We know you’ve been trying to bend it like Beckham (too old?). We’ve seen you working on those mad skills, but what we haven’t seen is you caring for your knees. This word might be new to those who like to live on the edge, so let’s define it first: a knee is the part joining your thighs to your legs — it’s the round and fragile medium that looks like the back of Uncle Fester’s neck. Please moisturize.
Cristiano Ronaldo is an inspiration to 30-somethings everywhere. He shows us that despite no longer being the target market and despite no contemporary pop songs being written about our nightly hijinks (“I don’t know about you but I’m feeling 33” just sounds sad), we are still human people. We are still capable of launching ourselves towards the heavens like a SpaceX rocket before getting one over on those nasty, garbage bin 40-somethings in goal.
“The football I grew up playing is no longer there. Today, all players care about are their cars, their shoes with their names on, and their image. While for me, the only thing that counted was football. Nothing else.” -Miroslav Klose
Football is under attack. It’s a sentiment that, regardless of how much it resonates with you, is often expressed and passionately argued. Whatever the reason, be it the influx of money, the unsporting concentration of talent or the diminished draw of the international game, there’s cause for cynicism.
Juventus will definitely be without Miralem Pjanic and Medhi Benatia for the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals against Real Madrid. We knew that going in. That's not the problem. The problem for the Italians right now is they might also be without Sami Khedira, Giorgio Chiellini and Alex Sandro.
There was a truly frightening moment during yesterday’s 2018 King’s Cup Final (an annual international tournament in Bangkok) between Slovakia and Thailand when Slovak captain Martin Skrtel went down in the 28th minute after being struck in the face by the ball.
The 33-year-old Fenerbahce defender was immediately knocked unconscious by the impact, and a quick-thinking teammate did the right thing by ensuring that Skrtel hadn’t swallowed his tongue, an action which could potentially be fatal because of the resulting airway obstruction.
Soccer mainly involves kicking, so it stands to reason that sometimes soccer players kick each other, both by accident and on purpose. Sometimes, they even kick each other in the face.
Ths, though, is just gratuitous.
Soccer players, for whatever reason, generally do not like wearing shin guards. It's weird. Many players go for the smallest possible shin guards in order to maximize unprotected shin surface area. Maybe it's like a weird masculine thing. I don't know.
What I do know is shin guards exist to protect one's shins from harm, and not wearing them is a fool's errand. Getting kicked in the shin hurts more than getting kicked in many other body parts, and soccer provides ample oportunity for getting kicked in the shins. You should wear shin guards so your shins don't get hurt.
This past week, supporters of both England and Iceland were left to fear for their World Cup futures after injuries to one-man strike force Harry Kane and talismanic playmaker Gylfi Sigurdsson, respectively.
Kane will return in four weeks while Sigurdsson will be out for six to eight, meaning they should both be available in Russia, but it just goes to show how terrifying these last two months of the club season are in a World Cup year.
If you want to turn your child into the next Brian “McHead” McBride, at what age should you start sand wedging some crosses at their malleable dome piece? Well, in America, we have rules for this sort of thing.
Back in 2015, the U.S. Soccer Federation announced that children 10 years or under should abstain from heading the ball. Additionally, players from the ages of 11 to 13 were now limited to practicing the skill in training with headers still outlawed in games.