Spain

It’s that time of year again: FIFA has announced the 10 finalists for the annual Puskás Award, the trophy given to the player, male or female, “judged to have scored the most aesthetically significant, or ‘most beautiful,’ goal of the calendar year.”

This most certainly wasn’t the case last year when Mohamed Salah scooped the award after Liverpool and Egypt supporters spammed the fan vote. The goal Salah scored against Everton back in December of 2018 hadn’t even won the Premier League’s Goal of the Month, so it was an awful joke to see it given the prestigious Puskás Award.

Real Madrid led, but only just. Karim Benzema had given Los Blancos an early lead but Luka Modric picked up his first straight red card in more than 300 matches with Real. Then came an insane Toni Kroos goal vs Celta Vigo, ensuring all three points for the Merengues on Saturday. 

After Benzema’s goal in the 12th minute you’d be forgiven for thinking Real Madrid would cruise to an opening-day victory. But Modric’s 56th-minute red card complicated things a bit.

In January of 2018, Philippe Coutinho became the second-richest transfer in soccer history when he moved from Liverpool to Barcelona. Essentially a replacement for Neymar, who had months earlier become the richest transfer ever, Coutinho never really quite fit in, as the impending Coutinho Bayern loan deal illustrates. 

Lionel Messi has spent most of his preseason with Barcelona recovering from an injury suffered on his first day back in training. The Messi injury, a Grade 1 calf strain, could keep him out of the LaLiga opener on Friday against Athletic Bilbao. 

But the Argentine is working hard to be fit for the match at the San Mamés. 

What’s the difference between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi? It’s the time-honored question that’ll be debated long after both you and I are altered into cosmic dust, although I’ve personally maintained that the difference between the two is the empanadas they’d serve at a social gathering.

The new LaLiga season begins on Friday with defending champion Barcelona heading north to play Athletic Bilbao at the San Mamés. Last year, Barça cantered to the title by an 11-point margin over second-place Atlético while Real Madrid finished 19 points back. However, the La Liga preview 2019/20 sees the challengers refreshed and reloaded with the likes of Eden Hazard and João Félix ready to come at the king.    

According to the latest reports, Neymar is on the verge of forcing through his exit at Paris Saint-Germain. It’s his ultimate destination — either Barcelona or Real Madrid — that those reports really can’t agree on.

Believe it or not, the International Champions Cup is still going on. 

Juventus and Atlético Madrid met at Friends Arena in Stockholm, Sweden, for the final ICC match on Saturday, though most fans have long since turned their attention to actual matches, like Liverpool and Manchester City routing overmatched Premier League foes. 

It’s been a year since Lionel Messi delivered a rare but powerful speech before Barcelona’s Joan Gamper Trophy match against Boca Juniors. It was during that address to the Camp Nou crowd that he promised a return of the Champions League trophy to Catalonia, but that promise was later eviscerated by Liverpool at Anfield. Messi’s pledge was then widely mocked.

The 2019 MLS All-Star Game averaged only 182,000 viewers for its English-language coverage on FS1, the smallest audience for the game on any network over the last decade and the smallest English-language TV audience in the 24-year history of the event. That number is down 60% from 2018 (452K on ESPN) and 57% from 2017 (420K on FS1).

Atlético Madrid won the match 3-0 in front of a sell-out crowd of 25,527 at Exploria Stadium.