Game Recaps

It’s the kind of scoreline out of France that we’d forgotten was even possible: Paris Saint-Germain, winners of Ligue 1 for four consecutive years now, were comprehensively beaten 3-1 by AS Monaco. It’s only the third match of the French league season, and it was Paris’ first loss, but the manner in which they succumbed to defeat was frighteningly sluggish.

Once again, Edinson Cavani struggled to impress in the limelight. Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s departure to Manchester United has put Cavani in the position of having to effectively replace the Swede. It's not going well.

We’re three weeks into the Premier League season and a quick glance at the table confirms some of the more common preseason predictions. Manchester United appear to be a much stronger club, Chelsea have returned to winning ways and Manchester City are likely the title favorites. 

After watching Portugal capture Euro 2016 by winning only a single match in regular time, the fear here was that we were about to witness more of the same on the women’s side of the game. Sweden had ridden their luck to the gold medal match on the strength of two penalty shootout victories.

Against Germany, they came undone. The first forty-five minutes appeared to give strength to the notion that Sweden were destined to win gold, but Germany simply blew them away in the second half. A 67th minute Sweden goal wasn’t enough to overturn the lead Germany had built.  

Well, that’s that then. Barcelona have eliminated Arsenal in the 2016-17 UEFA Champions League round of 16, taken it to Paris Saint-Germain in the quarters and will finally receive their first stern test in the semi-finals. 

Try as Arsenal might in their all-too familiar opening day loss to Liverpool, the Gunners were simply unable to overcome Barcelona, the Catalan giants throttling Sevilla 5-0 on aggregate in the Supercopa Espana.

Brazil have found their best form at the 2016 Summer Olympics men’s football tournament at just the right time. Building off their 4-0 hammering of Denmark and 2-0 quarterfinal victory over Colombia, they’ve put in their most impressive performance yet in a 6-0 drubbing of Honduras.

They now await the winner of the Nigeria vs. Germany match in the other semifinal in Sao Paulo later today.

Brazil couldn’t have asked for a better start in front of 70,000 supporters at the world famous Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

When Canada advanced to the quarter-finals of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, it was tempting to put their success down to the benefits of hosting the tournament and the individual brilliance of Kadeisha Buchanan and Christine Sinclair.

They’ve since put those notions to bed by advancing to the bronze medal match of the 2016 Rio Games. In their defiant 2-0 defeat to Germany in the semi-finals, they exemplified the strength of football as a sport of meritocracy — where, on any given day, the footballing superpowers of the world can be defeated by the long shot.

We've already covered many of the terrible things that have gone on before and during the Olympics, but here's a refresher: the Zika virus, deadly bacteria in the water, the police and fire departments can't protect anybody, everything is dirty, the diving pool turned green, it's really hot, a camera fell on some people, the Olympic Village is unfit for human habitation and the Sweden Women's National Team is making soccer unwatchable.

Carlo Ancelotti has already accomplished something that Pep Guardiola was never able to do at Bayern Munich: win the German Super Cup. Guardiola was unsuccessful in three attempts, but Ancelotti has landed an early trophy in his Bayern reign by defeating their Der Klassiker rival Borussia Dortmund 2-0.

Second half goals from Arturo Vidal and Thomas Muller put an emphatic touch on a scoreline that was hardly representative of the game’s competitive nature.

The USWNT drew 2-2 against Colombia to top Group G in Manaus on Tuesday. Goals from Crystal Dunn and Mallory Pugh for the U.S. were cancelled out by two free kicks from Maria Catalina Usme, one of which was the result of an error by U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo.

Through the first 30 minutes of the 2016 MLS All-Star Game, there was an interesting contrast between the midfields of Arsenal and the MLS All-Stars. Andrea Pirlo anchored the setup for MLS, in tandem with Kyle Beckerman and Kaka, while Arsenal chose the strength of Francis Coquelin and Mohamed Elneny to support Jack Wilshere.

The average age of the duel was 24 for Arsenal and 35 for MLS, but one couldn’t help but be in awe of the play of MLS’s old guard — particularly the sumptuous, metronomic style of Pirlo.