Sometimes a story comes along that just feels right. This is one of those. Mino Raiola, the super-agent who represents Manchester United new boys Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, has purchased a Miami beach house once owned by crime boss Al Capone.
Now that the United Kingdom has officially voted to leave the European Union, we can turn our attention to how the Brexit vote will affect the English Premier League.
You thought club football was over, didn't you? Nope! Adidas, Nike and Puma have begun their multi-million dollar ad campaigns that are hell-bent on flogging you the new kits for the 2016-17 season. "Wait, what? I just dropped $300 on my Peru vs. Haiti Copa America tickets!" you might contest. Too bad. Multinational corporations can't hear your screams.
Nike has a knack for creating really long advertisements for soccer. You have the older ads such as the three-minute 'Write the Future' ad and the the three-minute 'Take It To The Next Level' ad.
Adidas is one of many brands trying to muscle in on the attention the Copa America Centenario has brought to soccer in the USA. This is a good idea on its face, the only problem is they are not doing a very good job of it.
There is a persistent rumor that Adidas is an acronym for "All day I dream about sports." There is also a less-appropriate version that substututes "sports" for . . . well you get the idea. It doesn't matter anyway, because we alone know what Adidas actually stands for: All Day I Derp About Spelling.
Look what they did with "Colombia" and "Columbia."
Last weekend, the discovery of a serious match-fixing scandal has made Portuguese football a hot topic in crime pages in newspapers around the world.
Unfortunately this is not an isolated case, over the years, match-fixing scandals have dramatically grown.
Soccer is facing more suspicion than it ever has before, and that suspicion is driven by the possibility of a multibillion-dollar web of match-fixing that is corrupting the game.
Lionel Messi has been under investigation for tax fraud for so long that it was behinning to feel like nothing was ever going to come of it. But now, with Messi standing trial for four days, and details from that trial being released, it seems like there is a chance some s*** will hit the fan, only a slight chance but a chance none the less.
Prosecutors representing the Spanish government accuse Messi and his father of dodging €4.1 million in taxes from 2007 to 2009 via shell companies in the UK and Switzerland and tax havens in Belize and Uruguay.
The Copa America and European Championships are the two biggest continental tournaments in football. Both have a similar structure, but the money made available for winnings by CONMEBOL and UEFA is not equal between the two.
The Copa America Centenario has $18 million with which to reward national teams, which is $8 million more than Chile 2015 had to distribute.
Interim FIFA general secretary Markus Kattner has been fired for receiving lots and lots of money in secret bonuses.
For the previous 13 years, Kattner had served as FIFA's finance director, so he was in a perfect position to give himself a little extra million or several under the table.
FIFA's announcement was, um, succinct:
Earlier this year, the Bundesliga announced that the league had recorded its second-highest Bundesliga attendance ever. A total of 6,478,680 fans attended 153 matches over the first half of the season with an average of 42,344 per game. By contrast, the Premier League averaged 36,452 over the entirety of the season.
Home