There are two arenas in which professional sports teams succeed: on the field and on social media. As Southampton showed earlier this season, it's possible to win online even after losing on the pitch. A master class Club Brugge tweet at Manchester United ahead of the two sides’ Europa League Round of 32 first leg bout once again showed the power of Twitter.
Jesse Marsch's RB Salzburg entered its Europa League Round of 32 first leg against Eintracht Frankfurt looking to rebound from a loss against LASK this past weekend which cost Salzburg first place in the Austrian Bundesliga. Frankfurt came into the game having won four of its last six games, most recently putting five goals past Augsburg. Only Bayern Munich has racked up more points than Frankfurt since the Bundesliga's winter break.
In terms of a 1-0 scoreline, there’s no greater beatdown than the one RB Leipzig just administered to Tottenham in London on Wednesday. The difference on the scoreboard was Timo Werner’s 58th-minute penalty, but the difference on the pitch was an incredible gulf in tempo, build-up play and variation in attack.
It’s a confirmation of what everyone has come to understand over the past decade, but Miguel Delaney’s article in The Independent on Wednesday — entitled “How football became broken beyond repair” — is a sobering bit of realism that effectively illustrates how stale, predictable, undemocratic and hyper-capitalist the modern game has become.
Next week Europe’s most anticipated annual tournament — the Champions League — begins the Round of 16 knockout stage. For the first time in the tournament’s history the last 16 only consists of clubs from Europe’s “Big Five” (England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France).
Real Madrid and the Copa Del Rey simply don’t mesh well. On Thursday, the Spanish giants were knocked out of the tournament in the quarterfinals at the hands of Real Sociedad. The loss also ended a 21-game unbeaten streak for Los Blancos.
In the most ironic fashion, Real Madrid loanee Martin Odegaard opened up the scoring for Sociedad midway through the first half. Alexander Isak thought he doubled the lead in the 49th minute but his goal was disallowed. No worries though as Isak would get his goal just five minutes later, and it was a fabulous volley at that.
For a club that’s won the FA Cup six times and made it to the final on 13 occasions (only Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal have more final appearances), Newcastle’s abysmal recent record in the competition is astounding.
Heading into Tuesday’s Fourth Round replay with third-tier Oxford United, Newcastle hadn’t advanced to the Fifth Round (the Round of 16) in 14 years — that’s despite the club being a Premier League side in each corresponding year apart from two.
After a disastrous loss to Panama back on Oct. 7, 2018 prematurely ended Mexico’s quest for a third straight World Cup appearance, La Tri approached Wednesday’s encounter with Jamaica knowing that a similar result would likely end their dreams of earning a berth at the Summer Olympics for the first time since 2004.
Parody in European football is a rarity. Typically, in domestic leagues there are several clubs that dominate the table and even fewer that are traditionally crowned champions. As of right now, Europe’s top five leagues consist of 98 teams. In the past decade those leagues have crowned 15 different champions. No one league has had more than four unique champions.
However, Turkish Super Lig club Sivasspor is on a historic run for its first-ever league title.