The Bafétimbi Gomis celebration is one of our favorites. He gets on all fours and crawls forward, pawing his arms out like a big cat. 

It’s tough being a soccer fan, sometimes. You spend all your effort and energy trying to keep an eye on two tantalizing Champions League Round of 16 matches and then the best goal of the day is scored in a league match in France. But damn, did you see that Angel Di Maria free kick?

Last we heard from Barcelona’s Arda Turan in January, he was facing 12 years in prison for sexual harassment, assault, shooting a firearm in public and carrying a weapon without a license all stemming from an incident last year. 

This came on the heels of a 16-match ban last May for shoving a referee while on loan with İstanbul Başakşehir. 

Claudio Pizarro became the oldest Bundesliga goal scorer of all time on Saturday. He has an 18-year-old American to thank for it.

Pizarro, a 40-year-old Peruvian, has seen it all. He’s played for Bayern Munich and Chelsea and is in his fourth stint with Die Grün-Weißen. He’s even become a voice actor with a role in the German version of “Coco.”

It’s been a good week for Hungary. On Thursday, the country was included in the landmark strategy game series Civilization the first time. On Saturday, an 18-year-old kid reminded the world they can still play some football in Hungary.

Pulling off a nutmeg is exhilarating. Executing back-to-back megs is the stuff of legend. Three straight is unheard of. Four? That’s too outlandish for Hollywood. M. Night Shyamalan would slap you for even thinking something so preposterous.

But over in the Israeli Premier League, it’s just been done. The mad lad that probably deserves arresting is Maccabi Netanya’s Fatos Bećiraj. The 30-year-old Montenegrin striker redefined holdup play with this five-second display of savagery. 

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In a sequence of events that involved one man taking a ball to the face, another shanking the hell out of an overhead kick and a third connecting sweetly with a chilena of his own, we witnessed football’s most spectacular sight three times inside five seconds in the video above.

It’s not often you encounter a team with this kind of chutzpah. Usually, someone would opt for an approach other than the most notoriously advanced skill in the game, but these boys showed that anything other than a bicycle kick is simply a waste of time.

A Brazilian may age, but they never lose their touch.

Zico, one of the greatest footballers to ever play for the Seleção, played his last match as a professional 24 years ago. But at 65, he’s still got the velvety touch and incredible shot that helped him bag more than 500 goals for Flamengo and 48 more for Brazil.

Yesterday, Hoffenheim hosted Mainz in the final Bundesliga match before the winter break (the league doesn’t recommence play until the weekend of Jan. 18-20). Hoffenheim took the lead through Kerem Demirbay in the 11th minute, but Mainz equalized five minutes later via Jean-Philippe Mateta. 

In keeping with the spirit of Christmas, the match ended in a draw and the spoils were shared. However, the game's true highlight was the visiting Mainz supporters serenading the Rhein-Neckar-Arena with this lovely rendition of “Last Christmas” by English pop duo Wham!. 

Things are not well in Bilbao. Athletic, one of three clubs to have never been relegated from Spain’s top division (the others being Real Madrid and Barcelona), are mired in the drop zone of LaLiga with only 16 points from 17 matches. However, a moment of brilliant respite was briefly offered by 37-year-old striker Aritz Aduriz yesterday when he notched this audacious penalty against Real Valladolid.