soccer
The Alex Ferguson Era Won't End With His Retirement
His legacy is Manchester United itself
The front pages have spoken: Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United FC has retired. David Moyes, presently in charge of Everton (the other Liverpool club) will take over this summer. Ferguson, lovingly referred to by Man U fans as SAF, as if he were a unit the British Special Forces, has won for the club thirteen English Premierships, two Champions League and world club champion titles, and a number of cups. READ MORE >>
Tonight, the NFL Draft begins—in case you hadn’t heard. The cover of the most recent ESPN The Magazine is dedicated to it, and Sports Illustrated likely would have fronted it, too, had the Boston Marathon bombings not taken precedence. READ MORE >>
The Biggest Ego in Professional Sports
The amazing and infuriating career of Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho
A sad fact of life is that there are few great soccer novels. There are many reasons: In soccer, the true drama is enacted on the pitch; great players, whose success is reliant on repetition and discipline, are cads at best, colorless characters at worst; the managers comply with the stereotype of the fatherly figure. The only serious runner for a great soccer novel is Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, narrated by someone who never gets into the fray—a committed fan. READ MORE >>
Why Pelé's Cosmos Were the Best and Worst Thing to Happen to American Soccer
The Brazilian star's shadow still looms over the MLS
On October 1, 1977, more than 75,000 fans, including Muhammad Ali, packed into Giants Stadium and millions more tuned into ABC's "Wide World of Sports" to watch the final professional soccer match played by Edison Arantes do Nascimento. The 37-year-old Brazilian, known to the world as Pelé, spent the first 45 minutes in a Cosmos uniform—scoring a free kick minutes before the referee blew his whistle—and the second half wearing the jersey of the only other club he ever played for, São Paulo's Santos. READ MORE >>
The Geopolitics of Cheating
Soccer's fixing epidemic is a symptom of a much bigger problem.
Even those who don’t follow or understand soccer (and that includes most Americans even now) should have found something moving about the final of the latest Africa Cup of Nations in Johannesburg. As expected, Nigeria won, though only by 1-0. But the heroes of the tournament were surely the team they beat, Burkina Faso. READ MORE >>
Mali Burns, Malians Shrug
The fighting hits Timbuktu, but soccer's still on television.
DJENNE, Mali—The evening French and Malian troops entered the former Islamist stronghold of Timbuktu the men of Djenné, 200 miles to the southwest, gathered under the thatch awnings of mercantiles that flank the dusty square before the Sudanic clay steeples of the 12th-century Grande Mosque. They arranged overturned plastic buckets and rope chairs and wooden benches into impromptu amphitheaters in front of the small television sets they had balanced on cases of water bottles and soda and crackers. READ MORE >>
