TV and MLS have played a part in popularizing the beautiful game Stateside, but video games’ influence on the American soccer fan cannot be underestimatedFor Kelvin Garcia, growing up in a Dominican family from New York City meant two sports took priority. “As a Latino kid in the Bronx, all I ever played was basketball and baseball,” says Garcia, who now lives in Texas. As a boy, soccer was barely on Garcia’s radar. He remembers working at a sports camp with European counselors during the 2010 World Cup and wondering what the excitement was about. As a basketball fan, he was more interested in whether LeBron was going to the Knicks.Nowadays, Garcia cannot go a day without talking about his...
Who will be fired? Which struggling team is doomed? We look at the major issues in the league in a format in no way ripped off the presidential debatesWelcome to the first
presidential
debate of the 2016 NFL season, held just after week 3 concluded. There are many important issues to discuss, from the Eagles blowing out the Steelers in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, to grievous mismanagement of the clock by first-year head coach Dirk Koetter in Florida. Your moderator will be bolded questions and the debate will be fact-checked throughout by Guardian editors and also commenters reading along at home. Without further delay, let’s begin. Related: It's becoming clear that Carson Wentz is no wacky fluke Continue reading...
NYC FC have thrived in the face of adversity and much of that success can be traced directly back to their coachForeign coaches can’t win in MLS, right?Wrong. Continue reading...
The question of whether or not the Rams chose wisely by drafting Goff over Wentz is not quite answered. But a picture is beginning to emergeI doubt I was the only one who went into this Sunday’s football spread expecting Carson Wentz and the Philadelphia Eagles to fall to Earth faster than the asteroid in Armageddon. After all, this was a rookie quarterback going against a proven defense and a veteran signal caller, Ben Roethlisberger, on offense. Plus, it wasn’t as though Wentz and company suffered much competition in weeks one and two. The Bears (who kept their losing streak going against the Dallas Cowboys) and woeful Browns hardly count as a challenge and are both likely already out of...
The Marlins pitcher is dead at the age of 24. It is a tragedy made all the more painful after the adversity he had overcome in his short lifeThis is the year my son fell in love with baseball and for reasons that are still unclear he declared the Miami Marlins his second-favorite team. He often wears a black Marlins shirt to school with orange pants to match the team’s colors. And each night when we sit in front of the television to watch an hour of baseball before bedtime it is usually the Marlins we see. The most recent Marlins game we watched together was last Tuesday night when the team’s best pitcher José Fernández sliced through the Washington...