Soccer America Archives

Buenos Aires stops when the national team plays. Only a quarter of the city’s taxis are running, train service is cut to a minimum, directors encourage professors to suspend classes and pedestrian traffic on the streets is visibly depleted. You hear very few noises too, save for background TV commentary and the drone of a […]

Maybe they just couldn’t believe it: Spain still can’t seem to lift its curse at major tournaments and it all proved to be too much for the citizens of Madrid, who erupted into violence yesterday following Spain’s elimination by France. Municipal police officers drew their clubs on several young people who jumped into a fountain […]

Two of the most criticized players at this year’s World Cup (who happen to be teammates at Real Madrid) silenced their critics yesterday by leading their respective countries to what should be an exciting quarterfinal clash. Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane, both three-time recipients of FIFA’s World Player of the Year award, inspired their teams to […]

In 2002, the World Cup order was thrown out of whack: no France, no Argentina, no Italy, and no Holland, which failed to even qualify for the finals. Instead, the likes of Turkey, Senegal, South Korea and the United States helped give some actual global balance to a tournament traditionally dominated by two South American […]

Gianluigi Buffon, Italy’s excellent goalkeeper, admitted that he couldn’t watch as Francesco Totti stepped up to take Italy’s last-minute penalty against Australia. “You see the play from the back and sometimes it’s a tragedy and it takes you back to (South) Korea and you think, ‘not again’.” But it was Totti who with ice in […]

The International Herald Tribune called it a game of “numbing caution” and “desperate mediocrity,” as the Ukraine ended Switzerland’s World Cup on penalties. Switzerland now has the dubious distinction of being the first team to be knocked out of the finals without conceding a goal. Which is another way of saying they didn’t score enough. […]

Apparently, women are watching the World Cup in record-breaking numbers, which is great for the game. The big losers are advertisers, Reuters UK says, who definitely geared their advertising for predominantly male audiences. “It’s a new phenomenon, which has been undervalued and underestimated,” said Maurice Levy, chief executive of Publicis Groupe, the world’s fourth-largest advertising […]

There’s a saying in soccer that “you’re only as good as your last game.” For international soccer stars, that saying can either be a scourge or a blessing. Barely two weeks ago, Ronaldo was fat, lumbering and in danger of losing his place on Brazil’s starting 11; today he’s one of the greatest strikers in […]

Not that World Cup games need any added drama, but subplots always tend to spice things up. To the chagrin of the hapless Aussies, Italy and Francesco Totti in particular were able to exact their revenge on Guus Hiddink yesterday after Totti converted a 94th-minute penalty after a possible dive in the box from Italian […]