I didn’t think The End would come so quickly. No, Landon Donovan did not play at the World Cup in Brazil. No, he has not had a particularly productive Major League Soccer season. Yes, he is 32, which is not young for an attacking player in the modern game. Yes, he has been carrying injuries […]

[Read more →]

One of the surest ways to move your soccer career forward is to do a little something with a successful team at the World Cup. Like the one that ended on Sunday. —Luis Suarez scored two goals against England, bit a guy, and got a huge deal to more from Liverpool to Barcelona. —Toni Kroos […]

[Read more →]

A lot of sports editors around the world today weren’t exactly surprised that, with the end of the World Cup, not a whole lot is going on … but it still represents an unpleasant reality. A limited number of scheduled events in the near future. It is the case in the UAE, and it is […]

[Read more →]

My three wishes for the World Cup championship match: 1. Someone scores in the first 90 minutes. 2. Argentina scores the goal. 3. Lionel Messi scores the goal, for Argentina. A big 0-for-three. Two topics, out of “Germany 1, Argentina 0” — in 120 minutes:

[Read more →]

Deadline! Journalists love it and hate it. We love the rush. We hate that it probably will shorten our lives. (Or, less dramatically, get us in trouble for missing it.) We will be dealing with deadline for the World Cup final tomorrow.

[Read more →]

“Germany 7, Brazil 1” likely will be the Brazil 2014 match that sticks in the mind. Ahead, even, of the final. Barring the bizarre, on Sunday. It prompted me to think about “big-game blowouts I have known” … and that took me almost directly to the Super Bowl, and its former (deserved) reputation for producing […]

[Read more →]

Two weeks ago, I would have described myself as a Cristiano Ronaldo partisan in the great global struggle for hearts and minds and jersey sales pitting Ronaldo and his Spanish league rival, Lionel Messi. Casual fans of world football almost always prefer one or the other. And along with that usually goes casual allegiance to […]

[Read more →]

So, Brazil and Germany in the semifinals tonight. Perhaps the most anticipated match so far of the 2014 World Cup. Between them, eight World Cup championships. Brazil pretty much ordered to win their sixth, on home soil; Germany good enough to win the whole thing, too, even if they trailed Ghana in the second half […]

[Read more →]

For a while, there, I feared for the republic. Any criticism of the U.S. national soccer team was met by outraged rebuttals from fans and soccer bloggers-cum-reporters. They were unwilling to countenance the notion that the U.S. effort in Brazil was anything but The Best Possible Outcome or that Jurgen Klinsmann was anyone other than […]

[Read more →]

This comes up every four years. Or every four years after the U.S. national team has, at least, made the second round of a World Cup. Like this time around. “Is soccer about to make a breakthrough in the U.S.?” Will it be mentioned in the same breath as football and baseball and basketball? Or […]

[Read more →]