The season is ongoing, but everyone is acutely aware of one coaching position that will be free at the end of the current campaign. It’s been almost a month since Barcelona manager, Luis Enrique, announced that he will not renew his contract that expires this season.
Celtic are a club full of technicians, beautiful human beings with excellent character. They have the perfect manager to lead them: Brendan Rodgers. The Northern Irishman is going to be leading them for a good while longer, as the club has announced signing the former Liverpool and Swansea manager to a four-year contract extension.
In his first year as Celtic manager, Rodgers has already won the league with games to spare without losing a match, and gone to the Champions League group stage.
Soccer fans know that the outcome of a match doesn’t always reflect what transpired on the pitch. Talking heads have long debated whether a team was lucky to win or unlucky to lose, often with little substantial proof to argue against the scoreboard. The expected goals statistic (xG) has changed that, equipping soccer enthusiasts with a metric for “what should've happened.”
I don't know what Luke Shaw did to Jose Mourinho to make the Special One so angry at him, but it must have been really bad.
Here's what Mourinho said about the young defender earlier this week:
“It’s difficult for Shaw to be on the bench because I cannot compare him with Ashley Young, with Darmian, with Blind. I cannot compare the way he trains, the way he way he commits, the focus, the ambition. I cannot compare. He is a long way behind.”
Independent of this weekend's Arsenal Fan TV fireworks (or perhaps not, that would be fun), someone brought a "Wenger Out" sign to Wrestlemania.
You know what this means: soccer has finally made it in America! Woo!
A 'Wenger out' sign at #Wrestlemania - Credit to Arsene, in his worst Arsenal season he's become a global phenomenon pic.twitter.com/wpre01mNgg
As a player and manager, former Celtic midfielder, captain and coach Neil Lennon has always worn his heart on his sleeve.
Now working as the bench boss for Edinburgh’s Hibernian, which plays in the Scottish Championship (second division) — for the moment anyway — the Irishman’s, uh, enthusiasm seems to have once again gotten the better of him.
Jose Mourinho accidentally let slip a lack of knowledge concerning pop culture and heists while talking about the possibility of Manchester United signing Neymar. I'll explain.
Mourinho's quote, from ESPNFC:
Former Real Madrid captain Raul Gonzalez Blanco, known as Raul, looks to have outraged Los Blancos supporters once again after an interview with Catalan-based newspaper Sport. When asked if he could see himself working for any club other than Madrid, including Barcelona, his response was “I like to take things step by step. The first thing is to go back home, which is to Real Madrid, when the moment is right.