Highlight reels in soccer often cull together the best moves of attacking players, and for good reason. Scoring is the most important thing you can do in the sport, dribbles and passes and shots are just more aesthetically pleasing than smart defensive positioning, etc. etc. That doesn’t mean the big lads at the back…
Okay, okay, this isn’t quite a gimme goal here that Cristiano Ronaldo just missed. The angle was tough, and he had a lot to focus on with the keeper and defender right on top of him. Still, it was an open net, it would’ve been a hugely important goal in this second leg of Real Madrid’s Champions League tie against…
Gonzalo Higuaín’s transfer from Napoli could have ended happily for both parties. While Napoli is right to feel a bit miffed after losing their best player to Juventus, the one team who finished above them in Serie A last season, receiving the third-highest transfer fee in history for a 28-year-old is fantastic…
Okay, sure. When you first saw the name Gonzalo Higuaín—one part veteran, world-class, goalscoring bulldozer, one part habitual choke artist—associated with a transfer fee teetering dangerously close to the €100 million mark, you probably had to clench your eyes closed and press the palms of your hands against them so…
As inarguably great as Gonzalo Higuaín has been for the better part of a decade now, he tends to be overlooked when it comes time to rhapsodize about the great pure strikers in the world. But after the season he just put together at Napoli, scoring 36 goals in 35 matches and thus breaking Serie A’s single-season…
I’m getting the feeling that Gonzalo Higuaín didn’t exactly agree with this referee’s decision. Though maybe shoving everyone on the pitch—including many of his own teammates—is just how he expresses internal disappointment.
As the Napoli team bus set off for Turin ahead of tomorrow’s monster Juventus-Napoli showdown, something like 1,000 Neapolitans showed up to see their boys off. Or, more accurately, to block the bus’s path in order to hoot and holler and light flares and gin up the players so that they step out on the pitch as charged…
Napoli manager Maurizio Sarri probably feels lucky today. Days after calling Inter manager Roberto Mancini a “faggot” during a game, the Italian soccer federation has fined him €20,000 and given him a two-match Coppa Italia suspension. It could’ve been a lot worse.
Yesterday’s tense Coppa Italia Inter-Napoli match boiled over when the two teams’ managers got into a sideline argument towards the end of the game, for which Inter coach Roberto Mancini was sent off the pitch. After the match, an upset Mancini decried his counterpart Maurizio Sarri’s behavior, claiming he was called…
Just when we thought Lionel Messi would finally end Argentina’s trophy drought and in the process get those dumb doubters from his native homeland off his back for good this weekend, Gonzalo Higuaín went ahead and shat the bed. Since we can’t sing the G.O.A.T.’s praises today, let’s at least take some solace in…
In a season where Phillip Hofmann committed this crime against finishing, it would take a special bit of incompetence to snatch away the award of Miss Of The Season. This is not that. It is, however, a really bad effort from a really good player, making it particularly embarrassing in its own right.
Italy's Serie A is a league of stories, full of characters, narratives, plots, tensions, climaxes, and clichés. Time and again, the line between fact and fiction becomes so blurred that you just have to throw your hands up and shrug. You really couldn't make a lot of this stuff up.
We all know about Mesut Özil by now. The 24-year-old playmaker is the truth. From the moment he first took the pitch for Arsenal last month, he's been setting up goals for his teammates, even though he's been unable to find the net himself since moving from Real Madrid. But that finally changed today in the eighth…
There are 32 teams left after the Champions League playoff round ended yesterday, and so today was the Champions League draw, where the teams were divided into eight groups of four for the group stage of the tournament. There will be plenty of analysis and explanation and bloviation around the internet throughout the…
Napoli keeper Pepe Reina had to adjust his shorts before today's Arsenal-Napoli match in London. He probably shouldn't have done it in such close proximity to the kids they trot out to promote good sportsmanship, though.
Earlier this week, French champions Paris Saint-Germain bought Uruguayan forward Edinson Cavani from Italian side Napoli for a reported €64 million ($84 million). It's the fifth-highest transfer fee ever. What's also worth noting is that Cavani went for more than both Radamel Falcao's transfer to AS Monaco and Neymar…
For nearly two decades now, Sports Illustrated has stirred the tea leaves to discern a weekly Sign of the Apocalypse. Deadspin salutes the magazine's ongoing effort to head off the end of times, but declines to quietly cede to SI the scoop on the biggest event in world history.
Napoli beat Manchester City 2-1 today in UEFA Champions League play. Edinson Cavani scored both goals for the Italian side. He hadn't scored since late October, and his breaking of the drought put Man City in a tough spot for advancing to the knockout stage.
Aurelio De Laurentiis, the owner and savior of the soccer club S.S.C. Napoli, is also a successful Italian film producer in his native country. So we can forgive him for his penchant for the theatrical. But mio dio, his reaction to next season's Serie A fixtures was one for the ages.
