Most fans take straight to social media following a sporting event. Typically, the athletes will as well. And when angry fans clash with professional athletes, every Twitter user reading the thread heads straight to the microwave to heat up the popcorn.
It’s no revelation that it’s become increasingly difficult for youth players to make the grade at clubs of a certain stature. From Barcelona’s La Masia to Bayern’s Junior Team, potential first team prospects struggle to make the breakthrough while the world’s richest clubs continue to look outward rather than promote from within.
FIFA is a worldwide phenomenon, drawing millions of players each year. Every season, soccer fans wonder what the overall ratings of their favorite players will be, so much so that FIFA annually releases a top 100 overall rating list before the release of the game every September. Kevin Ellison, a Morecambe FC player, is not in the top 100.
Although we still have a few replays to settle, the FA Cup Third Round is pretty much done and dusted, giving us time to look at the darlings of the competition with 32 clubs remaining.
The usual favorites are all there — Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Spurs — but we also have three clubs that standout at the opposite end of the spectrum. Barnet, playing in the fifth tier, is the lowest ranked remaining club and the only non-League side left.
More than 15 years after Arsene Wenger brought Cesc Fàbregas to London at the tender age of 16, the Spanish midfielder played what was likely his final match for an English club. It was a little emotional.
After eight seasons with Arsenal and 4.5 more with Chelsea (with a brief stint at Barcelona in between), Fàbregas said farewell to the London fans, who gave him a heartfelt sendoff late in Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup on Saturday at Stamford Bridge.
She said it, and viewers felt it, because NBCSN gets it.
“Best game of the season by a country mile,” Rebecca Lowe said as the NBCSN coverage of Manchester City’s 2-1 victory over Liverpool moved from the announcers in the booth at the Etihad back to the studio analysts stateside.
The best match of the season, perhaps the most important match of the season, had all the gravitas expected of such an event on Thursday because NBCSN continues to show it is the best soccer broadcaster in America.
Before today’s Premier League showdown between leaders Liverpool and defending champions Manchester City, a tweet from The Guardian’s German football correspondent Raphael Honigstein was shown a lot of love, and, in hindsight, for incredible reason.
They say money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you the existential dread of being a football fan, if these English Premier League cash figures are any indication.
It’s not hard to figure out that the Premier League is the best in the world at generating and spending money. And while it’s also not hard to argue that other leagues or teams are better on the pitch, when it comes to finances, there’s only one king.
Manchester United defeated Newcastle United 2-0 at St James’ Park on Wednesday evening, and that’s all anyone will remember on the night. But the ramifications of victory are again rosy for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer — the win moves them within three points of Arsenal in fifth; Romelu Lukaku scored for the second-straight game; the maligned Alexis Sanchez came off the bench and got an assist on Marcus Rashford’s strike (the Englishman’s third in four games).