Game Recaps

The Champions League final is set. Real Madrid beat Atletico Madrid 4-2 on aggregate. We all knew Real madrid would win. We pretended that Atletico Madrid had a chance, that they could really do this, but we were fooling ourselves.

Real Madrid is Atleti's big, mean older brother who's smart enough to give the little guy a little hope before ripping his heart out.

This time, Real allowed two early goals to bring the aggregate score to 3-2, and then Karim Benzema danced down the end line past three Atletico Madrid defenders and Isco finished the play, ending Atleti's hopes.

The race for he third and fourth places in the Premier League has been more exciting to watch than the race for first and second places this season. Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal fans alike watch nervously each weekend in hopes that their team takes home three points. Today, Arsenal traveled to St Mary's Stadium to face Southampton and earned a crucial three points.

Kylian Mbappe became the youngest player to score in the Champions League semifinals, and that's cool, but it was the olds who stole the show on Tuesday.

Dani Alves (34), Andrea Barzagli (36), Gianluigi Buffon (39), Mario Mandzukic (30), Giorgio Chiellini (32), Leonardo Bonucci (30), Sami Khedira (30), Mehdi Benatia (30) and Claudio Marchisio (31) all featured for Juventus, and they did the damn thing. Juventus' 2-1 victory (4-1 on aggregate) was decisive and ruthless and efficient.

Brad Guzan's favorite spice is nutmeg. Or maybe it's his least favorite spice, but Chelsea's favorite spice. I'm not sure which variation of the joke I'm supposed to make here. Diego Costa, Marcos Alonso and Nemaja Matic nutmegged the Middlesbrough keeper three times for three goals to move one step away from a second EPL title in three years.

Middlesbrough, meanwhile, started Monday one step away from being relegated to the Championship, and that step has been taken. Goodbye Middlesbrough.

Two of Major League Soccer’s biggest clubs threw down last night in a clash featuring the most expensive roster in the league (Toronto FC) and the third most expensive (Orlando City). Those numbers are, in large part, due to the fact that the Eastern Conference sides boast the only two players that earn above $7 million per season — Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco and Orlando’s Kaka. The two did not disappoint.

The semifinals of the Champions League returned to Monaco’s Stade Louis II for the first time since 2004, and the 18,000+ in attendance would’ve surely expected their side to add to the 16 home Champions League goals they’d already witnessed since the beginning of their campaign.

But a Juventus side that had only given up two goals in this competition, and none throughout the knockout rounds, proved to be an entirely different challenge for Monaco’s goal-crazy attackers.

For all of Real Madrid’s dominance in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal with Atletico Madrid, it looked as though Atleti would escape to the Vicente Calderon with only a one-goal deficit. But then Cristiano Ronaldo happened. And then again. 

Ronaldo scored goals number 101, 102 and 103 to extend his all time record in the Champions League, and Atletico’s inability to grab an away goal, or to really trouble Real for that matter, makes the possibility of a comeback next Wednesday seem extremely farfetched. 

It’s tragic to think about the gross output of the cast of characters in the Manchester derby when bridled with the vast sums of money spent on assembling them. The latest edition of Manchester United vs. Manchester City was a sobering affair that could serve as a harrowing documentary of the wastes of our time.

The 14-point gap separating rivals Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga was never going to be a factor here. Even the home advantage Bayern enjoyed at the Allianz Arena in this DFB-Pokal semifinal was no reason to believe that this latest version of Der Klassiker had a clear favorite.