Outrageous

It was pissing down snow in Hannover today, particularly at HDI-Arena, which has a much better name sans sponsorship: the Niedersachsenstadion. Hannover 96, staring straight down the double-barreled shotgun that is relegation, welcomed Champions League aspirants Bayer Leverkusen to the Snowmageddon on Sunday, and things started off as you’d expect.

Leverkusen jumped to a 2-0 lead thanks to a first half brace from Kevin Volland. The second was quite nice, and it’ll help you to understand the weather conditions that we’ll be addressing shortly. 

What amounts to too much partying? What amounts to not enough privacy? Should professional athletes’ social lives be used against them? Do videos of Neymar partying prove he’s a horrible person who will never succeed at the highest levels without Lionel Messi as his running mate?

Mesut Özil scored his fourth goal of the Premier League season in Arsenal’s fairly simple 5-1 win over Bournemouth on Wednesday. 

Özil’s strike opened the scoring in the fourth minute, having been played in by Sead Kolasinac. The German had only the keeper to beat, and he did so with relative ease. But his shot was anything but usual.

Lionel Messi registered his 50th professional hat trick Saturday, which led to another Twitter frenzy.

Messi now trails just Cristiano Ronaldo with regards to career hat tricks — Ronaldo has 51 three-score outings. The two are compared and argued over more than we’d like to admit. However, the GOAT discussion has officially ended.

Both players have received praise from about everyone in the world, but Messi has officially one-upped his rival with this unmatchable praise:

Did you know there’s a 33-year-old American playing goalkeeper in the 2. Bundesliga? I did not, but I’m starting to connect the dots. That man is Kenneth Kronholm, born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and he’s a certified mad lad.

PSG star Kylian Mbappe is already way ahead of his time. The 20-year-old sensation has a Ligue 1 leading 19 goals in 18 appearances, a World Cup title and, to cap it all off, he has officially scored his 100th goal in practice.

What a legend.

19 goals in 18 league games for @KMbappe

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has decreed: The day of Fortnite is over. Apex Legends is king now.

Ibrahimovic tweeted his support for Apex Legends, the new battle royale game taking over the world, on Friday, telling his followers to check out his brother Aleksandar’s live Twitch stream. Aleksandar, who in the past has played Fortnite with Zlatan, was playing Apex Legends, not Fortnite.

Teen boys can be juvenile, crude, lewd, rude — and hilarious.

Case in point: an FA Trophy match (basically a lesser version of the FA Cup) on Tuesday between National League side AFC Fylde and Northern Premier League club Ramsbottom United (no, that’s not the joke). 

During the match, the public address announcer was conned into reading a lascivious statement over the PA. 

Things are going fine for Cristiano Ronaldo in Italy. On Sunday, the 34-year-old scored his 18th league goal in 23 appearances during Juventus’ 3-0 victory over Sassuolo. Following Napoli’s draw with Fiorentina, the win sees Juve open up an 11-point gap at the top of the table with 15 matches remaining. 

So it’s looking like an eighth straight Scudetto for the Old Lady and a Capocannoniere for Ronaldo as Serie A’s top scorer. Ho-hum. 

Manchester United’s trip to Fulham on Saturday morning seemed like a routine one, and that’s what it turned out to be. Goals from Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial saw Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s side reach the top four for the first time since August with a run of 11 games unbeaten. There was one moment in the match that was certainly noteworthy: David de Gea vs Mitrovic.