Transfer Rumors

People in Germany are very mad about RB Leipzig because, to them, RB Leipzig are everything that is wrong with a soccer world that is growing increasingly corporate.

Basically, Red Bull bought a lower-division German club and put a bunch of money into it, turning it into a monster overnight. Oh, and they renamed it after their company. That club now sits second in the Bundesliga and gets called soulless by fans who form the T-Mobile logo in the stands during home games.

‘Member John Obi Mikel? The 29-year-old defensive midfielder has been on the books at Chelsea for 11 years now, but he’s yet to make an appearance in the 2016-17 season. In the previous three seasons, Mikel made a respectable 67 appearances for the Blues, but the length of those appearances averaged only 52 minutes.

Seeing Mikel appear next to the fourth official became the equivalent of popping a bottle of champagne for Chelsea supporters — if Mikel was coming on, victory was all but assured.

According to ESPN, Real Salt Lake and another team from the MLS Eastern Conference have entered discussions with Landon Donovan over the 34-year-old continuing his career in 2017. 

Donovan made a shock return for the LA Galaxy in 2016, appearing in nine matches for a Los Angeles squad that had been left depleted in attack following a serious injury to Gyasi Zardes and the questionable fitness of Robbie Keane and Steven Gerrard.

The exorbitant fees that the Chinese Super League has been willing to pay to land the world’s best look like peanuts compared to what one unnamed CSL club was willing to pay Real Madrid and Cristiano Ronaldo to bring the Ballon d’Or winner to East Asia.

News of Carlos Tevez perhaps becoming the highest paid footballer on the planet by earning nearly $40 million with Shanghai Shenhua ($1.25 per second) was unfathomable. That kind of total, when dissected and attempted to be understood, is like standing on the beach and trying to fathom all the individual grains of sand or staring up at the night sky and quantifying your place in the universe. 

After Real Madrid’s 4-2 victory over Kashima Antlers in the FIFA Club World Cup Final, you would think everyone would be talking about Madrid’s amazing year that included three international titles. Nope. All the attention shifted to James Rodriguez’s post match comments saying that he couldn’t guarantee he would continue with Real Madrid and wanted to play more.

According to The Daily Mail, 32-year-old Argentine forward Carlos Tevez is set to become the world’s highest-paid player following a move to Shanghai Shenhua in the Chinese Super League. 

Tevez follows in the footsteps of Oscar, Hulk and Graziano Pelle, all players that’ve swapped more traditional footballing climes for a personal jackpot in the CSL. 

According to The Telegraph, Chelsea’s Brazilian attacker Oscar is on the verge of completing a historic transfer to Chinese Super League club Shanghai SIPG. SIPG made waves back in June by signing Hulk for a record fee of £47.5 millionNea, but Oscar looks set to join his fellow Brazilian and smash that record in the process.

FREE AGENT BABY.

These are maybe not the words you should be tweeting if you have just helped your new franchise to a very successful season and have therefore amassed a bit of good will from the fanbase. That is exactly what Jermaine Jones did following Colorado's 1-0 loss against Seattle Sunday, likely his last game with the Rapids.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic frequently plays at being a conquerer, emperor and god while discussing his career. He’s discussed how his favorite movie is Gladiator, because he feels that, like Maximus Decimus Meridius, he will have his vengeance, in this life or the next.

“That’s how I felt, or wanted to feel,” said Ibrahimovic in his book, I Am Zlatan. “I wanted to stand up to the whole world and show everybody who’d doubted me who I really was, and I couldn’t imagine anyone who’d be able to stop me.”