On Wednesday, Jose Mourinho said his team scored four goals and tied 2-2. On Saturday his team scored four goals and won 4-1.
It’s a common refrain to say Jose Mourinho loves boring, defensive football. It’s mostly true these days, especially as he seems to favor long balls to big men in the box over any sort of technical play. His best results of the season (the win over Juventus springs to mind) have come via Route 1 football.
The internet is often a pretty loathsome place, what with the political, tribal vitriol humans have for one another. But on occasion it can be a pretty cool place, like with these goal emojis that inundated Twitter on Thursday.
At the prompting of the @MundialMag account, a number of soccer fans described their favorite goals using only emojis.
Describe your favourite goal using only emoji.
Hatem Ben Arfa — football’s notorious l’enfant terrible — is now 31. If you’re thinking “Hey, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” it’s because he took an entire year off while collecting $12.3 million. Much like how he burned his bridges at Lyon, Marseille, Newcastle United and Hull City, he found himself ostracized during the final year of his contract at PSG.
Except for a four-minute spell of tilt which resulted in two Tottenham goals, Arsenal thoroughly enjoyed a 4-2 derby victory over Spurs on Sunday after a glorious second half fightback that included strikes from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (his 10th of the season), Alex Lacazette and the inspirational Lucas Torreira.
The match quickly set about foreshadowing the madness to come in the ninth minute, when Jan Vertonghen inexplicably handled a corner to give Aubameyang his first goal of the match from the spot.
Stanford will not win a fourth straight NCAA men’s soccer title. Akron made sure of that with one of the most impressive team goals you will ever see.
The Liga MX Apertura playoffs kicked off yesterday with number one seed Cruz Azul avoiding a “Cruzazulear” and defeating Querétaro 2-0 at Estadio Corregidora in the night’s first match, and that was followed by Monterrey’s 1-0 first leg win over Santos Laguna.
While most of Europe (but not the U.S.) was fixated on PSG-Liverpool on Wednesday, Lionel Messi was creating his usual magic in the Netherlands.
Barcelona failed to score in the first hour against PSV Eindhoven, which had just one point through four Champions League matches coming into Wednesday. Then Messi took over and before you knew it the Blaugrana had a 2-1 victory.
Thierry Henry finally got his first win as Monaco manager over the weekend, edging Caen in Ligue 1.
Back in the Champions League on Wednesday, it was more of the same for the Arsenal legend turned coach.
Atlético Madrid scored less than two minutes into the match and it was 2-0 in the 24th minute through a lovely finish from Antoine Griezmann. But what will give Henry and his side nightmares was the run by Ángel Correa to set up the second goal, one that dumped center back Jemerson to the floor with frightening ease.
Arjen Robben went some way toward saving the job of Bayern Munich manager Niko Kovač (for now) while simultaneously getting Benfica manager Rui Vitória sacked after giving his side an early lead in the Champions League on Tuesday.
With both sides struggling mightily domestically (Bayern’s fifth in the Bundesliga; Benfica’s fourth in the Primeira Liga), the scrutiny on both managers this week had been intense.