To Salah or not to Salah? Can Alexis get back to being the cash cow that he was at Arsenal? Is Harry Kane in for a down year? Fantasy Premier League is back! And the questions are soaring. Throughout the season, we'll be posting our takes for the 38-week FPL season.
August 12th, 2016 was a low point for the United States women’s national team. They were heading home from Rio after falling to Sweden in a penalty kick shootout in the quarterfinals. A fifth place finish for a team that had won gold at the previous two editions of the Summer Games, and who had just won the World Cup a year ago, was an embarrassment.
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When most mere mortals are out playing in the streets, they’ll casually yell something like “Pogba!” or “Ronaldo!” when completing some audacious pass or string of step-overs. But if you, like me, are invincible and legend, you’ll scream “Zusi!” or “Andy Carroll!” or “wee Joe Allen!” when you get stuck in or while you're riding the pine. These are proper footballers, conjoined by one common thread: They all have spectacular man buns (Zusi used to, but now he’s a giant fraud).
Mbappé. Pogba. Griezmann. Giroud.
These are just some of the players who starred for France during its most recent World Cup victory, and they are now household names around the globe.
It’s not an uncommon sight: A new signing at a club is often forced to sing a song for his new teammates. What is uncommon: the new signing being a 40-year-old legend of the game. And Gianluigi Buffon singing for his new Paris Saint-Germain teammates may be the best thing we’ve seen from the Italian since the 2006 World Cup.
Pep Guardiola is, in my humble opinion, the best manager in the game right now. There will be others who one day usurp his position as managerial king, but that day shall not arrive for a number of years, even decades.
We saw his genius work for Manchester City last season, as the Citizens reached the 100 point mark as well as setting multiple other records.
While it’s all well and good to sit here and marvel about the product Guardiola produces on the field, isn’t it worth investigating how and why he can garner his team to annihilate every opponent in front of them?
Who invented soccer or football or — the more diplomatic approach — association football (soccer for short)? It’s a history lesson that’s often summed up or bastardized with a simple answer: England invented it.
First things first, I’m not 100 percent certain we’ve agreed on a term for this particular skill. Is it a piece of back heel control? A rabona touch? An inverse rabona? A Nasty Neymar? From henceforth, it should be known as the Ballad of Ahmadzadeh Farshad.
Both born in 1998, France’s Kylian Mbappé and the U.S.’ Christian Pulisic are football superstars who, if both continue being great, will be of yet another generation that redefines the beautiful game. The question is, who’s the better 19-year-old?