England’s latest international soccer tournament ended in such a disaster — going out in the Euro 2016 round-of-16 against Iceland — that things concerning the Football Association got weirder than usual. Following the 2-1 disaster versus tiny Iceland, England coach Roy Hodgson resigned, as he had to, for professional reasons but also because he seemed […]

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It would have been so tidy. Jurgen Klinsmann, the coach who is leading the U.S. national soccer team into irrelevance, was interested in the England job. England was interested in him. At points over the past two weeks, bookies in England (they will bet on anything in Britain; anything) had the German as the favorite […]

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This seems almost too good to be true. The front-runner to get the job as coach of the English national team is none other than … Jurgen Klinsmann! This is great news … for the U.S., where he currently is employed. England, you’re on your own. But we should be talking up Jurgen at this […]

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All these years after soccer made a breakthrough in the United States, and I’m still not sure American fans appreciate the significance of the Uefa European Championship. The World Cup is the planet’s biggest tournament. The Euros are No. 2. I suppose No. 3 would be the Copa America, which is going on in the […]

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Sometimes I feel I’m at the far end of the Jurgen Klinsmann must go spectrum. I believe the German coach of the U.S. national team is an ongoing disaster who is actively making the team worse by denigrating American players and the country’s domestic league … and who continues to bring in faux Yanks, insta-Yanks, […]

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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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It would seem a bit late, as well as irrelevant, to conduct a post mortem of the U.S. failure to win a point from the 1998 World Cup. But Alexi Lalas, one of the best-known players on that U.S. team, and Steve Sampson, the U.S. coach, spend 40-plus fascinating minutes on The Mutant Gene Podcast […]

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Bob Bradley is my favorite former U.S. Soccer national team coach. He is a square-jawed, straight-shooter kind of guy who radiates quiet passion for his work but is a model of steely decorum — and gets results. Whether it is leading the American team to the final 16 of the World Cup (South Africa 2010) […]

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This never was going to be easy but until the Asian Football Confederation draw for the final round of qualifying earlier this week … it didn’t seem quite so daunting. Two groups of six with the top two in each group — following a 10-match home-and-away, round-robin competition — securing a place at Russia 2018. […]

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Some stories I have read in the past few days, stories you also might like. Let’s start with this one: In late 2001, Major League Soccer was essentially dead for several hours, after only six seasons and lots of red ink. Who saved it? The story suggests Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs […]

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