The feel-good aura surrounding Newcastle United was evaporating faster than a fart into a Panasonic exhaust fan as they stared a fifth-straight defeat in the face on Tuesday. West Bromwich Albion took a 2-0 lead in the 56th minute of their Premier League match at The Hawthorns, but a spirited fightback earned Newcastle an invaluable point and somewhat arrested the slide on Tyneside.
CONCACAF officially approved the CONCACAF League of Nations on Thursday, setting up a cool new competition for the 41 national teams in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. The League of Nations, which follows the lead of UEFA, is designed to provide quality, meaningful competition for all teams across the spectrum. Schedule and structural details will be announced in early 2018.
In a league where parity reigns unlike any other, the tenure of Caleb Porter as manager of the Portland Timbers will go down as one of the most wildly successful in Major League Soccer’s 22-year existence. According to reports, that tenure has reached a shocking conclusion — by mutual consent — after a season in which the Timbers finished at the top of the Western Conference.
The list of the 32 nations competing in the World Cup was finalized on Wednesday night. That also meant the list of 179 nations not competing in the World Cup was also finalized. While 15 percent of the countries who compete in FIFA will be preparing for the World Cup draw on Dec. 1, the remaining countries, constituting most of the world’s population, will be wondering “What if…” for the next four years.
We joked about it a month ago, the idea of the U.S. hosting a summer tournament full of all the nations who were too cool to actually qualify for the World Cup. Turns out, U.S. Soccer is actually looking into doing just that.
Oh sweet baby Jesus, won’t you please just make this 2017 USMNT horror show stop? Can’t we just be done with it until, say, 2019 or 2020?
At halftime in Portugal vs. U.S., it’s been a tale of two decidedly different things, although both have to do with players that pundits around the nation plugged into their “GUARANTEED 2022 World Cup Starting XI” article.
As far as debuts go, it doesn’t get any better than this. 19-year-old Texan Weston McKennie, fresh off breaking into Schalke’s first team in the Bundesliga and earning his first cap for the USMNT, put his country ahead against the world’s third-ranked side, Portugal.
Leave it to 19-year-old Christian Pulisic to provide some much-needed perspective on the USMNT’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. In a current political climate that does not often favor communicating thoughtful, introspective sentiments, Pulisic finally spoke up on the state of U.S. soccer with a thought-provoking, well-written article in The Player’s Tribune released on Monday.