Manchester City

Things did not go well on Manchester City’s visit to the San Siro to face Atalanta on Wednesday. But they could’ve been a lot worse if not for Kyle Walker.

Walker, a right back by trade, played the final 10 minutes in goal for City, which held on for a 1-1 draw and inch closer to the Champions League knockout rounds.

And Walker looked pretty decent in goal, becoming the first English keeper to make a save in the Champions League since 2016. 

After being booked for diving in the first half, Sadio Mané sparked Liverpool to a yet another dramatic, come-from-behind victory. The Liverpool winger set up the equalizer and scored the winner in the closing minutes of a 2-1 win over Aston Villa on Saturday at Villa Park.

Almost immediately after, he was being attacked for diving by the manager — of next week’s match.

There were not, admittedly, many great matchups in Tuesday’s Champions League slate. All the big clubs played opponents they were expected to beat, and while some struggled to claim all three points, most came away with easy victories. 

Two of the most emphatic victories came from PSG (5-0 over Club Brugge) and Manchester City (5-1 over Atalanta). Their star men both recorded stunning hat tricks.

On Monday, France Football (over the course of five ridiculous hours) released its 30-man shortlist for the 2019 Ballon d’Or prize, as well as a 20-player shortlist for the Ballon d'Or Féminin. Last year, Luka Modrić broke Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi’s combined 10-year stranglehold on the game’s most prestigious individual award, but Messi is again the favorite this year after leading Barcelona to the Spanish league title while capturing his sixth European Golden Shoe.

Things are heating up in the Champions League (read: Real Madrid bottom of Group A) and there’s no surer sign of the increase in dramatics than managers getting booked. In a first for the Champions League, coaches can now be on the receiving end of both yellow and red cards from the match official, and although Match Day 1 of the competition came and went without history being made, Match Day 2 brought the moment we’d all been waiting for.

Manchester City star Bernardo Silva has been the subject of controversy after tweeting an adolescent photo of teammate Benjamin Mendy alongside the logo of Conguitos, a Spanish candy. The logo is a candy mascot with blatantly racist caricatures.

The tweet said “Guess who?” along with some emojis.

The Football Association are looking into this tweet posted by Bernardo Silva earlier today...

We all knew it was coming.

After Norwich City upset Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City last week, there was never any doubt Watford would be on the end of a spanking at the Etihad on Saturday.

But this was all a bit much.

According to the Independent, the first major signing for David Beckham’s Inter Miami will be Manchester City midfield maestro David Silva.

It’s been an eventful week for building from the back. It began with Mexico’s beatdown of Gregg Berhalter’s longterm vision for the USMNT in East Rutherford, a result which led to a cry for abandoning the philosophy.

Things reached a crescendo yesterday with Arsenal — the masterful architects of their own downfall in recent times. Sokratis Papastathopoulos showed exactly why 2-0 is the most dangerous lead in football by passing the ball straight to Gerard Deulofeu in his own area.