the-champions-league Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
For one evening, Mohammed Salisu was Gandalf
Usually, when one player dominates a game, bending it to his will, you think of hat tricks and thunder-bastard goals and everything offensive. After all, soccer is judged on who scores and who doesn’t. And that goes for pretty much every sport....
So this Romelu Lukaku thing is a problem, just not in the way we thought
Back in August, I wrote this. And it sure seemed that way, as Chelsea utterly destroyed Arsenal, spearheaded by Romelu Lukaku. These were the defending European champions, who had just added the best striker from Italy in Lukaku the previous season, and he seemed like the final piece for Chelsea to ...
Man City is running away with the Premier League title, so what can the rest of the EPL teams still win?
Slow starts, midseason swoons, and collapses are ways soccer clubs can blow a title race, but if you’re Man City, those don’t happen. Pep Guardiola’s team beat Chelsea for the second time Saturday, 1-0, and are now 13 points clear of the second place Blues and 14 points clear of third place Liverpoo...
Inter Milan lost their two best players and manager but might win Serie A again anyway
It is not agreed upon defending-your-title strategy to watch one’s manager, and one of the best in the business in Antonio Conte, walk out the door in a huff mere weeks after said title due to disagreements over the financial planning. Though to be fair, that is kind of Conte’s finishing move. Still...
This will be good for Barcelona
I’m sure Barcelona, both their fans and the club itself, are tired of signs and symbols of how far they’ve fallen. Must get repetitive. Blockin’ out the scenery breakin’ their mind by this point. But their last Champions League game of the season was one of the harshest yet....
Management in Europe remains an unclaimed frontier for Yanks
While more and more American players populate the playing squads of clubs across Europe, that hasn’t spurred more esteem for American managers in the game’s bedrock. After today, only Pelligrino Matarazzo of Stuttgart remains in the Big 5 leagues, or really anywhere significant. That’s because, afte...
Rafa Benitez has become what he beheld
Deep down, Liverpool supporters would tell you they didn’t want to do this to Rafa Benitez when he was announced as Everton’s manager before the season. Or, to put it more accurately, they didn’t want to have to do this. Benitez is still, and will always, be loved by the red half of Liverpool for br...
Man United have the right idea, that doesn’t mean it’ll work
Counting on a horrible blunder to score and holding on for dear life to scrape a 1-1 draw against Chelsea isn’t where Manchester United are supposed to find themselves. But at least admitting that’s what they are is a first step in the right direction in a long time. Having any sort of strategy on t...
Steven Gerrard takes the next step in his journey home
There isn’t anyone involved in Steven Gerrard taking over as manager for Aston Villa that doesn’t know the deal here. The ending that Gerrard wants is that this is the route to land him as manager of Liverpool one day, the club that he — mostly single-handedly — kept relevant for his playing career ...
It’s most certainly Hammer time
While Manchester United have done their best to make sure the Premier League doesn’t become completely stratified into just a “top four and everyone else,” and Arsenal and Tottenham have made the idea of a “Big Six” laughable, that only works if there are other teams willing to crash through the doo...
Antonio Conte is Tottenham’s last gasp, but he’s the best last gasp
If you’re getting sucked under the current, you might as well reach for the strongest line possible. Tottenham, after looking completely adrift as a team and club on Sunday against Manchester United, have pretty much done that by hiring Antonio Conte. It’s not a signal of long-term planning. It’s pr...
Perhaps it’s time for Barcelona to recognize what they are
It couldn’t end any other way, especially when you bone it and get zipped by Rayo Vallecano to fall to ninth in the La Liga table....
Houdini, thy name is Ole Gunnar
While most every Manchester United supporter you know will scream at you about what a sneaky good manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær is, and certainly never in a tone or volume that will make you think they’re trying to convince themselves as much as they are you, the urge for all of us who don’t support t...
A hot mess without Messi
Good lord is Barcelona awful....
Real Madrid goes down in Champion’s League shocker
The main headlines of Tuesday’s Champions League will be Lionel Messi scoring his first for PSG. But fuck that, Messi scores every goddamn day. The real story is FC Sheriff, from a country that kind of doesn’t exist, in their first Champions League campaign ever, just beat Real Madrid in the Bernabe...
New Liga MX-MLS Cup is way cool, and might set up more cool stuff (I said ‘might’… this <i>is</i> MLS after all)
If I were the cynical sort (perish the thought!), I might suggest that MLS realizes its main stream of income, expansion, might be drying up in the coming years. That’s if you go by the “MLS is a Ponzi scheme” theory, which one has to admit has some legs. Charlotte and St. Louis join the league in t...
Someone should get Harvey Barnes a GPS, or a sense of purpose
It’s been a pretty woeful start for Leicester City in the Premier League this season after being the surprise package the past two. While both ended in final-day heartbreak, as they missed out on the Champions League at the final hurdle, they were still fun to watch as they sparred with and bloodied...
Your 2021-2022 Champions League Guide
Despite the attempt to kill it from Europe’s leading clubs last spring (and UEFA’s eventual success in doing so in the coming years), the Champions League returns today in its usual form. While it has become the nexus point in all that’s wrong with soccer and has certainly widened the gap between th...
Hey, Pep — you old scallywag, you old so-and-so — come manage the USMNT
So you need a new challenge in a couple years, Pep? Seven years at Man City will be enough? I agree. Want to try yourself at the international stage? Really all that’s left for you at age 50. Not much left to prove at club level, other than maybe not shitting yourself in the latter stages of the Cha...
So what does this say about Neymar?
When it comes to anything off the field in La Liga, and especially the two giants Barcelona and Real Madrid, if one of my eyebrows isn’t raised then it’s certainly in the starting blocks to be so. So when news last Thursday broke that Lionel Messi was leaving Barca due to their self-imposed, financi...