Tottenham Hotspur held Bayern Leverkusen 0-0 in Tuesday night's Champions League encounter in Germany on the back of some ridiculous heroics from Hugo Lloris in net.
The first half saw Hotspur attempt to take the game to Leverkusen, but the German club defended resolutely. Vincent Janssen hit the post for the visitors and Christian Eriksen's follow-up attempt brought a great save out of Bernd Leno.
Marco Fabian’s Bundesliga season went from good to great on Saturday after notching a goal and playing brilliantly throughout the match against Bayern Munich.
The Mexican international was unfortunate not to have two goals on the day after seeing one of his shots strike the inside of the post. However, his 78th minute equalizer earned Eintracht Frankfurt an unlikely point against Bayern Munich.
It's no secret that Serie A’s UEFA coefficient has been in decline for over 15 years. The UEFA coefficient, used to determine how many teams from each domestic league are entered into competitions such as the Champions League and Europa League, is based on the European success of a club within the last five years.
Right now, the Italian national side does not have an identity. On paper, drawing a match with Spain and winning against Macedonia might seem perfectly acceptable, but those who watched the games will know that there’s trouble afoot.
Spain should have won by a comfortable margin but consistently shot themselves in the foot when it came to actually putting the ball in the net. Italy were bad and deserved to lose.
Think about this number: 8.1 seconds. Chances are, your car goes zero to 60 slower than that, but that's how long it took Christian Benteke, who is not renowned for his speed, to score against Gibraltar.
Benteke's goal is the fastest goal in World Cup qualifying history, scored against a team that features just a few true professional soccer players. It just came together perfectly, although if you had asked us who would score the fastest goal in World Cup qualifying history, we would not have picked Christian Benteke. Good for him.
The England National Team's Wayne Rooney era appears to be drawing to a close after interim manager Gareth Southgate announced the captain would be dropped against Slovenia.
After a performance from Rooney against Malta that involved a lot of standing around and not very much doing things, Southgate must have felt he had no choice in the matter, even though Sam Allardyce and Roy Hodgson had been cowed into keeping Rooney in their respective England teams. Southgate appears to have followed the example set by Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho in dropping the player.
By any measure, Gerard Pique is one of the best central defenders ever, an omnipresent force in the back lines of Champions League-winning Barcelona sides and World Cup and European Championship-winning Spanish sides. Pique announced his decision to retire from the latter following the 2018 World CUp in Russia, and now everyone is talking about his shirts.