Opinion

Finding a good soccer children's book can be difficult for true fans of the beautiful game. You want something easily accessible for a youngster, but you don’t want something condescending or trifling.

Fortunately, there’s “G is for Golazo: The Ultimate Soccer Alphabet,” a kid’s picture book released Tuesday by Triumph Books. 

“G is for Golazo” is a follow-up to “B is for Baller,” a similar idea for basketball. In this soccer children's book, author James Littlejohn pulls into more than 100 years of soccer references to go through the English alphabet.

As the Premier League season wound down, polls such as this indicated that neutrals preferred to see Liverpool win the title. Some pundits claimed that this tendency was owing to sympathy that Liverpool hadn't won the title in 29 years, or perhaps to an affinity for Liverpool’s playing style or their affable manager Jurgen Klopp. 

There is another explanation that has received no attention whatsoever, namely that spectators judge Liverpool’s record to actually be superior to Manchester City’s. 

Arlo White is the voice of NBC’s coverage of the Premier League, a fixture on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the U.S. as NBCSN brings American viewers one of the most exciting title races in recent memory to our living rooms.

And Arlo White isn’t going to let you forget that last fact.

Throughout 2019, White has felt compelled to exclaim that every goal scored by Liverpool or Manchester City could possibly be the title-deciding strike. It’s getting a little old and a bit condescending to soccer fans in the U.S.

This past week MLS announced that expansion was formally approved to hit 30 clubs over the coming years. In a country with a relatively young soccer community, interest continually growing, and a number of small to large sized untapped markets, expansion is a fundamental part of the soccer landscape. Not just for MLS but across all the leagues. 

Here is a brief look at the new clubs set to debut in 2020. Expect this list to double by the time we reach November. 

Major League Soccer held its annual Board of Governors meetings in Los Angeles this week. Along with allowing MLS clubs to collect solidarity payments in the future, one of the major outcomes of the meetings was the announcement that MLS expansion will increase the league to 30 teams in the near future.

MLS announces plans to expand to 30 teams in the coming years. More: https://t.co/P71gdJhogy pic.twitter.com/mlnLDNd7x1

Yesterday, I was one of the fortunate 19,796 to witness Minnesota United open Allianz Field in Saint Paul. Ultimately I was very blessed because I got to take part in a spectacular atmosphere, but more so because I got to watch NYCFC goalkeeper Sean Johnson finesse one into his own net.

The match took place at 4:00 p.m. with the temperature hovering around 40 degrees and the sun appearing about as frequently as a Minnesota clean sheet.

The Wolverhampton Wanderers deserve to be in the position that they are in the Premier League. Sitting seventh in the table, Wolves have been touted as the “best of the rest,” so to speak.

With an adaptable and tactically astute manager, dynamic players and an important financial backing, Wolves are an example of a promotion success story.

While the statistics that attackers generate greatly lend themselves to the formulation of lists such as this, things get a little more ambiguous where defenders are concerned.