OK, we can stop whining. A couple of hours of cursing and gnashing of teeth is understandable, but after that … time to move on. Weird things happened tonight and the U.S. national team is out of the World Cup for the first time since 1986. A 2-1 defeat at Trinidad & Tobago; Honduras and […]

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That’s what you say when the ball gets away and rolls into another court, in tennis or basketball. “A little help, please?” A request, not a demand. Which is what the U.S. national soccer team is asking of Mexico and Costa Rica. “A little help, please?”

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As the ultimate international sport, one might expect soccer would offer all sorts of odd and interesting connections. This guy played for that guy, and later became coach of this team that I covered … It really is rather amazing, in a sort of “three degrees of separation” way. And I have noticed a few […]

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The U.S. national soccer team has played in the past seven World Cups and qualified for six of them. The Yanks hosted the 1994 World Cup and did not have to qualify. From the outside, it looks like light work. A massive country of 300 million people needs only to finish in the top three […]

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You bet. Start worrying now, if you are not already doing so. Only four days till the U.S. national team plays host to Panama, only eight days until an away game with Trinidad & Tobago, as Concacaf hexagonal qualifying for the 2018 World Cup concludes. At stake, the U.S. streak of seven consecutive World Cup […]

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Catalonia took another step on the road to sovereign status in a referendum today. And, as we typically do in reflecting the world of sports, we make it about us. To wit: “If  Catalonia leaves Spain … what does this mean for FC Barcelona and the Spanish league and the Spanish national team?” The short […]

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We cannot know what it is like, at the remove that is the TV in your living room. Radio can convey some of the noise but little of the energy. Even inside the stadium, the nervous tension does not always register up into the seats. To gauge the real impact of a big and painfully […]

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They probably should give a bit more thought than usual to avoiding trouble as they travel to Champions League group stage matches in Moscow in the coming days. One fine idea might be to hold off on consuming copious amounts of alcohol in the hours before kickoff. Why? Beside the calories? Because English club fans […]

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By population, the city of San Diego ranks No. 8 in the country, with approximately 1.4 million residents. By professional sports teams, however, San Diego now ranks perhaps No. 40 in the U.S. It has baseball’s San Diego Padres … and we are done talking about Big Four U.S. sports teams based in one of […]

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I get it. Some might consider it silly, ridiculous even, to be headed for a sports bar on a Wednesday night while visiting an exotic capital city. But keep in mind that 1) the sports bar is about 50 yards away from where we are staying; 2) the bar serves food as well as beer […]

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