Leander Schaerlaeckens
@LeanderAlphabet
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Writing a book on the United States men's national soccer team @VikingBooks . Soccer contributor @ringer . Sports comm & journalism lecturer @Marist . 🇳🇱🇺🇸
New York
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Pinned Tweet
FRIENDS! I’m writing a book! About the
#USMNT
, its madcap history and the rise of its golden generation. It will be published by
@VikingBooks
ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
I’m ecstatic!
Thanks to the kings
@monogramDP
and
@rpkot
for making it happen.
Kindly stay tuned.
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Congrats, you invented the World Cup
Argentina manager Lionel Scaloni wants to see a European team play in Copa América and a South American team play in the Euros 👀
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Sports Illustrated's model was really very simple:
1. Employ 1-4 of the best writers in every sport
2. Let them cook
3. Charge people to read what they wrote
It's insane that the Big Business Brains managed to fuck that up with a half century of cachet as the industry leader.
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Gregg Berhalter and Tyler Adams have now been asked about systemic racism in the U.S., the American fleet in the Persian Gulf, high inflation, and why Iranians need a visa to visit the USA but Americans don't need one for Iran.
This press conference has been... different.
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I don't care about the royal house, in the UK or anywhere else. Monarchy is an abomination. But Harry said "shit" on 60 Minutes and I'm now ready to die for him.
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I'm so bored of Wrexham being held up as some kind of underdog fairytale. It had the highest wage bill in League 2 last season. It has the fourth-highest in League 1 now.
You can spend your way up the leagues, same as ever. Uncut capitalism is all this is, not Hollywood magic.
“The Hollywood script keeps on writing for Wrexham.” 🎬
Nigel Reo-coker and
@BMcBride20
have nothing but praise for the team after their first EFL League One match 🤩
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I checked three times if this was a parody account.
We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY!
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The notion that Mbappe wouldn't have become a world class striker if he hadn't grown up in Europe is a weird thing to say, given that some of the world's top strikers of the moment -- Mane, Salah, Osimhen -- were raised in Africa.
Arsene Wenger wants to see more investment in Africa to help spot and develop talent 🌍⚽️
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Real Madrid won 4 Champions Leagues in 5 years after Jose Mourinho left. With the same players.
Chelsea won the Premier League the year after Jose Mourinho left. With the same players.
Manchester United has won six straight games after Jose Mourinho left. With the same players.
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Genuinely don't get all the Gregg Berhalter hate. He took a college-aged team with virtually zero international experience, won both CONCACAF trophies and took the
#USMNT
back to the World Cup knockouts, while playing better soccer than ever. Could you have imagined this in 2017?
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If you think Messi dicing up MLS defenses is an indictment of the league, you didn’t pay attention to his career. He laid waste to La Liga for years. Same in Ligue 1 and the Champions League. He was still cooking dudes in the World Cup. Defending Messi is life’s great equalizer.
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I think Ted Lasso caught on stateside because the setting of a small Premier League club, surrounded by the charming bits of London, seemed quaint to an American audience. But to English viewers, there's really nothing surprising in it. There's no cultural novelty there for them.
"Ted Lasso" is a hit in the U.S., but it hasn't gained a cultural foothold in Britain. “I’m constantly telling my friends, like, ‘Guys, I promise you I’m famous in America," Phil Dunster, the English actor who plays the footballer Jamie Tartt, joked.
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It seems that the flu has also hit the Dutch camp (after the Brazilian one) before their World Cup round-of-16 match tomorrow. They won’t say how many players are sick, but it appears all-important playmaker Frenkie de Jong is among them.
Na Frenkie de Jong en Marten de Roon nog meer zieke spelers bij Oranje? 'Als het rondgaat in de groep dan is dat zeker zorgelijk'
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Raise your hand if you thought Pinoe tried to dink the ball into the empty net and completely shanked her effort.
Rapinoe with the selfless pass to find Emily Fox who nearly adds to the United States' tally 🇺🇸
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1. Why pick this fight, MLS? Almost nobody knew what those flags even meant.
