Humor

After Real Madrid sold Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus in the summer, Karim Benzema’s role with Los Blancos became ever more important. The club needs him to score more to fill the void of one of the game’s most prolific strikers.

So far, Benzema has had a decent season; the Frenchman has 11 goals and six assists in 26 matches in all competitions. But Benzema, 31, has scored just twice in LaLiga since a brace on Sept. 1. 

Perhaps with that in mind, the striker went to Miami, Florida, to practice his, uh, shooting.

Mohamed Salah, Liverpool’s Egyptian King: incredible pace, dribbling ability and an eye for goal. Something he shouldn’t add to his box of tricks, however, is diving.

Salah has been wrapped up in a few diving cases in his Premier League career, most recently in yesterday’s match against Newcastle. Liverpool hosted Newcastle on Boxing Day, drubbing the Geordies 4-0. It was a routine win for Liverpool, but an important talking point of the match surrounded Liverpool’s second goal.

To coincide with The Guardian’s excellent list of the 100 best male footballers in the world — compiled by a panel of 225 experts from 69 nations — we here at The18 have compiled our own list over the last couple years. There are no experts involved, there’s no rhyme or reason for anything, but we do hope you’ll join us on this adventure into the bowels of the beautiful game.

I am Connordinho. 

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.

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. 

The internet is full of cats. Cat videos, cat pics, cat GIFs, cat emojis. Personally, I don’t believe you can have too many cats. Case in point: this ridiculously adorable new Club Léon mascot.

While most Liga MX fans may have been gearing up for the first leg of the 2018 Apertura final on Thursday, which finished in a 0-0 draw between Cruz Azul and Club América, Club Léon unveiled its latest signing, perhaps the best offseason move of the year (in my opinion, at least). 

We present to you Sambu, who is a baby lion, for obvious reasons.

During an extensive talk with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Juventus forward Cristiano Ronaldo spoke about why he deserves the Ballon d’Or every year, how he’s loving life in Turin and how he doesn’t like to be compared to other footballers . . .

From the creative studios that brought you Michael Bay movies and the Cavemen show, it's their latest and greatest idea — Europa League 2. Have you ever sat there on a Thursday, having watched the Champions League over the past two days, a bit let down from having to see Arsenal or Chelsea play some club you've never heard of and thought: "I wish this could be Watford at Qarabağ?" Yes? Well, you are in for a treat. 

No one likes a flopper — it’s one of the few things on which all football fans can agree.

You might begrudgingly appreciate when a flopper earns your team a penalty kick or understand that the nature of the high-stakes game encourages players to do whatever it takes to gain an advantage, but no one actually likes a flopper.

So when we recently discovered something called the Floppotron, we were intrigued.