GENEVA—World Cup stars Kylian Mbappe and Luka Modric will lead the challenge against a decade-long dominance of FIFA’s best player award by Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Mbappe, the teenage star of France’s World Cup-winning team, and Modric, the Croatia captain who was named the tournament’s best player, joined five-time winners Ronaldo and Messi among […]
By Joe CallaghanSpecial to the Star Sat., July 21, 2018 As tourists wheeled their suitcases through the afternoon rush in Moscow’s Arbatskaya Metro station, a worker frenetically scraped and peeled back the adhesive patches that had directed World Cup fans to Luzhniki Stadium for the previous month and threw them into a trash bag. It […]
MOSCOW—The men’s World Cup is notable for women. Fox’s Aly Wagner and Telemundo’s Viviana Vila are the first in-match analysts on U.S. television for soccer’s showcase. BBC’s Vicki Sparks is making a similar breakthrough in Britain and ZDF’s Claudia Neumann in Germany. “It took me 10 years. It was very disappointing that it took so […]
For women who work as sports reporters, #MeToo is not just a movement, it is often their everyday reality. In just the past two weeks, two women were harassed while reporting at the World Cup in Russia, the episodes captured in widely viewed videos. One of the women, Julia Guimarães, a reporter with TV Globo […]
By Stephen WhynoThe Associated Press Thu., June 28, 2018 WASHINGTON—Wayne Rooney is coming to Major League Soccer with D.C. United, the latest star to take his talents across the pond to the United States. Rooney follows the lead of Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic and retired countryman David Beckham by leaving Europe for MLS later in their […]
By Tales AzzoniThe Associated Press Mon., June 18, 2018 SOCHI, RUSSIA—This is unfamiliar territory for five-time World Cup champion Brazil. The last time it didn’t win its first game in a World Cup, Pele had just retired from soccer. The “Selecao” had won every one of its opening matches since 1978, a year after “The […]
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA—Sweden coach Janne Andersson makes no bones about spying on South Korea’s training sessions ahead of their game at the World Cup. The South Koreans responded by swapping players’ numbers around to confuse the Swedish “spy” because, in the words of coach Shin Tae-yong, “it’s very difficult for westerners to distinguish between Asians.” […]
Growing up in Toronto’s Kensington Market, Zanana Akande, 80, learned the importance of banding together to build community. Those lessons would ultimately inspire her life’s work in fighting for equality and improving the social, economic, cultural and political status of women, for which she was honoured on Saturday by Mayor John Tory with a ceremonial […]
A Greyhound Bus was engulfed in flames early Sunday morning on a Mississauga stretch of the Queen Elizabeth Way. Shortly after midnight, the Ontario Provincial Police and Mississauga Fire responded to the call for a vehicle fire near Cawthra Rd. All westbound lanes on the QEW were closed in the area, but have since reopened. […]
Two people were fatally shot early Sunday morning in northern Etobicoke, according to a spokesperson for Toronto Paramedic Services. Toronto Police received a call shortly before 2 a.m. on Sunday, and arrived at Lightwood Dr., a residential street in the Kipling Ave. and Albion Rd. area. The two victims, both men in their 20s, were […]
