champ Page 66 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Liverpool Couldn't Finish, And Now They Are (Probably) Finished
Liverpool were the better team. That might feel impossible after a game that saw Lionel Messi ruin the nights of millions of already angry Scousers, but it’s true. Through 90 minutes at a hostile Camp Nou, Liverpool shook off a hesitant start and brought the game to the Spanish champions, keeping Ba...

André-Pierre Gignac Scores Scissor Kick Beauty In CONCACAF Champions League Final
The CONCACAF Champions League may not generate the buzz of its European counterpart, but the competition has (usually) been the battleground upon which the top Mexican clubs stake their claim as the region’s best, and as such is a solidly entertaining tournament. Mexican sides are enjoying an exten...

Old Man Messi's Still Got It
If you wanted evidence of time’s inevitable erosion of even the most resistant of talents, you would’ve found it just before halftime of today’s Barcelona-Liverpool Champions League semifinal. It was then that Lionel Messi intercepted a backpass just past the halfway line, found himself essentially ...

Liverpool Fans Shove Old Man Into A Fountain, Generally Wreak Havoc At Barcelona Plaza
This should go without saying, but if you are part of a group of traveling soccer fans, please do not push elderly people into fountains. That’s a lesson not learned by a group of Liverpool fans in Barcelona for the Champions League semifinal, who played true to stereotypes by rampaging through the ...

Ajax Put Tottenham In An Early Strangehold And Held On For Dear Life
Through 15 minutes, it looked like Ajax were playing a particularly easy group stage match rather than the away leg of the Champions League semifinal. The Dutch Boys showed up at Tottenham’s brand new stadium and promptly put the undermanned London club in a variety of submission moves, moving the b...

Bolton Wanderers' Ownership Disaster Is Now Affecting Actual Games
When last we checked in on Bolton Wanderers, the storied English soccer club was on the verge of ruin after years of mismanagement and ownership incompetence. Not much has changed since: while the nearly bankrupt club has found a potential new owner willing to buy the team, the deal still has yet to...

Leeds Manager Marcelo Bielsa Instructs Team To Give Aston Villa An Uncontested Scoring Chance To Make Up For A Controversial Goal
Up until the 71st minute, the match between Leeds United and Aston Villa had been relatively uneventful. But once the game clock hit 71:20, the English Championship bout decided to make up for its lack of excitement over the next several moments with a debatably unsportsmanlike goal leading to a scu...

Snooker Community Slams Ronnie O'Sullivan For "Disrespectful" Demeanor After Shock World Championship Exit
In one of the more shocking results in recent snooker memory, consensus best player in the world (and potential G.O.A.T.) Ronnie O’Sullivan was knocked out of the 2019 World Snooker Championship in the very first round by James Cahill, an unranked amateur player....

VAR Will Ruin Everything
Yesterday, millions around the world watched Raheem Sterling cap one of the wildest matches they will ever see with a stunning last-gasp winning goal, only to be told a minute or so later that it never happened....

VAR Got It Right, In The Most Confusing Way Possible
What the fuck was that? ...

Philippe Coutinho And Barcelona Might Yet Have A Happy Ending Together
When Barcelona purchased Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool back in the winter of 2018 for an eye-popping €160 million fee, Blaugrana fans thought they had found their next Andrés Iniesta. It made sense: Coutinho can dribble, create, and score all at elite levels, and though the Brazilian needed to wo...

Ajax Have Slain Cristiano Ronaldo, Giant Of The Champions League
For only the second time in six seasons, Cristiano Ronaldo will not win the Champions League. For the first time in a decade, and only the second time in 13 years, he won’t even appear in one of the four semi-finals. Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who has loomed over the continent’s premier tournament l...

Oh No, David de Gea, What Are You Doing?
Manchester United came into the Camp Nou on Tuesday knowing that two goals would likely get them to the semi-finals of the Champions League. Not an easy task at all, but a doable one. But then United gagged up two awful first-half goals, one from an inexplicable David de Gea boner, and that looks to...

Leeds Fan Breaks Ankle While Celebrating A Goal, Waits Until After The Game To Go To Hospital
With a tight 1-0 home win over Sheffield Wednesday this weekend, Leeds United took a big step toward sealing promotion to the Premier League next season. In the explosion of joy following Jack Harrison’s 65th minute goal, one Leeds fan exploded his ankle during his raucous celebration, which require...

Finland Got Hosed And USA Won Gold
Team USA won its fifth straight women’s world hockey championship on Sunday, but not without controversy. (Important note: “Controversy” is the way to say it if you’re from the winning country and don’t want to admit the Americans got lucky and the Finns got robbed.)...

Cristiano Ronaldo Is Like Clockwork
Cross the ball, head the ball, score a goal. It is the simplest tactic in soccer. It is what practically all teams resort to when the need for a goal is at its most dire. It is a strategy without frills or subtlety. When it works, it is nearly unstoppable. However, it very rarely works—rarely in a s...

Real Cross Country Delivers Real Redemption
Jakob Larsen, director of Danish Athletics, revealed at the pre-race press conference that the guiding concept behind the design of the 2019 World Cross Country Championships course was a scene from the movie Crocodile Dundee. “That’s not a knife; this is a knife,” says our man of the outback in th...

Gerard Piqué Is Barcelona's Other Superman
It must be strange, being a defender of historic greatness for a solid decade, starring for arguably the greatest club and national teams of all time, and still winding up somehow underrated. And yet, that is the fate of Barcelona and Spain center back Gerard Piqué—though if he continues to put toge...

Tottenham Overcome Terrible Luck To Beat Manchester City
Tottenham fans could be forgiven for believing that their club is cursed. It seems like Spurs somehow give up that one goal or lose that one game or suffer that one injury that consigns them to failure at the least convenient possible times, even during this miraculously successful spell under manag...
