How did the Five Stripes become MLS’s most popular team five months after their first ever game? Shifting attitudes towards football in the US explain a lot Two Major League Soccer expansion clubs first took the field in March 2017, both bearing the moniker United. One in Minneapolis, the other in Atlanta – a city in that lower-third of the American map which, conventional wisdom holds, stands in stark opposition to the globalist concerns of either American coast, and could therefore never deign to care about a sport as preposterously effete as soccer, where flopping is rewarded. Five months later, Atlanta United boast the highest average home attendance in Major League Soccer history (46,318 fans per game, more than any...
With Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Roger Federer struggling with injuries, can the next generation, led by Dimitrov, Thiem and Zverev, finally step up?What to make of the state of men’s tennis? For the best part of a decade a quartet of hall‑of‑famers have transcended their sport by lifting it to hitherto untouched heights with their titanic struggle for supremacy while below them a host of challengers have strained to swell the numbers of the elite club known as the Big Four. Plenty have tried, most have failed. Some have offered flashes of impertinence but only Stan Wawrinka has provided a sustained threat to the established order. The entry requirements are gruelling. The top players ally astonishing skill with an...
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers would have needed Robert Aguayo to be hitting field goals from 65 yards to justify reaching for him in last year’s draftEvery April during the NFL draft, countless columns are published grading each team’s picks, all featuring a disclaimer that players can’t accurately be judged until several years into the future after they have time to develop as professionals. But there are some exceptions. Roberto Aguayo, for example. It’s been just 15 months since the Tampa Bay Buccaneers spent a second-round pick on the placekicker and it’s not too soon to say they missed as badly as the worst Aguayo field goal attempt.The Bucs released Aguayo on Saturday after he missed an extra point and a...
The corporation stepped in to replace Sky at short notice – would it have been better to sit back and allow a blackout?Criticisms of the BBC’s live coverage of the US PGA Championship were as immediate as they were predictable. Peter Alliss, again, was widely described as an anachronism, representing the dated image golf is trying desperately hard to leave behind. That elements of the BBC’s broadcast were only available via red button, or without high definition, was another cause for social media screaming. The slightest gaffe was met with widespread derision and insistence of incompetence.Criticism of the coverage was inevitable from the moment a BBC deal for the Quail Hollow major was confirmed. It was easy to infer minds...
In the wake of Charlottesville, protests against the president and his administration will only get louder and the sporting world is no exceptionOf all the reasons for resigning from Donald Trump’s “American Manufacturing Council” in the wake of the president’s reaction to the Nazi rally in Charlottesville, the one offered on Tuesday by Under Armour chief executive Kevin Plank felt the most wilfully naive. According to the boss of the sportswear firm, he was stepping down because “Under Armour engages in innovation and sports, not politics”.Oh dear. I’m not quite sure what Plank imagined he was getting Under Armour into when he took his seat on Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, but I can’t believe he really is so dim that...