Week 24 of the Premier League yielded a familiar set of storylines for the division: Chelsea are probably going to win the title, Arsenal’s challenge has collapsed and they’re now in fourth, Liverpool find themselves on the outside looking in and Jose Mourinho is talking about double standards.
Chelsea’s victory over Arsenal on Saturday was marked by a strange phenomena that led to the end of midfield enforcer Francis Coquelin’s career. Coquelin was employed to stop suspicious characters from running straight through the Arsenal midfield, but he failed after suffering spontaneous human combustion while tracking Eden Hazard.
He exploded into hellfire. There is no adequate explanation for this bit of poltergeist, in fact, referee Martin Atkinson adjudged it to be a foul, which is a pretty terrible way to treat someone who’s just suffered self-detonation.
Here's a lesson for all you kids out there: if you ever have a free kick, just smash it. That's the lesson Brazilian great Rivaldo gives to prodigies at La Masia, so why not? Just approach the ball like Barca B's Gerard Gumbau like Rivaldo and utterly annihilate the thing. It'll fly into the corner, you'll be the hero and you'll get promoted to the Segunda Division. That's the theory.
If ever there was a time to come up against Bayer Leverkusen, this was it. Hamburg, sitting 17th in the 18-team Bundesliga, were at home, and Leverkusen were without the injured Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez and still rocking from the news of midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu’s four-month suspension.
Hamburg have the distinction of being the only German club to have played in the top tier of German football since their inception — a staggering 96 years straight. With half the season gone, Hamburg are staring relegation in the face.
In a recent interview with Mundo Deportivo, Ronaldinho revealed that Pep Guardiola, rather than wanting to move forward without the Brazilian star as was believed, actually wanted him to stay before he left for AC Milan.
Turkish chef Nusret Gokce, better known as Salt Bae, is appreciative of how he’s taken over football with his finesse with the salt. After breaking Meme Land and sending the Twitter-verse into meltdown with GIFs that reciprocated the happenstance of life with arousing seasoning, we’ve come to know Salt Bae a little more.
Real Madrid’s 3-0 victory over Real Sociedad has silenced many critics, especially after both Sevilla and Barcelona dropped points. Real now have a four-point lead with a game in hand at the top of La Liga. But such is the nature of the beast at the Santiago Bernabeu that Zinedine Zidane is still facing questions over a poor January that included a stretch of one win in five matches and elimination from the Copa del Rey.
Barcelona, the defending Copa del Rey champions, are on the cusp of being able to defend their title after defeating Atletico Madrid 2-1 in Madrid. Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi put Barca up 2-0 by halftime, but Antoine Griezmann managed to pull one back for Atletico in the 59th minute.
Over 48,000 inside the Vicente Calderon witnessed a nightmare start as Suarez opened the scoring for Barcelona in the seventh minute. With Javier Mascherano returned to the defensive midfield role, his crunching tackle saw the ball roll free to Suarez.
The January transfer deadline window passed without the need for everyone to lose their collective minds over a deal like Karim Benzema to Burnley or Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to PSG, Manchester City, Arsenal or any of the other clubs he really likes.
Let’s be honest with each other, the FA Cup has become an irrelevance. Once the pinnacle of domestic football, the world’s oldest cup competition is now about as popular as a presidential executive order, with only slightly more charm.