Paris Saint-Germain striker Kylian Mbappé could start Tuesday's Champions League semifinal against RB Leipzig, as the French club target their first appearance in a Champions League final.
Mbappé came off the bench for the last half hour against Atalanta last week to set up the winning goal, and Thomas Tuchel told a news conference the France World Cup winner had suffered no reaction to his injured ankle.
Atlético Madrid's fears of further disruption to their trip to the Champions League 'Final Eight' tournament in Lisbon have been eased after the rest of the squad tested negative for COVID-19, following two positives the previous day.
The club's morning training session was postponed due to the positive cases and their plans to travel to Lison were put on hold, but the club said in a statement they would have one final session before flying out on Tuesday, a day later than planned.
Barcelona’s 3-1 victory over Napoli on Saturday was a throwback to Barça’s more controlled days with Ivan Rakitić deputizing smartly for the suspended Sergio Busquets and Frenkie de Jong going from strength to strength in midfield.
Napoli couldn’t get close to the 23-year-old Dutch maestro, who hardly put a foot wrong while completing 94% of his passes in the attacking third and going three-for-three in take-ons. He also had a would-be assist contemptuously chalked off after the ball grazed Lionel Messi’s upper arm.
Chelsea winger Christian Pulisic, widely considered the United States' top soccer export, is expected to miss six weeks with a right hamstring injury that could extend until the start of the next Premier League season.
The Hershey, Penn., native, who will turn 22 next month, came away with his injury during Chelsea's 2-1 FA Cup final loss to Arsenal. Pulisic scored his team's lone goal in the first half.
Last night, Club Tijuana and Tigres played to a scoreless draw at Estadio Caliente in a match that included six yellow cards and 39 fouls. Our friends over at the always excellent FMF State of Mind blog said the game “devolved into a series of fouls that choked off any momentum” and included “long stretches of the teams mauling one another.”
Aberdeen's Scottish Premiership match away to St Johnstone on Saturday has been postponed after two of the club's players tested positive for COVID-19 and six more are self-isolating.
On Thursday, Aberdeen issued a statement saying the match would go ahead as planned but following a meeting on Friday between Scotland's Minister for Public Health, the Scottish FA and Scottish Professional Football League, the matter has been taken out of their hands.
We all know the ancient tradition of clubs retiring jersey numbers to honor the player who wore it. Most of the time a retired jersey number means the player was a club legend who served for many years, or maybe that player passed away too soon or some other extenuating circumstance.
Of course there are always exceptions to that rule, and in the exceptions lie the weirdest reasons for retired soccer numbers.
Chelsea manager Frank Lampard says starting the new Premier League season on Sept. 12 is too early and his players run the risk of sustaining injuries given the short turnaround between campaigns.
Chelsea trail Bayern Munich 3-0 heading into the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on Saturday and even if they fail to overcome the deficit Lampard's side will have little over a month to recover before the new season begins.
In Neymar ($255 million) and Kylian Mbappé ($150 million) Paris Saint-Germain boasts the two most expensive footballers ever. By the time Neymar arrived in the summer of 2017 the club had already established itself as the best in France by winning four of the last five Ligue 1 titles and back-to-back Coupe de Frances.
What Neymar and Mbappé were lavishly acquired for was to take the next step in Europe, where PSG had suffered four straight quarterfinal defeats before La Remontada — that infamous Round of 16 loss to a Neymar-inspired Barcelona.
On Wednesday, Kylian Mbappé was announced as the FIFA 21 cover boy. On Friday, Kylian Mbappé’s entire 2021 was put in jeopardy early in the first French football match since the Covid-19 shutdown.