Happy Monday to you all. A funny old thing, the FA Cup. Just when it looked like all the magic was drained out, every big club pummelling their lower league opposition and football hierarchies asserting themselves, there Plymouth go and demolish the Arne Slot Penitentiary. A triumph of the plucky over the vast resources of the Premier League? Inject it right into our veins.
They were this weekend’s main characters, but they were supported by a cast across the world. From Buenos Aires to Tokyo and from Birmingham to Barcelona, here are all the football images that sent our hearts racing and brains whirring over the past few days.
“That FA Cup, eh? That FA Cup. It just won’t go away. It might hibernate from time to time and sink back into the swamp. I think the cyclical nature of the universe in which it exists demands it adheres to some of its rules.” Anyway, here are Plymouth’s Tymoteusz Puchacz, Matthew Sorinola, and Muhamed Tijani celebrating their side’s 1–0 win over Liverpool. If that doesn’t make you want to join the cult of Miron Muslic, then what will?
Look at the state of Estadio Monumental just before River Plate took on Independiente in the Argentine Primera Division match day four. The amount of smoke and colour you’d expect from revolutionary forces celebrating a successful insurrection used on an early-season fixture. We love it.
Temperatures in the stadium rose so high that River Plate fans were sprayed with water mid-match to cool down.
Independiente goalkeeper Rodrigo Rey personalises all his shirts with his favourite bands. AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Guns ‘N Roses, Las Pastillas del Abuelo, and more. He might be our hero.
Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio, two players who have been chewed up by the big football machine in various ways, will be very, very good for Aston Villa, won’t they?
Please stop making Heung-Min Son sad. No one likes it.
The beauty of the National Stadium before the Fujifilm Super Cup between Vissel Kobe and Sanfrecce Hiroshima in Tokyo. The kind of image that makes you want to google ‘flights to Tokyo cheap’ on a Monday afternoon.
“A smile might be good.” “Nothing to smile about in my life.”
Right, we understand that you’d get a prize cheque for winning the Super Cup, but why, pray tell, are the runners-up also getting money for losing? Twenty million yen is not a bad consolation at all. Maybe we ought to learn something about good sportsmanship from our friends in Japan.
Here’s Alvaro Morata waving a Gala flag after Adana Demirspor abandoned the match against Galatasaray after Alvaro converted a (hotly contested) penalty against them in the 12th minute of the game. "I hope the referee doesn't want to look cute for Galatasaray," Adana Demirspor president Murat Sancak said in an interview. Before adding, “We were 99% going to lose today anyway.”