Barcelona is the UEFA Youth League champion after besting Chelsea 3-0 on Monday in Nyon, Switzerland, to lift the continental title for a second time in the tournament’s five-year history.
That draws Barca level with the Blues, with Red Bull Salzburg the surprise winner of last year’s contest.
It was an electric performance from a Barcelona side that dominated proceedings courtesy of a dazzling attack.
Abel Ruiz was the engineer responsible for Barcelona’s opener. The 18-year-old attacker deftly turned Dujon Sterling with a bit of trickery on the left flank before a give-and-go with Ricard Puig sprung Ruiz into space, allowing him to fire a pass across the face of goal that Marques easily headed beyond a helpless Jamie Cumming.
Fim de primeiro tempo na final da UEFAYouthLeague. O Barcelona vai vencendo o Chelsea e levando a vantagem para o intervalo; Marqués abriu placar após bela jogada de Abel Ruiz.pic.twitter.com/BYNkB5Bu0K
— BarcelonaBRA?? (@FCBarcelonaBRA) April 23, 2018
Barcelona bossed the opening stanza and Marques’ goal was a deserved product of a clinical half from Gerard Lopez’s charges. Puig was particularly threatening, with the midfielder – who has drawn comparisons to Lionel Messi and Xavi – probing Chelsea’s midfield and backline with slaloming runs and pinpoint passing.
Marques all but put the match out of reach five minutes after the interval when Chelsea skipper Josh Grant’s pass back to defensive partner Marc Guehi was pounced on by the Barcelona forward. A replay showed there was contact between Guehi and Marques, though it was the latter who recovered the ball, slotting it to Cumming’s right and into the back of the net.
With a two-goal advantage, Barcelona slowed the pace and controlled possession, ensuring Chelsea saw very little of the ball over the final quarter of an hour. Barcelona made it 3-0 in the second minute of added time when Ruiz bagged one from short range.
Covered Vikings for Minneapolis Star Tribune, 1999-2008
The NFL is finalizing plans for a summit to continue an unprecedented offseason discussion about player safety, a league spokesman confirmed. The meeting, planned for May 1-2 at NFL headquarters in New York, will include a focus on the future of the kickoff.
There is no indication that the kickoff could be eliminated for this season. But the league has moved with uncommon speed in recent months to address a league-record 291 diagnosed concussions in 2017, as well as the serious spine injury suffered by Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier.
For the first time, the NFL and NFL Players Association have banned certain helmets for use by players.
Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy said the NFL’s competition committee wants injury rates on kickoffs to drop, or else it will recommend eliminating them.
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Owners have approved a rule that would penalize and potentially eject players for lowering their heads to initiate contact. For the first time, the league joined the NFL Players Association to ban the use of 10 helmet models. The NFL office is also preparing a team-by-team memorandum to address a spike in training camp concussions.
The kickoff has long been a source of concern for NFL medical staffs. The league’s competition committee sounded new alarms in March after receiving data that showed concussions were five times more likely to occur on kickoffs than other plays, even after a series of minor rule changes designed to reduce returns.
Green Bay Packers president/CEO Mark Murphy, a member of the committee, said the league was planning a special-teams summit — the one now confirmed for May 1-2 — to issue a clear warning.
“If you don’t make changes to make it safer,” Murphy said, “we’re going to do away with it. It’s that serious. It’s by far the most dangerous play in the game.”
An attendance list for the summit, which will also include discussion on the safety of interior line play, has not yet been finalized. Longtime NFL special-teams ace Steve Tasker, now a CBS broadcaster, recently told the Buffalo News that he had been invited. In addition to former players, the meeting is expected to include team executives, along with current and former coaches.
Commissioner Roger Goodell frequently convenes similar cross-discipline summits. They have not concluded with a rule or policy change. Instead, they are designed to provide background for future competition committee discussions. Goodell hosted two such meetings in recent years before the league rewrote its catch rule this spring. A similar gathering early in the 2017 offseason eventually led to a relaxation of post-touchdown celebration rules.
At issue with the kickoff is whether any realistic ideas remain for making the play safer beyond the steps the league already has taken. The league has spent much of this decade tweaking rules to reduce returns, and thus minimize the chances of injury, while also eliminating violent wedge-blocking schemes. In 2017, only 40 percent of kickoffs were returned. The rest were either touchbacks, went out of bounds or were impacted by another penalty.
“We’ve reduced the number of returns,” Murphy said in March, “but we haven’t really done anything to make the play safer.”
As Murphy’s words reverberated around the league, several prominent special-teams players have spoken out against a future elimination. The New England Patriots’ Matthew Slater told reporters last week that it would be “tragic” to take it away because it is part of “the fabric of the game.”
Slater wondered about the slippery slope of eliminating fundamental parts of the game.
“It really makes me ask the question, ‘Where do you go from here?'” he said. “What would happen next? I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know. But I look at a number of plays. I look at a goal-line stand. I look at a third-and-1. Think about the collisions that are happening there.
“Those may be deemed unsafe by some people, so if you make a drastic change such as this, what’s next? What happens? The reality is football. This is a contact sport. This is a violent sport. All of us that are playing the game understand that there are inherent risks that come along with playing the game. If you’re not OK with those risks, I respect that, and maybe you should think about doing something else.”
“If you’re trying to do this because you’re thinking about player safety,” Thomas said, “or trying to protect guys, or even thinking about future lawsuits or whatnot, then there are so many other things and ways you can protect this game, and getting rid of the kickoff is not one of them.”
