FC Barcelona is calling it the goal of the season. Deadspin called it “the platonic ideal of a Barcelona goal.” Ray Hudson said it was “kaleidoscopic football of the highest order." It was the crowning achievement of the club’s remarkable turnaround against Sevilla in the Copa del Rey quarterfinals — shifting a 0-2 first leg deficit into a 6-3 aggregate victory.
Krzysztof Piątek isn’t a household name just yet.
He should be.
Six months ago, Genoa bought Krzysztof Piątek from Cracovia in Poland for $5 million.
Last week AC Milan shelled out $40 million for Piątek.
At this rate, Piątek might soon be sold for $100 million.
When Milan made Piątek the most expensive Polish footballer of time with his $40 million move from Genoa, those who haven’t been following Serie A this season might have raised some eyebrows. So just who is this 23-year-old striker, the replacement for Gonzalo Higuaín?
In a sequence of events that involved one man taking a ball to the face, another shanking the hell out of an overhead kick and a third connecting sweetly with a chilena of his own, we witnessed football’s most spectacular sight three times inside five seconds in the video above.
It’s not often you encounter a team with this kind of chutzpah. Usually, someone would opt for an approach other than the most notoriously advanced skill in the game, but these boys showed that anything other than a bicycle kick is simply a waste of time.
Barcelona maintained its five-point lead at the top of LaLiga with a 2-0 victory over Girona on Sunday. Nelson Semedo opened the scoring in the ninth minute with his first-ever goal for the club, and Messi completed the scoring in the 68th with a delicate finish. The goal was, of course, assisted by Jordi Alba.
Messi now has 14 goals and nine assists in his last 13 games. He’s also scored in seven straight games in all competitions.
Last week, the South American U-20 Championship kicked off in Chile, with the top four finishers earning qualification to this summer’s U-20 World Cup in Poland.
It’d been a long time since any nation treated the USWNT like Spain did in the opening 45 of today’s contest in Alicante. 2019 will mark La Roja’s second-ever World Cup appearance (the first came in 2015), but the growing European side controlled 58 percent of possession and out-passed the defending world champions 274-195 in the first half. Not bad for a first-ever meeting with the powerhouse that is the USWNT.
With Lionel Messi given a rest and role as a substitute for Barcelona’s match against Leganes on Sunday, Ousmane Dembélé moved into the Argentine’s customary position on the right-hand side of Barca’s front three and spent the opening 45 minutes making the Camp Nou forget all about the man they were missing.
Dembélé opening run of the match led Leganes on a merry dance. He nutmegged one defender and then was millimeters away from dicing another.