Europe

The lives of most professional footballers — outside of vacation — are never quite as exciting as we'd like to believe. Their schedules are a ceaseless clockwork of training, recovery, matches and rest, so they spend the majority of their days on the couch in the living room recuperating.

This is doubly so when footballers are injured and deprived of their one meaningful outlet, so they become hellbent on returning to action by spending every waking hour either in the physio room or planted in front of the television.

Leicester City's King Power Stadium, which opened in 2002 and became world-renowned as boisterous crowds of over 32,000 roared the Foxes to an impossible 2015-16 Premier League title, has been given the green light by city council to construct an entirely new East Stand.

When you see photos of the ground, you're usually given a view of the 7,000-seat West Stand facing the River Soar.

AMSTERDAM — The Netherlands will be testing their goalkeepers in a special penalty shootout training session this week with an eye on the World Cup later this year, coach Louis van Gaal said on Monday.

He has called up four goalkeepers for this week's Nations League clashes against Poland and Belgium as the Dutch look to finish top of their group and advance to the finals next June.

But Van Gaal said a priority will be putting together the final touches for the World Cup in Qatar in November, where the Dutch play in Group A against the hosts, Ecuador and Senegal.

Real Madrid restored its two-point lead over Barcelona at the top of LaLiga with a surgical 2-1 win at the home of eternal rival Atlético Madrid on Sunday evening.

Juventus’ already dreadful September has somehow managed to get even worse. A miserable run of form saw the club winless with two draws and two losses and thousands of fans calling for “Allegri Out” on social media going into Sunday’s match against newly promoted AC Monza. What followed was a performance that would earn almost any top club’s manager the sack, as Monza handily beat Juventus 1-0 and thoroughly deserved to do so.