The NFL’s next inflection point for possible rule changes will come at its spring meeting, scheduled for May 21-23 in Atlanta. One of the items already on that agenda is finalizing the process by which players will be considered for ejection when penalized for lowering their helmets to initiate contact.
Gianluigi Buffon did not imagine things ending quite like this. Though it must be said, he wasn’t that far off. “When they ask me how my final game will go, I tell them I don’t think about that stuff,” he reflected before Italy’s game against Albania last March. “Maybe I’ll close out like (Zinedine) Zidane, giving someone a headbutt …”
One year later, Buffon appeared to bring down the curtain on his final Champions League campaign with a red card in the 93rd minute at the Santiago Bernabeu. He might not have assaulted an opponent, as Zidane infamously did Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final, but the Juventus goalkeeper was just as guilty of losing himself in a moment of hot-headedness.
He had been magnificent, just like all of his team-mates, as Juventus came within touching distance of what might have been the greatest European Cup comeback ever. Trailing 3-0 from the first leg at home in Turin, the Bianconeri pulled all the way back to 3-3 and looked set to take the tie into extra-time before Mehdi Benatia bundled over Lucas Vazquez inside the box with seconds remaining.
Related: Ronaldo’s injury-time penalty cancels out Juventus’ inspired comeback
The referee, Michael Oliver, was correct to award the penalty. Yet you could hardly blame Juventus players for allowing emotions to boil over in a moment of desperation at the end of a game in which they had given more than anyone thought possible. Buffon led the charge over towards the official, screaming blue murder and paying the price as he was shown a red card. All this, as Zidane himself watched from the opposition dugout.
Did Buffon even notice, under the red fog that engulfed him, how the home crowd rose to offer him a standing ovation? Madrid’s supporters were not applauding the dismissal, but simply a magnificent career. Just as the Juventus fans who acknowledged the majesty of Cristiano Ronaldo one week earlier, this fanbase has known enough success to recognise greatness when they see it.
Before kick-off, Buffon himself had suggested this would not be the worst place to bow out. “As a kid, I would have signed up to end my career with a Champions League match against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu,” he insisted.
Back then, though, the context felt different. Juventus was coming to Madrid to salvage some pride after the humiliation of the first leg, but not even the club seemed to believe the tie was still salvageable.
The media availabilities for this game were conducted before Roma overturned a three-goal deficit of its own to eliminate Barcelona on Tuesday. But even that context did not make the upset here plausible. Roma had played its second leg at home, in front of 60,000 roaring fans at the Stadio Olimpico. Juventus would need something unprecedented to prevail in Madrid.
And yet, Juventus came so close. Could any player be more due a triumph over Madrid than Mario Mandzukic, who scored a spectacular overhead kick as Juventus was beaten 4-1 by the same opponent in last season’s Champions League final, and followed that up with a brace here? His first goal arrived after just 76 seconds, the fastest ever scored against Madrid at its own stadium in this competition.
He added a second before half-time, and at that point, you could feel the panic seeping in among the home team’s defenders. Both goals had been back-post headers. Madrid, missing Sergio Ramos through suspension, seemed to have no answer for such size and power in close.
Nor were these strikes the sum of Mandzukic’s contribution. After Blaise Matuidi grabbed the third goal, jabbing home from close range after Keylor Navas mishandled a cross, the Croatian forward mucked in at the other end. As late as the 87th minute, there he was: holding his ground against Ronaldo inside the Juventus penalty area and shepherding the ball to safety.
His was the most impressive individual performance on a night when almost every Juventus player rose to the occasion. Douglas Costa was a constant menace down the right flank, both Sami Khedira and Stephan Lichtsteiner served up beautiful assists, and Benatia, before that final challenge for the penalty, mopped up everything at the back.
How could this be the same team that lost so emphatically a week ago? The manager must take his share of the blame. Both Mandzukic and Matuidi – the scorers of Juve’s three goals here – were left out of Massimiliano Allegri’s starting XI in Turin.
At least Juventus was able to wash away the bad taste of that first-leg humiliation. This defeat will hurt, for how close it came to something magnificent, yet taking a broader view, we can say there is no shame in losing by a single goal over two legs to Madrid. After two finals in the past three years, furthermore, the Bianconeri will expect to be back in the latter stages of the competition again next season.
Most likely, though, they will be there without Buffon. Although he has not yet formally confirmed his retirement date, he had said on several occasions that he would only return next season if Juventus won the Champions League – since that would allow him to compete for the first time in the Club World Cup and European Super Cup.
That opportunity is no longer on the table. “The referee has a trashcan in place of a heart,” said Buffon in a postgame interview. His pain was raw and relatable. He had been joking, of course, about the headbutt. Not even Madrid would have wished him an ending like this.
The UFC will take a serious look at signing former NFL defensive lineman Greg Hardy to an exclusive contract this summer.
Hardy, 29, has booked a heavyweight fight on June 12, on the “Dana White Tuesday Night Contender Series,” sources said. It will mark Hardy’s professional MMA debut. He has posted an amateur record of 3-0.
The DWTNCS consists of a handful of live fights in Las Vegas. White, along with UFC matchmakers Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard, offer at least one multifight deal with the UFC at the conclusion of each episode.
Greg Hardy hasn’t played football since 2015. He has won all three of his amateur MMA fights via first-round knockout. Steve Nurenberg/Icon Sportswire
Hardy hasn’t played football since 2015. He was arrested in 2014 after allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend. A domestic violence case against him was eventually dropped and expunged from his record. He pleaded guilty to an unrelated misdemeanor drug charge in 2016.
Hardy (0-0) fights out of American Top Team, in Coconut Creek, Florida. He has won all three of his amateur MMA fights via first-round knockout.
