Messi won his fifth Ballon d'Or Monday, but his victory may have been overshadowed by the real star of the show, a photo of Cristiano Ronaldo greeting Messi's girlfriend, Antonella Roccuzzo, with Messi looking on awkwardly and Neymar looking like he's about to hop out of his seat and punch Ronaldo in the face.
Probably the most commonly-used word to describe Zlatan Ibrahimovic is "antics." Both on and off the field, the big Swedish striker's antics are at the forefront, and have made him both loved and hated among football fans.
Ah, Google. Where any question can be asked and answered in half the time it takes to microwave pizza. If you can think it, dream it, or conceive it, you can Google it. And, thanks to Google’s auto-populating technology, you can see exactly what the people of the world desperately want to know. Which is great and equally ridiculous at the same time. Soccer is no exception. Here are nine mostly ridiculous soccer questions people ask on Google (the answers may surprise you).
Newcastle United are struggling. They’re struggling for goals, they’re struggling to properly defend for 90 minutes and they’re struggling to get their fanbase behind a team that’s owned by a modern day slave driver and managed by the imprudently jubilant patch of hair that is Steve McClaren.
Francesco Totti’s wife of 10 years, Ilary Blasi, has revealed to an Italian weekly that the great man is preparing to announce his retirement from football after 24 illustrious seasons with A.S. Roma.
Goddammit.
With Totti turning 40 next year, and having been sidelined by injuries throughout much of 2015, Blasi is quoted as saying, "...right now he is desiring something else."
So far this season, Liverpool FC have dominated Manchester City at Manchester City, done the same thing to Chelsea, been the first team to hold Leicester City scoreless, gone to penalties with a fourth division team, lost twice to West Ham, beat Southampton 6-1 and lost to Newcastle at home.
In short, Liverpool's season makes no sense. At least, that's what we thought. And then we found this video of Martin Skrtel wearing a mechanical turkey hat. And everything made sense.
Andy Yiadom must have, like, had a fight with his girl or something right before this game. That's the only thing we can think of to explain the level of confusion and misplaced rage demonstrated in this video.
Either that or he was on hold with Comcast.
The video starts out so normally, with Yiadom just standing there in the wall like a good boy. But then a Northampton Town player runs forward and then Yiadom runs forward and then AAAARRRRGGGHHHH ANGER AND RAGE.
Most of the time when you see a team bearing down on goal like Legia Warsaw is about to do in this next video, you expect to be thrilled. The speed of play involved pushes players to their absolute limits. Success is a matter of passing with pinpoint accuracy, maintaining composure, and knowing when to finish. Anything less results in a wasted opportunity.