Lucas Moura scored a dramatic 96th-minute winner and hat trick against Ajax, our ESPN FC crew break down his performance that sent Spurs to the Champions League final.
It is difficult enough to face Barcelona and Manchester City in the late st…
Messi broke Liverpool’s hearts in the Champions League semifinal, first leg, as though it was simple. To him, it probably was.
Watch out for Lionel Messi’s final goal. You’ll see it in a high-pressure match where he’s already scored once or twice; when it arrives, you’ll notice that this goal is far more spectacular than the ones that came before it.
Witness, for example, the first leg of this season’s Barcelona’s UEFA Champions League semifinal against Liverpool, in which Messi found the net twice last week. His first strike was a routine affair, following up to tap in a Luis Suarez shot that had fallen kindly to him…
ESPN FC’s Craig Burley believes Tottenham and Ajax will be the tie of the round, after both sides reached the semifinals in dramatic fashion.
The FC panel credit Mauricio Pochettino and his Tottenham side for the way they handled adversity in the second leg against Manchester City.
He scores early, he scores late; he scores at home, he scores away. Over two legs against Manchester City in the quarterfinal of the UEFA Champions League, Son Heung-Min gave a performance that perfectly summarised his entire season; he is a man for all moments, for all stages.
Of several players’ remarkable contributions to Tottenham Hotspur’s European cause — with a special mention, of course, for the often outstanding Harry Kane and Moussa Sissoko — Son’s is arguably the most extraordinary….
Here are three sentences whose words do no justice to the majesty of their content: In the depths of a molecular cloud, a star is born. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Lionel Messi chipped Pau Lopez in Barcelona’s 4-1 win at Real Betis on Sunday.
All three of the above sentences represent events that are noteworthy on an intergalactic scale. They all mark moments where aliens, sitting peacefully in their suburban homes, looked up to the skies from their Sunday papers and said: “Things done changed.”
Though…
When Roots Manuva, backed by the melancholic strings of the Cinematic Orchestra, crooned that “I’m All Things To All Men,” he could have been singing a future ode to Bernardo Silva. The Portuguese footballer is not a jack-of-all-trades; he is a master. He has the trickery of a winger, the vision of a No.10, the energy of a No.8 and the tenacity of a centre-back.
He is clearly the player that can take Manchester City forward, and with the news on Wednesday that the club have signed Bernardo to…
When Roots Manuva, backed by the melancholic strings of the Cinematic Orchestra, crooned that “I’m All Things To All Men,” he could have been singing a future ode to Bernardo Silva. The Portuguese footballer is not a jack-of-all-trades; he is a master. He has the trickery of a winger, the vision of a No.10, the energy of a No.8 and the tenacity of a centre-back.
He is clearly the player that can take Manchester City forward, and with the news on Wednesday that the club have signed Bernardo to…
The ball floated down from the heavens and it seemed that his time had come.
With his team trailing by a goal and one of the world’s greatest defenders in pursuit, the forward outstretched the toes of his right boot and brought down the pass as gently as a firefighter catching a child thrown from a burning building. His second touch was arguably more delicate still, a swirling lob that soared over the head of the approaching goalkeeper and, with a single bounce, landed in the net. The forward,…
MANCHESTER — It’s the end of a long, cold week at Carrington. We’ve come to the training ground of a resurgent Manchester United to interview Ander Herrera and as we wait for him in the lobby, our surroundings are a pleasant rumble of activity.
A translator is about to meet David De Gea and kills time by regaling us with tales of press conferences gone by. A man takes delivery of a parcel for Paul Pogba. Outside in the car park, academy players scoop handfuls of snow and skip between vehicles,…
With Frenkie de Jong’s move from Ajax to Barcelona now official, ESPN FC’s Julien Laurens gives his take on how he will fit in at the Camp Nou.
Virgil van Dijk’s price tag was so high in large part because of the value he brings moving in two directions — attacking and defending.
If the sum seemed absurd, it was because we had not been paying attention. Liverpool’s signing of Virgil van Dijk in January 2018 was first regarded by many as coming at a wildly inflated price — £75 million. Now it’s simply seen as simply the going rate for a centre-back of his class, but there is another perspective from which this can be viewed.
Football still values attackers more highly than other players, which is reflected in the prices for which they move clubs. Yet elite defenders…
During his playing days, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer became famous for being a “super-sub,” someone who could come off the bench and change a game to devastating effect. In truth, he was three elite footballers in one. Not only was he as decisive a substitute as the sport has seen, he was also good enough to play long stretches of his career as both a starting striker and a playmaker from the right flank.
It is no surprise, then, that Manchester United’s startling improvement since his arrival as caretaker…