National Teams

It’s been almost 180 days since Sergio Ramos put Mohamed Salah into a judo hold, fun-cussed Loris Karius and gave Roberto Firmino the flu by sweating on him, but to Liverpool’s Dejan Lovren, it still smacks of yesterday. 

The Croatian defender has gone full-on Dani Alves of late, telling anyone and everyone under the sun about his every whim and desire, and we’re here for it.

Algeria secured qualification to the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations with a 4-1 victory over Togo in Lomé on Sunday, and although the Sparrowhawks of Togo could still qualify for the main event by defeating Benin on the final match day, the way they fell behind against Algeria was nothing short of calamitous. 

England and Croatia played out a testament to the UEFA Nations League in front of 78,221 Wembley spectators with the unique winner-takes-all circumstances in Group 4 making it immensely more enjoyable than a typical November friendly two years before a major international tournament. 

The USWNT U-17 Women's World Cup campaign took a bad turn on Saturday. Featured on FS2 — one of the few soccer matches on TV in the U.S. on a day dominated by college football — the Americans were routed by North Korea 3-0 in their second Group C match in Uruguay. 

The U.S. opened the tournament with a 3-0 win while North Korea lost 4-1. Perhaps the Americans assumed they’d have an easy win based on those scores, but that was anything but the case. 

The U.S. will be at the U-20 Men’s World Cup. Alex Mendez and Uly Llanez made sure of that on Friday night.

The USMNT is currently playing in the Concacaf U-20 Championship in Bradenton, Florida. After crushing it in the first group stage — five wins with 39 goals for and two against — the U.S. needed just one more win in the second group stage to ensure one of four Concacaf spots at the 2019 U-20 World Cup. 

They got that win in style, beating Costa Rica 4-0 thanks to a couple impressive goals from Mendez and Llanez.

Guillermo Ochoa was awarded the Silver Glove at the 2018 World Cup, but it seems never really has gotten his due as one of the world's best goalies. A serially underrated goalkeeper (he probably should’ve won the Gold Glove), Ochoa is still making incredible saves more than 13 years after this Mexico national team debut.