When 18-year-old Brazilian forward VinĂcius JĂşnior was signed to Real Madrid on a €45 million transfer this summer, there was probably some expectation on his end that his footballing life would change for the better.
Before he was the regular goalkeeper at Chelsea, Thibaut Courtois was the number one at Atletico Madrid when they burst onto the La Liga scene to challenge the duopoly of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Now, since his transfer to Real earlier this week, Courtois has been forced to awkwardly answer for his past as a member…
The very gloomy outlook for Chelsea’s upcoming Premier League season just got a little bit brighter, albeit at a hefty cost. The Blues welcomed a new goalkeeper to the club today in Athletic Bilbao’s Kepa Arrizabalaga, who pretty understandably just goes by “Kepa” most of the time. Kepa’s price tag, paid a day before…
Real Madrid and Portugal striker Cristiano Ronaldo has reportedly settled his tax fraud charges with Spanish authorities, agreeing to pay $21.7 million, or approximately €18.7 million, to stay out of prison and receive only a suspended two-year sentence. Ronaldo’s achievement breaks the tax evasion mark set by his…
The Spanish soccer federation (RFEF) announced today that it has fired its national team manager Julen Lopetegui, on the eve of the World Cup, because Lopetegui did not “act the right way.” The infraction? Lopetegui accepted a job managing Real Madrid, which would have started after the World Cup, without prior…
Real Madrid announced Julen Lopetegui as their new manager today, just two weeks after Zinedine Zidane resigned abruptly from the job after winning the Champions League title. Lopetegui is currently manager of Spain’s national team and won’t take over at Real Madrid until after the World Cup.
Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius flew to Boston last week in order to undergo testing for a possible concussion some speculated he’d suffered just moments before the first of two monumental errors that more or less decided the Champions League final in Real Madrid’s favor. Today, the doctors who performed the exam …
In the mother of all mic drops, Zinedine Zidane called a snap press conference today and announced that he was quitting his post as manager of Real Madrid, mere days after winning his record-setting third Champions League trophy in a row. It was the perfect cap to a perfect marriage of coach and club.
Less than a week after leading Real Madrid to their third consecutive Champions League title in a 3-1 win over Liverpool on Saturday, manager Zinedine Zidane announced today in a shocking press conference that he was stepping down from the club.
Three Champions League titles in a row. Four such trophies in five years. The plain facts of Real Madrid’s astounding recent run in soccer’s most prestigious club competition means this Madrid team will go down in the sport’s history as maybe the single best exemplar of opulent, unimpeachable success—just maybe not…
Saturday’s Champions League final was a feverish, spectacular affair featuring memorable feats of athleticism, an even more memorable all-time boner, and a perfectly timed idiot on the pitch. The match was pretty significantly marred, though, by a first half injury to world-destroying goal-bot Mohamed Salah, who was…
Rafael Nadal is roughly midway through his clay-court rampage, having lengthened his consecutive set streak to a record 46, and just had some time off between tournaments in Barcelona and Madrid. He spent some of that precious downtime watching soccer, which he loves deeply.
Spain’s El Clásico remains the biggest and best rivalry in all of soccer. Especially during the last decade, when matches between Barcelona and Real Madrid practically always meant matches between two historically great teams who desired nothing more than to stick a shiv into their most hated foes’ guts—only partially…
Continuing this year’s Champions League tradition of first-leg beatdowns followed by second-leg borderline meltdowns, Liverpool lost to Roma today by a score of 4-2 but still won the tie. They will now meet Real Madrid in the final in Kiev on May 26th.
If, after watching Bayern Munich’s appalling display of simultaneous superiority and ineptitude that granted the evil white empire of Real Madrid entry to the Champions League final, you found it a little difficult to maintain the furious, righteous anger in your belly once you saw the agonizing, tear-streaked faces…
If ever there were any doubt that Real Madrid are the luckiest team in the history of the world, this staggering gaffe by Bayern Munich’s Sven Ulreich that set up Karim Benzema for the easiest goal he’ll ever score in his life should remove all doubt:
European Soccer Market (ESM) analysts the world over are still abuzz about the big step Real Madrid (ESM:RMD) took on their path to consolidating their ownership of the European Cup for the third consecutive year.
Cristiano Ronaldo vs. Lionel Messi. It’s an argument as old as time itself, with diehard fans of these two all-time greats throwing out stats and facts in support of their preferred candidate to make their case for superiority—Messianiacs pointing to his better scoring record, his better passing, his better dribbling…
