One look at the Bundesliga table — with Borussia Mönchengladbach currently on top — tells you that it’s been a wild season so far in Germany. But that adjective doesn’t come close to describing the scenes that unfolded at the end of today’s match between SC Freiburg and Eintracht Frankfurt at the Schwarzwald-Stadion.
Swaths of empty seats around the Camp Nou on Tuesday for Slavia Prague's visit in the Champions League reflected the current malaise surrounding Barcelona, one amplified by this past weekend’s 3-1 defeat to Levante in LaLiga. That match both increased the pressure on manager Ernesto Valverde and condemned Luis Suárez to a three-week spell on the sidelines with a new calf injury.
Granada is top of the LaLiga table. No, not the country. Granada CF, the football team from Granada, Spain. The same Granada that appointed Tony Adams in 2017 and was relegated.
Under the leadership of first-year American manager Jesse Marsch, RB Salzburg is running riot at the top of the Austrian Bundesliga. The club is undefeated after nine matches with eight wins, one draw and a goal difference of +31. They’re also through to the Round of 16 in the Austrian Cup, but it’s the club’s early performances in the Champions League that've made Europe take notice.
Things are heating up in the Champions League (read: Real Madrid bottom of Group A) and there’s no surer sign of the increase in dramatics than managers getting booked. In a first for the Champions League, coaches can now be on the receiving end of both yellow and red cards from the match official, and although Match Day 1 of the competition came and went without history being made, Match Day 2 brought the moment we’d all been waiting for.
It’s been an eventful week for building from the back. It began with Mexico’s beatdown of Gregg Berhalter’s longterm vision for the USMNT in East Rutherford, a result which led to a cry for abandoning the philosophy.
Things reached a crescendo yesterday with Arsenal — the masterful architects of their own downfall in recent times. Sokratis Papastathopoulos showed exactly why 2-0 is the most dangerous lead in football by passing the ball straight to Gerard Deulofeu in his own area.
MLS youth academy coaching is about to get a serious revamp along with a fourth iteration of the visionary partnership between MLS and the French Football Federation (FFF).
Steven Gerrard may still be managing Scottish Premiership club Rangers, but it looks as if he has his next job all but booked up. After a 2-0 defeat to Celtic before the break began, the former Liverpool midfielder managed to forget all about it and enjoy himself while kicking back on the golf course.
When it comes to touchline fashion, the game runs a pretty wide gamut from the track suits favored by the likes of Maurizio Sarri to the beloved hooded cardigan of Pep Guardiola. I believe, however, that we’re on the verge of another major transformation in managerial style — one that would require André Villas-Boas to swap his preferred trench coat for a bean-bag onesie.
Last week, one of the greatest players in University of North Carolina and USWNT history announced that she’s returning to her old stomping grounds. This time, Heather O’Reilly will be telling others to “get on the line.”
O’Reilly is joining the UNC women’s soccer team alongside Anson Dorrance as the assistant coach. Dorrance’s introduction of O’Reilly truly explained her importance to both the UNC squad and the USWNT — along with, of course, calling her out for mistakes.