At Old Trafford on Wednesday night the Women’s European Championship will get under way in front of a crowd of 73,000. England, the tournament hosts, will play Austria with Sarina Wiegman’s team hoping to prove their credentials as leading contenders for the trophy. Alongside a lavish opening ceremony, it is guaranteed there will be fireworks – a showcase for a sport exploding in popularity.
When England last hosted a Women’s European Championship finals, in 2005, the mood was very different. The coach of the national team – the pioneering Hope Powell – declared before the tournament that “the women’s game here is a second-class sport”. Her players were part-time, matches were played only in the north-west, and only eight t…
Jürgen Klopp’s departure will inspire Liverpool to end the season on a high to honour their manager, says Alexis Mac Allister. The German will end his nine-year Anfield reign in the summer, aiming to add to his six major honours, with four trophies still to play for.
The Premier League leaders face a potentially pivotal game in the title race on Sunday when they travel to Arsenal. Liverpool have defeated the Gunners at the Emirates Stadium this year, winning 2-0 in the FA Cup third round.
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There is comfort knowing what you have at quarterback, and Georgia coach Kirby Smart can only smile at just how settled the Bulldogs are at the position entering the 2024 season. Carson Beck started every game last season, ending an apprenticeship behind Stetson Bennett, and went undefeated in the regular season to establish himself as the No. 1 quarterback for the Bulldogs. "The day and age when you go somewhere and you jump school to school, it's a popular trend. This kid stuck it out," Smart said at SEC Media Days in Dallas on Tuesday. "He didn't get the starting job in a tough moment when the starter went down, and he lost the starting job to Stetson Bennett the week of the UAB game two years ago, and then said, 'You know what? I'm sticking with it…
First of all, I have indeed been to the Kentucky Derby (which is, like, a WHOLE other story, and I’ll never write it as well as Hunter S. Thompson, so just read his). I watch it, and a number of races, every year. I used to run the Derby pool at the New York Daily News. Every first Saturday in May I make a mint julep (or three) and I yell at my TV for two minutes. Sometimes I win. Most often not. So I like the thing, is what I’m saying. This is not me parachuting in on March Madness office brackets using “distance-from-the-geographical-center-of-the-U.S” or “which-mascot-could-eat-which?” to pick a winner in a sport I am not familiar with, nor care about. I like it. Am I some kind of expert? Oh, helllll naw! This is literally for entertainment purposes only. But I ca…
Five years ago, Portland and Denver played an epic seven-game series in the Western Conference semifinals. Since then, the teams have gone in different directions. The Trail Blazers won the 2019 postseason matchup with an impressive Game 7 win on the road and went on to the conference finals. That marked the high point. In the years that followed, Portland has gone from contender to rebuilding, trading away Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic while the Nuggets reached the pinnacle by winning the title last season. Denver is in contention for its second straight championship while the Blazers are headed for their third straight year of missing the playoffs. Still, the rivalry is alive and will be rekindled Friday when Portland visits the Nuggets in the first of two games in…
Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving has been ruled out for Friday's game against the host Atlanta Hawks due to a sprained right thumb. Irving sustained the injury in Dallas' 119-110 setback to the Boston Celtics on Monday. The eight-time All-Star did not play in the Mavericks' 132-109 home loss to the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday. Atlanta star guard Trae Young, who leads the team in scoring at 26.9 points and assists at 10.8, was placed in concussion protocol after the game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday and missed the past two contests. Young also missed a Jan. 19 game with an illness. He is listed as questionable against the Mavericks. Irving, 31, averages 25.2 points, 5.3 assists and 5.1 rebounds in 27 games (all starts) this season for the Mavericks. …
Hey guys, Mother's Day is coming! Don't bother with a present. All she wants is a card, and for you to avoid the following things: 1. Excessive TV volume 2. Those kitchen cabinets 3. Large portions of meat 4. Eastbound & Down 5. Poorly arranged shoes 6. Fast boats 7. Faster cars 8. Motorcycles 9. Salt 10. Just chilling out for a sec 11. Not staying in one lane on the highway 12. Slayer 13. Hot tubs 14. Using the wrong towel 15. Anal 16. Additives 17. Preservatives 18. Your most fun friend 19. Biking down steep hills 20. "All that sugar" 21. Ostentatiously sized televisions 22. All football announcers at all times 23. Going to the mall on a sunny day 24. Letting the screen door slam shut on its own 25. Billy Bob Thornton 26. Tracking di…
Next Media Animation, the Taiwanese animation company that produces short cartoons recapping the news of the day, has its best muse in sports, where the lines between good and evil lend themselves to pictures of angry video game characters, and events are just cartoonish enough to spark the overactive NMA imagination. It's a vision of what sportswriting once was: loose with the facts, endlessly biased, and happy to caricature villians and add fantastical unlikelihoods to its summaries. There's also the fact that some of the jokes are clearly lost in translation, CGI characters doing anything looks weird, and the good people at NMA are obviously a little insane. Nonetheless, this is more or less the way the year went down. This year, NMA incorporated photoshops from Deadspin co…
Time for your letters: Jayson: Who's the most overused ESPN analyst (any sport)? My choice is Herm Edwards: The guy has a losing record as a head coach, never won a Super Bowl, and was an average player, yet ESPN asks him questions about football all the time like he's a football prophet. Not only do they ask him about football, but they happily bring on "Coach" to offer up his wisdom on LeBron and Donald Sterling and other non-NFL issues that he's somehow even less qualified to discuss. If a nuclear bomb got dropped on New York, they would trot out Herm Edwards to offer his fucking take. I assume Edwards has a year-round contract and ESPN needs to squeeze as much airtime out of him as possible so that they don't have to pay for another analyst in the st…
data-mm-id=”_33ahirakx”>The Los Angeles Chargers are under the gun this week as more reports continue to surface concerning the franchise's dismal outlook in Los Angeles. Obviously this week we got the bombshell about the NFL potentially wanting the franchise to move to London and since that report, others have chimed in to verify that the league is, indeed, concerned with that's happening in LA. On Wednesday, the NFL Network's Steve Wyche added his voice to the mix.While appearing on The Darren Smith Show on XTRA 1360 in San Diego, Wyche clearly stated that the NFL was looking at the Chargers' long-time viability in Los Angeles. Check out the full segment below:Wyche had the following to say about the situation:””I had never heard the London aspect of it, but witho…