Thinking back over the first six months of the Premier League season, it has seemed like an unusually poor year for goalkeepers. This has been evident from the opening weekend, when a plethora of minor goalkeeping errors led to a forgettable start to the season.
David de Gea has been sensational, but aside from the Man United keeper, who has stood out between the posts this year?
Hello and welcome to one of the most difficult exercises of the year — the Champions League Round of 16 predictions.
It's always a fool's exercise since this stage of the competition is guaranteed to throw one shock at us (like Porto knocking out Juventus last year) while also delivering some matchups (Real Madrid vs. PSG, Man United vs. Atlético) that require very little imagination to see going either way. But all we do at The18 is watch an entirely unhealthy amount of this game, so we should be able to earn you a pretty penny* with these predictions.
The knockout stages of the Champions League begin Tuesday with what's arguably the most eagerly anticipated Round of 16 matchup ever — a clash between the club that never settles for anything less than lifting the trophy, record 13-time winner Real Madrid, and the club whose entire apparatus is hellbent on making that happen for the first time, PSG.
Every league has that one team that isn't really all that good but just seems to hang around for far longer than they should. They don't spend much, they don't play entertaining football, and they never really win any big games. Yet when the season ends, they are always mid-table.
In the 2010s, that team in England was Wigan Athletic, as Roberto Martínez's brand of "Guerilla Soccer" kept an underfunded Latics side in the Premier League for eight years.
The USMNT is one step away from qualifying for the World Cup after taking care of business on Wednesday night against an already eliminated Honduras side in "the coldest game ever."
I was on hand in Saint Paul to watch Kellyn Acosta again demonstrate why those who mocked his nomination for 2021 U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year deserve to be ostracized from our country and to see Christian Pulisic exorcise that lecherous demon known as Thomas Tuchel.
Disappointment was pervasive among American soccer fans after their side fell 2-0 to Canada in Hamilton, Ontario, on Sunday.
There's a certain sense of privilege among more flighty fans, as they expect the USMNT to travel the continent and come back unscathed with three points in hand every time.
But Concacaf is a difficult region for visiting teams to win in — perhaps the most difficult in the world — and we have the stats to prove it.
In a strictly sporting sense, the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations arrives at exactly the right moment (there are a lot of non-sporting reasons why this is not at all an optimum time). In Europe, the coming month will be dominated by transfer nonsense, the ever-tightening grip of the domestic title favorites and no Champions League football.
Between Jan. 9 and Feb. 6 in Cameroon, AFCON promises to deliver a remedy for each of those ills: the pure passion of the international game, total unpredictability and a showcase of some of the world's most brilliant footballers.
The USMNT is one step closer to the 2022 World Cup after a tight 1-0 victory against El Salvador that also featured an amazing Antonee Robinson celebration. The result was nothing to gloat about for American fans.
Most people would think of ice hockey as the most popular sport in Canada, and in a sense, you wouldn't be wrong. Hockey is among the most common Canadian stereotypes, along with maple syrup, Tim Hortons and those great Candian accents (oh yah?).
At the professional sports level, this assumption holds true as well. Canada has seven teams in the NHL versus a combined five teams in the NFL, NBA, MLB and MLS.
For United States men’s national team fans asking the question "is John Brooks playing for the USA?” the answer is no at the moment, and it could be that way for the future.
The 28-year-old was left off head coach Gregg Berhalter’s USMNT roster for a second straight World Cup qualifying window and won't play in games against El Salvador, Canada and Honduras. Brooks is experiencing a rough patch in his career, hasn’t found recent success with the national team and could be looking at a summer transfer after issues with Wolfsburg.