2. When you brand around organic supporter culture, you can’t then force those supporters to be fans on your specific terms.
3. American flags, national anthems and military salutes are also political.
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A reminder that David Beckham, who initially said he was "disgusted" by Qatar winning the 2022 World Cup hosting rights, now has a $277 MILLION ambassador deal with Qatar.
It's truly odd how little his reputation has suffered from this craven hypocrisy.
⚽️🏆 “I must continue to ask why David Beckham - such a proud advocate for
#LGBT
rights earlier in his career - has nothing to say publicly about this subject in the context of Qatar now that he is an ambassador for this tournament” -
@Okwonga
,
@BritishGQ
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Men's professional soccer has a gargantuan fucking problem with sexual abuse/assault/consent and I'm not sure that anybody is entirely willing to connect the dots and reckon with the sheer size of this issue.
A second victim has come forward in the case of four Real Madrid players sharing sexual content without permission.
El Mundo say that in her testimony she claims those players knew the other victim was underage.
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I know he gets paid a LOT at PSG, but a 19-year-old giving away $553,000 to charity is extraordinary.
19-year-old World Champion Kylian Mbappé is donating 100% of his pay ($29K per game + $350K bonus for winning the
#WorldCup
) to a charity that helps hospitalised and disabled children through the power of sport.
Already a legend on and off the pitch.
#SportforGood
#FRA
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Here's the problem I have with Peacock. It has taken games I was already getting and paying for -- through my cable provider -- and made me pay for them again. I now pay twice.
That's different from ESPN+, which mostly added *new* leagues and put them behind a subscription wall
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Some happy news, Ajax's Abdelhak "Appie" Nouri, who collapsed during a pre-season game in July 2017, has awoken from his coma and can communicate by smiling and raising his eyebrows, according to the family.
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For years, Donald Trump claimed he was a high school baseball star at the New York Military Academy.
“Supposed to be a pro.”
“Best in NY.”
But was he?
I found 11 old game stories + 9 box scores in local papers and spoke to 7 teammates.
My story
@Slate
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The thing we still don't entirely account for is that 4-year college guys like Tim Ream have a lot fewer miles in their legs than those who turned pro as teenagers. Their soccer age is basically four years younger than their real age.
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A story, if you’ll permit. I became an American today. The ceremony was solemn and moving. I and 55 others traded in our green cards for naturalization certificates in a surprisingly lovely afternoon. Our family made a day of it. Me; my wife; our 1-year-old; her parents.
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The thing that Zack Steffen is supposed to bring to this
#USMNT
is his distribution as a certified Guardiola Goalkeeper. But I can’t remember the last time he opened up the field with a pass.
Meanwhile, his shot-stopping and positioning are suspect.
I… don’t get it with him.
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Husband of U.S. women's national team star Julie Ertz does a football thing
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A reader sent me a 4,705-word email about the state of U.S. Soccer at 3.50 a.m. In case you were wondering where things stand with the fans.
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The year is 2050. Major League Soccer has just announced its 52nd and 53rd teams. The U.S. men's national team lost to Ghana in extra-time of the round of 16 at the World Cup over the summer. Bruce Arena is announced as the new Philadelphia Union sporting director and head coach.
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I think Major League Baseball has created a monster in the World Baseball Classic. An awful lot of baseball fans are waking up to how much fun the sport can be, when you ditch MLB's lame traditions and unwritten rules. But how do you make a 162-game season feel as urgent as this?
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Rapinoe is gonna shit-talk the NWSL into the mainstream sports conversation and it’s honesty exactly the right approach
🤣 that’s funny, indeed you got that right! See you sooooooon🤩🤩🤩
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The United States men's national team has played England three times in the World Cup and has never lost.
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Oh, and they've both been scolded for pronouncing it I-ran, rather than ih-RAHN.
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The last time the
#USWNT
played a competitive game, some 20 million Americans watched and streamed. But tonight, it's back to being buried on Fox Sports 2 as it begins Olympic qualifiers, which almost nobody knows about because CONCACAF didn't sell FOX the rights until yesterday.
