Get Zinedine Zidane out on the pitch with normal footballers and it immediately becomes clear that he is not a normal man. The 47-year-old has that je ne sais quoi of a genius, and it's impossible for him to hold back — his every touch is a work of art.
Vissel Kobe defeated Nagoya 5-3 in J1 League play on Sunday thanks to braces from Spanish legends Andrés Iniesta, age 35, and David Villa, 37. Villa opened the scoring with a fine solo goal, and then Iniesta restored Vissel Kobe’s advantage with this sensational long-range effort.
Mexico’s quest for its eighth Gold Cup — and first since 2015 — almost came to an abrupt end in Houston last night in front of over 70,000 at NRG Stadium. Raúl Jiménez had given El Tri a first half lead, only for Costa Rica to respond in the second half via a converted Bryan Ruiz penalty.
That would be the only scoring on the night, so the match would be decided on penalties. The shootout started as a nightmare for Mexico after Jiménez had his shot saved while Celso Borges converted for Costa Rica.
Down 2-0 with only 40 minutes remaining in last night’s CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinal, Haiti produced a barnstorming comeback to knockout Canada 3-2 while clinching a spot in the semifinals for the first time ever.
The progress that Canada had evidently made under John Herdman had been one of the talking points of the group stage, and there were whispers of the Canucks upsetting the odds to claim their first continental title since 2000.
To say Germany had Sweden’s number in major international tournaments would be an insult to number-having everywhere. In nine knockout-round matches between the two all time, the Germans had won all of them.
Well, all but one after Saturday.
Sweden overcame an early goal to rally past the second-ranked team in the world 2-1, providing perhaps the biggest upset of the Women’s World Cup to advance to the semifinals.
Sweden joined the U.S., England and the Netherlands in the final four and will play the Dutch on Wednesday.
The United States is into the semifinals of the 2019 Women’s World Cup, continuing its incredible streak of reaching the final four in all eight editions.
The USWNT did it by seeing off host France, seen by many as the biggest challenger to the No. 1 team repeating as world champion. The 2-1 win on Friday night in Paris was coach Jill Ellis’ 100th win in charge of the Americans, including 11 wins and one draw with no losses in World Cup play.
Hope Solo may disagree, but maybe we should give the Englishwoman a bit of respect for what she’s accomplished with Team USA.
Megan Rapinoe may just win the Golden Boot — and help the USWNT win a fourth Women’s World Cup in the process.
The USWNT winger scored in the fifth and 65th minutes to lead the U.S. to a 2-1 win over France in the 2019 Women’s World Cup quarterfinals on Friday in Paris. The anticipated showdown came down to the wire but the U.S. held on for an impressive victory over the host nation.
As much of a cliché as this sounds, England is very much a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.
This isn’t to say England has bad players — Fran Kirby and Lucy Bronze are among the best in the world at their respective positions. Yet it would be hard to say the Three Lionesses are the best in the world in any one particular area. There are better passing teams, better possession teams, better defending teams and quicker and stronger teams.
But when England puts it together, there might not be a better team.
Everyone knows that Christian Pulisic isn’t going to immediately step into Eden Hazard’s shoes at Chelsea and act as a carbon copy of the Belgian. Hazard, of course, is eight years older than Pulisic and currently much more decisive in the final third: Hazard hit 16 Premier League goals last campaign, the American tied his career best by reaching four in the Bundesliga.
Twitter, like Reddit before it, was once a largely satirical, clandestine take on whataboutery — a safe place against the echo chambers of fallacy that invaded popular media sources with the power to turn Mahatma Gandhi into a cynic. In their absurdism, Twitter and Reddit remained far from the trappings of modern media. That’s no longer the case.
Our takes are now dictated by the reactionary, reward-seeking behavior that's seeped into all social platforms, contributing directly to the cacophony of noise that leads to the short-sighted negligence we all, supposedly, abhor.