As has been said on many occasions, football is a beautiful game. With it, we laugh, we cry and we sometimes throw things at our television screens, but that doesn't diminish our passion.
What might accomplish that, however, is the constant need for social media to single-handedly try and shatter the illusion that surrounds these overpaid heroes we watch week in and week out.
The 3-1 lead has taken a beating this year. The Golden State Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA finals. The Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Clippers also blew 3-1 leads in the NBA playoffs. The Cleveland Inidians blew a 3-1 lead in the World Series.
In the "year in review" pieces declaring 2016 the year of the blown 3-1 lead, one notable choker has consistently been overlooked.
Borussia Dortmund.
In addition to bribery, money laundering and papering over racism, FIFA — football’s very own basket of deplorables — occasionally rolls out a rule change or two. During the weekend’s World Club Cup final, for example, Alvaro Morata became football’s first ever “fourth substitute” as Real Madrid took advantage of a trial rule-change allowing an additional substitution during extra time.
Football is a harsh business, particularly so for managers. Sometimes, simply winning matches isn’t enough to placate fickle supporters and owners. With exorbitant amounts of money being pumped into the game, the business of hiring and firing managers is a particularly trigger-happy one.
With clubs only a loss away from entering crisis mode, the decisions made are occasionally downright stupid. In modern football, at the risk of sounding old, the men in charge aren't given enough time to succeed.
Here are 10 managerial sackings that history will not look kindly upon.
In the sport of soccer, there isn’t anything worse than a diver, a flopper or a simulator, whichever derogatory term you prefer. Any half-decent spectator is appalled by the sight of these adults rolling around and screaming in agony when nobody even touched them.
It's one of the worst sins you can commit and thoroughly deserving of a yellow card. These eight gentlemen in particular would do particularly well on the diving board at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
It was only two weeks ago when we were treated to one of the most astounding open goal misses in the history of football over in Serbia. The gift of giving to helpless defenses seems to be in the air this holiday season as a Greek fourth division match has offered up its own tragic epic.
The Olympics and the World Cup are arguably the two greatest sporting occasions on the planet. What makes them so special is that they only come 'round once every four years, but there are a great deal of differences among these two giant competitions.
In the grand scheme of things, the simple fact is this: the Olympic Games mean way more to athletes than the World Cup does to footballers. Now, that wasn't always the case, but over time it has certainly developed into being that way, and it isn't really a surprise.
Darren Bent will go down in history for one thing: donking a football off a beach ball past Pepe Reina into the goal while he was at Sunderland in 2009.
This is one of the silliest, dumbest goals of all time. It shouldn't have counted, but it did. Even though I am a Liverpool fan, and this goal was scored against my club, I'm glad this goal exists somewhere on the plane of space-time. It serves as a reminder that sports can be both profoundly moving and profoundly stupid, sometimes at the same time.
The record for the fastest red card ever in soccer is somewhat dubious: is it limited to professionals? What about amateur leagues? Does the player actually have to play a second before being sent off? These are the kinds of ridiculous variables you must factor into determining the fastest red card ever in soccer.
According to the Guardian, there have been a number of instances when substitutes have been sent off without having ever played a second in the match.
You’ll likely be aware that the great majority of people on this planet refer to the beautiful game, that noblest of sports, not as soccer, but football. You’re also probably up to speed on the fact that soccer is in fact a long-since-abandoned piece of British slang, principally used by public (read: posh) school boys in 19th century England to distinguish football from their true love: rugby.