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Ajax manager Erik ten Hag gives his first response to the news that technical director Marc Overmars resigned over sexual harassment claims:
"This is just catastrophic, especially for the victims and especially for the women and their suffering. I struggle with that."
👏👏👏
Erik ten Hag reageert voor het eerst op het nieuws rondom Marc Overmars.
"Dit is gewoon rampzalig, met name voor de gedupeerden"
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Grant was incredibly kind and welcoming to me when I was starting out on the USMNT beat, even though we were ostensibly competitors. He always went well out of his way to help others break into soccer media--to help others, period.
He will be very badly missed.
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So I’d never seen Seinfeld before—didn’t move to the U.S. until 2009! I just finished season five. What’s so remarkable isn’t just that the jokes totally hold up. It’s the plotting. Not just an A and a B plot, but often 4 or 5 of them, intersecting and resolving crisply. Amazing.
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I'm old enough to remember when U.S. Soccer hastily passed a new rule to stop Rapinoe from kneeling during the anthem.
Now it pushes out clips of her calling out insurrections and racism.
There's different ways of looking at it, but I'm going to choose to see it as progress.
Don't call it a comeback! Great to have
@mPinoe
and her leadership back in the red, white and blue 🇺🇸
More from yesterday's media availability with
@mPinoe
,
@sophsssmith
and
@catarinamacario
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It's been 9 months since Earnie Stewart left U.S. Soccer and became PSV's technical director. Since then, PSV has:
-- Turned over half the starting lineup
-- Made a perfect 13-0-0 start to the Eredivisie season (48 goals scored; 5 conceded)
-- Survived the Champions League group
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63 million Americans: "You know who should succeed this great president? One of the worst people this country has ever produced, that's who"
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Wife: "If Argentina doesn't qualify, Messi should just go to the World Cup as his own team."
This is correct.
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That’s $26,086 in ransom for each of the 690,000 DACA recipients.
President Trump asked Congress for $18 billion for a border wall. In exchange, he offered to protect young undocumented immigrants.
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Cool as hell: Belgium announced its Euro '24 squad with a series of murals and mosaics of the players' faces, without telling anyone where to find them. So the whole country is on a kind of scavenger hunt.
België maakt EK-selectie op ludieke wijze bekend: massale speurtocht naar afbeeldingen internationals
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OG Ronaldo - 108
Games taken to reach 100 career goals:
Haaland - 146
Mbappe - 180
Messi - 210
Ibrahimovic - 245
Ronaldo - 301
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Fellow Americans: it took a year and a grand to become a citizen and another two months to register to vote.
My card came today.
Don’t take your right to vote for granted. Some of us go through a lot of trouble for it.
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Turns out all it took to get Weston McKennie to wear a mask is 4-degree weather
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My first story is on American soccer’s odd jersey subculture. It’s about lower-league and non-existent clubs that built a business on great jerseys, rather than great soccer. This story is free. After that, I hope you’ll subscribe. Let’s go. Fin.
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Maybe they could have, you know, found a decent ref for a Copa America final. Not one who is doing this for the first time ever.
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Jermaine Jones wanting to play for the USMNT so that his estranged father might notice him is one of the most heart-rending things I've heard in a while.
"I look back now and I'm super happy I represented this country." 🇺🇸
@Jermainejunior
sits down with
@AlexiLalas
to share the story behind his decision in choosing the United States and the importance of recruiting dual-national players to the
@USMNT
👏
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@PabloTorre
Famously, all voices for the voiceless ask for privacy in press conferences on the subject they want to be a voice on
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In France, they call the PSG-Monaco game “Le Plastique” and nobody whines about it.
Because they’re not insecure.
Does the LA rivalry have a respectable name?
"El Tráfico, the name… It's just a joke."
I spoke to people on both sides of a unique battle over the name of one Major League Soccer's best rivalries.
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Boo this man. El Trafico is clever and original and we don’t have enough of that in American soccer.
