Highlights

With Mohamed Salah ruled out of Tuesday’s Liverpool-Barcelona Champions League semifinal second leg with a concussion, maybe Jordi Alba thought he was in for a beautiful stroll across the lovely confines of Anfield. Maybe, looking across at replacement Xherdan Shaqiri, he thought, “Hell yeah, I might be marginally taller than this dude.” 

Or perhaps he thought he’d simply feed it to Lionel Messi (as has been the case on three occasions in LaLiga and twice in the UCL this season) and let him do the rest. 

Watch a couple minutes of Concacaf U-17 Championship highlights and one thing is clear: There is a lot of talent in the youth ranks at some of North America and Central America. 

This isn’t that surprising to anyone who follows MLS these days. Two of the biggest stars in the field are Mexico’s Efrain Alvarez and the United States’ Gianluca Busio, two 16-year-olds who are already making waves in MLS. 

It’s obviously been the wildest of title races, and Monday’s meeting between Manchester City and Leicester City only intensified how preposterously frantic it’s been. The Foxes were oh-so-close to doing Liverpool the ultimate favor, but the 2015-16 champions fell short due to Vincent Kompany’s 30-yard wonder strike in the 70th minute.

Manchester City looked destined to stumble to a 0-0 draw with Leicester City on the penultimate match day to hand control of the Premier League title race back to Liverpool ahead of the final round of games next Sunday. Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers, formerly of Liverpool, set up the 2015-16 champions immaculately, highlighted by dominant performances from center defensive midfielder Wilfred Ndidi and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel. 

Last Wednesday, Lionel Messi recorded his 600th goal for Barcelona during his club’s 3-0 Champions League semifinal first leg victory over Liverpool. It was an astonishing free kick, the 42nd of his Barça career, that venomously flew right past Joe Gomez’s face before curling into the top corner from 35 yards out. 

Forget all the complaints about which team had more rest or which team has more money — the first leg of the Champions League semifinals between Ajax and Tottenham was everything you want in a big match. 

Full of attacking intent from both sides, neither of which backed away from a single challenge, Ajax turned 30 minutes of first-half dominance into a 1-0 victory, a third-straight away win in the knockout rounds for the Amsterdam side. Spurs, meanwhile, suffered back-to-back defeats at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

The stumble for fourth place in the Premier League continued apace today with Arsenal getting thrashed 3-0 by Leicester City before Manchester United and Chelsea settled for a share of the spoils at Old Trafford following a 1-1 draw.

Coming into the match on the back of three straight defeats, United started strongly with both Romelu Lukaku and Marcus Rashford looking extremely sharp in attack. The Red Devils’ deserved opener arrived in the 11th minute with the aforementioned Lukaku playing a big role.

Manchester City returned to the top of the Premier League table with a 1-0 victory over Burnley at Turf Moor on Sunday, and it was Sergio Agüero’s goal-line technology-assisted strike — his 20th of the season — that proved the match-winner in the 63rd minute.

Many predicted the most difficult match of City’s title run-in here, and the scoreline demonstrates how precarious it was, but the level of control exerted by Pep Guardiola’s side will give very little hope to Liverpool that either Leicester City or Brighton can stop City from successfully defending its title. 

With the two automatic promotion places from the EFL Championship to the Premier League going to Norwich City and Sheffield United, today’s meeting between third place Leeds United and fifth place Aston Villa on the penultimate day of the season simply served as a preview of things to come in the Championship playoffs (both sides have already guaranteed their spots).