History says the U.S. women’s soccer team tends to perform best with its back against the wall. Each of the four times they failed to win a World Cup, the Americans followed by winning the Olympic gold medal the following year. And after their worst finish in a major tournament — a loss to Sweden […]
Quick, who’s the most valuable player in your favorite sport? If you’re a football fan, odds are you thought of a quarterback and not a defensive lineman; in basketball, it’s probably a high-volume shooter, not a rim protector; in baseball, it’s often a slugger, rarely a pitcher. Same in soccer, where the glory goes to […]
When we first published an interactive checking the accuracy of our various prognostications, back in April 2019, the sports world was relatively normal. The idea of playing in empty stadiums was still novel, game postponements over anything other than weather were rare, and masks were strictly for goalies and catchers (and Rip Hamilton). But a […]
cwick (Chadwick Matlin, deputy editor): Tony, Grace, Ryan — thanks for joining me for our final soccer chat of the season, a season that somehow ends with Chelsea as the best team in Europe?? When we talked after the semifinals you all thought Chelsea had a real shot to win the Champions League Final versus […]
cwick: Grace, Ryan, Tony — What a wild English Premier League season! The eventual champions looked mediocre for the first couple months. Top-tier clubs dumped their managers. And more than a quarter of the teams tried to flee to an entirely different league. And now, on the eve of the last match of the season, […]