After 10 years of nothing but Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Croatia and Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric has become the first player since Kaká back in 2007 to wrest football’s biggest individual accolade from the two behemoths of the modern game: The 2018 Ballon d'Or winner is Luka.
Paris Saint-Germain defeated Liverpool 2-1 at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday to put itself in a great position to qualify for the Champions League Round of 16. Liverpool, meanwhile, must now defeat Napoli at Anfield on Dec. 11 to have any chance of progressing.
In the end, Liverpool’s vaunted attack only generated one shot on target, and PSG’s attacking trident of Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and Edinson Cavani thoroughly outshone Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané on the night.
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.
In truth, we all knew this would happen eventually. But we’re still pissed.
When Turner Sports took over the UEFA Champions League TV rights from Fox, there was hope that TNT would show the best matches available every day. That’s what would make sense to the average fan, but Fox struggled to figure this out.