Sports

Pelé, 82, died last week in a hospital in Sao Paulo, the country’s largest city and commercial capital, of complications from colorectal cancer. He had been in ill health the better part of the last couple of years.

Qatar’s World Cup awarding 12 years ago might have caused controversy, but the actual tournament has brought immense pride to the Muslim and Arabic-speaking world. And the soccer has been stellar.

The Qatar 2022 World Cup has been a cozy logistical affair, enabling fans to easily crisscross the Connecticut-sized country and intersect with fans and other teams. But small and tidy is set to give way to large and unruly, as World Cup 2026 will be jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada. Minutes-long ground travel now will be replaced by hours-long air travel.

South American-born soccer players Tab Ramos, Claudio Reyna, Marcelo Balboa and Fernando Clavijo played key roles for the United States in the 1990s and early 2000s World Cups. A wave of German-born players — Thomas Dooley, Jermaine Jones, Fabian Johnson, John Brooks — progeny of American military fathers and German moms, also opted to play for Uncle Sam.

Soccer great Pelé is largely credited with calling his sport “The Beautiful Game,” an affectionate phrase its media and admirers still like to turn to when other adjectives escape them. But a closer look into soccer’s inner workings occasionally takes a bit of shine off the world’s biggest professional sport.

The city of Boston finds itself at a unique crossroads for professional golf this summer. In June, the Hub played host to the U.S. Open, America’s oldest championship, at The Country Club, a founding member of the United States Golf Association in 1894 and home to Francis Ouimet’s seminal national championship victory in 1913. This Labor Day, the upstart LIV Golf series comes to Boston for just its fourth ever event, offering a glimpse at what the future of the game may look like.  

While Black Americans still make up more than 73% of the NBA's players, two European stars — Greek Giannis Antetokounmpo and Serbian Nikola Jokic — have won the last four regular-season NBA MVP honors.

Last month, as 2022 U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick hoisted the trophy for photos at The Country Club’s 18th hole, Jada Richardson and Kendall Jackson were on the green. Both Division I golfers from Howard University were wrapping up a week of V.I.P. access as Lee Elder interns.

It used to be met with suspicion when NBA players sat out regular-season games with dubious injuries. Known euphemistically as “load management,” the concept is so ingrained now it has become tongue-in-cheek and gives off an air of inmates running the asylum.

In two weeks, The Country Club, Brookline’s prestigious private course whose name needs no elaboration, will take center stage in the world of golf for the 2022 U.S. Open. In advance of the attention and scrutiny that come with hosting one of the sport’s four major championships, The Country Club rolled out a new internship program to introduce college students from underrepresented backgrounds to the cloistered business of golf: the Lee Elder Internship.

Colombian soccer player Freddy Rincon is forever linked with one of the most rapturous moments in the history of his resource-abundant but historically-turbulent country.

Former NBA star Latrell Sprewell two decades ago turned down a $21m contract extension, foolishly exclaiming that he “had a family to feed.” Unless he was preparing his offspring as future candidates for “My 600-Lb. Life,’’ his comment was highly misguided. Sprewell never got another offer, and despite making close to $100 million in career earnings, he allegedly fell on hard times, although it’s never quite clear if athletes in these situations go completely broke or just lose portions of their vast earnings.