Pep Guardiola

In two seasons with Sunderland, Jermain Defoe has managed to save Sunderland from relegation twice. Goals are key to survival, and Defoe consistently provides them from the forward position. He’s been doing so for almost sixteen years — since his Premier League debut with West Ham United during the 2000-01 season.

Defoe’s greatest EPL return was 18 goals during the 2009-10 season. You’d expect, at 33 years of age, that his goalscoring ability would’ve plummeted since then. You’d be wrong.

Pep Guardiola’s 2009 ‘revolution’ of Barcelona was not so much the invention of a new system, but rather the insistence on a playing style that’d been utilized by great European footballing sides since the mid-1900s. Key to his idea of attacking football was developing a Barcelona side that could attack from any position on the field — Sergio Busquets was promoted from the Barca B squad, Dani Alves was purchased from Sevilla for €29 million and, most importantly, Gerard Pique returned from Manchester United for the ridiculously low price of €5 million.

The Pep Guardiola effect is in full swing at Manchester City with the Citizens beating Barcelona to the signing of 19-year-old Brazilian forward Gabriel Jesus.

City and Jesus’ Brazilian club, Palmeiras, have agreed to a £27 million fee with the attacking talent set to stay in Brazil until December. Jesus has been widely touted as the greatest prospect to emerge from Brazil since Neymar — the two will be in action together for the Selecao at the 2016 Olympic Games.

As FourFourTwo set about compiling a list of the top 50 managers in world football, one of their resident experts, former Dutch international Pierre van Hooijdonk, revealed the difficulty in ranking such a role: “If you changed all the managers in the league for cats, there would still be a champion.

33-year-old Franck Ribery is aiming to recapture the form that saw him named UEFA’s Best Player in Europe for 2012-13. The following three seasons for the Frenchman, all under Pep Guardiola, have seen his appearances and goalscoring totals dwindle.

Ribery was plagued by injuries last year, and he only managed to score two goals in 22 games for Bayern Munich. Ribery, who’d finished third in the 2013 FIFA Ballon d’Or voting, is desperate to get back to his brilliant best. 

UPDATE: Alves' transfer to Juventus is official:

UFFICIALE - @DaniAlvesD2 è bianconero! https://t.co/U82CsKAyIY #BemVindoDani pic.twitter.com/1Uxq8fjdnz

— JuventusFC (@juventusfc) June 27, 2016

Bayen Munich have won the DFB Pokal for a record 18th time.

Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich played out an intense and draining DFB Pokal final that ended up having to go to extra time.

As expected Bayern dominated the possession and the shot count, but Dortmund would not give in to their bitter rivals and refused to back down. 

When Germany announced their preliminary squad for Euro 2016, the accompanying names were a comforting who’s who of Die Mannschaft familiarity. There’s good old hulking center forward Mario Gomez, the ageless but totally aging Bastian Schweinsteiger and footballer turned living memorial, Lukas Podolski.

Alongside the talents of Thomas Muller, Mesut Ozil, Manuel Neuer and Jerome Boateng, this is a side that should certainly be favorites to win Euro 2016 as the reigning world champions.

When talking about Brazilian soccer clubs, the average soccer fan will know a decent amount of them, like Corinthians who stunned Chelsea in the Club World Cup a few years ago, or the Internacional side that took down one of the strongest teams in history, 2006 Barcelona, or even the Sao Paulo squad that defeated Liverpool in the 2005 Club World Cup final.