It has been a fantastic 18 months for Shakhtar Donetsk under Paulo Fonseca. Brought in to replace legendary coach Mircea Lucescu the Portuguese head coach has not just resurrected Shakhtar to become the top club in Ukrainian football once again, but he himself has become a coach linked with some of the biggest clubs in…

Football is a beautiful sport. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions. An amusement. An art. Sometimes to the point of addiction. Hence the Brazilians call it “jogo bonito”, the French call it “beau jeu” and the Turkish call it “güzel oyun”. What Besiktas did this season in the Champions League has been a significant display of…

12 clashes since 2000, 18 goals apiece. 4 wins for Chelsea, 3 wins for Barcelona. Far from a local derby, and far from equal historical standing, but Chelsea vs. Barcelona is one of the most exciting, intense and heated games European football can offer up. There’s so much history: Controversy in 2005 as Jose Mourinho…

In what many would claim as an upset, Roma finished at the top of Group C against perennial Champions League challengers Chelsea and Atletico Madrid. Eusebio Di Francesco has transformed this Roma team from being the laughingstocks of the Champions League into opponents to be feared. Roma’s next opponent in the Round of Sixteen is…

The season of Sevilla has been a bumpy roller coaster ride both on and off the pitch, starting from the summer and continuing with the inconsistent form on and off. The summer of 2017 once again saw many of Sevilla’s key figures leave: Jorge Sampaoli, Iborra (Sevilla Captain), Vitolo, Rami, and Mariano. But the most…

Well, THIS is weird. It wasn’t that long ago that gloom and misery stalked the halls of Culerville after the second-best player in the game scuttled to Paris, in search of more sun than shadow. His ostensible replacement broke while doing, of all things, a backheel, and needed surgery. A dour man nicknamed The Ant…

The return of the Champions League. As the Champions League returns, back-to-back champions, Real Madrid, return in surprising form. They’ve been struggling this season due to many key players being off form and blunders from manager Zidane has also cost them, as a result, Real Madrid are realistically out of the title race and are…

An eye-catching draw for the Champions League last-sixteen saw the fate of the experienced, well-oiled Bianconeri come head-to-head with the fearless, youthful Tottenham Hotspur. A tale of two very different teams has the ingredients of a scintillating draw. On one hand you have Juventus – a side as glorious and as glamorous as they come, with years…

It has been nothing short of a phenomenal season so far for Manchester City, who currently sit sixteen points ahead of their local rivals. Having such a cushion in the Premier League, only adds more pressure on City to perform in the Champions League, a competition Guardiola was brought in to challenge for. Last season…

Liverpool enter the Champions League Round of 16 in a hesitantly optimistic manner. After making headlines by scoring the second-most goals in the group stage and finishing first in Group E, the Reds return to a level of the competition they haven’t reached since 2009 when they defeated Real Madrid 5-0 on aggregate. Drawn in…