Yaya Toure used to be good at defending. No really, he was. Back in his Barcelona days he was just about the most promising all-round midfielder in the world, meaning he could attack just as well as he could defend.
At Manchester City, that balance has apparently skewed towards the offensive side of things.
Germany beat Argentina in the 2014 World Cup Final, but watching this and knowing the current state of Mats Hummels and Lionel Messi, you wouldn’t know it.
Hummels’ ability as a defender is as debated as the attractiveness of Peggy Olson from Mad Men.
Ronaldinho picked his dream 5-on-5 team and, as one would expect, it's a doozy.
Ronaldinho revealed his squad in a Goal.com article. He picked Messi, Ronaldo (Nazario), Denilson and Neymar, who he described as "happy people with amazing dribbling skills."
Chile has defeated Argentina in the Copa America final to win the first Copa in Chile's history.
The match went to penalties, with Argentina winning the shootout 4-1.
Lionel Messi was the only penalty taker for Argentina to make his shot.
Gonzalo Higuain missed and Ever Banega had a shot saved. Lionel Messi is left without a major trophy with the Argentina National Team.
Contact The18 Staff Writer Sam Klomhaus at Klomhaus@The18 or follow him on Twitter @SamKlomhaus
Lionel Messi’s game is helped out enormously by his speed. You just don’t score goals like this if you can’t turn on the afterburners and leave a defender or two in the dust.
That got The18 thinking about things: how fast is Lionel Messi?
You can never be too sure about how you will affect someone’s life. Our actions, words, and emotions can do so many different things across the 6 degrees that separate every single human being in the world. It is almost impossible to track how this affected that, there.
Lionel Messi is 28 years old.
Depending on when you became a fan of soccer, that will strike you in a certain way. If you fell in love with the game around 2005 or 2006, you will probably not be able to believe your ears. “I remember when he played with Ronaldinho!” you’ll say — as in back when Ronaldinho was good. Yeah, that long ago — he has aged quite a lot in that time. He’s a man now, not a boy, not even a young man.
Jerome Boateng believed he would beat Barcelona when he walked on the field on the 6th of May, 2015. He was a part of one of the greatest teams in the world, a German machine that had just completed a ludicrous second leg comeback against FC Porto.
As Jamaica bow out of the Copa America after suffering their third 1-0 defeat in a row, Jamaican forward Deshorn Brown decided to leave with a piece of digital gold.
Lionel Messi had an off year in 2014. He lost in the World Cup Final. He didn’t win the Ballon d’Or. His club, Barcelona, lost out on all three major trophies, including missing out on a chance to win La Liga on the very last match day of the year. By the end of the year it was looking like Barcelona, as great as they would always be, were a long way away from hitting the heights of their glorious past, and that Messi would never be able to regain the form that earned him 4 straight Ballon d’Ors.
How much have things changed.
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