As it enters its 25th season, Major League Soccer has developed a bit of a swagger. “In 10 years, we’ll pass baseball and hockey to be the third-biggest sport in the U.S.,” said Larry Berg, the lead managing owner of Los Angeles F.C. “The league will vault way past Liga MX” — the Mexican first […] More
MONZA, Italy — Filippo Antonelli remembers the days when his calls went unanswered. As sporting director of Monza — a soccer club with a shoestring budget and narrow horizons in Italy’s third tier — he had little clout with his peers. To discuss a player on another team, or to make an offer to sell […] More
The stands didn’t fill and the crowd didn’t roar, but there was an important soccer match scheduled in Milan on Thursday, so Internazionale, the home team, and Ludogorets, the visitors from Bulgaria, set aside their fears about the coronavirus and dutifully went about playing each other. Italian health officials had set the bizarre stage for […] More
Facing abuse and anger over its decision to ban Manchester City, the English soccer champion, from its competitions, European soccer’s governing body this week took the unusual step of ordering its staff members not to wear branded clothing when they travel to matches involving the team, or even to games played in Manchester. The warnings […] More
The sense of inevitability that the 32 N.F.L. owners tried to project last week when they rushed to New York to approve a proposed 10-year labor agreement has turned into a battle, with faction lines drawn not just between owners and players, but also within the players’ union itself. The main stumbling block is a […] More
A soccer match in one of Europe’s biggest tournaments is to be played behind closed doors on Thursday as the authorities in Italy continue to restrict public gatherings amid concerns about the spread of the coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy. The decision to play the game — the second leg of a Europa […] More
In China, officials struggling to contain the spread of the coronavirus have delayed the start of the soccer season for months, and at least one top-division team has been marooned in the Middle East for weeks, unable to return from a preseason training camp. In South Korea, fans attending matches earlier this month were checked […] More
Lionel Messi’s word choice was telling. Perhaps he has started to develop a little resistance to Barcelona’s capacity for self-immolation over the last few weeks. The club has, after all, spent most of 2020 lurching and bouncing from one drama to another, almost all of them of the team’s own making. There was the abysmal […] More
