So, a match in an Argentinian tournament called the Copa Ciudad de Plata made it to the 93rd minute without incident. And then there was an incident. A flying karate kick incident.
The kicker is Alvaro Pereira, who has played a not-unimportant role for the Uruguayan National Team over the years and had an excellent 2014 World Cup. Here, though, he shows us that he's adept at kicking things other than soccer balls.
Have you ever heard the one about the fan who shot a ball mid-air – with a gun – in order to stop if from going into the net? No? Because neither had we until we strolled onto The Guardian’s soccer page.
The story is absolutely ridiculous, and apparently the quest to find it started off with a vague memory, some drinking, and a search on the Internet. Which is as good a way to start something as there is today.
Well this isn’t going to help stop any rumor mills.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale have been painted as rival teammates who don’t get along ever since Bale arrived at Madrid in the summer of 2013.
It makes sense, considering they are superstars in a team defined by its image that has been shaped around Ronaldo for the past 5 years. Gareth Bale is younger than Ronaldo, incredibly talented, and a British star. All of which make Bale a threat to knock Ronaldo off his perch as the alpha of Madrid.
Yaya Touré blasted the African confederation for not awarding him the African Player of the Year award, the Ivory Coast starlet finishing second to Gabon and Borussia Dortmund striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
In a startling outburst, Touré reportedly labelled the decision as “pathetic”, “indecent” and one that “brings shame” to Africa.
You know you are a good team when your opponents have to resort to stomping on your best player and saying horrifically offensive things to you. Luckily for world-beating Barcelona, its opponent in this case received two red cards for its actions, although you could argue it should have been more.
Most of the time when you see a team bearing down on goal like Legia Warsaw is about to do in this next video, you expect to be thrilled. The speed of play involved pushes players to their absolute limits. Success is a matter of passing with pinpoint accuracy, maintaining composure, and knowing when to finish. Anything less results in a wasted opportunity.
As fans of soccer, we appreciate the theater, drama and storylines that call us to develop personal opinions. The game is as much about heroes and tribes as it is about common enemies and villains. There are some things we all love to hate. If you can’t admit that, well, you’re just afraid of your own primal instincts.
In the past, we've covered violence in football. Take, for instance, this planned brawl between hooligans in Russia which takes place before every Spartak v. Dynamo match. Or this instance when Saliou Ciss transformed into the Incredible Hulk after being sent off.
England is known for it’s rough-and-tumble, all-action playing style. The Premier League is no stranger, for better or for worse, to crunching tackles and fierce 50/50 challenges.
While officials in the EPL have been working to cutdown on the horror tackles, from behind and/or with the studs showing, that result in terrible injuries, there’s no denying that soccer is an inherently physical game and will remain so for the forseeable future.
Arnold Fabián Peralta Sosa and his wife were out buying baby clothes for their three-month-old daughter in his home town of La Ceiba, Honduras. While the details of the case are still to be resolved, Peralta was subsequently shot dead, having suffered numerous cranial injuries, in the parking lot outside the shopping mall.