Danny Welbeck is part of the pantheon of great English forwards who do not score goals. That’d seem to be a terrible oxymoron, but you forget that supporters love a grafter. If you had to rely on one striker to effectively man-mark a center back out of a match, it’d be Danny Welbeck.
I don’t know why you’d ever employ that tactic, but that’s the highest praise I can bestow on Welbeck.
Everybody loves goalkeepers. Except, of course, when they mess up and concede the stupidest goals. Recently, we have thought a lot about the things that make goalkeepers weird.
From strange training drills to incomprehensible attitudes, keepers have so many things that make them unique.
Melbourne Victory midfielder James Troisi had an open goal. He then committed perhaps the worst A-League miss of the century in the Melbourne Derby.
Remember those drills you had as a child, where you had to pass the ball through some cones at varying distances? Troisi apparently never mastered that skill.
Remember taking shots at an open goal to improve accuracy? Troisi apparently struggles with that too.
You know how passing to a stationary target is easier than hitting a moving target? Yeah, Troisi never figured that one out either.
The Algarve Cup began Wednesday with six matches. The highlight was supposed to be Japan, a finalist in the last two World Cups, against the Netherlands, the reigning European champion. However, the match was hardly competitive, with the Leeuwinnen thoroughly dominating the match. The only notable aspect of the 6-2 rout was four miserable seconds from Japan goalkeeper Sakiko Ikeda.
Dutch goalie Mark Flekken is really into hydration. How else do you explain perhaps the worst goalkeeping error we’ve ever seen here at The18?
Flekken, who plays for MSV Duisburg in the Bundesliga 2, was caught in his own net grabbing a water bottle while FC Ingolstadt scored an equalizer. A teammate attempted to head the ball back to him to pick up, but Flekken was nowhere to be found.
West Brom is in a lot of trouble. The club is bottom of the Premier League, seven points from safety. But Alan Pardew and his boys are turning things around. The great West Brom taxi heist and McDonald’s rendezvous of 2018 is the ultimate team building exercise in football history. I believe it was John Wooden who said: “The team that commits crimes together, stays up together.”
Martín Cáceres may want to commit the final lines of the Brand New song “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot” to memory. The track is now a fitting anthem for the Lazio right back.
“Call me a safe bet, I’m betting I’m not.
I’m glad that you can forgive; I’m only hoping as time goes, you can forget.”