Spain

It’s the question that has plagued Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane throughout his time in charge of the club: What’s the deal with James Rodriguez? Does the French coach even rate the Colombian playmaker?

Following a season in which James only appeared in 26 La Liga games for the club, his lowest total since arriving in 2014, would James be shown the door this summer? The player has continued to excel for Colombia on international duty, where he's the focal point of the attack, but he's taken a back seat in Zidane's preferred 4-3-3 formation at Real. 

Like a character from a Leo Tolstoy novel, Alex Song is off to the Republic of Tatarstan — a former Barcelona nobleman whose links with high society have been severed.

Alex Song’s career has taken in the sights of beautiful Barcelona, Spain and both West and East London with Arsenal and West Ham United, but the 28-year-old is about to embark on his greatest adventure yet. 

The former Cameroon midfielder has accounted for €23 million worth of transfer fees throughout his career, but his latest move will cost Russian club Rubin Kazan nothing. 

105,826 crowded into Michigan Stadium, better known as “The Big House”, to get a glimpse of Real Madrid and Chelsea stars like Marcelo, Oscar, Eden Hazard and James Rodriguez. At the end of they day, they were all talking about Real Madrid’s 22-year-old Dominican forward Mariano Diaz Mejia, simply known as Mariano.

Marcelo put in a man of the match performance, and Eden Hazard scored two wonderful late goals for the Blues, but Mariano’s goal was absolutely world-class.

Barcelona used some rather unorthodox training methods ahead of their game against Celtic in Dublin Saturday. 

The team walked out onto the pitch at St. George's Park expecting maybe some shooting drills or perhaps a little El Rondo action, only to greeted by the sight of a dozen human bubble suits. 

That's right folks. The secret to Barcelona's success is intensive rounds of bubble football. 

Neymar loves to party. He might even love it more than J.R. Smith does. There’s nothing wrong with that, the guy’s 24 years old. 

The Barcelona superstar has been living it up during his time off. He was not playing during the Copa America because the Brazilian Football Confederation preferred that he played in the Rio Olympics, but that didn’t stop him from watching a Brazil Copa match with Justin Bieber, Lewis Hamilton, and Jamie Foxx.

The story arcs that football provides us with are both fascinating and absurd. Who could’ve guessed that, come 2016, Brad Guzan would be doing battle with Victor Valdes to be named the starting goalkeeper for Middlesbrough?

Guzan, the 31-year-old Illinois native with 50 USA appearances to his name, is expected to join the newly promoted Premier League club on a free transfer following Aston Villa’s relegation. 

It's the offseason, which means the soccer news cycle is dominated by unsubstantiated transfer rumors and pictures of players on boats. As little as most people care about how everyone's vacation is going, we feel compelled to report it anyway because we're a soccer website and our rent isn't going to pay itself. That's why we're going to tell you about Cristiano Ronaldo going to a Jennifer Lopez concert.

Yes, Ronaldo went to a Jennifer Lopez concert in Las Vegas. Kim Kardashian was there too. And Calvin Harris.

You may remember that we previously wrote about CD Deportivo Leganes and their rather bizarre scratch-and-sniff kit. Now, you're probably thinking that it couldn't get any weirder than that. We have something to show you. 

See, for whatever reason, Spanish lower-league clubs seem to be in some sort of intense competition over who can make the most eye-punishing travesty of a kit. We've made fun of plenty of kits over the years, from all across the world. But the Spanish, well, they're just on another level.