Champions League Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Orange ball!
I can’t tell you why I and other soccer fans (which might just be my one friend) love it when the orange ball makes an appearance. Probably because it’s just so rare. Or maybe because it kind of looks like a tiny alien vessel has landed on the field and the players just decided to use it. It feels p...

Maybe it’s Mexico that needs to look in the mirror
The big story out of the US’s demolition (at least in the 2nd half) of Mexico was the US stuffing Memo Ochoa’s words back from whence they came. Ochoa had claimed before the match that Mexico “was the mirror that the US wants to see themselves,” which led to Pulisic writing “Man In The Mirror” on hi...

Steven Gerrard takes the next step in his journey home
There isn’t anyone involved in Steven Gerrard taking over as manager for Aston Villa that doesn’t know the deal here. The ending that Gerrard wants is that this is the route to land him as manager of Liverpool one day, the club that he — mostly single-handedly — kept relevant for his playing career ...

It’s most certainly Hammer time
While Manchester United have done their best to make sure the Premier League doesn’t become completely stratified into just a “top four and everyone else,” and Arsenal and Tottenham have made the idea of a “Big Six” laughable, that only works if there are other teams willing to crash through the doo...

Antonio Conte is Tottenham’s last gasp, but he’s the best last gasp
If you’re getting sucked under the current, you might as well reach for the strongest line possible. Tottenham, after looking completely adrift as a team and club on Sunday against Manchester United, have pretty much done that by hiring Antonio Conte. It’s not a signal of long-term planning. It’s pr...

Harry Kane and Spurs are learning what happens when you stay together for the kids
If there was ever going to a point where Tottenham could have turned their season around, a moment to use as a springboard, it was yesterday. They were at home, facing one team that might be in a bigger crisis than they are, Manchester United. For at least a little while, their fans sensed the same,...

Perhaps it’s time for Barcelona to recognize what they are
It couldn’t end any other way, especially when you bone it and get zipped by Rayo Vallecano to fall to ninth in the La Liga table....

And now an unbiased and clear-headed review of Man United vs. Liverpool
PHHHHHHWWWWOOOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!...

An existential question for Man U fans ahead of their clash with Liverpool
Consider yourself lucky if you’ve never had that feeling about a coach when he’s not awful and he’s not great, but you’d rather not sack him because you don’t trust ownership to hire someone. I imagine it’s a lot like purgatory when you know you’re damned. You’re just kind of floating there, knowing...

Can the Bundesliga ever be competitive again?
I start a lot of these with the phrase, “I knew better.” Whether it’s tuning into Monday Night Raw, or believing in the Carolina Hurricanes, or something else, you say that phrase enough and it becomes clear that, no, I don’t actually know better. I’m just a gullible giblet. ...

Houdini, thy name is Ole Gunnar
While most every Manchester United supporter you know will scream at you about what a sneaky good manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær is, and certainly never in a tone or volume that will make you think they’re trying to convince themselves as much as they are you, the urge for all of us who don’t support t...

A hot mess without Messi
Good lord is Barcelona awful....

Real Madrid goes down in Champion’s League shocker
The main headlines of Tuesday’s Champions League will be Lionel Messi scoring his first for PSG. But fuck that, Messi scores every goddamn day. The real story is FC Sheriff, from a country that kind of doesn’t exist, in their first Champions League campaign ever, just beat Real Madrid in the Bernabe...

They’re still Manchester Damn City
It’s a little surprising, just a bit, how a team that cantered to the Premier League title and was a Champions League finalist just a few months ago can somehow fly under the radar. But with the noise of Cristiano Ronaldo and his rape accusations landing across town, or Romelu Lukaku giving Chelsea ...

New Liga MX-MLS Cup is way cool, and might set up more cool stuff (I said ‘might’… this <i>is</i> MLS after all)
If I were the cynical sort (perish the thought!), I might suggest that MLS realizes its main stream of income, expansion, might be drying up in the coming years. That’s if you go by the “MLS is a Ponzi scheme” theory, which one has to admit has some legs. Charlotte and St. Louis join the league in t...

Someone should get Harvey Barnes a GPS, or a sense of purpose
It’s been a pretty woeful start for Leicester City in the Premier League this season after being the surprise package the past two. While both ended in final-day heartbreak, as they missed out on the Champions League at the final hurdle, they were still fun to watch as they sparred with and bloodied...

Your 2021-2022 Champions League Guide
Despite the attempt to kill it from Europe’s leading clubs last spring (and UEFA’s eventual success in doing so in the coming years), the Champions League returns today in its usual form. While it has become the nexus point in all that’s wrong with soccer and has certainly widened the gap between th...

It’s showtime!
It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to dodge the bags of piss...wait, those aren’t the original lyrics, are they? Well, for the USMNT they might as well be. ...

It’s hard to know who’s king twit of dumb mountain between Real Madrid, PSG, and Barcelona
The transfer window in soccer closed yesterday evening, and after Cristiano Ronaldo took his rape accusations to Manchester United, there weren’t too many surprises. Man City didn’t find the striker they were after, Chelsea added to an already ridiculous squad, blah blah blah. Perhaps everyone was j...

Hey, Pep — you old scallywag, you old so-and-so — come manage the USMNT
So you need a new challenge in a couple years, Pep? Seven years at Man City will be enough? I agree. Want to try yourself at the international stage? Really all that’s left for you at age 50. Not much left to prove at club level, other than maybe not shitting yourself in the latter stages of the Cha...