The exorbitant fees that the Chinese Super League has been willing to pay to land the world’s best look like peanuts compared to what one unnamed CSL club was willing to pay Real Madrid and Cristiano Ronaldo to bring the Ballon d’Or winner to East Asia.
Almost every FC Barcelona YouTube video, given the talent at the club, is worth a view. However, every once in a very long while, they release a video starring Lionel Messi during his La Masia days. These are particularly important because they showcase the unreasonable talents of a goofy looking 14-year-old with control like Diego Maradona.
It's talent like this that saw Messi rapidly progress through the club's ranks, making his first team debut as a 16-year-old.
Warning: the following article contains screenshots of tweets that should not be viewed by children or anyone who might be near a child in the future.
Also: Tweets are NSFW
Samir Nasri's Twitter, um, did a thing. Meet me on the other side of these screencaps.
Samir Nasri and Drip Doctors: a true love story pic.twitter.com/LvEr7AFfQm
We still have to wait over a week for Barcelona to return to action in the Copa del Rey against Athletic Bilbao, but the folks at Barca’s official YouTube channel have made the wait a little more bearable by sharing a video of Luis Suarez, Lionel Messi and Neymar warming up.
With any other attacking trio of teammates this would most likely fall flat, but here are three of the five best players on the planet performing tricks and volleying across the field at each other.
You could certainly do worse with one minute of your time.
A joint effort between the Japanese and Spanish has seen the first footballer successfully launched into space. Takashi Inui, a Japanese international and midfielder for Eibar, rocketed to infinity and beyond with the help of Spanish goalkeeper Iago Herrerin.
According to our planisphere star chart, Inui is currently near Mars’s moon Phobos, taking pictures of the Martian planet’s polar ice caps. He will hopefully return to Earth in time for Eibar’s next match against against Sporting in the Spanish Cup.
There will never be another series of transfers like FC Barcelona’s 2013 and 2014 plundering of some of the best soccer players the world has seen in quite some time. During that Summer of endless spending, Barcelona came away with Luis Suarez, Neymar, Ivan Rakitic, goalies Marc-Andre Ter Stegen and Claudio Bravo and important role players Jeremy Mathieu and Rafinha.
Barcelona had its eyes set on deep domestic and continental runs. While they were mindful of the future, more important was the immediate success of the team. It certainly paid off.
It hasn’t taken much, but Jonathan dos Santos has matched his career best for goals in a season. In 66 previous La Liga appearances, Dos Santos had managed a total of two goals, both during his debut season with Villarreal in 2014-15, but he’s already scored twice in only 14 appearances for the Yellow Submarine this campaign.
Before Atletico Madrid’s last Champions League group stage fixture against Bayern Munich, Diego Simeone made some interesting comments saying that he will one day coach Inter Milan. A fire that was started a week earlier by his son Giovanni Simeone (striker for Genoa) saying that his dad will indeed one day be the manager for the Nerazzurri side.
Atletico Madrid, in their second game since manager Diego Simeone confirmed he intends to leave them for Inter Milan someday, played like a team whose manager had recently said he intends to leave them someday. Villarreal had much less trouble scoring than would be expected against one of the world's best defensive teams.