They came, they saw, they conquered. That’s the American plan for FC Barcelona and club president Josep Maria Bartomeu following the opening of a Barca office in New York on Tuesday.
The Empire State Building projected the Blaugrana colors, Ronaldinho completed the ribbon-cutting ceremony with a signature no-look pass into a mini-goal and the Barcelona flag was hoisted outside Barca’s new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
It's been ten years since Cristiano Ronaldo first flirted with the prospect of leaving Manchester United for Real Madrid. We all know he wound up making the switch to the Santiago Bernabeu during the summer of 2009, but Ronaldo’s three extra years at United helped him become the Herculean figure he is today.
Ronaldo's initial itch to leave United stemmed from fear — a fear of backlash from the whole of England after his perceived role in Wayne Rooney's sending off during a 2006 World Cup quarterfinal.
The 2016 summer transfer window is officially closed. There have been many exciting transfers as well as some truly terrible, overpriced ones. We're only a few weeks into the new season so we don’t know for sure how these transfers are going to work out, but we've come up with a list of 10 transfers which we anticipate will prove worthless.
#10: Maarten Stekelenburg | Fulham to Everton
“I uh…I eat a lot of frozen stuff…It’s usually pretty bad, I mean the pictures are always so awesome, you know? It’s like ‘Hell yeah, I’m starved for this lasagna!’ and then you nuke it and the cheese gets all scabby on top and it’s like…it’s like you’re eating a scab…I mean, seriously, what’s that about? It’s like ‘Yo! What ever happened to truth in advertising?’ You know?” -Jesse Pinkman
This quote from Aaron Paul’s Breaking Bad character could effectively be applied to Paul’s own PokerStars Duel face-off against footballing superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.
Gareth Bale has already scored over 120 goals in a career that includes appearances for Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur and Real Madrid. The 27-year-old has a knack for scoring sensational goals combining his freakish pace, outstanding technique and sheer determination. Here are the top three goals of his career so far.
When most people think of FC Barcelona, they think of titles and success across Europe. One thing nobody likely associates with them is relegation. Indeed, they have never been relegated from the Spanish top flight. However, that almost changed back in 2002-03 when Louis van Gaal led them towards La Liga relegation.
Ronaldo confirmed his status as the best young player in the world after scoring 54 goals in 57 games across all competitions for PSV Eindhoven. “The Phenomenon” wasn’t even 20 years old yet when Barcelona became interested in signing the Brazilian.
Barcelona finally landed Ronaldo by paying a then world record fee of $19.5 million, with the striker set to join the side for the 1996-97 season.
In the deliriousness following Brazil's Olympic win, Neymar has apparently gone a bit overboard and dyed his hair blonde. Apparently the entire team did this, which means that must have been some party.
Neymar with his blonde hair pic.twitter.com/ZaM3fAfPnF
— njrstats (@njrstats) August 21, 2016
Earlier this week at Barcelona practice, new signing Andre Gomes crashed his team-issued Audi SUV into the back of Luis Suarez's team-issued SUV. This doesn't strike a good way to endear yourself to your new teammates, but Europe is a weird place. Maybe Gomes was just looking for attention.
In July of 2014, FiveThirtyEight published an article entitled “Lionel Messi Is Impossible” which attempted to evaluate Messi’s goal-scoring abilities through the use of statistics and data.
One of the most ridiculous findings from all the number crunching was how much better Messi was than everybody else at shooting from distance. In fact, Messi’s efficiency from outside the box was almost as good as most other players inside of it.