I’m no Bundesliga expert. When it comes to FC Cologne, I’ve always known two things: (1) Lukas Podolski and (2) goats.
The club boasts one of the greatest crests in world football, which features the silhouette of the famed twin spires of the Cologne Cathedral and that dang ol' goat Hennes.
The Bundesliga has taken center stage this weekend, but although we’re asleep for it, we shouldn’t sleep on the K League. In the early hours of Sunday morning, Ulsan’s three-goal comeback allowed the visiting side to escape Suwon’s Big Bird Stadium with all three points.
Suwon took the lead right before halftime thanks to this sensational strike from midfielder Ko Seung-beom. Ko took possession inside his own half, nutmegged his marker, took off on a 40-yard run and — with the defenders backing off — dialed up an unstoppable drive from 25 yards out.
We knew it would be weird. We knew it would be a new normal. We knew we didn’t care.
Major European football returned from a two-month hiatus as the Bundesliga kicked off with six matches on Saturday, none bigger than the Revierderby between Ruhr rivals Borussia Dortmund and Schalke.
Dortmund, without its menacing Yellow Wall behind it, throttled Schalke 4-0, instituting its own form of social distancing on the scoreboard.
The latest news from the Bundesliga — which committed to a May 16 restart but has since seen the entire Dynamo Dresden squad placed in a two-week quarantine — showcases just how complicated the entire process is for returning to the pitch. But the good news is that South Korea’s K League kicked off on Friday and rolled through the weekend.
On Sunday, Gangwon defeated Seoul 3-1 and you need to see the match-winner.
When the 2006 World Cup was over, eight of The Guardian’s 12 correspondents in Germany named it the match of the tournament. That sentiment has lasted 14 years as a recent poll on FIFA’s Twitter — with nearly 45K votes cast — declared it the one game from the 2006 competition that fans wanted to rewatch most.
And all this fervent nostalgia for a match that remained 0-0 over the course of the first 118 minutes of action in Dortmund.
As the final whistle approached, it looked as if Barcelona would have to settle for a draw. The Blaugrana had led with just five minutes remaining in normal time of El Clásico, but James Rodriguez leveled the score at 2-2 for ten-man Real Madrid. Enter Lionel Messi.
Messi was coming.
For the first and only time — barring a grizzled move to Inter Miami — the greatest footballer ever was going to play competitive matches on American soil. The fact that it was the Copa América — a grand old competition summoning the specters of Zizinho, Javier Zanetti and Carlos Valderrama — made it all the more fantastic. By all rights and definitions, the tournament didn’t even belong here.
Welcome to our wall-to-wall coverage of Day 2 of the FIFA Stay and Play Cup — it's the first four matches of the Round of 16!
If you missed yesterday’s play-in round, catch up on all the action here. Wednesday was dominated by Scandinavian clubs while Marseille, Valencia, PSV and Helsinki all ate it.
Day 1 of the FIFA Stay and Play Cup is in the books, and while at times it was just ridiculous (an 8-2 scoreline, Twitch host Jimmy Conrad disappearing, people forgetting to unmute their mics), it was an entirely welcome and enjoyable afternoon after over a month of sporting radio silence and the total absence of communal events (competitive toilet paper hoarding aside).
Anfield erupted as Ilkay Gündoğan's free kick flew wide and the final whistle blew. The Liverpool faithful had witnessed some remarkable European nights at their home ground, but perhaps none as exhilarating as this one.
The Reds had just completed a miraculous turnaround to claim a 4-3 victory over Jürgen Klopp's former team Borussia Dortmund to advance to the Europa League semifinals, 5-4 on aggregate. Before last year's famous Champions League victory over Barcelona, this game had a strong claim as Anfield's greatest European comeback.