Lion Links: 5/22/18

Happy Tuesday, Mane Landers. Yesterday marked my last ever final exam of my undergraduate education (barring me failing a class this semester), so that’s got me in a good mood. Before we go any further, birthday wishes are in order for the Orlando Pride’s own Kristen Edmonds! Now on to the links.

New Stadium Policies Announced

In a press conference yesterday, Orlando City CEO Alex Leitão and Vice President of Gameday Operations Alex Wolf took questions and addressed the media regarding new stadium policies that were announced following last week’s loss to Atlanta United. Namely, all bottles and cans will be eliminated in the stands, and more security cameras will be installed. Additionally, the club has currently identified 38 individuals who will be suspended from the stadium for 1-2 years and will notify those individuals by mail. Additional policies were announced that can be read about in more detail at the link above.

Confidence Boost for Morgan

After scoring her first league goal of the 2018 NWSL season, Alex Morgan is feeling confident.

“I haven’t scored a goal at Providence Park since I was playing for the Portland Thorns, so that was a big thing for me, just to get on the scoreboard and feel good and feel in form with this team.”

That confidence is coming at a good time with top of the league North Carolina Courage up next on the schedule. Hopefully Morgan and the rest of the Pride attack can keep the goals coming when the unbeaten team come to town. Don’t forget that game is tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. ET at Orlando City Stadium.

Russia Reportedly Covered Up Doping Tests

Allegations have surfaced that Russia has ignored positive doping tests in Russian soccer. The claims were made in the German documentary Russia’s Football Friends by Grigory Rodchenkov, a known whistle blower when it comes to doping in Russian sports. Rodchenkov claims that 155 positive samples were seized by the World Anti Doping Agency in December 2014, with some of those samples belonging to members of the national team. FIFA is apparently investigating the alleged positive samples. So that should go well.

A Look at the High-Tech World Cup Ball

The new 2018 World Cup ball has more technology than any other World Cup ball before it. Which isn’t hard to do, since no other ball before it had technology of any kind. The Los Angeles Times are here to give you a look at the new ritzy ball, which contains inside of it a near-field communication chip that allows interaction with the ball through a smartphone. While designing the ball, Adidas experimented with embedding micro cameras in the ball, but somewhat unsurprisingly, the video captured by them was “nauseating.” The chip doesn’t allow for much more than giving the user the ability to name the ball, but apparently getting information about the ball’s speed, height, and curl could be coming in versions somewhere down the road.

Ali Krieger Offers Up Free Beer

Attention, attention: There is free beer up for grabs at the Pride game on Wednesday. All you have to do is be one of the first 150 fans to buy tickets to the game from the link in the below tweet, and boom, Ali Krieger will buy you a beer.

Not a bad deal at all, and one that I would probably take advantage of if I didn’t live roughly 1,000 miles away. Looks like I’ll be buying my own beverages tomorrow.

Free Kicks

Before you wonder why Yoshimar Yotún is missing from Saturday’s lineup:

This may mean nothing, but don’t forget that Nike promoted Philippe Coutinho as a Barcelona player before that deal was announced.

• Arsenal is apparently set to appoint Unai Emery as its new manager.

That’ll do it for me today. Don’t forget that it’s a Wednesday game for the Pride this week, and a Saturday game for Orlando City, both of which are home games (and the Pride are in Chicago Saturday afternoon). Ciao.