Videos

A wise old sage once quipped that football is a gentleman’s game played by thugs, and The18 would certainly concur. We’ve witnessed some pretty atrocious behaviour on a football field in our time: Eric Cantona Kung-Fu kicking a supporter, for example, or “teammates” Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer fighting mid-match. Or Diana Ross…

OK, Arsene Wenger has seen a veritable avalanche of fan backlash this season. After year-after-year of 4th place finishes, Gooners everywhere were hoping that this season would be the first since Theirry Henry graced the side that Arsenal would string together an entire campaign of consistency. No more half seasons of mediocrity followed by title winning form. No more star players forcing their way out to Barcelona or Manchester United. No more.

It’s all in the genes. Neymar Jr took an Instagram video of his father, Neymar Sr, playing keepy up while he is sitting down. 

For us not very talented soccer players, you know keeping a solid juggle going for a while is difficult. But have you tried it sitting down? Well, Neymar Sr has no problem at all managing that task. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. His son has scored 14 goals in 18 games this year for La Liga side Barcelona and scored 15 goals in 13 games for Brazil in 2014. 

A persons FIFA skills can be a sensitive topic. Most people believe that they are untouchable when gaming on "the sticks." And most FIFA gamers can vouch that there has been a time where a game of FIFA not only resulted in an argument, but a full fledged bitterness towards the person you’re playing. Or even a broken TV.

Being a professional athlete allows you to do some pretty awesome things. Red Bull athlete  and Barcelona superstar Neymar got the opportunity to co-pilot a rally car around the hill of Montserrat in Barcelona with World Rally Champion Sébastien Ogier. 

For those who don’t play soccer but have played FIFA, you know about all the little training exercises that clubs use to brush up on their skills. Well, Portuguese club Benfica have introduced a new state-of-the-art technological training room that blurs the lines between video games and reality. 

This video is going to be the best 12 minutes of your day. The Premier League is touted as the best league in the world, and this video makes it hard to disagree with that. The quality of goals throughout this video is astounding. 

This compilation has it all: volleys, bicycle kicks, solo runs, chip shots, thunderbastards...we could go on, but that would take away from the sheer surprise that some of these goals elicit. 

You may be thinking to yourself, they couldn’t possible have 12 minutes of amazing goals, could they? Well yes. Yes they could. 

This is one of the more unfortunate things we have ever seen and, trust us, we have seen a lot. Of all the soft red cards we have seen, this might just take the cake. After being subbed on during a restart after a goal, the poor chap in blue picked the wrong player to swing his arms in the general vicinity of:

A turtle and a dog enjoy a friendly game of soccer until the turtle turns into Luis Suarez — with the dog as Chiellini.