Professional footballers are well known for having wild hairstyles, from David Beckham’s fauxhawk to whatever Paul Pogba decides to do with his hair today. Brazilians in particular have a history of outlandish haircuts, such as Ronaldo’s bizarre ’do at the 2002 World Cup. But this latest Neymar hair is really something.
Nicklas Bendtner has some time on his hands and a tag on his foot.
The former Arsenal striker was arrested in September for assaulting a taxi driver. In November, he was sentenced to a 50-day jail term. The courts are allowing the Denmark international to serve his sentence from home while under intensive surveillance.
We live in an age when there is growing equality among all genders and all colors of skin — perhaps the best we as a species have ever been in treating everyone equally. But one look at the Italian Super Cup — and Serie A as a whole — and it’s easy to see we still have a really fucking long way to go.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s social media accounts are a strange, bulging land of ad placements. This New Year, we thought we’d reached another peak with the unveiling of his The Lonely Island-inspired turtleneck and chain look, but we had another thing coming.
Mohamed Salah, Liverpool’s Egyptian King: incredible pace, dribbling ability and an eye for goal. Something he shouldn’t add to his box of tricks, however, is diving.
Salah has been wrapped up in a few diving cases in his Premier League career, most recently in yesterday’s match against Newcastle. Liverpool hosted Newcastle on Boxing Day, drubbing the Geordies 4-0. It was a routine win for Liverpool, but an important talking point of the match surrounded Liverpool’s second goal.
To coincide with The Guardian’s excellent list of the 100 best male footballers in the world — compiled by a panel of 225 experts from 69 nations — we here at The18 have compiled our own list over the last couple years. There are no experts involved, there’s no rhyme or reason for anything, but we do hope you’ll join us on this adventure into the bowels of the beautiful game.
For the first time in 47 years, Serie A featured a round of matches on what Italian’s refer to as Saint Stephen’s Day (Dec. 26).
Let’s be honest, divers ruin a lot of what’s great about soccer. Flops slow the game down, they win undeserved free kicks and generally just create more annoyance than enjoyment.
But sometimes, the diver’s acting is so unbelievably poor that the dive itself becomes a work of art. Usually, it’s some of the best players in the world that are doing the diving, which seems counterintuitive.