mad Page 46 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Bahraini Prince Trying To Save Cycling Is A Credibly-Accused Torturer
The tiny island kingdom of Bahrain is something like a smaller Qatar: extremely rich, friendly with the United States, and run by a single family. While Qatar (allegedly) purchased the World Cup—bringing with it thousands of dead slaves—Bahrain, being smaller, appears to have set its sporting ambiti...
Cristiano Ronaldo's Swag Is Off The Charts Right Now
The video you’re about to see shows a neat little Real Madrid sequence capped by a deceptively difficult Cristiano Ronaldo finish. But the goal itself isn’t what we’re here for. What we are here for is all the swag dripping off the Portuguese forward after he scores....
How Will Bryce Harper Deal With The Barry Bonds Treatment?
Bryce Harper hasn’t logged an official at-bat in his last 11 plate appearances. He was walked a grand total of 13 times during a four-game series against the Cubs, and set an MLB record by reaching base seven times in Sunday’s game without recording an at-bat: He was walked three times, intentionall...
Spanish Police Throw Hands With Manchester City Fans
It’s hard to tell exactly who’s the aggressor here—the Manchester City fans visiting Real Madrid’s stadium for yesterday’s Champions League match, or the police who push and pull and punch them—but there’s definitely some scrapping going on, and it doesn’t look all that necessary....
Manchester City's Defending Is Beyond Awful
If one clip could explain how a rich and deep and talented team like Manchester City got bounced so unceremoniously from a Champions League semifinal no one thought they deserved to be in in the first place, and why such a well-run club could perform so erratically so regularly, and why one of the b...
Real Madrid Don't Deserve A Champions League Title, So They'll Probably Get One
Part of what makes European soccer and the multiple trophies it awards each season so special is how close its mechanisms of rewarding champions come to achieving true meritocracy....
Atlético Madrid Lose Their Way Into The Champions League Final
What makes Atlético Madrid different from most other great teams in the sport is that they have mastered the art of reactivity. The prevailing trend in elite soccer is the implementation of proactive, possession-based playing styles. Almost all the richest and therefore best teams in the world pack ...
Saúl Ñíguez Dances Through Bayern Defense, Gives Atlético 1-0 Lead
Check out this ridiculous run right here, and remember that Saúl Ñíguez is a central midfielder not at all known for his dribbling ability, and marvel at his awkward grace as he skates by Bayern Munich’s whole defense and scores:...
Diego Simeone Suspended Rest Of La Liga Season For Bizarre Ball-Throwing Incident
The bit of unsportsmanlike conduct you see above comes from Atlético Madrid’s home match against Málaga this past weekend. As you can see, with Málaga in behind Atleti’s defense and acres of green ahead, some ball boy tosses another ball onto the pitch, presumably to distract the players and/or bait...
Two Butt Teams Combine To Play Butt Game
Real Madrid and Manchester City—two teams that kind of suck in similar ways, and are lucky to even be here thanks to their fortunate draws leading up to this point—met in the Champions League semifinal today. It should’ve been one of the best matches of the year, pitting two greats of Europe in a cl...
The Time Hunter S. Thompson Passed Out In A Pool And Missed The Rumble In The Jungle
The classic 1974 Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire attracted, among other things, famous writers like Norman Mailer and George Plimpton and even ol’ Hunter Thompson. But while Mailer and Plimpton and the rest of the world marveled at Ali’s command performance, Thompson, well, he experienced the fight as on...
Gareth Bale Makes A Totally Convincing Case That He And Ronaldo Are Buds
Gareth Bale is out to set the record straight. He’s heard all the rumors that he and Cristiano Ronaldo don’t get along. He’s even seen the efforts of his agent to disabuse fans of the notion that the Bale-Ronaldo partnership is anything but jolly twisted into evidence of the exact opposite by a conn...
Atlético Madrid Tried To Stop A Breakaway By Throwing Another Ball Out
It’s Málaga! Atlético Madrid—a team in the Champions League semifinals—shouldn’t need to resort to this kind of nonsense to beat them, but here’s a ball magically flying off the bench late in the first half today. It reportedly earned Diego Simeone a dismissal....
The Resurrection Of Fernando Torres
Fernando Torres does not suck anymore. It may sound like fairly unremarkable praise to say that a rich and famous professional athlete manages to wring enough competence out of the limbs and lungs that have made him a millionaire dozens of times over to not be actively bad at his job. But for Torres...
"Raspberry Beret" Is The Best Pop Song Anyone Ever Did
Everyone has opinions about Prince today, and pretty much all of them are good and right, but let’s take a second to talk about “Raspberry Beret,” which is—I would argue—the single most perfect pop song anyone has ever done, slightly more perfect than the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” or Big Star’s “Sept...
Keylor Navas Makes Stunning Short-Range Save Off Indirect Free Kick
It’s another cruise in the park for Real Madrid against Getafe today, but make no mistake: keeper Keylor Navas is getting his work in. Here’s the Costa Rican laying out to make the stop on an indirect free kick from right in front of the goal....
Atlético Madrid Kill Barcelona, Rule Europe For Now
It was always going to come down to that first goal. Coming off a 2-1 first leg of this Barcelona-Atlético Madrid Champions League quarterfinal tie that Barça narrowly edged at home, the next goal was always going to have a huge influence on who went on and who went home. Score it, and Atlético coul...
World Famous Headbutter Zinedine Zidane: "I Never Lost My Head As A Player"
You may know Zinedine Zidane as the manager of Real Madrid. If you don’t know him from that, you definitely remember him as the guy who flipped out in the 2006 World Cup final and headbutted an opponent. Though apparently Zidane himself has forgotten about that, judging from some recent quotes....
Cristiano Ronaldo Was Great Today, Just Like He Knew He Would Be
It’s hard to think of a more quintessentially Cristiano Ronaldo performance than the show he put on today. Everything that makes him the all-time great that he is—from the tangible things like his speed, power, technique, and finishing, to the abstract ones like his determination and preternatural i...
![Cristiano Ronaldo Ignites Real Madrid's Comeback With 2 Goals In 2 Minutes [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/fv3c1owkjdcnkzu0jn3e.gif)
Cristiano Ronaldo Ignites Real Madrid's Comeback With 2 Goals In 2 Minutes [Updated]
Now we’ve got a game! After their shocking 2-0 loss against Wolfsburg last week, it looked like Real Madrid were on the cusp of blowing a great chance to make it into the Champions League semifinals. Then today’s game came, and Cristiano Ronaldo showed up, and everything has changed....