In-Depth Feature

Less than a week after Sporting KC beat the New York Red Bulls to win the 2017 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in September, qualifying for the 2018 tournament began. More than 100 amateur clubs entered the competition, dreaming of a chance to compete in the 105-year-old event against the best professional teams in the country. 

Of those scores of squads, 14 Open Division Local Qualifying teams emerged, 14 flag bearers for an ever-growing stanchion of U.S. soccer. 

The fallout from Jonathan Gonzalez’s switch from the United States national team to Mexico has been expectedly fierce, especially so when coupled with the current state of U.S. Soccer. Here was a California native who’d progressed through the U.S. youth system, including run-outs at the U-17, U-18 and U-20 levels, who joined Mexican club side C.F. Monterrey in 2014 “bleeding red, white and blue.”

American-born defender Eric Lichaj had a deal with his wife: Score a hat trick and she will finally let him get a dog. The Nottingham Forest defender came oh so close to scoring a hat trick against Arsenal during the FA Cup on Sunday. After Lichaj asked Twitter to bombard his wife with dog memes, she caved. Eric Lichaj finally has a dog. 

Every so often you see a story or a headline about how soccer is taking over the U.S. — it’s been America’s sport of the future for at least four decades. The latest stories revolve around a recent Gallup poll, which asked Americans what their favorite sport is to watch. Soccer popularity in America is ranked fourth, easily passing by hockey and inching closer to edging baseball out of the top three.

How do you replace a man like Gianluigi Buffon? For the past two decades, Buffon has been a mainstay between the posts for both the Italian national team and his club side, Juventus.

During that time, he’s demonstrated remarkable consistency, spending twenty years as one of the best keepers in the world. Even when Juve was relegated in 2006, he stayed with the team. He’s unquestionably a legend of the game. But the end is nigh.

In the end, it’s all shock and horror for Arsene Wenger and Arsenal FC. Their 4-2 defeat to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup on Sunday means it’s the first time since Wenger became Arsenal’s manager that they’ve failed to progress past the third round — a record of 21 straight seasons that’s now over. Forest are also the first team from a lower division to score four or more goals against Arsenal in the FA Cup since 1908. 

The 2017 MLS Cup Final will be rightly remembered as the crowning achievement on a historic, record-setting season for Toronto FC, but for the second year running, Seattle Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei came agonizingly close to writing the script himself — almost literally single-handedly. 

Will Philippe Coutinho transfer to FC Barcelona? According to Google, that’s all anyone wants to know in 2018. We’re not here to give you a definitive answer, but to break it on down like the 2 Live Crew utilizing a system developed by The Walking Dead’s Eugene Porter. Here’s Philippe Coutinho’s rumored transfer from Liverpool to Barcelona broken into the categories of “What We Know,” “What We Know We Don’t Know” and “Things We Are Unaware Of. Wholly.”

George Weah, the 1995 Ballon d’Or winner, was elected president of Liberia on Thursday, beating out current vice president Joseph Boakai in a run-off election. A former Monaco, PSG and AC Milan star striker, Weah was announced as the winner after securing 61.5 percent of the vote from 98.1 percent of the ballots cast.