Opinion

The UEFA Champions League has only played one group stage game thus far meaning it’s time to predict the semifinals. It’s almost like trying to guess the Final Four during March Madness, however this Champions League prediction will be a little different.

After the Round of 16 anything goes in terms of the Champions League draw. There runs the risk of two predicted teams meeting at some point before the semifinals. To solve this issue each of the four teams I predict to make it to the semifinals will have an alternate club to take its place.

Being an American fan of a Premier League club or other European team has its ups and downs. On the positive side you get to watch some elite soccer in the morning/afternoon and watching games is extraordinarily simpler today than say 10 years ago.

The downs are still in existence. Rarely (if ever) getting to see your favorite team in person isn’t any fun, having to pay the NBC overlords to stroke their Peacock sucks and still having to deal with Americans that hate soccer is annoying to say the least.

It’s about time. After 18 episodes of doing his own thing in the background as Ted Lasso’s selfless assistant coach, Coach Beard, played by Brendan Hunt, finally got his chance to be the focus on an episode of “Ted Lasso.” While Season 2, Episode 9 “Beard After Hours” probably wasn’t the best episode — some might argue it was the worst — it was certainly the most unique, and I guarantee many will say it was their favorite.

Warning: The following contains “Ted Lasso” spoilers through Season 2, Episode 9.

The FIFA 22 ratings are being revealed ahead of the game’s release on Oct. 1, providing us with some largely agreeable rankings mixed with Alexis Sánchez still ruling the world. 

It’s an unenviable task that usually ends with Thomas Müller being as effective as a wind-tossed plastic bag and Shakhtar Donetsk playing like ’82 Brazil, but maybe this is the year it all comes together.  

We need to talk about the Kanye West Messi lyric on his song “Off The Grid” from his new album, Donda. While it’s special to see one of the world’s largest artists nod at the planet’s most popular sport, the bar about Lionel Messi is subpar.

Before I continue, I would like to make it clear that I actually quite enjoy “Off The Grid.” My bone to pick is with this Messi lyric.

The Panama World Cup qualifying campaign is smooth sailing after the first three games. This is the exact opposite of what we predicted here at The18.

In our Concacaf World Cup qualifying predictions, six out of seven people predicted the Panamanians to finish dead last in the group of eight teams. Only one person had Panama finishing higher than eighth. That individual had the Central American country finishing seventh.

Imagine after a bad day at the office you get questioned on what went wrong and then have some random person run up to you begging for a photo. Everyone will react differently, but I personally would react the same way that Virgil van Dijk did after his Dutch side drew with Norway 1-1 on Wednesday in World Cup qualifying.

Van Dijk’s day could have gone smoother as the big man had his finger dislocated trying to stop Erling Haaland’s opening goal.