Soccer | featured news

Former England captain David Beckham has failed to make the British soccer team for the London Olympics.

Spain and Portugal were locked in a scoreless tie through regulation and overtime, but when it came down to penalty kicks La Furia Roja prevailed.

The Euro 2012 match went to a shootout that Spain won, 4-2, heading to Kiev for the final against the winner of Germany’s match against Italy on Thursday.

Italy is restoring pride in a tarnished national game while England is shaking off past inhibitions. The European Championship is turning out better than expected for the English and Italians, who meet on Sunday in the quarterfinals. The Italians are providing a welcome distraction from another match-fixing scandal at home after setting out in the tournament under siege from fans - and the police.

Amid the gloom of a political and economic crisis, Greece's gutsy 1-0 win over heavily-favored Russia to advance to the Euro 2012 quarterfinals has at last given the country's crisis-weary citizens something to cheer about.

From testicle-biting police dogs to sonic cannons capable of inducing involuntary urination, Polish anti-hooligan squads have an array of weapons ready to deal with any troublesome England fans at Euro 2012.

The audience for the world's most watched sporting event this year included some of the world's most powerful people.

Meet the king of the sporting Twittersphere: Brazilian soccer star Kaka. The Real Madrid midfielder on Wednesday became the first athlete to amass 10 million followers on the social networking site. "Thank youuuuu. To celebrate I'll make a twitcam" wrote the 30-year-old Kaka, who at the last count had 10,012,862 Twitter fans. He's nowhere close to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber - who each have more than 20 million followers - but it's not a bad haul for a player whose career appears to be on the wane after becoming a superstar in a golden six-year stint at AC Milan in Italy.

The star midfielder, whose record five-year, $32.5-million contract with the Major League Soccer club expired Dec. 31, will announce Thursday that he has reached agreement on a new contract for the 2012 season, which begins in March. Details of the contract were not immediately available but it is expected to call for a summer sabbatical from MLS play, allowing Beckham to play for the English team in the London Olympics.

A team made up of some of soccer's biggest names — David Beckham, Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane — finds redemption by winning the MLS Cup. Who says Los Angeles can't win a pro football championship? It just did, Sunday night in a poncho-filled bandbox in Carson, so chilly the players' breaths appeared in puffs, so soggy their socks were caked in mud. Folks in this country call it soccer, but, goodness, this was football, powerful and passionate, players fighting through the Home Depot Center muck while thousands serenaded them with streamers and songs, throaty voices rising above the tempest and eventually landing somewhere deep in the Galaxy.