Written a few days ago, this article would've been very different. In the cold light of Monday morning, many people were welcoming the revived glories of AC Milan. A young, exciting squad packed with home grown Italian talent, led by one of Serie A’s most promising and intriguing managers, had taken on the champions of the last five years and won. 'Milan beat Juventus — they’re back!' came the shouts. A new era was upon us.
Landon Donovan, the all-time leader in scoring, assists and second most capped player in USMNT history, to go along with MLS’ all-time top scorer, assists leader and playoff goals leader has added another distinction to his legacy: he’s now MLS’ all-time leader in playoff assists with 15.
The Galaxy mercilessly ended a careening Real Salt Lake season, the Claret and Cobalt having limped into the playoffs after collecting only three points from their final seven regular season games.
There was a strange moment in the EFL Cup fourth round match between Manchester United and Manchester City during the half-time break. The first half had passed largely without incident save for a Kelechi Iheanacho header that the young Nigerian got completely wrong. Zlatan Ibrahimovic had a wretched opening 45 minutes, but the half-time punditry, as it so often does this season, gradually shifted to Paul Pogba.
During the commercial intermission, we were treated to this beautiful Adidas commercial concerning the world’s most expensive player:
Building off a record breaking 2015 season that saw an average attendance of 21,558, the 2016 MLS season managed to set another landmark by edging that total with an average attendance of 21,692 fans per game.
The growth of MLS is exemplified by this being the third consecutive season that the record has been broken. Leading the way for MLS is the Seattle Sounders (42,636 fans per game), Orlando City (31,324) and New York City FC (27,196).
Eight months after the kick off to the 2016 campaign, the MLS season has finally reached the playoff stage. In a case of switching identifies, last year’s champions, the Portland Timbers, failed to make the knockout round, while typical basement dwellers Colorado were a pacesetting team from start to finish. San Jose, Houston and Vancouver join Portland on the outside looking in, all hoping to be next year’s Rapids.
After yet another impressive season, FC Dallas finish top of the Western Conference and MLS, winning the 2016 Supporters’ Shield.
Arsenal fans like to share their opinion on things...a lot. Now, before we go any further, we must say that there's a fair bit of whinging and moaning from fans of every club, however, Arsenal seem to take it to a new level.
Borussia Dortmund beat Manchester United 4-1 as the Red Devils kicked off their tour of China in Shanghai. Two goals from Gonzalo Castro, a goal from Ousmane Dembele and a Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang penalty did the trick for Dortmund, while ex-Dortmund player Henrikh Mkhitaryan pulled one back for United against his old club.
Euro 2016 is over. It's all over. Tell us it isn't so.
Now that we have finished weeping uncontrollably and cursing the inevitable passing decay of time, we've been able to look back fondly at that magical month in France. All the surprises, all the snoozefests, the wardrobe malfunctions, the hooligans, the Irish lullabies, the pyrotechnics and of course, the tears. It's all been so great.
In the back of our minds, we all kind of knew it would end this way for Iceland. The England win was the climax, the summit. They weren't going to beat France. There was nowhere to go but down.
Which is fine, because they made it up pretty darn high. As much as we all made fun of England after they lost, that team has good players on it. Iceland stifled one of the two best players in the world and made one of Bayern Munich's wonderkinds look very extremely average.
Eventually, though, Iceland were going to run into one of the juggernauts, and it was not going to be pretty.
It's safe to say that NYCFC fans are not completely impressed with Frank Lampard so far. He's been booed by his own supporters, he's been called the worst MLS signing in history and he's only managed to play 14 times for NYCFC in just under a year.