Manchester City

Mino Raiola, the footballing super agent with a clientele list including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku and Gianluigi Donnarumma, believes that Lionel Messi must leave Barcelona to show the world that he’s good at football.

Can you hear it? Playing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again? It’s the Champions League anthem. The best thing to happen to Tuesdays and Wednesdays since Frasier went off air is nearly back. 

Thursday marked the Champions League group stage draw in Monaco but we know you only care about two things, so let’s get them out of the way.

Qarabag was drawn into Group C and Christian Pulisic is in Group H, with two more matches against Real Madrid in store, not to mention a date at Wembley. 

With Liverpool’s 6-3 aggregate pasting of Hoffenheim on Wednesday, the English Premier League put five clubs in the Champions League for the first time. That’s five chances for English fans to cry over their clubs failing to come through in the continental competition.

Chelsea won the Champions League in 2012 but since then English clubs have barely sniffed the final. In 2015, no EPL team even made it past the Round of 16.  The days of 2008 — when the EPL had three of the four semifinalists, including both teams in the final — are barely visible in the rearview mirror. 

Every football club in the world wants to buy Lionel Messi, but there are only a few that can even begin to think about maybe trying to buy him, because Messi would cost a truly absurd amount of money. We'll start with Lionel Messi's $352.7 million release clause, a sum so insanely high that until a few weeks ago it was unfathomable that anyone would ever pay it, even for the best footballer ever.

What does $60.25 million get you? How about $57.35 million? $47.25 million? If you’re Manchester City or Everton on Monday, not much — they’d have been better off with freebies. 

Big-money signings Kyle Walker, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Ederson and Jordan Pickford underwhelmed for their new clubs Monday and it wasn’t pretty. Free transfer Wayne Rooney and oft-forgettable Raheem Sterling scored in a 1-1 draw between Everton and Manchester City at the Etihad.