#europa league round of 16

[rangersfc-1872]

2023/24 UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE ROUND OF 16 - 2ND LEG

Rangers 0-1 SL Benfica (2-3 agg) 14th March 2024 Ibrox Stadium

Silva (66')

[calciopics]

UEFA Europa League 2022/23 Draw

[daminouspurity]

Liverpool F.C. vs. AC Sparta Prague | 2023-24 UEFA Europa League Round of 16 | Predictions EA Sports FC 24

[nadalffc]

why someone said on a post about copa del rey "that's the only title they're winning this season" as if it wasn't the third 😭😭

[insidecric]

Man United vs Barcelona Live Stream: How to Catch All the Action of the Europa League Round of 16 Playoff

Man United vs Barcelona Live Stream will go head-to-head at Old Trafford in a highly anticipated Europa League Round of 16 playoff match on February 23. This game will determine who progresses to the next stage of the competition, making it a must-watch for football fans around the world. The first leg of this fixture ended in a 2-2 draw at Camp Nou, setting up a winner-takes-all scenario for the…

[thomas-mvller]

Darwin Núñez (7') Bobby Clark (8') Mohamed Salah (10') Cody Gakpo (14') Dominik Szoboszlai (48') Cody Gakpo (55') Liverpool FC | 6 - 1 | Sparta Prague 2023/24 UEFA Europa League - Round of 16

[flagwars]

Video Game Flag Wars: Round 2

1. Salmon Run Flag (Splatoon) vs. Homestead Banner (Palia)

2. Bilge Rat Adventures Flag (Sea of Thieves) vs. Arstotzka (Papers, Please)

3. Kirin Tor Offensive Banner (World of Warcraft) vs. Aquileian Republic (Supremacy) (Equestria at War)

4. Commune of Revachol (Disco Elysium) vs. Calchaqui (Europa Universalis 4)

5. Flag of the Crown (Cult of the Lamb) vs. Communist Australia (Victoria II)

6. Patagonian Worker’s Front (Kaiserreich) vs. Livonia (Arma)

7. Gaul Úr (Red Flood) vs. Alam Melayu (Rise of Nations (Roblox))

8. Principality of Kemerovo (The New Order: Last Days of Europe) vs. Shadow Isles Clash Banner (League of Legends)

9. Zhu Xi's Legacy (Age of Empires 4) vs. Watchers (Overwatch)

10. Grey Warden Heraldry (Dragon Age: Inquisition) vs. Outer Wilds Ventures (Outer Wilds)

11. Sickle Moon Flag (Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker) vs. The Rebellion (Just Cause 3)

12. Great Lake Revolutionary Council (Extremis Ultimis) vs. Pontiac Province (Judgement Day: Aftermath of the Red Flood)

13. New California Republic (Fallout) vs. Golden Deer Banner (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

14. American Collective (Twilight of the Anthropocene) vs. Niflheim (Final Fantasy XV)

15. Corvus (Dead Ahead (Roblox)) vs. Federation of Anrakan Isles (Suzerain)

16. Hurons (American Conquest) vs. Falkreath Hold (Skyrim)

[lustspren]

Who according to you is the greatest Italian to kick a football?

Who is milan's greatest ever player?

And Messi or Ronaldo

Also Europa league 😝😝

Top of the table

The general answer is Roberto Baggio. However, my favorites will always be Paolo Maldini and Andrea Pirlo

Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi and Ricardo Kaká

Messi the GOAT.

Yeah, enjoy the round of 16 until the quarterfinals against City lol

[beingliverpool]

GOLAZOS!! YNWA!!

Diaz 12′ (assist – Gomez) Gakpo 15′ (assist – Salah) Salah pen 51′ (assist – Gakpo) Gakpo 90+2′ (assist – Alexander-Arnold)

Liverpool 4-0 LASK: A festival of goals as Reds book Europa League last-16 place...

The result means Liverpool sail into the Europa League knockouts as group winners, allowing Klopp to rotate for the trip to Union SG next month... Liverpool will avoid playing a dropout from the Champions League too, and will instead go straight into the round of 16 in March.

