

Talavera never really seemed in danger in the show until that fateful week, receiving her first and only nomination of the season.

However, fans of the evictee should know she’ll be back in the show as a jury member.

She also had a good running in the show, making it to the halfway point of the season