the-champions-league Page 5 - 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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
We all know Liverpool can’t win the Quadruple, but what my book presupposes…
To say winning the Quadruple–the League Cup, the FA Cup, the Champions League, and the Premier League–is a dream isn’t accurate. No fan ever really thinks of it before a season starts, or really before even February. It’s beyond fantasy. It’s not something you’d ever give the time of day. Perhaps En...
I MF’d Barcelona
There’s no hiding, not after yesterday. Not after Barcelona, just months ago the biggest figure of fun in world soccer, waltzed into the Bernabeu, and kicked eight different kinds of shit out Madrid to the tune of 4-0. It could have been 8-0 or 10-0. It probably should have been 5-0 or 6-0. This was...
That was some fiendish Atlético Madrid treachery
You’re not supposed to miss a blister. You’re not supposed to get nostalgic about a paper cut on that webby part between your thumb and forefinger. You shouldn’t smile at stubbing your toe against the bed or couch that causes you to limp for an hour....
Kylian Mbappé passes the audition but PSG spectacularly fail another test
While the word “narrative” has become something of a cinder block sitting in the intestines of sports, sometimes you just can’t avoid how much it’s beating you over the head. Kylian Mbappé lining up against Real Madrid in the round of 16 in the Champions League was one of those times. Mbappé is stil...
With Weston McKennie done for the season… now what?
For as much excitement as this batch of the USMNT has generated, most of that has been tempered by the fact that A) they’ve rarely actually played all that well together and B) they’ve rarely all been together and in anything near top form. There will be those, the most rose-colored glasses-adorned ...
What is it Manchester United are trying to do?
At the end of Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s run as Manchester United, they got absolutely dog-walked by Liverpool and Manchester City at home. The combined score was 7-1, but no one would have been surprised had it ended up 17-0. Plenty will tell you it should have. Even for the notoriously directionless ye...
Jesse Marsch tries again, this time at Leeds United
You can’t accuse Jesse Marsch of being unambitious. He replaced Julian Nagelsmann at RB Leipzig, and Nagelsmann had only left for Bayern Munich — one of the biggest jobs in the world — and is considered maybe the leading young genius on the European continent (whether this letterman’s jacket is evid...
Let’s see All-Stars, Pro Bowlers mess around with generational wealth on the line
The reason why I’m against an NBA midseason tournament is the same reason why All-Star weekend events and Pro Bowls don’t work: incentive. Rings are the only unit of bragging rights that matters. It’s why people laugh when Carmelo Anthony talks about all of his Olympic gold medals. There’s no reason...
So after Mason Greenwood, what will Manchester United do about Cristiano Ronaldo?
Not that we don’t know the answer, but it will make for even more awkward viewing than United’s on-field performances have been anyway....