After a weekend in which both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi absolutely killed it, we start our week off with news that they actually killed someone. Well, not they themselves, but the idea of them; the debate of Messi vs Ronaldo killed someone.
Real Madrid absolutely demolished Celta Vigo on Saturday. Cristiano Ronaldo scored four goals as Real cruised to a comfortable 7-1 victory. Celta Vigo visited the Santiago Bernabeu near the top of the La Liga table, in sixth place and trailing Villarreal by 11 points in the race for a coveted Champions League spot.
The man who mugged Napoli forward Lorenzo Insigne this weekend had one of the more interesting requests we've heard about from a mugger (we used to be a crime reporter, so this statement is made with at least some authority).
The thief – who made off with €800 in cash, a Rolex and some jewels – had one very peculiar request for Insigne: dedicate a goal to him, the mugger, against Fiorentina on Monday.
Fantasy sports are an estimated $26 billion industry in the United States. You can be in a fantasy league for any type of sport these days, from NASCAR to golf to baseball and football and fantasy soccer.
The first sport to really embrace fantasy was baseball. In the 1980s fans would compete against one another in what are still called rotisserie leagues, and when fantasy was discovered by more sports fans, it predictably took off.
A stir was caused today by the pricing of Manchester United's away tickets for their Europa League game against Danish side FC Midtjylland, and the location of the tickets. One fan tweeted a picture of his seats. The picture seemed to show that he (and, presumably, his fellow United fans) was seated in some kind of giant cage.
Shaq has a favorite soccer team, but which one?
Could it be Liverpool, which is partly owned by Shaq's former teammate LeBron James? Or could it be the Vancouver Whitecaps, partly owned by a different former teammate, Steve Nash? Or what about AC Milan, the team favored by Lakers partner in threepeat-dom, Kobe Bryant? Actually, scratch that. It's definitely not AC Milan. Tell me how my a** tastes, AC Milan.
Valentine's day: the romance of a relationship somehow expressed over the course of one single day, or a 24-hour solo binge-fest on Haagen-Dazs’ latest fudge-brownie. Either way, it’s sure to be one of the better days of the year.
(If your date isn’t of the ice cream variety, you have some decisions to make. What do you do? Where do you eat? Do you go all out on that chocolate moat you read about in Cosmopolitan?)
The Eiffel Tower. The Arc de Triomphe. The Louvre. Notre Dame.
And soccer hooligans?
Paris is known for many things, but most visitors to the “City of Light” don’t know the local Ligue 1 soccer club — Paris-Saint Germain (PSG) — was once plagued by the same problem more often associated with teams in places like London, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Buenos Aires: hooliganism.
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.