Shakhtar Donetsk won their sixth league title in eight years last week, a 3-0 win over bottom-of-the-table Oleksandriya ensuring that they would again finish above Dynamo Kiev.
Having converted a low cross from the right to give Nigeria the lead against Bulgaria, Yekini stood in the goal, arms through the net, hands alternately clenched around the strings and clasped to his face as tears rolled down his cheeks.
The life of a great football team is brief: as the great Hungarian coach Bela Guttmann observed, “the third season is fatal”.
After Borussia Dortmund won the league title last season, their coach Jurgen Klopp was determined that nobody should get carried away.
The only predictable thing about Emelec’s late winner against Olimpia in the Copa Libertadores last week was that it was a Quinonez who scored it.
To listen to Mircea Lucescu, you’d think everything in Ukrainian football is stacked against him and his Shakhtar Donetsk side.
Given the — justifiable — excitement over Marcelo Bielsa’s Athletic Bilbao at the moment, it would be easy to overlook just how significant a part Schalke 04 played in their thrilling meeting in the Europa League last Thursday.
It is rare in modern football to see something quite so startling as Athletic Bilbao’s two victories over Manchester United.
One of the great joys of South American competition is that nobody knows anything.
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