Andrew Kerth 
No nation and no tournament belong to each other like Brazil and the World Cup. Brazil has won it five times, more than anyone; played in all 23 editions, the only country with perfect attendance; and supplied the tournament’s sacred texts, from a 17-year-old Pele in 1958 to the 1970 team still used as the … Read more
Ninety-six years of World Cups have produced a record book like no other in sports: a 17-year-old winning it all, a 42-year-old scoring in it, five goals in one game, thirteen in one tournament, a red card inside a minute, and a match that needed sixteen yellow cards and four reds just to finish. Some … Read more
It’s the strangest fixture in soccer: a match between two teams that just had their hearts broken, playing for a trophy neither wanted. The World Cup third place match, the “bronze final,” pits the two losing semifinalists against each other the day before the final. Players have called it pointless, coaches have campaigned to abolish … Read more
Every World Cup, it happens: two teams finish level on points, and suddenly a billion people are doing goal-difference math on their phones. The World Cup’s tiebreaker system runs deeper than most fans realize, a strict sequence of seven criteria after points that descends from the sensible (goal difference) to the surreal (yellow-card counts) and … Read more
Twenty-two times, the world’s biggest sporting event has come down to one match. The World Cup final has been decided by a hat trick from a London wharf worker, a headbutt, two of the greatest players ever trading blows in extra time, and once, by a game so traumatic a nation still has a word … Read more
A false 9 is a striker who refuses to act like one. Instead of playing on the shoulder of the last defender, the false 9 starts in the center-forward position, the No. 9 role, and then abandons it, dropping deep into midfield to collect the ball where strikers aren’t supposed to be. The position he … Read more
Shohei Ohtani’s fastest pitch in Major League Baseball is 101.7 mph, a four-seam fastball thrown on June 28, 2025 against the Kansas City Royals. The pitch came in just his third start back from his second elbow surgery, which is the part that made jaws drop: most pitchers spend a year after an elbow operation … Read more
Shohei Ohtani’s medical chart may be the most consequential document in baseball. The two-way experiment that produced four MVPs and the sport’s biggest contract has also produced two elbow surgeries, a shoulder operation, a knee procedure, and two full seasons without pitching, and every new twinge sends a shiver through Los Angeles. That includes this … Read more
It’s the sight that drives new soccer fans crazy: a player brushed on the shoulder collapses clutching his face, rolls three times, waves for a stretcher, and then, ninety seconds later, sprints back onto the pitch completely healed. Faking injuries looks absurd. But it isn’t random theater; it’s rational behavior in a sport whose rules … Read more
Every red card costs a team a player. A red card to the goalkeeper costs them two problems at once, because soccer’s laws are non-negotiable on one point: there must always be a goalkeeper on the pitch. When the keeper walks, someone else has to pull on the gloves, and the manager faces an instant, … Read more