More than two years after the 2014 World Cup, the excess of $3 billion spent on building new stadiums and renovating existing ones across Brazil is looking more and more like an unmitigated disaster. With the government unable to pay teachers, medical personnel and pensions, the extreme costs of up keeping these gargantuan white elephants are rightly the last thing on the country's priority list.
From his inauguration in 2009 until his final days as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama was always a passionate supporter of the world’s game while in office. He’s invited multiple MLS Cup champions to the White House, the USWNT and he shared a phone call with the USMNT after a successful World Cup.
Here are some of the best soccer-related photos of Obama during his time in the White House.
Everyone, in lazy idleness, allows their mind to drift. You might start thinking about what a cat’s face might look like on the body of an elephant or if we had arms where our legs should be and legs for arms. The mind just wanders into strange territory.
If you have been on the Internet in the last few days you have almost certainly heard about the unverified dossier Buzzfeed published in President-elect Donald Trump's alleged relations with Russia.
What you might not know is the operative in charge of putting the dossier together, British former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, recently helped bring down a corrupt, delusional politician: Sepp Blatter.
From the New York Times:
After Missouri Governor-elect Eric Greitens called public funding for stadiums "welfare for millionaires", the bill pledging $80 million in public funds for a soccer stadium in St. Louis seemed like a long shot. Now, the bill is officially dead.
The FIFA World Cup is set to undergo its first expansion since the current format of 32 teams was employed at the 1998 World Cup in France. The 2026 World Cup, as unanimously approved by members of the FIFA Council on Tuesday, will feature 48 teams.
The 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will stick to the 32-team format, meaning that the expanded tournament will likely make its debut in the CONCACAF region come 2026.
Four Chelsea supporters, despite claiming they aren't racists, have been found to be racists by a court in France after throwing a black man out of a Paris metro car, according to the BBC.
The men who claimed they aren't racists could be heard yelling "we are racist, we are racist, and that's the way we like it" in a video taken of the scene.
All four men were given one-year suspended prison sentences and ordered to pay their victim 10,000 Euros.
Surely the picture above is not some kind of metaphor for Missouri Governor-elect Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, shooting down a proposal for an MLS team in St. Louis that included a hefty chunk of public funding for a new stadium.
That would be ridiculous.
Greitens has once-and-for-all said that state funding will not be used for stadiums if he can help it.
Cataluña, la comunidad autónoma ubicada en el extremo este de España con Barcelona como su capital y su ciudad más grande, ha estado pidiendo su independencia desde la Guerra civil española. Con una autonomía cultural y política, además del uso prevalente del idioma catalán, seguido de eso la región tendría su propio equipo nacional de fútbol.
Sin embargo, Cataluña no está afiliado con la FIFA o la UEFA y eso los descalifica de poder participar en la Copa del Mundo o en el torneo europeo.