[rangersfc-1872]

2023/24 UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE ROUND OF 16

SL Benfica 2-2 Rangers 7th March 2024 Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica

Di María (45+2' pen), Goldson (67' OG) Lawrence (7'), Sterling (45+5')

[calciopics]

UEFA Europa Conference League 2022/23 Draw

fuSea

[daminouspurity]

Rangers F.C. vs. S.L. Benfica | 2023-24 UEFA Europa League Round of 16 | Predictions EA Sports FC 24

[thommi-tomate]

Leon Goretzka

Borussia Mönchengladbach vs Schalke 04

(Europa League, round of 16, second leg, Borussia-Park , March 16, 2017)

[picturesofthearsenal]

Martin Odegaard of Arsenal during a training session ahead of their UEFA Europa League round of 16 leg one match against Sporting CP at London Colney on March 08, 2023 in St Albans, England. (Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

[bsaka7]

Fabio Vieira: Arsenal's 'reguila' (full text under the cut)

When Fabio Vieira’s name is mentioned on home soil, there is a particular Portuguese word that surfaces to describe him: ‘reguila’.

“Reguila is a term that we use for players who decide things by themselves,” says Tiago Moreira, who coached Vieira for Porto’s under-10s, and is now assistant coach for their under-19s and B teams.

“A reguila is a player that makes the difference by his own personality and confidence, without paying much attention to the coach — not in a bad way.”

“It’s quite a Portuguese word,” says Miguel Lopes, who Vieira played for with Porto Under-14s. “These things are in you and I’m sure he still has this ‘reguila’, which is that guy who has something so sharp. It seems that he’s not aware but his radar is always on. In the moment you need something out of the box, he can figure it out. ‘Reguila’ we mostly use with kids, not so much with adults.”

That quality has been clear in Vieira since he stepped foot in north London last summer, and could be essential now he is back in Portugal to face Sporting in Lisbon tonight in the Europa League’s round of 16.

The 22-year-old impressed in his group-stage runouts in this competition before the World Cup break and scored an instinctive long-range effort on his first Premier League start against Brentford. He made a crucial contribution to breaking down Wolves’ deep block in November, assisted twice against Oxford United in the FA Cup and made a telling impact against Aston Villa in the league last month.

‘Reguila’ also has a more literal meaning to describe somebody with a cheeky or mischievous personality. Vieira’s presence on both ends of the ‘reguila’ spectrum has been there from a very young age.

That’s what made him stand out at Porto in a footballing sense.

“I was thinking about how I could make a challenge to make his talent explode. It was a challenge for a reguila,” Moreira recalls about one training session during Vieira’s under-10s season.

“My idea was to make a tournament with three teams in the middle of training. I picked two captains and they chose their team-mates. The only rule was, ‘You cannot choose Fabio’, and I didn’t explain why to Fabio — but did in the end.

“The two captains chose the best players of the group, so the players who weren’t chosen were supposedly the less capable of the group plus Fabio. I was looking at him in the middle of the choosing process and he started to realise what I wanted to do. I reached Fabio at the end of the choosing process and told him, ‘Now I want to see if you’re capable of winning the tournament or not’. He said ‘Yeah. I got it, Coach’.

“Can you imagine what happened? He won the tournament. That’s the best way to describe Fabio as a personality and a player.”

Vieira’s cheekier side has also been on display since joining Arsenal. His insistence on why Londoners don’t pronounce the ‘t’ in words like ‘what’ or ‘water’ is a recent glimpse into that personality those at Porto know all too well.

“He was a cheeky kid. At Porto, with all the structure there, he didn’t have much margin for manoeuvre, but we still noticed that side of his personality,” Humberto Costa, who coached Vieira in Porto’s under-11s and under-12s, tells The Athletic.

“He was good friends with Joao Mario, who is now Porto’s right-back. They often roomed together during trips abroad. Sometimes the team captain would inform me that Fabio had eaten Joao Mario’s snacks. Joao Mario is a laid-back character, quite reserved, so he didn’t want to come to me directly and complain about Fabio. But the information reached me.”

These traits went hand-in-hand whenever Vieira was on a pitch during his youth.

Despite joining Porto’s academy at eight, there was an individuality in his play that stuck out. From when he arrived as a dribbling left-winger under Moreira, throughout his academy days winning national and European youth championships, through to the point he broke into the first team.

“He looked like a street kid who had grown up playing outdoors. That clearly had a profound effect on him,” Costa adds.

“When you play out in the street, your games aren’t subject to a lot of rules. That really foments creativity in people. His whole body had a relationship with the ball. He moved in a different way from the other players.

“I’ll give you an example: if I asked the boys to do a drill and then asked Fabio to explain it to his team-mates, he might not have been able to do it. He didn’t always find it easy to express himself with words. Fine. But if I just said, ‘Start playing, let’s go’, Fabio would be organising things in no time at all, just with the way he played. He would quickly understand what everyone needed to do.”

This theme ran through Vieira’s time at Porto. Though a lack of physicality may have contributed to him not being called up to represent Portugal until under-18s level, the technical ability and attitude were always there — it was just a matter of nurturing those qualities.

