الـMILF من المادريغال pic.twitter.com/IiP3m6lBKk
— سَيِدُكُمُ آي نَعَم (@iRaufex) March 20, 2016
Barcelona’s war on fans continued during their match against Villarreal on Sunday when a Lionel Messi shot went over the bar and hit a woman in the hand.
From the man who brought you the fourth place trophy concept comes a new thesis of defeatism that’s sure to provide Arsenal fans with zero comfort after losing to Barcelona in the Champions League. A club Wenger says are “more beatable than ever before.” Seriously.
From ESPN FC:
“Maybe the Premier League has become the Champions League for English teams. Because every game is so difficult in the Premier League that maybe we suffer a bit in Europe,” Wenger said. “Barcelona can walk through their games before they play against us. They played on Saturday afternoon with a team that after 20 minutes was 3-0 up. … They can select a little bit how much they go for it. In the Premier League you cannot.”
If a Premier League club had Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Luis Suarez at their disposal, maybe they could walk through their games, too.
But yes, Arsene, the reason Arsenal haven’t gotten past the Champions League round of 16 in seven years is because Watford might be better than Espanyol and not because your injury plagued team consistently underperforms while you hoard more cash than any other club in the world.
If Spurs finish ahead of Arsenal this season, look for Wenger to say something even lamer like “everyday we’re alive is like finishing in first place.” Might as well call him the limbo king because he keeps pushing that bar lower and lower.
Barcelona took two big away goals from the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie against Arsenal, leaving them in good position going into Wednesday’s second leg. Still, preparations must be made and proper training must be done to ensure that they are ready to finish off their opponents. With that in mind, Barcelona trained against three children who invaded their session on Tuesday.
Barcelona are enjoying another wonderful season in which they have an eight-point lead over second-place Atletico Madrid (and 15-point lead over Real Madrid), but it is still a season marked by one incredibly odd blemish: a historically bad penalty conversion rate.
The universe is cruel. This is a fact that Cristiano Ronaldo is keenly aware of. The unrelenting existence of Lionel Messi has been bad enough, but now his own words are being used against him by the cosmos to add insult to inconvenience.
At a certain point, anything can get a bit boring. When you’re Lionel Messi and you’re up 3-1 against Celta Vigo in the 80th minute, you’ve reached one of those times where taking a penalty as one normally does just feels a bit bland. So instead of shooting from the spot, you lay off a pass to Luis Suarez to confound the goalkeeper, blow the minds of everyone watching and get your teammate his hat trick. That, my friends, is the mark of genius.
When we last saw Denis Cheryshev, he was being hastily substituted at halftime of Real Madrid’s Copa del Rey round of 32 first-leg match against Cadiz once everyone realized that he was ineligible to play due to a suspension he incurred the year before with Villarreal. That got Real Madrid disqualified from the competition, delighting rival fans (and clubs) everywhere.
In an attempt to hide the embodiment of this embarrassment, Real Madrid loaned Cheryshev to Valencia, giving him another crack at the Copa del Rey as his new side had to face Barcelona in the semifinals of the competition.
Cheryshev came off the bench in the 58th minute of the first leg and Valencia ended up losing 7-0 with the Russian being shown a yellow card in the 79th minute. So, all together, this Copa del Rey appearance was even worse than his last one (at least he scored in the last one).
And to make the whole thing even worse, the Barcelona fans gave him a rousing mock ovation when he came on, as thanks for the shame he brought upon Real Madrid.
As of this moment, no one on the planet hates the Copa del Rey more than Denis Cheryshev.
Javier Mascherano was given a suspended sentence of one year in prison and a fine of €815,000 after pleading guilty to tax evasion in Spain. According to the Telegraph, “prison sentences for under two years in Spain can be suspended in exchange for a fine, so long as the crime is non-violent and the perpetrator has no previous convictions, and the Argentine is not expected to serve any time in jail.”
The state attorney has yet to agree to this sentence, however, so while they await that decision, the two sides have met to discuss a deal to ensure Mascherano’s freedom. The following is a transcript of that conversation.
27′ gone & 0-0 between RCDE-Barça. Lively on the field & off with a ‘banner fest’ from home fans directed at Pique. pic.twitter.com/NYAD6PBfDP
— AS English (@English_AS) January 13, 2016
The second leg of Barcelona and Espanyol’s Copa del Rey derby was a heated one despite the Blaugrana building on their 4-1 lead from the first leg to advance on an aggregate score of 6-1.
Barcelona’s Troll Supreme, Gerard Pique, riled up their local rivals after the first leg by questioning their ability to fill their own stadium (“They call themselves the ‘marvelous minority’, and they’re in such a minority that they can’t even fill their ground. Let’s see whether they manage to fill it for the return leg, because the other day it wasn’t full.”). So Espanyol fans responded by continuing their inexcusable taunts about his family. Read more
After enduring a full year in which they were banned from making new signings by FIFA and, as a result of that devastating punishment, only won five major trophies, Barcelona were finally able to resume their transfer market wheeling and dealing with the opening of the January window. So they immediately made up for lost time by signing all of the players. All of them (77 to be exact).