The holidays are upon us and 2019 is almost here, and it's shaping up to be quite the year for soccer, both locally and around the world.
The biggest event next year will be the women's World Cup. The U.S. women's national team enters the year as the favorite to retain its title from 2015, but the gap isn't as large as the team's undefeated 2018 season would indicate.
Tournament host France will be supremely confident. It hasn't lost to the United States since 2016, including a win and a draw on American soil. The two teams will play a mid-January friendly in Le Havre. The winner will be feeling pretty good about its chances come June.
The year's other big event will be the Gold Cup next summer for the U.S. men's national team, including a U.S. match at Allianz Field in St. Paul. It'll be the national team's first chance in a major tournament under new coach Gregg Berhalter, and its first chance to start erasing the sting of failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Hope is back, thanks to a promising young squad, but the team needs victories to match the promise.
Locally, the star of the year will be Allianz Field, which by all accounts is a jewel. At times, it felt like Minnesota United was playing two years' worth of exhibition matches at TCF Bank Stadium and that the true jump to MLS hadn't really happened yet. Walking into the team's permanent soccer home will make the whole thing finally seem real, while serving as a pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming kind of moment for longtime Minnesota soccer fans.
For once, European soccer is shaping up to provide pre-summer excitement, too. The Premier League, for the first time in a few years, has a genuine title race with Liverpool and Manchester City dueling at the top. Should both slip up, Chelsea and Tottenham could be drawn into the fray as well. A four-team title race would be the perfect way to start the year.
Nor is England the only country with a race. Four Spanish teams are within five points of each other at the top of the league. With a victory Friday, Borussia Dortmund has raced nine points clear of Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. Usually Bayern and Barcelona have things wrapped up by Valentine's Day. It's genuinely pleasing that it won't happen that way this year.
To wrap up 2018, here are a few haphazard predictions for next year. First, the women's World Cup will once again remind fans that women's soccer is high-quality and fun to watch, and NWSL attendances will spike. One team will still fold, but two other cities will start new teams for 2020.
