In 1999, a U.S. team led by Landon Donovan got to the semifinals of the Fifa Under 17 Championship, in New Zealand. The young Americans played Australia to a 2-2 draw but lost the shootout 7-6 when Kenny Cutler missed his penalty and Oz’s Joshua Kennedy converted. Brazil won the tournament and the Yanks finished […]

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For as long as I have been a quasi-fan of Arsenal FC, which is about seven years now, the debate has raged, fomented by placard-waving fans or banners pulled along in the sky by small airplanes. Sometimes the argument is loud. Sometimes louder. Is it time for Arsene Wenger, the coach since 1996 of English […]

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This has driven me to distraction for decades, going back to when I was a know-almost-nothing parent coaching my kids’ soccer teams in Highland, California. I was hazy about numerous concepts of the game, but one I understood quite clearly … and in the decades since have seen screwed up all the time, from kiddie […]

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This has been an oft-revisited topic over the past five or six years. Has Arsene Wenger, on the job since 1996, stayed on too long as coach of English Premier League side Arsenal? Increasingly, the answers have come back, from fans and pundits, “Yes. It is time for Wenger to go.” The criticism of his […]

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The Wales soccer team is more Welsh than I imagined it would be. I decided to have a look, after watching the rousing 3-1 victory over Belgium tonight that puts Wales in the semifinals of the European Championships being played here in France. Seems like a team good enough to beat Belgium’s all-star side might […]

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Yesterday, we linked to a podcast reexamining what happened to the U.S. national team at the 1998 World Cup … and if we boiled it down one of the primary factors for the U.S. face-plant at France ’98 was the bad behavior of John Harkes, the team’s captain. So, it was a bit of a […]

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Ah, Quique Sanchez Flores. Here we are on Day 2 of My Favorite Soccer Coaches Roundup, which includes a certain Spanish player and coach who grew up wanting to be a sports writer. But more about that in a bit. I have been a fan of Quique Sanchez Flores from the moment he was named […]

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I am a semi-serious Arsenal fan, over these past six years, and the club drives me crazy. I can only wonder how it feels for those who have been cheering on — and wincing at — the club since said fans were in diapers. Arsenal, would-be contenders for the Premier League championship nobody seems to […]

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Heretofore, “Emirates” was a name American sports fans saw just about only on the jerseys of prominent European soccer teams. Real Madrid. Arsenal. PSG. AC Milan. This season, the logo of the aggressive, Dubai-based airline, will be seen in a baseball stadium for the first time — behind home plate and at the foul poles […]

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For 2.5 years I sat across from an Englishman who detested Ashley Cole, who at the time was a left back with Chelsea. My coworker inevitably would get around to paraphrasing the quotes from Cole’s biography, My Defence, in which the player said he was “trembling with anger” in the summer of 2006 when his […]

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