Germany and England don’t always see eye to eye on the football pitch after decades of contentious football matches. But even with all their history, that Ruben Loftus-Cheek double nutmeg was just nasty.
Here at The18, we typically steer clear of transfer rumor nonsense fueled by nothing more than the strange fancies of dubious websites because we’re not hacks. That’s why our award-winning staff is so often likened to German dachshunds with regards to the transfer market — we sniff out the nonsense and we piss on it.
Danel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling played a game in which Sterling was made to guess which of Sturridge's traits was rated higher in FIFA 2018: pace, shooting or dribbling. Sterling narrowed it down to either pace or shooting, before finally guessing pace.
Reader, he was wrong. And then he was even more wrong than he thought he was.
Sturridge finding out that his FIFA pace is at 76 is hilarious pic.twitter.com/UoVPI6LjIO
Son Heung-min scored Tottenham’s only goal in a 1-0 win over Crystal Palace on Sunday. More importantly, it was his 20th league goal, making him the highest scoring Asian in English Premier League history. Son, a 25-year-old South Korean, passed former Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-Sung, who scored 19 goals from 2005-2012.
Álvaro Morata may have the most brilliant head in England since Isaac Newton. The Chelsea striker scored with his noggin yet again for the only goal in a 1-0 victory over Manchester United to spoil yet another return for Jose Mourinho to Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
Morata has scored 10 goals with his head since the start of last season, the most in Europe’s top five leagues in that span. That’s more than the sinewy peg atop Peter Crouch’s body, Andy Carroll’s bulging cranium and the meaty French forehead of Olivier Giroud.
Manchester City is on an historic run of form, crushing all competition with relative ease. Pep Guardiola’s free-flowing footballers bounced around Arsenal like they have against every other team this year and deservedly won 3-1 on Sunday at the Etihad. But Man City was aided by a few refereeing decisions going its way to dispatch a Gunners side that was actually decent in defense for once despite allowing three goals.
There’s certainly not a whole lot in this — it’s wild January transfer speculation two months before the window opens from dubious sources — except that it kinda makes sense.
Remember when Alberto Moreno was awful? For a long time, Moreno's attack first, ask questions later while also attacking style wowed objective observers who just wanted some goals to happen and infuriated Liverpool fans who wanted Liverpool goals but not Liverpool opponent goals. And with Moreno, that could go either way.
Until this season.
Gone are the head-in-the-clouds mental lapses. Gone are the reckless kung-fu attempted tackles. Still here are the scampering runs forward, but now with common sense!
For a half-hour inside the Stadio San Paolo in Naples, Napoli didn’t just look like the best team in Italy — a statement backed up by their current position in Serie A — they looked like the best side in Europe. An opening period of dominance was stamped by a sensational goal in the 21st minute for the Neapolitans, and everything appeared rosy for the home side before defender Faouzi Ghoulam had to be substituted in the 31st minute with an apparent knee injury.
With 20 minutes left in the match, Londoners were shouting “Olé!” for every touch of the team in all white, which held a commanding three-goal lead. The two-time defending champions were chasing ghosts.
Tottenham crushed Real Madrid 3-1 in a Group H Champions League match at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday, staking a claim as one of the best teams in Europe and a legitimate contender for the Champions League crown.