* With new video link! The final 15 minutes of North America’s six-team qualifying process, for Brazil 2014, was madness. And it ended with a crazy result: Mexico remaining alive for the World Cup thanks, pretty much entirely, to US Soccer … and with a Mexican television announcer shouting: “God bless America” in English. Mexico […]

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1. The United States is headed for the World Cup for the seventh consecutive time. It’s a lock. Bom dia, Brasil 2014! But it gets better.

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The first thing to keep in mind, when considering the U.S. national soccer team losing tonight at Costa Rica is … The U.S. never wins in Costa Rica. The Yanks didn’t win there when the U.S. was a second-rate soccer country. And they do not win when they are ranked No. 20 in the world, […]

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Several broad trends in the makeup of Asia’s delegation to the World Cup were confirmed today, the final match day of qualifying for Brazil 2014. It is good news for the powers that be. And have been. It is bad news for just about everyone else.

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Mexico fans are probably gloating a little. El Tri is representing North America at the Confederations Cup, the quadrennial continental championships, in Brazil, a nice little tournament that doubles as a test run for the host country a year ahead of the World Cup. Four years ago, it was the U.S. national soccer team at […]

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If you follow global soccer, you know this is not an unusual story. Nigeria’s national team today refused to leave its hotel in Namibia because the Nigeria soccer federation had not paid the players the money they were promised for recent successes in international games. How is this possible? Because the Nigeria federation is broke […]

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  The U.S. national soccer team won a key World Cup qualifying match over Costa Rica last night in conditions that were, oh, unusual for a game played in the Concacaf “hexagonal” — made up mostly of teams from Central America and the Caribbean. A heavy snowstorm. Don’t see that in Kingston. The Yanks defeated […]

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For a period of about 20 years, from 1989 until 2009, I saw nearly every match the U.S. national soccer team played. Many of them in person. Most of the rest via television. I knew those teams, especially those from the World Cup teams of 1990 through 2002, as well as I have ever known […]

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I don’t have a strong opinion about most Premier League coaches. Even after three years of reading about them daily. Sir Alex Ferguson? Negative connotations. A sort of bully. “Fergie time,” all that. And I don’t like calling anyone “sir”. (It’s the republican in me.) But he wins. Roberto Mancini seems a sort of fancy […]

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The biggest sports event in a decade to be held in the UAE begins in 226 days. That would be the Fifa Under 17 World Cup, comprising teams from 24 nations playing 52 games in six cities over 23 days of competition, beginning on October 17. Some big events come through here, but the scale […]

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