Highlights

You can take Cristiano Ronaldo out of LaLiga, but you can’t take out the brilliant symmetry that’s conjoined the fortunes of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi since the day they were born. Days after Ronaldo saw red in the UCL, Messi’s Barcelona will have felt hard done by a red issued to defender Clement Lenglet — this one coming after the referee had gone to the monitor on the advice of the VAR (something still missing from the UCL).

Cristiano Ronaldo recovered from the madness of his Champions League sending off to score the match-winner in Juventus’ 2-0 victory over Frosinone on Sunday in Serie A play, giving the Portuguese forward three goals in five appearances in Italy’s top division.

Ronaldo crushed his peers by attempting 10 shots on the day, putting five on target, two off and having three blocked. That’s a high number of shots, folks. (To go along with the fact that Juve outshot the home side 30-3.)

An Eredivisie table-topping match between first place PSV Eindhoven and second place Ajax went the way of PSV on Sunday, the home side using an entirely dominant opening 35-minute period to build a resounding three-goal lead thanks to strikes from Gaston Pereiro, Luuk de Jong and Hirving “Chucky” Lozano.

It’s official: The 2018 North Carolina Courage will go down as the finest side in NWSL history after dominating the Portland Thorns 3-0 in front of a sellout (and hugely pro-Thorns) crowd at Providence Park. Jessica McDonald was voted the game’s MVP after scoring a brace either side of halftime, but the Courage never looked back from Debinha’s opening goal in the 13th minute, dominating the entirety of the match much like they did the NWSL season.

Aston Villa was defeated 2-1 at Villa Park by Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, but a 53rd minute strike by 23-year-old Scottish international John McGinn briefly offered hope to the Claret & Blue Army.

Although the defeat leaves Villa mired in 12th place in the Championship, the lasting memory of the day will almost certainly be this absurd left-footed volley from McGinn.

After scoring a fluky goal against Club Bruges in the Champions League Tuesday (although a hugely important one that secured all three points for Borussia Dortmund), Christian Pulisic made it two goals in two games after salvaging a point for BVB against Hoffenheim Saturday.

Perhaps most importantly from an individual perspective, the 20-year-old went the full 90 minutes for the first time this season after being sidelined at the start of the campaign with a muscular injury. 

Fresh from his stint in the CSL with Hebei China Fortune, former Arsenal and Roma winger Gervinho appears to be loving life back in Italy with Serie A side Parma. After scoring against Juventus back on Sept. 1, the Ivory Coast flyer registered his second of the season Saturday in Parma’s 2-0 win over Cagliari. 

Rennes played Jablonec on Thursday in the Europa League, beating them 2-1. And there were a few takeaways. One being the fact that Hatem Ben Arfa came on after practically two years of inactivity and scored the winner, another being that Theoson Siebatcheu is an American-born player and plays for Rennes, which is promising for the state of U.S. soccer and could be an exciting USMNT call up.

But most notably: Ismaïla Sarr scored a banger — a volley outside the box that arguably skyrocketed into the upper-right corner faster than an actual rocket.

Volodymyr Chesnakov has one of the oddest pregame rituals we have ever seen. 

The captain of Vorskla Poltava, Chesnakov and his teammates were in London to face Arsenal in the Europa League on Thursday. Before coming out onto the pitch at Emirates Stadium, Chesnakov spit all over his own face.

And it worked. He scored a great goal for Vorskla, the fifth-place team in the Ukrainian Premier League.

But Arsenal still won easily, 4-2, to the surprise of no one.