If last week’s round of Serie A fixtures was dominated by tragedy, then this week’s matches were defined by flashes of beauty peering through the gloom. Across a number of games, there were flashes of brilliance which pierced through the fog for vastly different reasons. Even if, ultimately, the moments meant nothing, the surge of emotion and energy was undeniable.
Let’s begin with the most astounding of all.
Con Antoine Griezmann, Alex Lacazette, Anthony Martial, Olivier Giroud, Dimitri Payet, Ousmane Dembele, Nabil Fekir, Kylian Mbappe, Kevin Gameiro y Karim Benzema, Francia posee 10 delanteros que, si fueran estadounidenses, seguramente pasarían a ser los mejores delanteros de Estados Unidos en la historia.
Esto es un exceso de calidad, especialmente si los juntamos con el excelente juego en el medio campo de jugadores como Paul Pogba, Thomas Lemar, Kingsley Coman y Corentin Tolisso.
The Greek Superleague has been suspended after a match between PAOK and AEK Athens briefly turned into an episode of Justified.
PAOK owner Ivan Savvidis ran on the field to protest a call the referee had made, and guess what, he had a gun on him.
We are not making any of this up.
Oh baby. It’s that time of year again. Nearly seven weeks after a Copa del Rey exit put manager Zinedine Zidane’s position on the brink, Real Madrid has since gone 9-1-1 while elevating itself back to the position of Champions League favorite following a 5-2 aggregate humbling of PSG.
Over that period, Cristiano Ronaldo has recorded 15 goals and two assists in nine starts, including a brace against Eibar on Saturday.
Lionel Messi missed Barcelona’s 2-0 victory over Malaga at the weekend because of the birth of his third child, Ciro. Ciro joins Thiago, age 5, and Mateo, age 2, as nearly 30% of the Messi children needed to field an entire XI of Messi children.
It’s been a great month for Borussia Dortmund attacker Marco Reus. After suffering an ACL tear in last season’s DFB-Pokal final, the 28-year-old made his long-awaited comeback on February 10 against Hamburger SV in the Bundesliga.
He’s since played in six more matches for BVB, scoring three goals (including the strike that’s since been voted the Bundesliga’s Goal of the Month for February).
Danny Welbeck is part of the pantheon of great English forwards who do not score goals. That’d seem to be a terrible oxymoron, but you forget that supporters love a grafter. If you had to rely on one striker to effectively man-mark a center back out of a match, it’d be Danny Welbeck.
I don’t know why you’d ever employ that tactic, but that’s the highest praise I can bestow on Welbeck.
The greatest footballing nation to have never won the World Cup? It’s the Netherlands. The Oranje have thrice reached the final, losing to hosts West Germany in ’74, hosts Argentina in ’78 and Spain in 2010. The most famous of those defeats came against the Germans, because this was a tournament that had been turned into a pageant for the Dutch vision of Total Football.