“Fabio was really a character,” Lopes says. “I remember one game against Rio Ave. At that time, Porto always competed in older leagues. Fabio would be an under-11 playing against under-13s, or under-14s playing against under-15s.

“That season there was a rough game because contrary to the rest of Portugal, there is always really bad weather in Rio Ave (a short drive north of Porto along the coast). It’s by the sea so there’s a lot of wind, it’s cold and it’s always hard to play there. Sometimes you think, ‘If we have this very skinny player, it’s not the day for him’, but Fabio was having a good season.

“The game was still 0-0 because it was so hard to attack with the ball always in the air with strong winds. At the very end, he forced a penalty because he was trying to sprint against the wind and at the last minute he realised the defender was going to arrive first. So he just gave a small touch to the ball and the guy went through him. It was like a 60kg (132lb) guy against a 30kg guy so he went flying two or three metres! We almost said, ‘He killed him!’.

“We looked at Fabio, he was still on the floor and he looked at us and smiled realising, ‘Oh, I got the penalty’. He took it, scored and we won 1-0. This was Fabio. Those things were only possible with Fabio.”

By the time Moreira reunited with the midfielder in Porto’s under-19s, the challenges were different. Into his final year as a youth player, Vieira was playing for his future. Moreira could feel that but it brought the best out of Vieira and the squad as he went on to score the opening goal in their UEFA Youth League final win over Chelsea in 2018-19.

“Everyone felt the pressure — it’s impossible not to — but the way we acted with that pressure; it’s different from person to person, but he was not hiding in that game,” Moreira adds.

“He was assuming the responsibility of being on that pitch and his role in the team, and that’s Fabio. In the most important game of our lives, not just his.

“It’s impossible not to be emotional with that kind of game. The club had never been to the final. It’s a final against Chelsea and it’s the biggest competition worldwide for that age. It’s the fuel they need to have to play at the highest level possible. Even us coaches jumped like little kids.”

Arsenal got a glimpse of how emotional Vieira’s celebrations can be in that 4-2 comeback at Villa Park last month. He fell to his knees, arms aloft, the second he played in Gabriel Martinelli for the fourth goal after opposition goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez had gone up for a corner to try to snatch an equaliser.

That match was the first real flash of Vieira and Martinelli’s on-pitch relationship. Manager Mikel Arteta teased the idea of the pair playing closer together after beating Everton a week ago, and trialled Vieira as a left-sided No 8 with Martinelli outside him against Bournemouth on Saturday, but the visitors scoring after nine seconds and Leandro Trossard going off injured on 22 minutes threw any gameplan the Spaniard had out the window.

“He’s a great guy, everyone can see our relationship (is good). He’s a great guy and I love him,” Martinelli said when replacing Vieira for press conference duties before this first leg against Sporting due to the Portugal Under-21 international’s sore throat.

Vieira and Martinelli on Arsenal’s pre-season tour of the United States last summer (Photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Arteta later explained “Fabio is OK” when asked about his fitness, which could provide another opportunity to trial him in an area where he has previously flourished.

“Porto’s youth teams always play 4-3-3. Fabio played in the same position he did against Bournemouth at the weekend: the left ‘interior’ (left of midfield three),” Costa says.

“Why? Fabio is very good at receiving the ball between the lines, surrounded by opponents, because he’s so good technically. His first touch is great. And I also wanted him close to the goal, because he has a really good shot on him. Really, really good.”

Moreira adds: “He brought the opposition net closer to everyone, and he still has that. When you see Fabio and see him to the side and backwards, that’s not Fabio. In Fabio’s best moments, he puts his team-mates in front of goal. He has ‘goal’ on his body — by scoring, by assisting, by whatever.”

Arteta joked that the first thing he did when the last-16 draw was made was quiz Vieira about Sporting.

All being well, Vieira will get his chance against them today, and the characteristics that have defined him for more than half his life could be a key factor in Arsenal balancing this competition with an increasingly draining Premier League title bid.

He is a player Arteta was instantly excited by because of his ability to decide matches in the final third, after all.

[flagwars]

Video Game Flag Wars: Round 1

Now that the National Pride Fusion Flag Wars has ended, we can return to the Video Game Flag Wars! The prelims decided which flag would represent each series, so now the tournament contains one flag per series. This does not include mods and fangames, as there are multiple flags from Hearts of Iron mods and Roblox games in the tournament. As there are so many flags even after the prelims, there will be 32 polls in the first round rather than the usual 16. Let me know what flag you want to win! See the brackets below.

