Spanish Clubs
Messi Wins The Golden Ball...Again
Revisit The Last Time Pep Guardiola Returned To The Camp Nou
Thursday's Champions League group stage draw yielded one matchup no football fan in the world will want to miss: Pep Guardiola's new club, Manchester City, versus his formative one, Barcelona. It won't be Guardiola's first return to his old stomping grounds. During the 2014-15 Champions League semi-finals, Guardiola's Bayern Munich came up against Barca.
Messi Won The UEFA Goal Of The Season Award Thanks To His Barcelona Teammates
Pep Guardiola doesn't coach Barcelona anymore (he'll stop by the Camp Nou for a visit with Manchester City in the UCL group stage), but the Blaugrana can still tiki-taka teams to death.
During last season's UCL group stage, they did their whole "death by 1,000 paper cuts" routine on Roma and it won UEFA's Goal of the Season award. Messi, the finisher, is technically the recipient, but we think the whole damn team should get a trophy for that move.
Watch "The Phenomenon" Ronaldo's Top Five Goals For Barcelona
Ronaldo confirmed his status as the best young player in the world after scoring 54 goals in 57 games across all competitions for PSV Eindhoven. “The Phenomenon” wasn’t even 20 years old yet when Barcelona became interested in signing the Brazilian.
Barcelona finally landed Ronaldo by paying a then world record fee of $19.5 million, with the striker set to join the side for the 1996-97 season.
Gerard Pique’s Dream Champions League Draw Is To Mirror Real’s ‘Easy’ Route
There are no easy matches in the Champions League — or are there? According to Barcelona’s Gerard Pique, Real Madrid got the rub of the green with regards to Champions League draws last season.
Real Madrid’s route to the final included victories over clubs that were, at the time, hardly at the top of their domestic leagues. So, when a fan asked Pique via Twitter what he’d like to see from Thursday’s group stage draw, Pique couldn’t resist a very obvious dig at Real:
Neymar Is Blonde Now Too
In the deliriousness following Brazil's Olympic win, Neymar has apparently gone a bit overboard and dyed his hair blonde. Apparently the entire team did this, which means that must have been some party.
Neymar with his blonde hair pic.twitter.com/ZaM3fAfPnF
— njrstats (@njrstats) August 21, 2016
Andre Gomes Rear-Ended Luis Suarez After Barcelona Practice
Earlier this week at Barcelona practice, new signing Andre Gomes crashed his team-issued Audi SUV into the back of Luis Suarez's team-issued SUV. This doesn't strike a good way to endear yourself to your new teammates, but Europe is a weird place. Maybe Gomes was just looking for attention.
It’s An Absolute Privilege Watching Lionel Messi’s Top 10 Hits From Outside The Box
In July of 2014, FiveThirtyEight published an article entitled “Lionel Messi Is Impossible” which attempted to evaluate Messi’s goal-scoring abilities through the use of statistics and data.
One of the most ridiculous findings from all the number crunching was how much better Messi was than everybody else at shooting from distance. In fact, Messi’s efficiency from outside the box was almost as good as most other players inside of it.
Without Zinedine Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo Believes His Year Would’ve Been Lost
As recently as January 2016, Real Madrid were a club in crises. Having been defeated 4-0 by Barcelona in late November, kicked out of the Copa del Rey in the round of 32 after fielding an ineligible player and dropping points to both Villarreal and Valencia in the space of a few weeks, manager Rafa Benitez was given his marching orders on January 3rd.