Ronaldinho could’ve been sent off hundreds of times in his career for unsporting behavior. Blessed with otherworldly control and technique, the Brazilian would frequently contort the rules of the game for his own benefit. It wasn’t fair, nobody else could or can do it now, but he got away with it because he was a god. As we all know, life has two great questions: 1.) Is there a heaven? 2.) How did Ronaldinho get this good?
When you limit your playing career to Manchester United, Real Madrid, LA Galaxy, Milan and Paris Saint-Germain (and represent the English national team for 14 years), you're inevitably going to play alongside some of the world's best players. What's more, if you're a really great passer of the ball, which David Beckham was, you're going to provide a few classy assists for that talent.
Goalkeepers, to paraphrase a popular saying, are insane. It’s the forwards that get the glory, and it’s more often than not the goalkeepers that have to shoulder the blame. It’s a thankless, lonely task that hardly ever favors the man or woman between the sticks. However, these individuals have dazzled with their ability to keep the opposing team off the scoreboard. These are the goalkeepers with the most clean sheets in different respective competitions.
Own goals: the bane of any defender’s existence, the joy of everyone else’s. When that ball is swung into the commentator’s corridor of uncertainty, you can’t blame a defender for sticking out a leg and burying the ball into the back of his own net…but yes you can.
Here are some various records for own goals, their infamous scorers and other riotous events that are worth reading about.
From The Simpsons to Charlie Brown and Shrek to Tarzan, we've compiled a list of footballers who may or may not have been the insipriation behind these characters. Take a look at the 11 footballers who most look like cartoon characters.
The comparison will always be between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. We’ve all accepted that, we all read endless articles about it — content to feed the beast that compares and contrasts two players that are hugely different in almost every area besides their unparalleled success and unmatched statistics.
As I followed the fortunes of both Arsenal and the New York Knicks this season, I realized I had seen this movie before. The two organizations struggled through campaigns that mirrored each other. Fans of each team have experienced similar trauma over the past decade and the similarities became uncanny this year.
Here at The18, we love soccer science. We've even designated a series of videos to soccer science experiments, featuring our very own PhD in soccer science. At least, he tells us he holds that degree from an accredited university. The office of admissions at Johnny Hopkins hasn't answered our calls requesting a transcript.
We're not in Kansas anymore. Although, from the looks of it, the dust devil that carried away a soccer goal in Lillehammer, Norway might rival a twister in Lawrence, Kansas.
Not that the citizens of Lillehammer seem all that frightened by the dust devil that whirls through the parking lot of a sports facility and then interrupts a soccer match.
In fact, in Norway this type of occurance is known as a "Værfenomen" – literally, weather phenomenon – and the logical thing to do as soon as you spot one is to giggle and jump directly into its path.