Europe

Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli has been charged by the Football Association for a post from his Snapchat earlier in February.

Juventus coach Maurizio Sarri is struggling to impose his style of play on the Turin side and his frustration came out into the open again after a poor performance in their Champions League defeat to Olympique Lyonnais on Wednesday. 

In comments that could be viewed as refreshingly honest or a risky public criticism of his players, the chain-smoking 61-year-old said that his team were struggling to grasp the concept of passing the ball around quickly — a style dubbed "Sarri-ball" by his admirers. 

Heading into Wednesday’s Champions League Round of 16 first leg between Real Madrid and Manchester City, the narrative centered around the contrasting styles of managers Zinedine Zidane and Pep Guardiola. In essence, how would the laissez-faire approach of Zidane, which yielded back-to-back-to-back titles in this competition between 2016 and 2018, fare against the meticulous neuroticism of Guardiola, which hasn’t earned the Spaniard Old Big Ears since 2011. 

Cristiano Ronaldo and Juventus traveled to the hallowed grounds of the Parc Olympique Lyonnais, home of the best women’s club team in Europe and the location of the USWNT’s 2019 Women’s World Cup triumph. 

The Italian Old Lady couldn’t live up to the ladies who have made the French stadium one of the Mecca’s of women’s football.

But Ronaldo made a funny face.

There’s a graphic doing the rounds that shows the 10 players with the most combined goals and assists in Europe’s top five leagues since August 2017. Lionel Messi is obviously miles ahead in the top spot, Luis Suárez is sixth and Neymar — despite only appearing in 52 games over that period — comes in 10th. 

It was only three seasons ago, but MSN seems a lifetime away. With a collection of arguably the world’s best No. 9, No. 10 and winger, there were endless variants to the ways in which Barcelona could go about killing you. 

Bayern Munich left back Alphonso Davies had himself a little battle with his opposite No. 19, Chelsea’s Mason Mount, on Tuesday. Well, he had a battle in the same way a child with a magnifying glass has a battle with ants on a sidewalk.

Davies toyed with the young Blues midfielder throughout the match, using his immense pace to recover on a couple occasions when it appeared Mount was in on goal. Then the Canadian teenager blistered past Mount and the entire Chelsea defense for the back-breaking goal in a 3-0 win in the Champions League Round of 16 at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday. 

Gigi Becali, the flamboyant owner of Bucharest football club FCSB, formerly known as Steaua Bucharest, thinks he knows what to blame for his team's recent poor run in the Romanian league: too much of the wrong kind of exercise.

The 1986 European Cup winners, Romania's most successful club with 26 league titles, have failed to win their last three games, and Becali said the players were having too much sex.

They’re calling Liverpool’s Premier League title challenge a procession because that’s exactly what it is. For whatever reason, that’s come to be seen as a howl of despair from neutrals, as though Liverpool’s brilliance is setting off an ennui inside us all that can only be rectified by allowing offside goals scored against the Reds to stand.  

When Pablo Fornals steered his volley beyond Alisson to give West Ham a 2-1 lead over Liverpool with 35 minutes remaining, there was a sense that David Moyes would finally have his day at Anfield while bringing a close to a host of historic Liverpool ambitions. 

Alas, the man with the football genius moniker will be left cursing his goalkeeper following a remarkable Liverpool turnaround that keeps the Reds 22 points clear at the top while the Hammers remain rooted in the relegation zone. 

Children between the ages of six and 11 have been banned from heading during practice by the English, Scottish and Irish FAs. The heading ban was announced on Monday following a landmark study into the correlation between footballers and brain disease.