Enjoying this newsletter every Friday? Send it to a friend, or six, and have them sign up at nytimes.com/rory. There is something unsettling about watching a soccer match played behind closed doors, in a stadium filled with echoes and air, rather than noise and life. The faces of the players, the jerseys they wear and […] More
For the past month, since the N.F.L. banned nonessential travel and shuttered team facilities, many coaches, scouts and other player evaluators have had to rely primarily on watching footage of college games in the hopes of finding a franchise-lifting selection in the N.F.L. draft that starts on April 23. Watching video, though, is not a […] More
Von Miller, the Denver Broncos’ All-Pro linebacker and the winner of the Most Valuable Player Award in Super Bowl 50, on Thursday became the latest and most prominent N.F.L. player to reveal publicly that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Miller was not feeling well in recent days, which prompted him to get tested […] More
Something is rotten in Barcelona. While the coronavirus has brought the sports world to a standstill, the sense of chaos and uncertainty at F.C. Barcelona, the Spanish soccer club, seems to be more pronounced than anywhere else. Much of it is self-inflicted. Simmering boardroom infighting erupted into embarrassing public revelations of how one of the […] More
As far as Rámon Rodriguez Verdejo — the man everyone knows as Monchi — is concerned, there is as much work to do as there ever was. The game of soccer is paused, indefinitely, placed in the same anxious limbo as every other sport, as every other industry. But on laptop screens and cellphones, the […] More
Willie Davis, the Hall of Fame defensive end who played on five Green Bay Packer championship teams and anchored one of pro football’s greatest defensive alignments, died on Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 85. His death was announced by the Packers, who said he had been hospitalized with kidney failure. Playing in the […] More
LONDON — Anil Murthy had already been facing a barrage of criticism. But as a former diplomat for Singapore, Murphy, the president of Valencia, a top soccer team in Spain, was ready for most of the barbs directed his way for imposing restrictions on access to the club’s players. On Feb. 29, however, the complaints […] More
Megan Rapinoe, the star midfielder of the United States women’s national soccer team, for whom she has taken home multiple golds in the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, is almost as opinionated off the field as on … her nighttime skin care routine, on fragrance and on fresh hair color. Though her soccer season […] More
