Coming off a tantalizing victory against Manchester City sealed by an 89th minute Matt Doherty winner just 43 hours earlier, fifth-place Wolves made Liverpool sweat as the Reds held on 1-0 to record their 10th straight victory in the Premier League and run their unbeaten league home streak to 50 games on Sunday.
Two stats stood out ahead of today’s Premier League match between Sheffield and Newcastle United at Bramall Lane: (1) Andy Carroll was handed his first Newcastle start in almost nine years and (2) Martin Dúbravka was busy making his 65th straight EPL appearance for the Toon, a run which began directly following his move from Sparta Prague back in January of 2018.
Both players played massive roles in Newcastle’s bizarre 2-0 victory.
Seeing Lionel Messi dive is about as rare as seeing the Argentine pick up a red card. It might happen from time to time, but not enough for anyone to legitimately call Messi a flopper.
Don’t tell that to 36-year-old referee Clement Turpin, who officiated Barcelona’s Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday at the Camp Nou.
Over the current international break, representatives from all 20 English Premier League clubs met to discuss the recent introduction of Video Assistant Referees. On the whole, they reported an increase in the rate of game-changing calls being made correctly but admitted the league could do a better job communicating certain decisions to fans.
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has escaped any sanctions from the Football Association for turning himself into the Meme Lord during Sunday’s 3-1 defeat to Liverpool.
A good portion of the sports-loving world would love it if politics never entered sports. While that’s a pipedream (politics and sports will always be intertwined), we expect at the very least for sports to be conducted outside the purview of politicians.
But in Italy, two senators have brought up a debate on the state of Serie A.
In September, the Mexican Football Federation (FMF) unveiled a plan to stamp out the use of the homophobic “puto” chant. Scared of further punishment from FIFA — from fines to forfeiting World Cup qualifiers — the FMF finally decided to do the right thing.
The fans? Not so much.
The use of Video Assistant Referee finally arrived in England this season, with the Premier League finally joining the rest of the world in embracing video replay. But why does VAR suck so much in the Premier League?
This past weekend saw a number of high-profile VAR decisions in the EPL, almost all of which seemed to be wrong. Why does the VAR in England seem to get things so wrong when the rest of the world has introduced replay with far fewer complaints?
Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City played to a 0-0 draw to open the A-League campaign on Saturday, but it was a goal that was was called back that drew our attention.
Elvis Kamsoba, a 23-year-old Burundi international who has already played for six different clubs, thought he had scored his first A-League goal in the 56th minute for Victory. Played in brilliantly by former Sweden international Ola Toivonen, Kamsoba slid his first-time shot past onrushing keeper Dean Bouzanis.
Things are heating up in the Champions League (read: Real Madrid bottom of Group A) and there’s no surer sign of the increase in dramatics than managers getting booked. In a first for the Champions League, coaches can now be on the receiving end of both yellow and red cards from the match official, and although Match Day 1 of the competition came and went without history being made, Match Day 2 brought the moment we’d all been waiting for.