There’s a lot to like about this Galatasaray club. First off, in a match against the global superpower that is Paris Saint-Germain, Fatih Terim’s side featured a quintet of guys fast approaching their mid-30s, including Radamel Falcao, Yuto Nagatomo, Mariano, Fernando Muslera and Ryan Babel.
It’s no wonder that Terim was profusely sweating his way through proceedings on the touchline.
Club Brugge came within five minutes of recording a historic upset of 13-time European champion Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu on Tuesday, but the Belgian side ultimately had to settle for a 2-2 draw after a late equalizer from Casemiro.
Regardless, the story of the game will be the first-half brace scored by Club Brugge’s Emmanuel Bonaventure Dennis.
The Palestine Cup, a FIFA-sanctioned club championship that sends its winner to the Asian Champions League, was effectively canceled this week by Israel.
Now the world is waiting to see how FIFA reacts, if indeed it steps in at all.
Although she finished eighth in The Best FIFA Women’s Player 2019 voting, Lyon attacker Ada Hegerberg was omitted from the first-ever FIFPro Women’s World11 due to the inclusion of Marta in attack. With all due respect to Marta’s legacy, the 33-year-old playmaker didn’t warrant her place after scoring five goals and providing zero assists in 12 appearances for the NWSL’s worst team before a disappointing World Cup that included zero goals from open play and zero assists in three games.
UEFA made some far-reaching decisions during a meeting of its executive committee on Tuesday in Slovenia. In addition to determining the future Champions League final locations, European soccer’s governing body made changes to the UEFA Nations League, decided to finally introduce VAR in competitions other than the biggest men’s tournaments and promoted women’s rights.
A UEFA Executive Committee meeting in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana has hashed out some future Champions League final locations, so we can now confirm sites for 2021, 2022 and 2023. This year’s final will be staged in Istanbul, and then Ol’ Big Ears will travel to Saint Petersburg, Munich and London over the course of the following three competitions.
The Best FIFA Football Awards 2019 went down in Milan today, and you can rest assured that The18 tried its best to watch on YouTube, but good lord, this stuff is mostly unwatchable. It's remarkably drawn out, full of self-aggrandizing nonsense from FIFA and the forced banter between hosts Ilaria D'Amico, Ruud Gullit and the guests makes you search for the mute button while your skin crawls.
But other than that it's pretty good!
Let’s go to the green carpet for some select photos before the ceremony. Here’s Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe looking fly.
Bayern Munich was on its way to an easy victory over Red Star Belgrade to open Champions League Group B play at the Allianz Arena in Munich on Wednesday. Then it decided to pull out one extra little trick to add a bit of goal difference.
After controlling nearly three-quarters of possession and not allowing Red Star a single shot on goal, Thomas Müller scored in the 91st minute to give Bayern Munich a 3-0 win.
The Müller goal vs Red Star was totally unnecessary, but it was fun to watch.
A lot of the pregame hype for Juventus vs. Atlético Madrid surrounded the matchup between Portugal’s past-and-current king, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Portugal’s future king, João Félix.
But the match was decided by the matchup between Mexico’s Héctor Herrera and former Arsenal man Aaron Ramsey, two second-half substitutes.
An excellent Ángel Di María brace spearheaded PSG to a 3-0 victory over Real Madrid on Wednesday night, giving belief to Parisians that this is finally their year. On the other side of things, Zinedine Zidane’s greatest nightmare came to fruition as he was forced to watch James Rodríguez and Gareth Bale attempt to orchestrate an attack that finished with zero shots on goal.