Author: Steven Sahiounie

When Ramin Rezaeian scored his first World Cup goal to seal Iran’s victory over Wales last week — just the country’s second tournament win in 24 years — it should have been a moment of pure joy. Yet Rezaeian tweeted afterward that he didn’t know “whether to laugh or cry” — feeling trapped along with his teammates between a government that views their success as a propaganda tool and Iranian protesters mounting the most dangerous challenge to the country’s theocratic rulers in four decades. Those conflicting emotions could become even more complicated Tuesday when Iran meets the U.S. in a game that will determine which team…

Carlos Queiroz once spent a year trying to fix U.S. soccer. On Monday, as coach of the Iranian national team, he’s going to try to beat the Americans.“He took maybe a year to analyze U.S. soccer, analyze youth development in U.S. Soccer,” current American coach Gregg Berhalter. “I remember when I was with the national team in ’98, he was around observing.”At the end of that year, Queiroz turned in a 113-page report that was supposed to be a blueprint on how to get the U.S. to a World Cup final by 2010. A dozen years later, Berhalter is simply…

In four years with the U.S. national team, Gregg Berhalter has coached 58 games, traveled tens of thousands of miles, auditioned dozens of players and run too many training sessions to count. All that work will now come down to 90 minutes Tuesday when the U.S. faces Iran in its final group-stage match of the 2022 World Cup with a berth in the knockout rounds at stake. And the scenario couldn’t be simpler: win and the U.S. goes on, lose or draw and it goes home. “It sounds kind of illogical to judge four years on one game, but that’s our business,” Berhalter said.…

Two more spots in the Round of 16 have been locked up. Brazil and Portugal on Monday became the latest teams to punch a ticket to the knockout stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Brazil advanced with a 1-0 victory over Switzerland, while Portugal did so with a Bruno Fernandes-led 2-0 win over Uruguay. Brazil and Portugal join France as the only teams to have qualified for the Round of 16 by the end of Matchday 2. Elsewhere on Monday, Cameroon and Serbia played to a thrilling 3-3 draw and Ghana escaped elimination with a dramatic 3-2 win over South Korea. Here were the…

This should be a beauty of a game in Group A as both Ecuador and Senegal still have a chance of winning the group. STREAM LIVE ECUADOR v SENEGAL Ecuador is on four points after their impressive draw against the Netherlands and La Tri, led by the three goals of Enner Valencia, have been one of the stories of the tournament. The South American minnows have impressed mightily and a win here could see them get a more favorable path in the knockout rounds. A point is enough to guarantee them a spot in the last 16, however their captain…

The 2022 FIFA World Cup features 32 nations competing in soccer’s biggest event in Qatar, the first World Cup ever held in the Middle East. This year marks the final edition of the tournament with a 32-nation field – that number is set to increase to 48 for the 2026 World Cup, which will have venues across the United States, Mexico and Canada. This year’s Copa Mundial looks different for several reasons, including the dates (due to Qatar’s intense summer heat, the schedule was shifted to November-December instead of its traditional summer timing). But as always, the event features the…

The Netherlands face hosts Qatar in their Group A finale knowing a win could guarantee them top spot. STREAM LIVE NETHERLANDS v QATAR Louis van Gaal’s side are level on points (4) and goal difference (+2) with Ecuador and if they better Ecuador’s result against Senegal in their Group A finale, they will go through as winners of the group. However, the Dutch were not impressive against Ecuador and were lucky to get a 1-1 draw. It will be intriguing to see if Memphis Depay is fit enough to start as LVG looks to build up his fitness ahead of the knockout…

The ures taking effect Friday will include reductions on water for the irrigation of crops and industry The measures taking effect Friday will include reductions on water for the irrigation of crops and industry BARCELONA, Spain — Barcelona and large swathes of Spain’s northeast are going under water restrictions as a months-long drought that has devastated crops starts to put the pinch on human activities in the Mediterranean country. The measures will affect 6.7 million people, 80% of the population in the Catalonia region, Patrícia Plaja, spokeswoman for the Catalan administration, said Tuesday. Plaja said, for now, it will not…

Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the App Store as part of its app review moderation process.“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.In other tweets fired off on Monday morning, he called Apple’s App Store fees a “secret 30% tax,” and ran a poll asking if “Apple should publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.” He also claimed that Apple has pulled most of its advertising from Twitter.Apple’s App…

Twitter searches for the widespread Covid-19-related protests in China are returning a flood of spam, pornography and gibberish that some disinformation researchers say at first glance appear to be a deliberate attempt by the Chinese government or its allies to drown out images of the demonstrations.Beginning late last week and into Monday, searches in Chinese for major protest hotspots, including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Guangzhou, produced a nonstop stream of solicitations, images of scantily clad women in suggestive poses and seemingly random word- and sentence fragments. Many of the tweets reviewed by CNN on Monday came from accounts that had…