The Women's World Cup gives FIFA a chance, once every four years, to showcase the growth of women's soccer. It gives FIFA a highly visible opportunity to encourage countries around the globe to also support their women's programs. It gives FIFA the forum to show countries the potential of women's soccer if only you support it.

Sports have always been a big part of my life. At school, I played a lot of different sports, and I was competing with other schools. I did everything: running, volleyball, basketball, soccer, Olympic-style gymnastics, and more! My history with sports gave me good concentration, focus, strength, and motivation to stay healthy.

My father was always pushing me to become a basketball player. In Africa, when you're a kid, every kid loves to play soccer, and I loved playing soccer. But my dad didn't want me playing soccer. He would joke, 'C'mon, man, you're too tall!' Then he promised me, 'If you start playing basketball, I'm going to give you my jersey.'

Yorkie has officially retired about 5 times... The man's a clown... People are going on about the game and agents and directors of football and managers losing their jobs, but we should be worried about people like him... Clowns. That's the last time I'm going to say clown... If he's the vice-president of FIFA, God help us all.

The first time I won a medal in the all-around competition is when I realized that's what I wanted to do pretty much for the rest of my life. Even though I was still doing baseball and soccer at the time, I think I just found that that was more my passion, where I saw a lot more success... I was probably eight or nine years old.

The starting point and the ending point are nothing but two arbitrary choices. You make them as in soccer games, where they chose that it's 90 minutes, not less and not more. But the choices are the responsibility of the filmmaker. You have to choose to join the story at an arbitrary point, and you leave it at an arbitrary point.

I was aggressive but I played the game because I loved and enjoyed it. I might have hurt people and I got hurt myself a few times, but not with any malice. When I went on to the field I just wanted to play football. I didn't go out to kick anybody purposely. I just enjoyed playing and if that's aggression, then I'm guilty of that.

I find the ball, and I think, 'Where's the ball going, and where do I need to go?' It just puts me back in the game, and it's the simplest thing, but it's become sort of like my soccer mantra. I simply use the ball as my focus point and move back into position, and the distracting thoughts disappear, and I'm right back in the game.

I grew up playing softball, and at the age of nine, I decided I was going to be an Olympian. I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I thought it might be in a warm summer sport like softball, but I played a variety of sports growing up - basketball, soccer and track. I really didn't care. I just wanted to be an Olympian.

I played on this soccer team, called Hollywood United, and there were a lot of old ex-international pro-players. We played this benefit match at the Rose Bowl, and the crowd streamed in. It's so nerve-wracking to go out into a stadium, feeling a billion eyes upon you when you mess up your touches. That's an overwhelming environment.

Since 9/11 we've been engaged in wars around the world, and General [James] Mattis has been a leading battlefield commander in many of those theaters, including in the April 2004 siege of Fallujah, where the US Marines killed so many people that the municipal soccer stadium in the city had to be turned into a graveyard for the dead.

I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.

All that proves is that most of the world is too poor to build bowling alleys, golf courses, tennis courts and baseball fields. There's hundreds of millions of poor people out there who still ain't got indoor plumbing, but that don't mean there's something great about an outhouse. Soccer is boring. I've never seen a more boring sport.

I think Barcelona and the Spanish national team have been good for soccer because there are a lot of teams that come up playing from the back: with the goalie, the defense, moving up a defender to midfield, playing attacking soccer. I think fans want to see that. They want to see beautiful soccer, a spectacle, and Barcelona does that.

I think Barcelona and the Spanish national team have been good for soccer because there are a lot of teams that come up playing from the back : with the goalie, the defense, moving up a defender to midfield, playing attacking soccer. I think fans want to see that. They want to see beautiful soccer, a spectacle, and Barcelona does that.

Faith-healing is peculiar enough at the best of times, but applying it to football merits a special league of barking. Why would God bother to perform a miracle that enabled Sol Campbell to yell Oh holy Jesus, now I can win the ball in the air. It's been five years since I could defend from corners, brothers and sisters, it's a miracle.

I love soccer, love tennis... Roger Federer has been a favourite for a long, long time. The kind of consistency he has shown, 16 Grand Slam titles... The way he handles himself in pressure situations is admirable... He is so calm... In soccer, I'm a huge fan of Barcelona... I like watching Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and David Villa.

