Sports

By Ben Church, Patrick Sung Cuadrado, CNN (CNN) — At just 18, soccer superstar Lamine Yamal has won more than most players ever do in their entire careers. He’s already a three-time La Liga winner for Barcelona, a European champion with Spain and now, if you ask the bookmakers, he’s highly-tipped to add a World

By Kathleen Magramo, Fred He, CNN (CNN) — World Cup team send-offs are usually a grand event. Rigorously selected players dressed in dapper suits, waving at fans before they board a plane to represent their countries at one of the biggest sporting events held every four years. But not for China this year. The country’s

By Hannah Keyser, CNN Brooklyn (CNN) — Early in the Eastern Conference Finals, as the New York Knicks pulled off miraculous comebacks and marched to unprecedented blowouts, I noticed that the official watch parties outside Madison Square Garden had become meta funhouse mirrors of phone screens. Semi-professional streamers encouraged antics for cameras suspended on gimbals,

CNN By Ben Church, CNN (CNN) — Note: This is story first appeared in The Beautiful Game by CNN Sports, our daily newsletter on all things World Cup. To subscribe, click here. The first games of the World Cup always seem to have a little shock in them. On Saturday, Switzerland, Brazil and Turkey found

By Ben Church, CNN (CNN) — Note: This is story first appeared in The Beautiful Game by CNN Sports, our daily newsletter on all things World Cup. To subscribe, click here. The first games of the World Cup always seem to have a little shock in them. On Saturday, Switzerland, Brazil and Turkey found that

By Don Riddell, CNN (CNN) — Nobody can predict how the 48 teams will do at the FIFA World Cup this summer, but if you wanted to gamble on Japan being the tidiest team, you’d surely clean up at the bookies. Thanks to a societal expectation of all Japanese people, you’d never know they were

By Julia Vargas Jones, CNN Moorpark, California (CNN) — The crest is red, white and green – the colors of the Iranian flag. Nader Adeli, the 65-year-old captain of Arya Football Club, holds up the jersey and laughs: “We are Iranian! We are Aryan, alright?” All 11 Arya FC players on the field are Iranian

By Ben Church, CNN (CNN) — Note: This is story first appeared in The Beautiful Game by CNN Sports, our daily newsletter on all things World Cup. To subscribe, click here. It now feels like we’re well underway in the World Cup with matches coming thick and fast. After the USA’s dominating win yesterday (more

By Hannah Keyser, CNN (CNN) — One time, before she met her now fiancé, Victoria Perry went on a first date with a man who said he wasn’t into the NBA. “I was not going on a second date,” she says now. And just think if she had – and they had hit it off

By Emile Nuh, CNN (CNN) — The quest for a sixth star begins again for Brazil. This storied, soccer-mad nation has lifted the World Cup five times – more than any other country – but its last triumph in 2002 is beginning to feel like a distant memory as over two decades of frustration have

By Ben Church, Isaac Tellechea Toronto (CNN) — Canada concluded its opening World Cup match against Bosnia and Herzegovina with a 1-1 draw. Bosnia was the better team in the first half but ran out of legs by the end. That, and some smart substitutions for Canada, saw the co-host get back into the tie,