Enjoying this newsletter? Tell a friend to sign up at nytimes.com/rory and then you’ll have something new to talk about every Friday. The story of how the term “tiki-taka” entered soccer’s lexicon, how it came to define a style, might, perhaps, be apocryphal, but that does not matter. Sometimes, whether a story is true and […] More
People throughout the sports world, from athletes to arena staff members, tell The New York Times how their lives have changed during the coronavirus pandemic. The professional soccer player David Najem has not put on his cleats or shot on a goalkeeper in seven weeks, and it is all very disorienting to him. Just as […] More
The Cincinnati Bengals cut quarterback Andy Dalton on Thursday one week after drafting his replacement, Joe Burrow of Louisiana State, with the first overall pick. Dalton spent nine seasons as their starter and will now head into a free agent market that is already crowded with talent and offers very few landing spots for veteran […] More
In the video, posted three weeks ago on Twitter, Jameis Winston has his right arm cocked, feet shuffling as if he’s moving around the pocket, as his trainer launches an oversize speed bag at him, again and again. The drill, it seems, is intended to simulate defensive pressure, and Winston, looking trim and coiled, evades […] More
When Mekhi Becton signed up for the football team at Highland Springs High School in Virginia, he picked wide receiver and tight end as his positions. He was 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 215 pounds. “At 13 years old, when someone is that big, you anticipate them growing even more,” Loren Johnson, Becton’s […] More
At least, it seemed, the Dutch had made a decision. Alone among Europe’s soccer leagues, they now had some clarity about what the immediate future held. On Friday morning, the Netherlands became the first country in Europe to call off its soccer season. There would be no champion crowned, no teams condemned to relegation. It […] More
Harland Svare, who played linebacker in the celebrated defense that helped take the Giants to three N.F.L. championship games in the 1950s and became, at the time, the youngest head coach in the N.F.L.’s modern history when the Los Angeles Rams hired him in 1962, died on April 4 at a nursing home in Steamboat […] More
When sports do come back, leagues will be trying to pack in as many revenue-generating games as possible. At the same time, many of the players coming out of quarantine may not exactly be in tiptop shape. That combination could prove troublesome. International soccer has proposed a solution: allowing five substitutions a game instead of […] More