Bob Bradley wants the rivalry game between LAFC and the LA Galaxy to be called "La Clasico."
"Throw that 'El Trafico' thing out the f'ing window."
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Appalachian State University cut its men's soccer team. So the head coach and a group of investors spun it into an independent, semi-pro minor league team:
@AppalachianFc
Could it become a model to circumvent college sports?
My story
@YahooSports
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I sat down with
@ATLUTD
manager Frank de Boer to talk about his long-term plans there after whirlwind spells with Inter Milan and Crystal Palace.
@YahooSports
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If I'm Inter Miami, I don't think I'm all that worried about fitting my roster and payroll into Major League Soccer's stringent cap limits.
What's the league going to do, block the Messi move? Or make him unhappy by denying him the company of his buddies?
BREAKING NEWS: Former Barcelona star Jordi Alba to sign with Inter Miami, reunite with Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets. Here are details.
@miamiherald
@heraldsports
@InterMiamiCF
#MLS
#InterMiamiCF
#FCBarcelona
#Alba
#Messi
#Busquets
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Why are we always in such a rush to give USMNT a pass? B-team and off-year or not, Martinique are semi-pros. Eking out a win is embarrassing
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Deadspin alums, please make a new website and call it Stick to Sports
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After years of virtual silence, the U.S. men’s national team suddenly backed the women’s equal pay fight in a statement Wednesday...
... just as their own CBA talks have stalled.
Permit me to call bullshit.
@FCYahoo
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I get sworn in as an American on Dec. 1.
I'm only 33, don't mind playing left back and have been active in local over-30 leagues. And I could have my passport in time for January Camp.
Just saying.
#USMNT
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Bayern Munich won all 11 of its Champions League games this year and claimed its second treble this decade.
Can't really argue with any of that.
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Spoke to
#USWNT
captains
@CarliLloyd
and
@BeckySauerbrunn
, who delved into gender discrimination filing
@YahooSports
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Superstar wife delivered Lukas Schaerlaeckens late Saturday night. He's eligible for the Dutch, Belgian, Spanish and U.S. national teams.
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@FabrizioRomano
The better translation is “boundary-crossing.” He crossed the line, not a nation’s border.
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I think this is what MLS could offer him that no other league could: a taste of the normalcy he lost almost two decades ago.
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Christian Pulisic is about to have his fifth Chelsea manager. It's only been 4 years and change since he signed there.
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Carli Lloyd is the first man or woman to score a natural hat-trick (3 goals in a half) in a World Cup final. Or to do it within regulation.
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In case you were under the impression that things are less weird at other soccer federations, the Dutch just appointed Nigel de Jong as director of top-level football.
He has no training or experience or qualification beyond a high school degree.
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I've been mulling this for a while now. And I've decided that as a fellow Tall, I applaud Matt Miazga pointing out that we're better.
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FYI, we have reached the stage in Facebook's life-cycle as a tech company where I'm having to explain to young people how to use it for a class assignment.
I, for one, am delighted.
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Soccer friends, I need some help: we're awaiting quite a lot of immigrants here in New York's Hudson Valley. The local charity says they could really use soccer balls.
Whatever your politics, these are tired people who love the same sport we do. Any ideas on where to find balls?
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That's 6.5 million viewers for a World Cup Qualifier. Well above what the Stanley Cup drew. For those keeping score.
USA-MEX drew 2,052,000 on FS1 -- most-watched WC qualifier in the channel's history. Peaked in 2nd half at 2.8m. Univision totaled 4.5m.
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Why did FOX Sports start saying Türkiye rather than Turkey?
And why doesn’t it then also say Nederland or Deutschland or Italia or España?
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Is this least excitement we’ve seen about the USMNT for an A-team Gold Cup in the last two decades? Surely.
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Did you know
@mindykaling
is a part-owner of Swansea City of the Premier League? I did not know
@mindykaling
is a part-owner of Swansea City of the Premier League.
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Poor Crystal Dunn is a forward both by nature and for her club. And now the world is judging her on how she's defending one of the game's best wingers. Like a bricklayer very publicly having to landscape a garden.
