From playing with Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1 to the World Cup with France, Kylian Mbappé had himself one helluva 2018, all before turning 20 in December.
To commemorate the end of the calendar year (at least on our antiquated Gregorian calendars), Mbappé made an awesome Instagram post highlighting many of his achievements from 2018.
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.
Ada Hegerberg was named the first winner of the women’s Ballon d’Or award earlier this month, a well-deserved honor after she was snubbed by FIFA’s The Best awards. Now she has some sweet boots to match her golden award.
Thomas Müller was all apologies Wednesday and Thursday.
He started apologizing before Nicolás Tagliafico hit the ground. He kept apologizing as he was shown red. He tried to apologize in person after the match. And he kept apologizing the next day.
Müller’s red card against Ajax on Wednesday was one of the worst you’ll see in the Champions League — a flying kick to the head. But Müller responded exactly how you’d hope a professional footballer would after such a vicious attack.
During yesterday’s Premier League match between Chelsea and Manchester City at Stamford Bridge, a Blues supporter could be seen allegedly directing racist abuse at City forward Raheem Sterling.
The internet is often a pretty loathsome place, what with the political, tribal vitriol humans have for one another. But on occasion it can be a pretty cool place, like with these goal emojis that inundated Twitter on Thursday.
At the prompting of the @MundialMag account, a number of soccer fans described their favorite goals using only emojis.
Describe your favourite goal using only emoji.
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.
If ever I wanted a recommendation on what Netflix show to watch, I’d ask a footballer. There’s no other profession where rest and recovery are so important; outside of matches and the training ground, footballers are specifically instructed to do nothing — it’s pretty much the key to a long and successful career.
Before he retired a month ago, Rafael van der Vaart's career took him to some of the greatest clubs in the world, where he played with some of the legends of the game. He started in Ajax and went on to play with Hamburg, Real Madrid, Tottenham and Betis while also appearing more than 100 times for the Dutch national team.
A Russian Premier League match in Siberia between bottom-half clubs Yenisey Krasnoyarsk and Akhmat Grozny was played in some absolutely miserable conditions on Saturday. Temperatures reached as low as -13F as the two teams played to a 1-1 draw.
ОФИЦИАЛЬНО!
Температура -13,9! pic.twitter.com/rV6gd8qUbX— ФК Енисей (@FCEnisey) December 1, 2018