English Clubs

The winter-break period separating the first half and the second half of the season in Europe’s top five leagues is a great time for clubs to reflect on a club's season (although winter break doesn’t exist in England). Even before Christmas, but Europe’s top clubs are preparing for their second half of the season push. Here are some New Year's resolutions for Europe’s top clubs in the big five leagues.

Let’s be honest, divers ruin a lot of what’s great about soccer. Flops slow the game down, they win undeserved free kicks and generally just create more annoyance than enjoyment.

But sometimes, the diver’s acting is so unbelievably poor that the dive itself becomes a work of art. Usually, it’s some of the best players in the world that are doing the diving, which seems counterintuitive.

The 2018-19 Europa League has turned the page on the group stage action and now looks ahead to February with the knockout round draw having been completed. While it's no future Europa League 2, the competition still comes with a major trophy, a spot in the Champions League and features more variety amongst the clubs that will challenge for the title.

Jose Mourinho is out of a job. After improving slightly on the work of predecessors David Moyes and Louis van Gaal, the horror of watching Manchester United attempt to play football was still enough to warrant his sacking on Tuesday. This certainly felt inevitable and there are a lot of reasons for the Portuguese’s dismissal, but the Jose Mourinho transfer spending at Manchester United is the easiest way to make sense of it all.

As human beings with hearts, we here at The18 love it when famous footballers do cool things for young fans. One of the best ways to watch this play out is having a footballer surprise a youngster by showing up unexpectedly. 

Mesut Özil was involved in just such a moment when he surprised young Kyan by popping up right behind him at Highbury Quadrant Primary School on Friday.