During Real Madrid’s fairly pedestrian demolition of newly promoted Elche last Tuesday, Cristiano Ronaldo scored his second hat trick in as many games for Los Blancos. Ronaldo actually scored four goals against Elche, but, you know, he scored a hat trick along the way. Enough semantics though.
Cuauhtemoc Blanco is a soccer genius, only no one knows.
The 2013-14 campaign for Lionel Messi was a disappointment for a player of his stature. He didn't win the World Cup, the Ballon d'Or, or the Champion's League - and even winning the Golden Ball as the best player of the World Cup left many Messi fans wanting for more. These, however, are the standards that Messi's past successes have set.
It's been clear since Jürgen Klinsmann's final selection of the USMNT for Brazil 2014 - and, infamously, his exclusion of American star Landon Donovan - that he has an eye to the future. And that future is building U.S. Soccer into a powerhouse.
It may seem like Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been in the dark just because Sweden didn’t qualify for the World Cup (although we had plenty of Virtual Zlatan during ESPN's coverage of the World Cup). Ibrahimovic was a little salty after their 3-2 loss to Portugal in their World Cup play-off.
For World Cup 2014, ESPN engaged Brazilian artist and graphic designer Cristiano Siqueira to create a series of posters, one for each of the 32 nations playing in the tournament. For our money, Siqueira nailed it. We'd love to have every one of these hanging on the walls of The18 headquarters. The posters blur the line between graphic art and street art.