Humor

Sweden National Team manager Janne Andersson would like all of you to know that there is NO WAY Sweden's all-time goalscorer and all-around entertainment generator Zlatan Ibrahimovic is going to play for Sweden at the World Cup, which they just qualified for, much to the chagrin of Italy. So just get that out of your heads. Zlatan, the man who once said "a World Cup without me is nothing to watch" is not going to play in the World Cup. He is retired from international football and currently rehabbing an awful knee injury. IT IS NOT HAPPENING.

Patrice Evra has a lot of downtime now that he's not playing soccer professionally for anyone. Evra was released by Marseille after assaulting a fan prior to a Europa League contest. He was also handed a ban from European continental competitions.

During pre-season in 2015, Real Madrid and AC Milan played a friendly and Milan striker Alessandro Matri made a substitute appearance. Sort of.

What a performance from Matri against Real Madrid today. pic.twitter.com/W5fTiHyD0i

— Football Tweets (@FutballTweets) July 30, 2015

What's that, in the distance? The wind has shifted. Something smells different. There's a barely perceptible hum in the air. Yes, just barely perceptible, but it's there, no doubt about it. We can feel it in our bones. Something is on the horizon, something big. Something beyond our wildest imaginations.

Tuesday marked the beginning of a new era, with Twitter doubling the character count for most Western-language users. (Japanese, Korean and Chinese users will stay at 140 because their languages convey more per character.) There were countless bad jokes across the globe as everyone felt compelled to tweet about the fact they had something that everyone else had. 

(mandatory musical accompaniment to this post)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get down to that soccer field in the silliest way imaginable. You must draw as much attention to yourself as possible. Be noticed by everyone. Make sure you do not do anything that a normal human would do. Do what a bored teenager would do in this situation. Avant garde stadium entering.

Good luck.

Patience is a virtue. Good things come to those who wait. These are two pieces of generally-accepted wisdom that in most situations can improve peoples' lives. 

However, these two pieces of wisdom are not always adhered to because I WANT THAT THING AND I WANT IT RIGHT NOW. NOW NOW NOW.

Usually, upon reflection, a person who ignores the wisdom of waiting in order to TRY AND GET A THING RIGHT NOW is proved to have been foolish, and that person wishes they had been patient. This goalkeeper in the Qatari League Cup is one of those people.

Soccer is the beautiful game and the most popular sport in the world. We know you like it because you’re reading about it right now. But there’s one thing missing from soccer that is ever present in most team sports: a clock counting down to the end of a match. 

Surely you have already heard about Jozy Altidore and Sacha Kljestan's, uh, "incident" Sunday in the MLS Cup playoffs, in which both players were sent off at halftime for fighting in the tunnel, but DID YOU SEE THE TWEET?