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I just listened back to this in Dutch and Alex is right. Van Gaal wasn't criticizing Berhalter in saying the U.S. "didn't adapt; didn't adjust." That was a very deceptive way of spinning that quote.
This is taken a bit out of context. The question was about how teams the Netherlands will face later in WC will adjust to their playing style. Van Gaal started by saying (via translator): "I would assume that the stronger the country is, the less they'll adjust to the system..."
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A college basketball player, once as healthy as a person can be, has a damaged heart.
Most likely because of COVID-19.
And we're all just going to pretend that his recovery is a feel-good story, rather than a giant red flag fluttering in the sky above college sports.
Mike White of
@GatorsMBK
says "Keyontae Johnson is back with us and doing well."
Said he was at practice and blew a whistle.
"We're extremely grateful and thankful to everyone in this country and throughout the world who prayed for him."
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Hahahahaha. Somebody just found this.
Prediction: Belgium will bomb at the 2014 World Cup -- they haven't been to one since 2002 -- but tear it up in 2018, armed with experience.
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Isn't it kind of weird that U.S. Soccer is good with Michael Bradley's political statement but not Megan Rapinoe's?
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Here's the silver lining for the most talented young
#USMNT
ever: They were competitive against a World Cup contender in a knockout game. They were not outplayed, outclassed or outpunched. They arguably had the better chances. They made three mistakes in their defensive coverage.
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@BeardedGenius
I suspect because that's exactly what is happening here. And it is indeed gross.
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This is pornographic and should be banned from Twitter
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The rest of the world has it wrong. Single-table championships are lame compared to this. There, I said it.
#MLSCupPlayoffs
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Doing my first-ever backyard grilling and immediately caught on that it's a ruse for alone time with a beer. Well played, generations of men
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The answer is apparently because the Turks asked. Fair enough.
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“Skating is an important mode of transportation in the Netherlands.”
I literally don’t know a single countryman who has ever used skates to get anywhere.
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A wild story out of the Netherlands, where reports say at least 50 fans have signed a contract to go to the World Cup, all expenses paid, but agree to participate in the organizers’ events and behave as they’re told, including pushing back against “insults” from other visitors.
In ruil voor hun gratis aanwezigheid, moeten de fans deelnemen aan activiteiten van de organisatie. Daarbij is het verboden om dingen te doen die tegen de „geest of intentie” van het programma indruisen.
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Three more points:
1. What did you reasonably expect of this team that Berhalter hasn't delivered on?
2. His players would walk through fire for Berhalter. That's rare in international soccer.
3. Who do you think would actually take this not-so-appealing job and be an upgrade?
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I've never seen so many hilariously unimpressive men in one place before.
And I'm a longtime Mets fan.
#GOPdebate
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Happy Fourth of July, my first as a citizen. Times are challenging, but I retain an abiding faith in this country and its people. And I'm very grateful to be one of them.
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Look who’s suddenly all-in on mainstream medicine. Did he even do his own research?
If we’ve learned one thing about 8, it’s that he’s a fighter.
(📸 AaronRodgers12 / IG)
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Cordeiro thanking Gulati is no great crime, people. Gulati spent three decades busting his ass for the federation, for free. However you feel about the results, or him, that merits a thank you.
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I spoke to lots of smart soccer people about reforming the game in America. They came up with a plan
@BleacherReport
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TNT showing 100 fewer Champions League games than FOX Sports did, and just one Europa League game, is a giant own-goal by UEFA. The value of this market is enormous, and it's just willingly cut its own exposure by well over 66%.
"The only Europa League game featured on television will be the final. Meanwhile, TNT will televise 46 UEFA Champions League games throughout the season. That’s in stark contrast to FOX Sports’ coverage of the Champions League where they showed 146 games per season"
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Frank de Boer's talent for making a team play like much less than the sum of its parts is extraordinary.
Like a reverse Guus hiddink.
Oranje, with all that talent, has been absolute dogshit since he took over.
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