When my father became vice president, I was a sophomore in high school. I'd do things like go on a run with my soccer team and purposely dodge the security van. Then my parents compromised with the Secret Service when I went to college. I just had a panic button in my dorm room, so if I pressed that, they'd be there within 2 or 3 minutes.

Most of the time the concept of globalization ends up sounding unnecessarily abstruse - even the name itself sounds clunky and highfalutin. And people discuss it in a way that makes it seem so impersonal. But globalization really is a concrete, fundamental fact in everybody's lives, and you really see that come to life in soccer stadiums.

We came to a great country like Canada that took us in, which is amazing looking back at it. At that time, I didn't know if I wanted to play soccer or not. I didn't know what I was supposed to do with my life, but once I came to Canada and started watching it on TV, my dad and brother played and watching them play, I wanted to do that too.

I usually dig the single-digit numbers, but No2 is retired. I'm going to change it up and wear No10. I'm going to wear it for Messi, my favourite soccer player. I've been playing a lot of FIFA lately and watching the games. He's the best little guy to do it and I've got to be the best little guy to do it at No10 in the NBA. That's my goal.

The summer before my senior year of college, I would surf every single morning, and I got better and loved it. For me, it is nice to get away from the soccer field and have these other things to clear your mind. You don't have to be good at it; you just do it and enjoy it. It is nice to have that balance, and I need that balance in my life.

It is an indication of Chelski's warped finances that even successive titles can be regarded as failure. Spend unprecedented sums and only unprecedented success can be commensurate. Chelski won't get the credit they think they deserve because of the money they've spent. There's £300m worth of difference between a victory and an achievement.

When I got started, the Bulls weren't even that popular in Chicago. The Chicago Sting, the indoor soccer team, was outdrawing the Bulls. Now you can travel all over the world - Europe, Far East, Africa, wherever - and you see people with Bulls memorabilia or merchandise. It's incredible and the one thing I never could imagined accomplishing.

When I did play team sports, I was into soccer and hockey. I loved hockey. And then rock climbing became the thing that got me out of Iowa, and I traveled the world for rock climbing. I really loved the, I guess you would say, dirtbag lifestyle of not eating much and traveling the world and slipping into different cultures and just observing.

When the U.S. team went on its historic run to the World Cup quarter-finals in 2002, I was thirteen years old. Each game in that run - the astonishing victory against Portugal, the resilient win over Mexico, even the gutsy but unlucky effort against the Germans - propelled me to push my other athletic interests aside and focus only on soccer.

There's the beauty of the stage. I don't like filmed theater or opera because you're kind of playing soccer in a hockey game. Either or, they don't do justice to the media and you end up with a hybrid that is purely sensationalistic. Opera is a very theatrical medium that should be seen on a stage with the musicians in the pit in the audience.

I played college soccer before I was hurt, and just to be able to jump back into something that you could be so competitive at or you can achieve, to get to the Paralympics, that's the first really big achievement that you can have. It's the second biggest sporting event in the world. To be a part of it and to get a medal for that, it's unreal.

I've written in every imaginable location; a repurposed closet, the kitchen table, the bleachers while my kids had basketball practice, the front seat of the car when they were at soccer. In airports. On trains. In the break room when I was supposed to be wolfing down dinner. In the back of classrooms when I was supposed to be paying attention.

I feel like soccer brings another dynamic to the city, it makes it more eclectic... I feel like it opens doors for people who grew up playing soccer here their whole life. We've got some rings on the way, trophies on the way, and we're gonna win, and we're gonna stand behind Atlanta United just like we stand behind everything else out of Atlanta.

I play for the intense challenges that the game on the highest levels present. The whole team enjoys playng exciting soccer for the fans and my part in that makes me feel good about myself. The whole concept of teamwork is what keeps us all going. It's my role to create scoring chances, and to come through for my teammates is extremely satisfying.

Sport can be used for messaging, for example, making the connections between shin guards or a helmet that protects you, and protection in terms of HIV and AIDS. There has also been a very active program in Africa called 'Kick Polio out of Africa,' where soccer players have spoken out in terms of polio. There is also going to be a swim for malaria.

Once, I had to drive Oliver to soccer, was ten minutes late, and learned that there had apparently been a misprint in the Bible on the Ten Commandments thing: Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not be late to soccer. My father was so pissed, I practically had to get the lightning bolt surgically removed from my back.

