Gossip

The Arsenal vs. Aston Villa match on Tuesday was trending — and for several reasons. Arsenal beat Liverpool and Man City in the last week but fell to Aston Villa 1-0. This win for Villa pulled them out of the bottom three.

A MASSIVE goal in Aston Villa's quest to stay up! #MyPLSummer pic.twitter.com/Y4BLfFewyJ

Rivalries in European football are a huge deal and aren’t taken lightly. Schalke teenager Rabbi Matondo learned this lesson the hard way after accidentally wearing a Jadon Sancho Borussia Dortmund jersey during a private training session and posting a picture on social media. The post has since been deleted, but the damage had already been done.

Former Tottenham and Real Madrid midfielder Rafael Van der Vaart can’t seem to get enough of roasting the absolute hell out of Manchester United captain Harry Maguire. The former Dutch footballer took another shot at Maguire ahead of the Red Devils’ matchup with Aston Villa on Thursday.

Van der Vaart has a bone to pick with Maguire’s defending. Most notably when the English defender got nutmegged during Bournemouth’s first goal against Manchester United on July 4.

As major American sports leagues plot their respective paths back to action, they are having to balance the requisite safety measures and local stay-at-home restrictions with the formulation of return-to-play scenarios. 

While over in Europe the mantra is something like “just get it done” due to the nature of how domestic leagues work (no playoffs, relegation), American competitions like the NBA are being forced to get creative due to both time constraints and the hard truth that no one’s interested in watching the Minnesota Timberwolves and Phoenix Sounds do battle right now.

Premier League players resumed to small-sided training sessions this week in a bid to return to action by June. It was our first look at many of the league’s most popular players in about two months, the country having been on lockdown since football ground to a halt in mid-March. 

A few players emerged from self-isolation looking better than ever. For many, sadly, quarantine did not treat them or their heads kindly, chief among them Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Abby Wambach, the greatest goal scorer in U.S. soccer history, knows how you feel. 

She understands the torment you face every day, the agony of decision plaguing couples every single night. The anguish, frustration and heartache over the inability to make one fucking decision.

Abby Wambach is all of us.

We all have one of those friends, some of us more than one. 

You know the type: people who ignore rules put in place to protect themselves and others. Whether it’s as benign as using torrents to illegally download the latest show from HBO or as fucked up as saying they’re cool to drive after six beers, there will always be those who believe the rules do not apply to them. 

Update May 9: Alex Morgan gave birth on May 7. Read all about it here.

It’s a good thing the 2020 Olympics were pushed bacl to 2021, because it would’ve been mighty hard for Alex Morgan to return to playing shape given how long it’s taking her baby to arrive. The latest Alex Morgan baby update showed the USWNT superstar riding her bike while 41 (!) weeks pregnant.

I think we can now say definitively why Angel Di Maria was such a colossal failure at Manchester United.

Di Maria had four stellar years at Real Madrid, where he developed a reputation for having a rare combination of flair and work rate. He won six trophies with Los Blancos, including the 2014 Champions League.

But after a $73.65 million transfer to Manchester United in 2014, which broke the British transfer record at the time, he fizzled out faster than the dying Manc sun.