Nigel de Jong, a former Dutch international whose most famous moment on a football pitch was when he kicked Xabi Alonso in the chest in the 2010 World Cup final and somehow didn't get sent off, has officially moved from Galatasaray in Turkey to Mainz in Germany.
We interrupt your regular 24/7 Coutinho transfer saga coverage to bring you this alarming item from the BBC:
David Jeffrey has accused the co-users of the Ballymena Showgrounds of a lack of respect after the pitch was damaged by stock car racing on New Year's Day.
Ousmane Dembele made his long-awaited return from injury in Barcelona’s Copa del Rey Round of 16 first leg match versus Celta Vigo, but the headlines were written by the man he replaced in the 72nd minute, 22-year-old winger Jose Arnaiz.
Atletico Madrid gave themselves an unassailable four-goal advantage heading back to Madrid for the second leg of their Copa del Rey Round of 16 encounter with third division side Lleida Esportiu on Wednesday. Diego Godin and Fernando Torres opened the scoring in the first half, and then Lleida had to contend with second half substitute appearances from both Diego Costa and Antoine Griezmann, both furthering Los Colchoneros’ advantage.
According to Club America coach Miguel Herrera, the opportunity to land 27-year-old Dutch international and current PSV Eindhoven striker Luuk de Jong “has been laid on the table.” America and Herrera are looking to land an international player to rival Tigres’ Andre-Pierre Gignac (“a player with a bigger name than Gignac,” according to Herrera), and De Jong is the player the club and coach have landed on.
In an interview with Russian news source Blic, Barcelona and Argentina demigod Lionel Messi spoke on how he’d like to improve his penalty taking in 2018 and his future prospects as a manager.
Papu Gomez became a club legend at Atalanta B.C. last season after his goals fired the club to a fourth-place finish in Serie A (their highest-ever league finish) and qualification for the Europa League. Hopefully you’re familiar with the forward’s goalscoring celebration, a dance which was turned into a viral sensation.
It’s an old trope of film that always gets the job done effectively and, more importantly, concisely: the training montage. Films like the Rocky franchise, The Karate Kid, X-Men: First Class, The Fighter, Cool Runnings, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Hunger Games and you get the point have all utilized the uplifting sequence to quickly portray a long passage of time devoted to painstaking preparation.
Adama Traore is soccer’s Usain Bolt. He’s a Bugatti. He’s Sonic the Hedgehog. He’s Jimmy John’s. He’s stupid fast and you won’t even see it coming.
In a match against Aston Villa recently, Middlesbrough’s Adama Traore won a foot race that he wasn’t even involved in. While two players chased after the ball like two pups playing with a chew toy, Adama blew both of them away — and it wasn’t even close.
Will Philippe Coutinho transfer to FC Barcelona? According to Google, that’s all anyone wants to know in 2018. We’re not here to give you a definitive answer, but to break it on down like the 2 Live Crew utilizing a system developed by The Walking Dead’s Eugene Porter. Here’s Philippe Coutinho’s rumored transfer from Liverpool to Barcelona broken into the categories of “What We Know,” “What We Know We Don’t Know” and “Things We Are Unaware Of. Wholly.”