Thinking back over the first six months of the Premier League season, it has seemed like an unusually poor year for goalkeepers. This has been evident from the opening weekend, when a plethora of minor goalkeeping errors led to a forgettable start to the season.
David de Gea has been sensational, but aside from the Man United keeper, who has stood out between the posts this year?
Hello and welcome to one of the most difficult exercises of the year — the Champions League Round of 16 predictions.
It's always a fool's exercise since this stage of the competition is guaranteed to throw one shock at us (like Porto knocking out Juventus last year) while also delivering some matchups (Real Madrid vs. PSG, Man United vs. Atlético) that require very little imagination to see going either way. But all we do at The18 is watch an entirely unhealthy amount of this game, so we should be able to earn you a pretty penny* with these predictions.
In a turn of events that no one could've predicted, Super Bowl LVI is the closest we'll ever get to an NFL championship game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Detroit Lions (it's Matthew Stafford's Los Angeles Rams, but you can pretend it's Detroit if you want).
Every league has that one team that isn't really all that good but just seems to hang around for far longer than they should. They don't spend much, they don't play entertaining football, and they never really win any big games. Yet when the season ends, they are always mid-table.
In the 2010s, that team in England was Wigan Athletic, as Roberto Martínez's brand of "Guerilla Soccer" kept an underfunded Latics side in the Premier League for eight years.
It was only a matter of time before Christian Pulisic became one of the most expensive American soccer players of all time. Ultimately it was Chelsea that pulled the trigger on the Borussia Dortmund 20-year-old in January 2019, shattering the record for a U.S. soccer player, whether or not you think he was overpriced.
After six rounds of qualifying and three rounds of the competition proper, just two non-league sides remained among the 32 clubs still alive in the FA Cup Fourth Round.
After Kidderminster Harriers carried a lead into second-half injury time but couldn't earn the result against West Ham, Boreham Wood was left as the only remaining non-league side in the competition.
With a difficult trip to Bournemouth in store, it appeared to be the demise for fans of the underdog. Then, the inexplicable happened.
Manchester United returned to the top of the table on Monday but not the one they were hoping for as they were named the club with the biggest transfer losses in the last decade, splashing out more than $1.14 billion on players.
A study published by Switzerland-based independent research group CIES Football Observatory revealed United had a net spend of $1.23 billion since 2012, spending $1.77 billion on transfers while making $538 million back in player sales.
Before the only story that anyone ever really remembers is written at the World Cup finals, there's the meandering, melodramatic tale of qualifying composed over a multi-year period. Players become heroes for firing their nations into the 32-team fold, but the prolificacy of qualifying's highest scorers doesn't always foreshadow greatness at the tournament itself.
According to the latest reports, Barcelona is set to chip away at its $1.5 billion debt with a couple new shirt sponsorship deals following the expiration of its current contracts with Rakuten (front of the shirt) and Beko (sleeve). Spotify will become the new main sponsor on a five-year deal worth $384 million ($77 million per year) and Polkadot (a cryptocurrency) goes on the sleeve in another five-tear deal worth $113 million ($23 million per year).
Home