They formed a four-man wall. They had a defender lie prone behind the wall to block a low shot. They dropped another defender to the goal-line to clear any effort at the near post. They had Czech international Tomáš Vaclík between the sticks.
It didn’t matter.
Lionel Messi’s first goal of the 2019-20 season flew in from 23 yards out, avoiding it all with astonishing ease.
Barcelona moved into second in LaLiga — two points behind leaders Real Madrid — with an emphatic 4-0 victory over Sevilla at the Camp Nou on Sunday. Barça raced to a three-goal halftime lead thanks to a stunning overhead kick from Luis Suárez followed by further strikes from Arturo Vidal and Ousmane Dembélé. Lionel Messi finished the scoring with a sublime free kick in the 78th minute.
To whomever says Lionel Messi lacks character, isn’t a leader or doesn’t care about his country, Ángel Di María would like you to know you’re dead wrong.
Speaking with ESPN Argentina this week, Di María said Lionel Messi left the Argentina players in tears after an emotional speech following La Albiceleste’s exit from the 2019 Copa América this summer.
Lionel Messi made his first start of the season against Villarreal on Tuesday and normalcy was restored to Barcelona for 15 minutes. Barça raced to a 2-0 lead over that period, but then Messi went down and the Camp Nou went quiet.
It certainly didn’t appear to be a recurrence of the calf injury that’s plagued him so far, and he carried on through the remainder of the first half — just long enough to see Villarreal pull one back through Santi Cazorla.
Tim Sherwood said something this weekend that really made my blood boil.
The former Tottenham manager turned pundit provided some post-match commentary on Arsenal’s 3-2 comeback victory against Aston Villa on Sunday, and while most of what came out his mouth was typical drivel about “wanting it more” and “grit,” Sherwood had a pretty unique take on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s decision to let Nicolas Pépé take a penalty kick:
The Best FIFA Football Awards 2019 went down in Milan today, and you can rest assured that The18 tried its best to watch on YouTube, but good lord, this stuff is mostly unwatchable. It's remarkably drawn out, full of self-aggrandizing nonsense from FIFA and the forced banter between hosts Ilaria D'Amico, Ruud Gullit and the guests makes you search for the mute button while your skin crawls.
But other than that it's pretty good!
Let’s go to the green carpet for some select photos before the ceremony. Here’s Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe looking fly.
Josef Martinez is joining (and exceeding) elite company. He’s surpassed Gabriel Batistuta, Jamie Vardy and Robert Lewandowski and is now chasing Lionel Messi for one of the most impressive goal records in the world.
And he’s doing it by embarrassing defenders in Major League Soccer.
Despite the fact most everyone in the world has played soccer at some point in their lives, professional footballers — players and managers — possess knowledge far beyond that of the average Sunday leaguer. So it makes to take a football MasterClass from one of these experts, giants of their field.
We’ve put together a list of the 18 football MasterClass courses we want to see from famous soccer players and coaches.
It’s been a while since Lionel Messi’s last in-depth interview with a major news outlet, but one has just landed today from Barcelona-based daily SPORT.
Meet the Malabar giant squirrel, or Indian giant squirrel (Ratufa indica), the world’s cutest Barcelona fan.
Photos captured by wildlife photographer Kaushik Vijayan and posted to his Instagram page show a squirrel with blue and dark-red coloring that looks a bit like the blaugrana uniforms of famed football club Barcelona.