Last year, on February 28, Louis van Gaal became a meme. It was bound to happen eventually. This is a man who once exposed himself to his Bayern Munich squad in the dressing room to make some kind of point no one understood, once booped a camera and once did whatever this is.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s quest to win trophies for Manchester United is being realized with stunning proficiency. After scoring late for Man United in their FA Community Shield victory over Leicester City to mark his Red Devil Wembley debut, Zlatan has continued his act by scoring twice, including an 87th minute winner, to lift United over Southampton in the EFL Cup final, 3-2.
Barcelona climbed to the top of the La Liga table (at least until Real Madrid play Villarreal later today) after defeating fierce rivals Atletico Madrid at the Vicente Calderon, 2-1.
Rafinha opened the scoring for Barca in the 64th minute with a goal that probably took a couple of years off Diego Simeone’s life.
For better or for worse, Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has taken every competition seriously this campaign. You could say for better because it’s resulted in United reaching the EFL Cup final, the FA Cup quarterfinals and the Europa League round of 16.
You could say for worse because with the Red Devils holding a 3-0 advantage over Saint-Etienne in the Europa League, Mourinho elected to field a strong side in the second leg, resulting in injuries that will rule both Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Michael Carrick out of Sunday’s EFL Cup final.
The world’s most popular sport is made up of more than just talent. These footballers have proven to us that they have swag on the field as well as off it. These 15 players ditched the athletic wear and replaced it with a whole bunch of style. Their sweaters, shades and shoes are giving us some serious style goals. Take a look at the most stylish footballers on Instagram.
Porto are nearly unbeatable at home, but not when Alex Telles gets a red card, which he did, earning two yellows in the span of 74 seconds against Juventus Wednesday.
After Telles was sent off in the 27th minute, Porto scrapped and clawed, but in the end the collective talents of Juventus were simply too much for the Portuguese side.
Valencia pounced on Real Madrid with two goals in the first eight minutes Wednesday, and held on to win 2-1, which was certainly the thing that everyone expected to happen in this match. Yup.
A brilliant goal from Simone Zaza was followed by a counterattack goal from Fabian Orellana. Cristiano Ronaldo pulled one back for Madrid just before halftime, but it was too little, too late.
In direct defiance of former Manchester United hard man Roy Keane, Paul and Florentin Pogba again displayed feelings of brotherly love on the soccer pitch Wednesday: giving dap, exchanging jerseys, strolling around the pitch postgame, applauding everyone and refraining from threatening to murder each other and calling each other
As a flashy rich person, Cristiano Ronaldo obviously owns a lot of cool cars, but there is no car cooler than the Bugatti Veyron. The Veyron is the second-fastest street-legal car in the world and is capable of killing a driver who isn't careful in an instant. It's also, at a cool $1.5 million, so expensive urchin sportswriters like me aren't even allowed to look at it in person.
But that's why we have Cristiano Ronaldo, who has no problem buying such a car and showing it to his legions of adoring fans via social media.