Managers

There’s still another round of matches to play in Serie A. Sure, Juventus have won the title. Sure, they printed some pretty cringe-worthy ‘LE6END’ merchandise and plastered it everywhere. Sure, Napoli and Roma seem set in their Champions League spots. Sure, every position in the league is seemingly sorted, bar Crotone and Empoli bickering about who gets to be the third worst team. Sure, the league is pretty much done and dusted. But we still have one round of fixtures left.

The premeditated pomp and choreographed farewell that John Terry bid Chelsea supporters at Stamford Bridge on Sunday stood in stark contrast to Luis Enrique’s final match at the Camp Nou. While the feel-good factor in the southwest of London as compared to the tension-riddled atmosphere at the Camp Nou could go someway towards explaining these divergent going away parties, the real variation was really only in the respective men of honor.

Losing a World Cup final in extra time is brutal and tough to come back from. Losing a Copa America final on penalties the subsequent year is a kick to the teeth. Losing yet another Copa America final the following year, to the same team and in the same manner, is practically a kill shot to any footballer’s professional hopes and dreams.

It hasn’t exactly been rosy times for Valencia CF and their fans of late. Since qualifying for the Champions League in 2015, the club has completely gone downhill. In the last two seasons, they’ve finished mid-table in La Liga, flirted dangerously with relegation, sold their best players and have had a total of five managers: Nuno, Gary Neville, Pako Ayestaran, Cesare Prandelli and Voro. However, things may finally be changing at Valencia after three important announcements were recently made by the club.  

Since the 2014 World Cup, Karim Benzema’s output for Real Madrid in La Liga and Champions League matches reads like this: 114 matches played, 64 goals scored, 23 goals assisted. With a record of over a goal per every two matches, the 29-year-old French forward is one of the most feared in Europe.

Diego Costa's hysterical antics have been in full swing this season. From the tractor incident to funny post match interviews, the list keeps growing. During halftime of Chelsea's travels to West Brom, Costa fancied himself a nutritious snack, and Conte was informed of this after the match.

You could say it’s been an abnormal season for Cristiano Ronaldo. We’ve all gotten used to the Portuguese star playing almost every single competitive match and reaching outrageous totals of 50 or 60 goals a campaign. 

This season, however, Ronaldo has scored 37 goals across all competitions, and he’s appeared in 43 of Real Madrid’s 57 official games — a total of only 75%. This is a significant change from last season when he scored a total of 51 goals and played 48 of Real’s 52 matches — a total of 92%. 

Each narrative in the English Premier League has a nauseatingly long lifespan until it utterly annihilates itself — it’s annually cyclical, like the depiction of a serpent eating its own tail. We belabor the same statistics, the same trends and the same memes until we’ve had our fill, proceeding to damn them out of existence like a child pop star whose career of cultural martyrdom has run its course.

Diego Maradona has one of the more interesting coaching resumes we know of. Besides being a legandary footballer in his own right and managing the Argentina National Team for a spell, Maradona has managed Argentine clubs Racing Club de Avellaneda and Mandiyu de Corrientes and UAE-based Al-Wasl FC.

He's back now, with UAE second-division club Al-Fujairah SC.