Behold The Unrelenting Genius Of Lionel Messi's Passes

The danger, if you can call it that, of regularly watching Lionel Messi play soccer—which is to say, to watch one man routinely perform stupefying acts of brilliance the likes of which you’ve never seen before—is that at some point, you run the risk of becoming inured to it.

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Jermaine Jones Calls Tim Howard's Comments On USMNT Dual Nationals "Dangerous Stuff"

On Tuesday, USMNT goalkeeper Tim Howard questioned the passion of his dual-national teammates, in part blaming them and their lack of American-ness for the USMNT’s recent string of poor results. He tried walking back those comments by citing the strong play of dual-national teammates Jermaine Jones and Fabian Johnson,…

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What FIFA And The Cameroon National Team Are Doing To Joël Matip Is A Travesty

Sepp Blatter may have been ousted from the corrupt and labyrinthine bureaucracy he constructed out of the billions of dollars that FIFA funnels in from the world’s love of soccer, but lest you worry that the organization isn’t as perplexingly, exasperatingly stupid as before, we have the case of Liverpool, the…

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Sevilla End Real Madrid's 40 Game Unbeaten Run With Two Late Goals

Real Madrid hadn’t lost since an April Champions League match against Wolfsburg, winning or drawing 40 games in a row to set the record for longest unbeaten streak in Spanish soccer history. But that ended at the Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán in Seville this evening, as Sevilla stormed back from a 1-0 deficit to…

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Reports: Diego Costa Dropped From Lineup, Told To Take His Ass To China

Current Premier League leaders Chelsea are headed to Leicester to play the defending champions this weekend, but they’ll reportedly do so without leading scorer Diego Costa. Things were going so well for Costa just a week ago, but according to a series of reports, Costa and manager Antonio Conte did some rowing.

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Dimitri Payet Doesn't Want To Play For West Ham Anymore 

Last season was West Ham’s best since the founding of the Premier League, as they finished seventh and qualified for the Europa League. Their talisman was attacking midfielder Dimitri Payet, who led the team with 12 goals and 14 assists in all competitions. Payet capped his year with a starring turn at Euro 2016,…

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The World Cup Is Probably Expanding To 48 Teams, But That Might Be Okay

The docket at the FIFA governing council’s meeting tomorrow morning in Zurich includes the following items: “Approval of the Media and Marketing Regulations for the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup Bahamas 2017”; “Monitoring Committee Israel-Palestine”; as well as “Format of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.”

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Aaron Ramsey Golazo Draws Arsenal Even

Aaron Ramsey helped wake up a pathetic-looking Arsenal early in the second half of the Gunners’ FA Cup match at Preston North End with this rocket golazo from just outside the box that left keeper Chris Maxwell hopeless. Credit, too, to Alex Iwobi’s heroism in holding onto the ball despite defenders surrounding him…

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Bad Soccer Teen Cut For Savage Tweets To Premier League Player

Alfie Barker, the 19-year-old striker who before today played in England’s 10th division, watched yesterday’s Bournemouth-Arsenal match and had some thoughts. He was none too impressed with Bournemouth giving up a three-goal lead in the eventual 3-3 draw. And so he sent these tweets to Harry Arter, Bournemouth’s…

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Missouri Governor-Elect Takes Bazooka To MLS Hopeful's Stadium Financing Plans

Missouri’s recently elected governor, Republican Eric Greitens, is a former Navy SEAL, a devoted humanitarian, and a man who ran a campaign ad that was just 20 seconds of him firing a Gatling gun. All of that means he doesn’t take any shit, not when justice is at stake. The vampires trying to suck over $100 million…

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Diego Costa And Eden Hazard Are Good As Hell Again

Remember this past summer, when Chelsea were reportedly sniffing around every big-name striker out there in an effort to find a replacement for the once-feared, maybe-fallen (and possibly fat?) Diego Costa, who just a couple season ago looked like a legit (and arguably literal) world-beater? And when there was a…

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Henrikh Mkhitaryan Was Offside But Who Cares Because This Goal Was Dope

Photo credit: Dave Thompson/AP

Henrikh Mkhitaryan has only gotten a handful of Premier League starts this season, a fact that has given United fans good reason to grumble. After you see the goal he scored against Sunderland today, you’ll understand why they want him on the pitch more often.

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Alan Pardew Sacked At Crystal Palace After Not Doing Jack Shit With Lots Of Money

After two years of up-and-down management of Crystal Palace (the “up” referring to his swashbuckling midseason heroism of his first few months at the club which brought the Eagles out of danger and led them to 10th place in the table, and the “down” the current campaign that has them teetering on the edge of the relegation zone), Alan Pardew has been fired today.

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Mario Balotelli Takes Break From Doing Good Mario Things, Does Bad Mario Thing

Mario Balotelli is still thriving out in France, scoring eight goals in nine league appearances for out-of-nowhere Ligue 1 leaders Nice, so things aren’t all bad. What is maybe a little bad is that yesterday, for the first time this season, Good Mario gave way to Bad Mario, when the Italian striker was shown a straight red card for this:

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Julian Green To Officially Begin His Career By Leaving Bayern Munich

Julian Green was never going to make it at Bayern Munich. He is a fairly promising homegrown prospect at a club that (at least historically) values integrating players developed in-house, but he’s also a not all that talented player—not enough to consistently earn developmental minutes at one of the four or five biggest clubs in the world—who still hasn’t found his natural position and hasn’t shown much of anything on the pitch to justify his continued place on Bayern’s roster. The longer Green stayed at Bayern, the more he delayed truly starting his professional career in earnest, and the lower the odds became of him eventually hitting a talent ceiling high enough to merit a surefire starting spot at a mediocre-to-good European club and a regular place in the USMNT.

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