Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Sam Allardyce is coaching a Premier League club.
Yes, the English manager is back in the EPL after not having his contract renewed with West Ham United at the end of last season. This time, he takes the reigns of a struggling Sunderland, who have a mere three points in eight games. If it wasn’t for an equally unimpressive Newcastle United, they’d be rock bottom in the table.
South American national teams started World Cup this international break with several of the leading South American players ineligible through either suspension or injury.
Obviously the most-missed is Lionel Messi, who injured his left knee in La Liga and will almost certainly will not play in any of the remaining qualifiers for Argentina in 2015. Messi has scored 49 goals in 105 games for his country.
As the United States Men’s National Team prepares for its all-important clash with Mexico on Oct. 10 with a spot in the 2017 Confederations Cup up for grabs, one pressing question must be asked: who really deserves to be the starting goalkeeper when these two CONCACAF rivals square off in Pasadena? Guzan vs Howard?
Screaming fans, a sold-out stadium, waving banners and chants from the crowd that reach the players in the locker room before they take the field. This will be the spectacle awaiting Kansas City FC and Seattle Reign FC when they arrive in Portland for this week's 2015 NWSL Final. It will be played in front of a crowd at Providence Park, home of both the Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns FC and, coincidentally, one of the most rabid fan bases in all of soccer.
David de Gea's move was billed as the biggest transfer of the summer between two of the game’s biggest clubs in Manchester United and Real Madrid. The last transfer between these two clubs was the £80 million transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo.
It has been a long road for Ronaldinho. Yet, the two-time FIFA World Player of the Year might be facing one of his toughest ever challenges in his second return to Brazil. The newest trial posed to Ronaldinho is to turn an apathetic Fluminense squad back into a winning club.
Fun fact: WashingtonSpirit.com lists Crystal Dunn, who as mentioned in the sub-head won the 2015 NWSL Golden Boot, as a defender. Granted, Crystal Dunn has played her fair share of defense (she won ACC Defensive Player of the Year while at the University of North Carolina), but this seems curious to us. Just an interesting thing we noticed. On to the preview.
It would be disastrous if the Netherlands didn’t qualify for the UEFA Euro 2016 in France. But, with only two games before the end of qualifying group stages, the Dutch National team sits fourth in their group, trailing Iceland, the Czech Republic and Turkey. What should have been a winnable group and a doable job proved more difficult than expected.
Iceland’s win over Holland last Thursday at Amsterdam Arena was the most surprising result of the day in Euro 2016 qualifying.
Their draw with Kazakhstan Sunday was less surprising, but more important in terms of what it directly led to.
Iceland’s national team has qualified for a European Championship for the first time ever.
The island nation nearly qualified for the 2014 World Cup road but lost in the playoffs against Croatia and failed to get its ticket to Brazil.
Collegiate soccer programs began to truly emerge sometime in the 1980s. For women, the passage of Title IX opened up opportunities for female athletes that were only available to men playing football (the oblong type) and basketball. Men’s soccer programs have been around significantly longer (the first NCAA championship was played in 1959), but consistently take a backseat to padded football and madness of basketball.
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