There have been two of those in the Champions League since 2011, the Euros starting in 2012, and the World Cup starting in 2014. I don’t know why that system isn’t implemented everywhere, but obviously most leagues don’t find that the benefit outweighs the cost, and risk, of having those extra officials.

I’ll defend the refs on this one. The linesman on the far side, whose call this really is, probably has his view of the ball blocked by the goalie’s body. The center referee is half a field away and, from his terrible distance and angle, and with his eyes being at 5 feet off the ground instead of 30 like the camera,…

Yes, but—and bear with me here—Oh still trails the Beastie Boys in hits, per the Beastie Boys.

Haisley is obsessed with rattling off the relative merits of everything: players, leagues, managers, this guy is one of the five best passers in the world, this is the team that is the BEST RIGHT NOW but they don’t DESERVE X Y and Z, etc. It’s possibly his single most annoying trait as a writer. It’s a means of…

Ouch. I hope her Sinn’s Fein.

He’s risking giving away a penalty kick. All of this could be considered tripping, jumping at, or charging an opponent (the rule makes no distinction about who has the ball)—all of which are direct-free-kick fouls. Commit one in your defensive penalty area and it’s a penalty kick.

By “just” in the headline you mean, “28 hours ago.” Writers at the Guardian and the Telegraph manage to write more intelligently and certainly more succinctly about soccer within an hour or two of every final whistle.

There was an unusual amount of dead air in the last few minutes of the game as Nantz and Sims fumbled around (!!!) trying to find the words that expressed their disappointment without saying exactly what you said.

Nantz and Sims spent more time arguing the legality of the hit that knocked Roethlisberger out than they did with this one.

Hear, hear!

Deadspin used to criticize ESPN for dumbing down sports into single-athlete narratives. It’s fine to me if Deadspin themselves do it lazily or casually, (think the old“That’s so Javale” tag or “Hey, Steph Curry is amazing, we don’t need to say much more let’s just post about him every few days and let the video and…

I’m with you. I don’t want to be That Guy either, but as soccer assists go, this is a good one but not a great one. Here’s an example of a better one from last weekend: https://streamable.com/9i9z

I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, assuming you are one of the 292 million Americans who doesn’t live in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa or Illinois.

+1

Here’s the tale of the 50 Chicken McNugget Challenge from when I was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail (the one in the U.S., not the one in Argentina) in 2011. Long-distance hikers very quickly develop unbelievable appetites; when people who already have high metabolism thru-hike, they can literally consume 10,000 or…

I think there’s a chance that neither referee (center or nearest assistant) was looking at it. If they were, they would have had to say it was intentional because it looked like the forward jumped to block the keeper’s distribution. “Preventing the goalkeeper from releasing the ball with his hands” is supposed to…

Not like he hasn’t been caught before.