Europe

Luka Modric has claimed The Best FIFA Men’s Player 2018 award ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Mohamed Salah (and dare I say it at risk of being murdered, Lionel Messi), but that contentious decision pales compared to everything else that unfolded at a star-studded gala (sans Messi and Ronaldo) in London on Monday evening.  

I don’t know how we got here.

I mean, there’s no denying the popularity of eSports games like Overwatch, Dota 2 and League of Legends, but a Swiss league match between Young Boys and FC Basel was halted in the 16th minute yesterday while fans threw tennis balls onto the pitch, a PS4 controller (damn, that’s like $50) and unfurled massive banners in protest of eSports . . . things have escalated so quickly.

PSG cruised to a 3-1 away win against Rennes on Sunday thanks to goals from Angel Di Maria, Thomas Meunier, and Eric Maxim Chuopo-Moting. They sit atop Ligue 1 with a five-point cushion above second place Lille.

PSG bounced back from defeat at Liverpool with a decent win away at Rennes!

You can take Cristiano Ronaldo out of LaLiga, but you can’t take out the brilliant symmetry that’s conjoined the fortunes of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi since the day they were born. Days after Ronaldo saw red in the UCL, Messi’s Barcelona will have felt hard done by a red issued to defender Clement Lenglet — this one coming after the referee had gone to the monitor on the advice of the VAR (something still missing from the UCL).

Cristiano Ronaldo recovered from the madness of his Champions League sending off to score the match-winner in Juventus’ 2-0 victory over Frosinone on Sunday in Serie A play, giving the Portuguese forward three goals in five appearances in Italy’s top division.

Ronaldo crushed his peers by attempting 10 shots on the day, putting five on target, two off and having three blocked. That’s a high number of shots, folks. (To go along with the fact that Juve outshot the home side 30-3.)

It’s the headline you did not expect today: Patrice Evra once defecated in Gerard Pique’s shoes at Manchester United. The reason for it, however, is totally understandable. 

According to Spanish daily sports paper Diario AS, Evra once waited months for a pair of boots from Nike that had the names of his kids and other details on them. When Evra finally received them, Pique went to the showers, made a small bonfire and burned them. Nice one, Pique.

An Eredivisie table-topping match between first place PSV Eindhoven and second place Ajax went the way of PSV on Sunday, the home side using an entirely dominant opening 35-minute period to build a resounding three-goal lead thanks to strikes from Gaston Pereiro, Luuk de Jong and Hirving “Chucky” Lozano.