Cuba’s national team left Toronto on Saturday having not only lost its opening Nations League match to Canada 6-0, but having lost five of its players permanently.
| #MLS | [La Presse][French]Five Cuban players defect after the loss to Canada https://t.co/gAMGPcwFC5
Being a national team coach in a landscape where you rarely get to see your players must be difficult, and Costa Rica manager Gustavo Matosas has said to hell with it after less than one year in charge.
Matosas, the head coach, said that he gets bored with the amount of downtime he has compared to the amount of time he actually has to train and work with his players. He felt “unproductive” with so much down time, even though he spends loads of it studying film so that he is prepared to get the most out of the little time he has with his players.
The Jamaica women’s national team has announced that it will refuse to play until it receives the compensation that the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) owes them.
Jamaica's women's national soccer team made the #FIFAWWC for the first time ever in 2019.
They apparently were never paid for their effort, and now they're refusing to play or train. https://t.co/BHkfZO09Pt
Last night in Atlanta, Minnesota United became a truly Minnesotan franchise. It’s got to mean more than an expansion love-in and a celebration of soccer stadia specificity — it’s got to hurt, and Tuesday had that Sisyphean quality that encapsulates everything Minnesota teams try their hand at.
The USMNT’s debut fixture in the Concacaf Nations League has finally been announced.
"Events DC is honored for DC to host the U.S. Soccer Men’s National Team vs. Cuba in the first-ever CONCACAF Nations League competition..." @EventsDCPrez
Jack Warner, the former Trinidad and Tobago soccer official, has been ordered to pay $79 million in damages for his role in negotiating and accepting bribes and kickbacks over his years as a FIFA vice president and Concacaf president.
The ruling came Tuesday from a New York court, with U.S. District Judge William Kuntz writing the ruling after Warner failed to show up to fight the charge, the Associated Press reported.
Concacaf announced the redesigned qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup on Wednesday. The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football has made it even simpler for the two heavyweights in the region — Mexico and the United States — to qualify for the 2022 tournament in Qatar.
It’s been just over eight years since Giovani dos Santos scored one of the greatest goals in Gold Cup history, putting the finishing touches on a 4-2 Mexico victory over the USMNT during the 2011 final. Fast forward to the present day and it’s his younger brother, Jonathan, who’s cemented El Tri’s continental dominance.
Anyone who has been to or even just watched on TV one of Mexico’s 2019 Gold Cup matches this summer knows it to be true: El Tri fans are still using the anti-gay chant during opposition goal kicks. Fans don’t seem to care that it is indisputably anti-gay and continue to use it despite tame, failed attempts from the Mexican Football Federation (FMF) to stop them.
There may have been some doubt the last time the USMNT played competitive matches 20 months ago, but there is none now during the 2019 Gold Cup. Christian Pulisic is the USMNT’s best player, without question. He may just be the best player in all of Concacaf.
Pulisic, as he’s done all Gold Cup, played with fire, passion and purpose to help the U.S. defeat Jamaica 3-1 in the semifinals late Wednesday night and into Thursday morning in Nashville, Tennessee, after a 90-minute rain delay in the first half.