Soccer Monday: AI debate, MLS playoff race heats up and Arsenal adds insult to injury time
Kick off your week with all the action from this past weekend
Happy Labor Day!
My hope is that you have the day off and are reading this while thinking about your plans for doing something fun. By the way, some fun things happened over the weekend in the soccer world.
Here’s a look at the major stories from this weekend:
3. AI and soccer
It has been a torrid summer. Not just because of the hot temperatures — but also due to the heat generated by the soccer world.
I decided to take a break from the headlines a few weeks back to conduct an interview with ChatGPT. Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer is a language bot developed by OpenAI that can offer information on just about anything topic.
AI is a machine’s ability to perform cognitive functions we associate with human minds, including reasoning and learning. It is something that potentially threatens jobs and how people live going forward.
As I learned, it’s also something you can get into a heated debate with about the world’s biggest game.
2. MLS final sprint
The start of September in MLS is when teams focus on trying to clinch a playoff spot. A look at the standings reveals it will be a heated race between now and the end of the regular season on Oct. 21.
FC Cincinnati is the only team to have clinched a berth to the MLS Cup Playoffs. That means the field remains wide open.
There are some teams in the Eastern Conference that don’t look like they will contend for one of the nine postseason berths. The New York Red Bulls, for example, suffered a 4-1 road defeat on Sunday to the Philadelphia Union. As a result, they are now in 13th place and four points below the red line.
Over in the Western Conference, the Portland Timbers played Seattle Sounders FC on Saturday to a 2-2 away draw in the Cascadia Cup. Nonetheless, the Timbers are stuck in 12th place and four points out from a playoff spot.
1. Arsenal stuns Man United
The Premier League season may still be in its infancy, but there’s. no doubt that it has already offered up plenty of excitement. The weekend’s biggest game — featuring Arsenal versus Manchester United — lived up to the pre-game hype.
Just as the match at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday appeared destined to end 1-1, the home side scored two goals in stoppage time for a 3-1 win.
The goals — by Declan Rice in the sixth minute of injury time and one by Gabriel Jesus five minutes later — pushed the Gunners into a four-way tie for second place with 10 points alongside Tottenham, Liverpool and West Ham. Manchester City, after routing Fulham 5-1 at home Saturday, remains in first place with 12 points.
In another shock win, this one on Saturday, Nottingham Forest defeated Chelsea 1-0 at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea are now mired in 12th place with a 1-1-2 record. The Guardian, in describing the Blues, noted that the London club is “a team bereft of edge in the final third, a team of young players who look unsure of themselves in tricky situations and nobody who has been paying close attention to recent events here could say they were particularly surprised when Forest pounced on one defensive slip and stole the points thanks to Anthony Elanga’s clinical finish at the start of the second half.”
In other news: Qatar National Bank records — included in a filing made by a Philadelphia-based policy organization fighting a subpoena from a former Qatari-hired American lobbyist — reveal $330 million in payments to members of the FIFA committee who voted on which country would host the 2018 and 2022 tournaments in late 2010. They list specific names, bank account numbers and amounts of money received. … A Spanish government panel announced on Friday that it has opened a case against FA chief Luis Rubiales. He has come under fire for kissing a player on the lips without consent after Spain won last month’s Women’s World Cup in Sydney. … Boca Juniors is the only team that can prevent a fourth straight all-Brazilian Copa Libertadores final. The game will will be played on Nov. 4 at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Palmeiras — winner of the tournament in 2020 and 2022 — will face Boca Juniors. The other semifinal will pit Internacional against Fluminense.