People are lost. Their feelings are based around material things, and because that doesn't make them happy, they look for something else: bullfighting or soccer, or they go travelling, off to India - and that's not right. You can't just decide, 'I'm going on holiday to India.' Only when God allows you to. You have to ask His permission to go there.

Men can absent themselves from real life for their art more easily. Women are anchored into the quotidian business of getting food on the table, making sure everybody's socks match, the soccer gear is ready. I admire idealists, but they're usually enabled by someone who holds the tether on their balloon, who pays the bills and sweeps up after them.

This is the face of our political class: arrogant, authoritarian, and on the level of some banana republic south of the border. Welcome to the New America, where leader-worship has taken the place of politics, Team Red and Team Blue battle it out to see who gets to be El Supremo for the next four years, and politics resembles a prolonged soccer game.

Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men - such as playing with a lighter ball. That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?

If there is a defining aspect of UNC women's soccer, and its success, it is what we call the competitive cauldron. It is the pinnacle of our program. The great part about the cauldron is that it fosters a quality we can all possess. It isn't a talent we are born with. Competitive drive is not governed by innate ability, but by self-discipline and desire

You are pushed to behave differently here, you don't really have a choice. If you cheat you have no chance of being admired. Even your own supporters will dislike you. So what do you do? Well, the way is not to be stupid, but not to cheat either. If there is a foul, you have to fall. I call it 'helping the referee to make a decision'. That's not cheating.

You know what I wonder about? This - the more details of Sven-Göran Eriksson's love life that appear in the press, the more contempt he attracts for his choice of substitutes in England games. Now, we haven't done the research, but my guess is that Sven's performances in the sack and that of his subs on the pitch are not correlated. So why do we link them?

You can feel the same thing in football or soccer - that for the best teams in Spain and England, for instance, the public... they're not really going to cheer at all when they play against bad teams unless they do something spectacular. Even if they're winning by a few goals they'll probably just say, "nah." That's normal and they're not excited about it.

I remember being in West Ham's youth team and seeing Jody Morris play for Chelsea at 17 and you scoring for Liverpool on your debut when you were 18. I was watching it on Soccer Saturday and I was like, "I can't believe he's scored!" It's professional jealousy. It's best to be honest about it. It gave me real desire. I was thinking "God I want that to be me".

If you want to fight hell and the power of darkness that seek to destroy the hearts of our daughters, I know a type of spiritual warfare that creates value in a daughter's spirit. It is called "Taking your Daughter out for tea" or "Going to Her Soccer Game", and it works in direct opposition to the agenda of hell and darkness that wants to destroy their lives.

The rest of the world loves soccer. Surely we must be missing something. Uh, isn't that what the Russians told us about communism? There's a good reason why you don't care about soccer - it's because you are an American and hating soccer is more American than mom's apple pie, driving a pick-up and spending Saturday afternoon channel-surfing with the remote control.

One of the things I discovered in Japan was from watching sumo wrestling. At the end you can never tell who has won the fight, and who has lost, because they do not show their emotion because it could embarrass the loser. It is unbelievable. That is why I try to teach my team politeness. It is only here in England that everybody pokes their tongue out when they win.

I think Sepp Blatter is in danger...or has reached a point now, where he is being mocked within the game. Whether he's getting too old, I don't know. But things can happen to people in power. Look at some of the despots in Africa... From a position of great power, he has uttered so many ridiculous statements that he is in danger of seriously damaging his credibility.

But as we went on, and you keep practicing and rehearsing more and more fight scenes, it clicks and you just get it. It's almost like a soccer game. If you take enough shots on target, one of them is going to go in. As soon as it does, something happens and it just registers. I found it a lot easier after that, which was about three-quarters of the way through the shoot.

However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension.

It is a testament to the fundamental honesty of football that Israel, with nothing to play for, overcame Russia in Tel Aviv on Saturday. The sport has its faults, but this basic trust is the reason Wembley holds 80,000 and could take more and the track and field venue for the London Olympics will be reduced after the event to the same capacity as the home of Wigan Athletic.

How much soccer training is it needed to become a top player? It depends on the efficiency of your training routine. Setting long and short-term goals is a must. When planning out a soccer training regime, one must strive for realistic and consistent program that will diminish specific weaknesses. Broad versatility of soccer skills is the Nirvana of every dedicated trainee.

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