Newcastle’s already miserable season reached a new low on Sunday as they lost the Tyne-Wear Derby 3-0 to a Sunderland team led by their own former manager, Sam Allardyce. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they also misspelled Chancel Mbemba’s name wrong on the back of his shirt.
Paul Pogba played Juventus’ 2-0 win against Atalanta with a hand written addition to the back of his shirt. Next to the No. 10, he wrote in a “+5.” But why? Did he decide that he prefers the No. 15 just before kickoff? Was it some kind of psychological warfare against his opponents? A tribute to the Jackson 5? What could it be?
Late in Spurs’ 5-1 dismantling of Bournemouth, an unusual but very accurate announcement was made over the Vitality Stadium’s public address system.
Leicester finally recorded their first clean sheet of the season and all it took was the supreme motivational power of pizza. Last month, Claudio Ranieri promised to buy pizza for all of his players if they achieved the feat and in their 10th match of the season, they finally did it, beating Crystal Palace 1-0 to put them three points behind first-place Man City.
Being a man of his word, Ranieri announced that he will fulfill his promise and even throw in some champagne for good measure. And for scorer Jamie Vardy, who now has goals in seven consecutive Premier League matches (giving him a league leading 10 for the season), there will be an added bonus.
A clash of heads with Vincent Kompany left Wayne Rooney with a busted hair plug and a river of blood flowing from his head. So to patch up the damage, Man United’s physio had to break out the staple gun. This was the only borderline interesting thing that happened in this match.
Look at that! That’s how close Chelsea were to an equalizer after West Ham opened the scoring in the 17th minute. Amazingly, things only got much, much worse for the struggling Premier League champions after this.
Cesc Fabregas then had a goal disallowed for being offside and Nemanja Matic was sent off after his second yellow just before halftime. In the frustration of all of this, Diego Costa and Fabregas were also shown yellows for dissent, while Jose Mourinho (who was already on a suspended one-match ban for his comments about the referee after Chelsea’s loss to Southampton and assistant coach Silvino Louro were sent off.
Carlo Ancelotti has been enjoying his sabbatical from the game in Vancouver, Canada. He’s been fishing and dining with old friends and now he’s even taking up acting.
Carlos Tevez took a heavy challenge from Gustavo Gomez late in Boca Juniors’ Copa Argentina match at Lanus. Tevez scored Boca’s first goal in what would be a 2-0 win and in the 80th minute, Gomez made him pay for it with this tackle from behind, earning himself a red card and giving Tevez a free trip to the moon.
Though his leg generated enough wind power to fuel all of Buenos Aires for the rest of the night, Tevez was able to finish out the match.
This has been the Dirty Tackle of the Day: a chronicling of unfortunate events.
Jurgen Klopp made his Anfield debut as Liverpool hosted Rubin Kazan in the Europa League. This was an understandably exciting moment for the club’s supporters, but if you were dropped off at Anfield with no idea what was happening, you’d probably assume that this Klopp fellow had given everyone in town their own solid gold sex robot.
Here are some choice images from around the ground as Klopp fever was only mildly tempered by a 1-1 draw against a Russian club that played the final hour with 10 men…
UEFA has reached a new level of self-parody by launching disciplinary proceedings against Manchester City after their fans booed the Champions League anthem before Wednesday’s 2-1 win against Sevilla.
