In the U.S., sports fans must be talking about the top-seeded University of Virginia losing tonight to a 16 seed in the NCAA basketball tournament. A No. 1 seed losing to a 16 had never happened, not in 135 previous encounters, until Virginia succumbed to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMDC) by 20 points […]

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I have never liked the Manchester City club of the English Premier League. This is not a lifelong thing. No, this is about events and behavior and performances observed during my great Premier League awakening, while working in Abu Dhabi at the start of this decade. That is when I decided that for better or […]

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It is the nature of sports fans to crave a connection to star athletes in some (typically obscure) way. Chelsea fans had, until today, a pretty good statistic that they could bandy about. In eight Champions League matches versus the London club, Lionel Messi had never scored. That drought ended in his ninth Champions League […]

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Not that it matters much anymore, with print journalism in collapse, but for fun we can revisit a topic that would have been of great interest to sports journalists of 10 or 20 years ago: Where is “home” to the latest great athlete? Like, say, Chloe Kim, snowboarding gold-medallist at the Pyeongchang Winter Games? Chloe […]

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A former colleague who is involved in grassroots soccer may still be in mourning. He was adamant that the U.S. Soccer Federation needed new blood at the top … but the presidential election over the weekend went the way of the two establishment candidates, with the former federation vice president and Goldman Sachs partner (no, […]

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When I decided that, oh, what the hell, I was a fan of Arsenal FC, the English Premier League club … I was concerned at being branded a front-runner. Straddling the turn of the century, Arsenal won the Premier League three times in seven seasons, and this was when Alex Ferguson, the knighted coach of […]

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Alexis Sanchez, an attacking player recently of Arsenal FC, moved to Manchester United today, as his deal to switch Premier League teams was completed. That meant it was time for an “unveiling”, as the Brits inevitably describe an “introduction” … typically with stiff and anxious new player behind a table, with a club executive nearby, […]

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Ah, so it wasn’t just his missing the game. Not all about “don’t know what to do with myself.” It also was about getting paid. According to a newspaper report in Mexico, Landon Donovan will be paid $180,000 per month by the Liga MX club that has brought him out of retirement. In North American […]

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When Landon Donovan first retired, in December of 2014, his U.S. National Soccer Team record for international goals seemed unassailable, at least in the short-to-mid term. And I wrote that. His closest pursuer was Clint Dempsey, and the Texan was on 38 goals, 19 behind Donovan’s total. Then, Dempsey went on a scoring spree, banging […]

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I was made aware today of this video, which is based on the Barcelona midfield standout Andres Iniesta showing “There is a first time for everything” by trying something new — American football. It is an advertisement for an online foreign-exchange trader known as UFX, and the notion of the elfin Iniesta (5-foot-7, maybe 130 […]

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