Spain

You can take Cristiano Ronaldo out of LaLiga, but you can’t take out the brilliant symmetry that’s conjoined the fortunes of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi since the day they were born. Days after Ronaldo saw red in the UCL, Messi’s Barcelona will have felt hard done by a red issued to defender Clement Lenglet — this one coming after the referee had gone to the monitor on the advice of the VAR (something still missing from the UCL).

History was made on Sunday. The first transgender soccer player in Spain made her debut for Las Rozas CF in the women’s third division. 

She scored a goal, too.

Alba Palacios, 33, had played hundreds if not thousands of matches before Sunday’s landmark match. But this recent one was special for her and the transgender community.

Real Madrid beat Roma 3-0 at home on Wednesday and we are all talking about Modric’s assist to Bale, Isco’s brilliant free kick, Mariano’s delightful goal and the team’s changes in playing style now that CR7 left, but what we are not talking about, is that Sergio Ramos got a yellow card, giving him the most Champions League yellow cards in the history of the competition, now one past the 36 yellow cards Paul Scholes accumulated in his career with Manchester United.

A blockbuster Champions League encounter between Italian champions Juventus and Valencia — fourth place finishers in LaLiga — descended into farce when Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off 29 minutes into his UCL debut with the Old Lady. 

Ronaldo had been active and involved throughout the early proceedings, and Juventus really should’ve taken the lead through either Mario Mandzukic or Sami Khedira, but both put close range shots over the bar in the game’s opening period.

Wednesday featured the first Champions League matches for both Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid since the two parted ways over the summer. Ronaldo, now with Juventus, was sent off after 29 minutes. Real Madrid, with a Welsh winger leading the line, scored a 3-0 win thanks to a brilliant Gareth Bale goal vs Roma. 

Cristiano Ronaldo’s Champions League debut with Juventus lasted all of 29 minutes at Valencia’s Mestalla stadium. With Juventus in possession of the ball out wide in Valencia’s third, Ronaldo made a run into the box before play was stopped with both Valencia and Juventus players remonstrating and gesticulating wildly. 

After a short break, German referee Felix Brych consulted the official behind the goal, and he looked adamant that Ronaldo deserved to be sent off for his actions. Brych duly obliged while Ronaldo went hysterical.  

You could sense it was coming. 

PSV Eindhoven had threatened Barcelona on the other end a couple times in the opening 30 minutes of the first Champions League match of the group stage, but when Lionel Messi lined up behind the ball after a hard foul on Ousmane Dembélé just outside the box, there was only ever going to be one outcome.

Lionel Messi scored the first goal of the Champions League group stage with a stunningly perfect free kick, curled into the top-right corner of the net to give Barça a lead in the 31st minute on Tuesday in Barcelona.

One day after it was revealed that FC Barcelona and Girona FC had submitted formal proposals to move their LaLiga match from Estadi Montilivi to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami in accordance with a 15-year marketing agreement between Spain’s top division and Relevant Sports,