I honestly wasn’t aware until today, but the Swedish Allsvenskan is making a pretty convincing argument concerning the best league in Europe. First, it came to my attention that with only one match day remaining in the 2019 season, three clubs — Djurgården, Malmö and Hammarby — still have legitimate aspirations of winning the title.
We’re almost a third of the way through the 2019-20 European club season, giving us an ample enough sample size to analyze this year’s current statistics in a somewhat meaningful way. There’s one giant caveat to it all and that’s Lionel Messi’s restricted start to the campaign due to a calf strain followed by an abductor muscle injury. He’s only started three of Barcelona’s nine league games thus far, so he's yet to dominate every statistical category.
One of the fastest rising profiles in the game today is OGC Nice and Algeria right back Youcef Atal. The 23-year-old arrived at the French club from Belgian side KV Kortrijk in the summer of 2018 for a modest fee of $3.42 million, but he’s reportedly being closely tracked by Chelsea, Tottenham and PSG.
Cristiano Ronaldo scored the 700th goal of his professional career, but Portugal’s 13-game unbeaten streak was brought to an abrupt end by Ukraine in Kiev on Monday. The victory secured qualification to Euro 2020 for Ukraine, and it was a continuation of the country’s glorious renaissance under the direction of 43-year-old manager Andriy Shevchenko.
It was Shevhenko himself who scored Ukraine’s last goal at a major international tournament — that coming at Euro 2012 — but based on today’s display, this is a team that will certainly do more than make up the numbers next summer.
They formed a four-man wall. They had a defender lie prone behind the wall to block a low shot. They dropped another defender to the goal-line to clear any effort at the near post. They had Czech international Tomáš Vaclík between the sticks.
It didn’t matter.
Lionel Messi’s first goal of the 2019-20 season flew in from 23 yards out, avoiding it all with astonishing ease.
With Decision Day behind us, it’s time for the 2019 MLS Cup Playoffs! Actually, we’ve got to make it through an international break, but then — it’s time for the 2019 MLS Cup Playoffs! It’s our first taste of the newfangled MLS playoff schedule, with the top seven teams from each conference battling it out in single-elimination matches. Play begins on Saturday, Oct. 19, and concludes with MLS Cup 2019 on Sunday, Nov. 10.
Here’s a look at the MLS playoff schedule 2019, including match dates, times, TV information, previews and predictions.
Things are heating up in the Champions League (read: Real Madrid bottom of Group A) and there’s no surer sign of the increase in dramatics than managers getting booked. In a first for the Champions League, coaches can now be on the receiving end of both yellow and red cards from the match official, and although Match Day 1 of the competition came and went without history being made, Match Day 2 brought the moment we’d all been waiting for.
Although she finished eighth in The Best FIFA Women’s Player 2019 voting, Lyon attacker Ada Hegerberg was omitted from the first-ever FIFPro Women’s World11 due to the inclusion of Marta in attack. With all due respect to Marta’s legacy, the 33-year-old playmaker didn’t warrant her place after scoring five goals and providing zero assists in 12 appearances for the NWSL’s worst team before a disappointing World Cup that included zero goals from open play and zero assists in three games.
Despite missing three games while on World Cup duty with Australia — where she finished with five goals in four games — the Chicago Red Stars’ Sam Kerr is just one goal shy of the NWSL’s single season goalscoring record. Kerr scored against Sky Blue yesterday to bring her total to 16; the record is the 17 she scored as a member of Sky Blue back in 2017. Time is a flat circle.
Cristiano Ronaldo continued to make history earlier this week, being named Portuguese Player of the Year for the 10th time in his career.