champions-league Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Long Live the LIV?
The LIV Invitational Golf Series has been a drag on a PGA Tour that was already flailing to find its next superstar. LIV, which is funded by blood money from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has sparked a mini-exodus of several PGA stars. By offering boatloads of cash for appearance fees, LIV ha...
Icarus can kiss my ass
Perhaps there’s no bigger showcase of Lucy yanking the football away than Liverpool chasing The Quadruple. Because as it got closer, it only became harder and only felt further away. Which sounds stupid, because no team has gotten closer. But fatigue was clear for the last few weeks, and the more ma...
Real Madrid shouldn’t have even been there
We’ll likely never see a UEFA Champions League run like the one Real Madrid just completed. If only quality of play decided Los Blancos’ quarterfinal and semifinal two legged-ties, as well as Saturday’s one-game final against Liverpool, they would’ve lost each one. Real Madrid trailed late in each s...
Real Madrid have more than just black magic against Liverpool
While four years is a long time in soccer, and teams can greatly transform a couple times in that timespan, Real Madrid and Liverpool look a lot like they did four years ago. Liverpool are still anchored by Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Andrew Robertson in defense and Sadio Mane and M...
Kylian Mbappé is PSG’s only hope
Let’s be fair, it isn’t much of a sacrifice or even a hard choice to make more money than a lot of countries’ GDP and live in Paris. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and something 95 percent of the world would opt for (with the other five percent either already living there, making millions somewhere bette...
It comes down to minute levels of control
The Premier League title chase took a massive turn this weekend. Liverpool dropped points at home to Tottenham, drawing 1-1 on Saturday afternoon. Buoyed by watching that, and in the wake of trying to recover from their Champions League collapse, Manchester City rubbed Newcastle’s ass in the moonshi...
How do you plan for devil magic?
So Pep Guardiola has to eat shit again. I’ll pause if that sentence makes you giggle (I know I am). Once again, armed with probably the most stacked team in Europe — as he was in Munich, and as he has been in Manchester — and armed with the most cohesive team in Europe, and probably the best team in...
That was MLS’s biggest night
Perhaps there have been too many markers as “MLS’s biggest night” that the words have lost all meaning. So many stadium openings (which is good! Except for those that might have been opened on the public dime), or MLS Cup finals, or TV deals, or expansion teams joining the fray (and definitely not a...
You can only throw everything at Liverpool for so long
I guess it confirms me as an irretrievable Malorkus, but after watching Liverpool simply outlast Villareal in yesterday’s second leg of the Champions League semifinal, all I wanted to do was go back in time and show the game to the writers of Game Of Thrones. And to give them a demonstration of what...
Jesse Marsch and Leeds might be in serious trouble
It’s hard to judge just how important it is that an American manager finally “makes it” in Europe. It would certainly be cool, but for what it means for men’s American soccer overall trails by miles to how players make it in the world’s best leagues. The US needs a load of players making a fist of i...
Madrid have the most annoying way to win an argument
That isn’t to say that Madrid won last night, because they most certainly didn’t. 4-3 results when you have the three is a loss in the scorebook. And it’s that kind of biting analysis that keeps you coming back. But Madrid “won” in that a one-goal deficit when the second leg is at home, where white-...
USMNT in the knockout round! An Argentina-Brazil semifinal! Oh, Canada! (and more World Cup predictions)
Instead of a World Cup taking place in the summer, we’re waiting until the late fall for the festivities to start to get to a manageable playing temperature in Qatar. The 2022 FIFA World Cup draw took place a few weeks ago, giving a path to the 37 teams still in contention to lift the trophy. Four w...
Who pissed in Stefan Savić’s pregame Gatorade?
Trying to help his team become the second from the Spanish capital to qualify for the UEFA Champions League semifinals, Stefan Savić went from composed center back to savage at the drop of a hat....
And we all thought Barcelona was done big-game hunting
We didn’t really get as big of a window to laugh at Barcelona as we thought or hoped. Proving the life lesson that you need to celebrate anything worth celebrating at that time and that place or you’ll miss the opportunity. Barça is roaring in La Liga right now, all the way up to second after winnin...
To the death, then
The only result between Manchester City and Liverpool this morning that would have made it a “title decider” (which is how it was built by every outlet broadcasting it) was a City win. A four-point gap at this point in the season, requiring City to fuck up two games in the run-in while Liverpool to ...
Lost in Liverpool’s pursuit of a quad is Man City’s potential treble
With Tiger Woods falling out of contention and Sunday at Augusta turning into a sleepy 3-year-old crashing off of sugar, wake yourself up by flipping on probably the biggest game of the English Premier League season. Man City sits atop the table but only barely. Liverpool, still chasing a potential ...
Man United reportedly set to hire Erik Ten Hag, which raises more questions than answers
Perhaps the ink isn’t dry, but it sure feels like current Ajax manager Erik Ten Hag is going to be leaving for Old Trafford after this season. Which is funny as all the reports of his hiring started spilling out just hours after SI made it pretty clear that the Man United board wasn’t exactly blown ...
Welcome back, baseball
I spend a lot of time here pointing out everything that’s wrong with baseball. Maybe even most of my time. And for good reason. Baseball is broken, and the latest CBA doesn’t do nearly enough to address the problems. And those who are in a position to do anything about it aren’t interested in doing ...
They qualified, so shut up
As mentioned previously this week, the USMNT fan’s natural inclination these days is to turn cold and scornful. It’s understandable, as we all spent so much time watching a team and program that was an utter mess and just twirling around before falling like a child you made do the spin-around-the-ba...
Duke-North Carolina at the Final Four is already one for the ages
It’s already an instant classic and the ball won’t be tipped for four more days. The greatest rivalry in college basketball, one of the fiercest in all of sports, heads to the Final Four. Duke squaring off with North Carolina is a momentous, must-watch occasion when it takes place under routine circ...