Round 1:

1. Crimson Cult Banner (Thaumcraft) vs. Flag (Roblox BedWars) vs. Salmon Run Flag (Splatoon)

2. Unnamed Flag (Lego City Undercover) vs. Atlantic Federation (Valkyria Chronicles) vs. Homestead Banner (Palia)

3. Middle Eastern Alliance (Squad) vs. Shadowkin (Raid: Shadow Legends) vs Bilge Rat Adventures Flag (Sea of Thieves)

4. Saker’s Flag (Fable) vs. Novistrana (Republic: The Revolution) vs. Arstotzka (Papers, Please)

5. San Andreas (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) vs. Kirin Tor Offensive Banner (World of Warcraft) vs. Alliance of Galactic Travelers (No Man’s Sky)

6. Black Revolt (Kaiserredux) vs. Aquileian Republic (Supremacy) (Equestria at War) vs. Rescue Corps Flag (Pikmin 4)

7. Tropico (Tropico) vs. Sons of Liberty (Metal Gear Solid 2) vs. Commune of Revachol (Disco Elysium)

8. Mawkin Flag (Metroid: Dread) vs. Calchaqui (Europa Universalis 4) vs. Kazan Military Okrug (Thousand-Week Reich)

9. King Dedede’s Flag (Kirby: Triple Deluxe) vs. Meat Flag (Slime Rancher) vs. Flag of the Crown (Cult of the Lamb)

10. Communist Australia (Victoria II) vs. Delian League (Imperator: Rome) vs. Ominous Banner/Illager Banner (Minecraft)

11. Patagonian Worker’s Front (Kaiserreich) vs. Castle Siege (Super Smash Bros.) vs. Yara (Far Cry 6)

12. Stag Beetle Flag (Animal Crossing: New Leaf) vs. Fortnite (Fortnite) vs. Livonia (Arma)

13. Gaul Úr (Red Flood) vs. Strong Badia (Homestar Runner) vs. Super Earth (Helldivers)

14. Alam Melayu (Rise of Nations (Roblox)) vs. Tiki Tak Tribe (Donkey Kong Country Returns) vs. Sea Slide Galaxy (Super Mario Galaxy)

15. Great Lakes Government (Kalterkrieg: Shadow of the Weltkrieg) vs. Principality of Kemerovo (The New Order: Last Days of Europe) vs. Joker Banner (Balatro)

16. Shadow Isles Clash Banner (League of Legends) vs. Rebel Corps, Phantom Thieves Version (Persona 5 Tactica) vs. Antarctica (3D Atlas (1996))

17. Generic Flag (Roblox) vs. Standing Flag (Dragon Blade RPG (Roblox)) vs. Zhu Xi's Legacy (Age of Empires 4)

18. Kitakami (Pokémon Scarlet and Violet) vs. South California (Cyberpunk 2077) vs. Watchers (Overwatch)

19. Avalar (Spyro the Dragon) vs. Union of American People's Republics (Red World) vs. Grey Warden Heraldry (Dragon Age: Inquisition)

20. Eusan Nation (Signalis) vs. Aurelia (Ace Combat) vs. Outer Wilds Ventures (Outer Wilds)

21. Columbia (Bioshock Infinite) vs. Sickle Moon Flag (Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker) vs. Eggmanland (Sonic Unleashed)

22. The Allied Nations (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3) vs. The Rebellion (Just Cause 3) vs. Federation of the Americas (Call of Duty: Ghosts)

23. Great Lake Revolutionary Council (Extremis Ultimis) vs. Courland (Empire: Total War) vs. Columbia (Crimson Skies)

24. Pontiac Province (Judgement Day: Aftermath of the Red Flood) vs. Communist Iberia (Hearts of Iron IV) vs. International Workers' Armed Forces (Krasnacht: Twilight of the Gods)

25. New California Republic (Fallout) vs. Deep Hollow Valley (Night in the Woods) vs. Victory Flag (Fall Guys)

26. Zheng Fa (Ace Attorney) vs. Golden Deer Banner (Fire Emblem: Three Houses) vs. Warbanner (Risk of Rain 2)

27. Blue Flag (Halo: Combat Evolved) vs. Wario’s House (WarioWare) vs. American Collective (Twilight of the Anthropocene)

28. Niflheim (Final Fantasy XV) vs. Republic of America (Dustborn) vs. American Empire (Pax Britannica)

29. Corvus (Dead Ahead (Roblox)) vs. Banner of the First Fleet (Monster Hunter)

30. Fillydelphia Contingent (Balefire Blues) vs. Federation of Anrakan Isles (Suzerain)

31. Yartar (Baldur’s Gate 3) vs. Hurons (American Conquest)

32. Falkreath Hold (Skyrim) vs. Assassin Jolly Roger (Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag)