Days before a highly anticipated England-Italy final, UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin admitted the Euro 2020 format was unfair and said he wouldn’t do it again in the future.
Obviously. How else would England have reached a major final for the first time since 1966? (Kidding, maybe.)
France’s Clermont Foot is a forward-thinking club. Between 2014 and 2017, the side was managed by the current coach of the women’s national team, Corinne Diacre, making her the first woman to coach a men’s professional team in a competitive match in France.
After Diacre left to take charge of France, she was replaced by Pascal Gastien. Under Gastien, Clermont finished second in Ligue 2 during the 2020-21 season, achieving promotion to the top division for the first time in its 110-year history.
The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) is the forgotten child of the soccer world. The only time fans really hear about the OFC is when it sends New Zealand to a World Cup qualifying playoff that it loses nine times out of ten, or the Oceania team that gets sent to the Confederations Cup.
Anyone else remember when poor Tahiti was forced to play Spain, Uruguay and Nigeria at the 2013 Confederations Cup? It takes a special team to finish with a -23 goal differential after three games.
UEFA likes to claim it supports human rights — until there’s any sort of pushback. Europe’s football governing body once again showed how fucking feckless it is by banning rainbow ads at Euro 2020 quarterfinals in Saint Petersburg and Baku.
While the Euros roll on through the knockout rounds, we have plenty of wild fan interactions already. From fans showing up to support their team in the wrong country to pitch invaders wielding rainbow flags, anything goes as fans are enjoying their time back. Football fans were kept from stadiums and fully supporting their teams for over a year by the Covid-19 pandemic, diminished to yelling at screens instead of faces, so we wouldn't expect anything less extravagant than what has been happening. Let's take a look at the best Euro 2020 fans so far.
When I first heard UEFA's plans to not have just one host city for Euro 2020, I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised.
The idea makes sense. Spread fans out across eleven host cities, which prevents hundreds of thousands of supporters descending on one particular country or city. It mitigates the COVID-19 risks (not something that was on the minds of organizers in 2020, but is beneficial in 2021) and helps the many host countries and cities financially without giving too much home field advantage to one country — at least in theory.
The Premier League said on Friday it is funding defibrillators at grassroots clubs and facilities to save lives if someone suffers a cardiac arrest in the wake of Christian Eriksen's collapse at the European Championship.
The former Tottenham Hotspur midfielder collapsed in Denmark's group opener against Finland. His life was saved when CPR was administered to him on the pitch and his heart was re-started with a defibrillator before he was taken to hospital.
Last week, Hungary passed an anti-LGBTQ+ law outlawing any content that might “promote homosexuality” to Hungarians under the age of 18. It’s a law that has already sparked legal proceedings against it, and one that came front and center in the soccer world for Hungary’s Euro 2020 match against Germany on Wednesday in Munich.
UEFA has turned down a request from the mayor of Munich for the city's stadium to be lit up in rainbow colors for Wednesday's Euro 2020 match between Germany and Hungary.
Munich mayor Dieter Reiter had said he wanted to light up the stadium in the colors in protest against a new law in Hungary that bans the dissemination of content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and gender change and restricts the media from showing content with homosexuality in programming accessible to minors.
Gyasi Zardes scored twice to send Historic Crew Stadium out in style when host Columbus defeated the Chicago Fire 2-0 on Saturday.
The Crew (4-2-2, 14 points) has won three straight, none more meaningful and emotional than the final game at the first soccer-specific stadium in MLS. Their $314 million Lower.com Field will be christened July 3 against the New England Revolution.
Wise men say... pic.twitter.com/WW5QvKQvuJ