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When the UEFA Champions League group draw occurs every year in August, the two biggest focuses are inevitably which group is my favorite team in and which group will be the most entertaining to follow/watch.

For a small portion of us, the most interesting section of the draw is uncovering the most obscure team that somehow made the group stage.

Usually this team comes from some tiny country in Eastern Europe, riding some sort of heavy investment toward a wave of success only for the debt to invariably catch up soon after.

On Aug. 21, teenage goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu earned a shutout for League One leader Portsmouth against Doncaster Rovers. Just 11 days later, the Manchester City loanee was making his fifth international start for the Republic of Ireland.

My Spanish is a little rusty, but here is a snippet from a conversation overheard between a few El Salvadorian fans shortly before the country's World Cup Qualifier against the USMNT on Thursday:

Guy No. 1: "OK, here's the plan: step one — get a ladder. Step two — carry the ladder into the stadium."
*Pause*
Guy No. 2: "What's step three?"
Guy No. 1: "What do you mean step three? That's the whole plan, we take the ladder and bring it into the game. That's it."

They say size doesn't matter, but with the modern men's goalkeeping landscape populated by giants like Manuel Neuer (6-4), Gianluigi Donnarumma (6-5) and Thibaut Courtois (6-7), 6-2 is almost considered the minimum height for a professional goalkeeper in the modern age.

A few players, like Yann Sommer (6-0) and Jordan Pickford (6-1) buck this trend, but it is increasingly rare to see a men's keeper under 6-0, much less one who is 5-8 or 5-9. 

An unapologetically American league, MLS has always set out to be different from European soccer competitions, and the All-Star Weekend Skills Challenge is no different.

Including such events as the most powerful shot, soccer tennis and an Olympico corner kick challenge, the skills challenge was played from 1998 until 2001 and provided a unique flavor to what can often be a dull All-Star Game.

The competition took a hiatus for nearly two decades before returning in 2019 with noticeably tamer events and even less focus on one position group in particular: goalkeepers.

YouTube soccer thumbnails are one of the greatest art forms to ever grace the internet. Nearly every soccer fan has found themself on their phone at one in the morning watching a “worst ever tackles” or “strangest EVER occurrences on the pitch” compilation.

The videos themselves are quality content, but the real treasure is the hyperbolic thumbnail that made you click on the video in the first place. You don’t remember the time the Lionel Messi got tackled by six players at once???

Here are my personal top 10 favorite YouTube soccer thumbnails.

Back in 2014, a study found that a goal scored in the Premier League was worth around $2 million in prize money. Add the exponent of your choice to that figure, and you'll likely arrive at the value of a goal in the EPL today.

Fans of the Football League Championship will likely know that Cardiff City has been the division's most lethal set piece side over the past few seasons. 

The Welsh club's 51 set piece goals since the start of the 2019/20 campaign have been by far the best in the league, which shouldn't be a surprise given that striker Kieffer Moore — who stands every bit of 6-5 — topped the team with 20 goals last year and led the league with 10.5 aerials won per match (winning 119 more aerial duels than the second place finisher).