Laurent Dubois's Blog, page 48

The Evolution of David Beckham

The man, the myth, the legend, David Beckham has been a household name in the US since he and his wife, Victoria Beckham, moved here in 2007. Beckham has been touted as fashion icon, a heartthrob, and a soccer star. He is a man of many accomplishments. Today my friends we will look at this… Read More »

The “I Believe” Chant: A Brief History

During Friday afternoon’s student protests at Duke University, the crowd approaching the Allen Building (which was occupied that afternoon by nine students, who are still in the building as of today), broke into a very particular chant, as seen here in a video posted by the Duke Chronicle.   They repeated the chant on Saturday… Read More »

A Lapse in Judgment: Wambach Arrested for DUI in Wake of USWNT Lawsuit

In the wake of the U.S. Women’s National Team filing a lawsuit demanding equal pay from the U.S. Soccer Federation during the past week, the USWNT and the soccer world received shocking news about one of its former superstars Sunday morning. After being pulled over at 11:05 p.m. Saturday, former U.S. forward Abby Wambach, 35,… Read More »

Why Not Playing in the Olympics Should Matter to the US Mens Team

    A few days ago, my colleague Seth Johnson wrote a great piece on the importance of the US Mens Team game against Guatemala last Tuesday. He made an excellent case for how important the game was to the US Men’s hopes for World Cup qualification, but also how important the game was to… Read More »

Similarities between two Powerhouse Franchises

Posted: April 1, 5:45PM; Author: Nicholas Vega Recently, I was on Twitter and came across a Tweet that compared the dominance of two different teams, from two different sports: the Golden State Warriors (NBA basketball) and Barcelona (soccer). Initially, I thought the comparison was as much as a stretch as it was trivial: how could two… Read More »

The beauty of South American Qualifiers

Two days after the end of another South-American world cup qualifying week we can see why South American world cup qualifiers are known by many people as the “toughest qualifiers on earth”. As of right now, there is a difference of 3 points between the first place team (Uruguay) and the 5th place team (Colombia)… Read More »

Equal Pay for Equal Work

On March 31, 2016 Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo filed an action with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of the entire United States Women’s National Team that accused the U.S. Soccer Federation of wage discrimination. In the lawsuit they claim that they are paid almost four times… Read More »

MLS Salaries Compared to other American Sports

A week ago, ESPN released answers to a survey they conducted with 123 MLS players. Two questions stood out to me. The first, was “You’re commissioner for a day. What’s the one thing you’d change about the MLS?” The top answer? 44 percent of the players said that salaries are the one thing that they… Read More »

What is the Klopp Effect?

This past October, Liverpool Football Club fired manager Brendan Rodgers after a roller coaster 4+ years in charge of the club, which saw the club come as close to winning a Premier League title as Liverpool has ever been in 2014, only to crash out of the Champions League in the group stage and endure… Read More »

“Não há medo no futebol”

Terça-feira. Dia 22 de Março de 2016. Bruxelas, Bélgica. 7:58 da manhã. Duas bombas explodem na sala de embarque do Aeroporto de Bruxelas em Zaventem. Um pouco mais de uma hora depois, uma outra bomba explodiu na estação de metro Maelbeek. Quando o sol se pôs sobre a capital da Europa, trinta e cinco pessoas… Read More »