Can Manchester City Bounce Back and Defend the English Premier League?

           With ten games left in the English Premier League, the defending English champions, Manchester City are in dire need of an uptake in form to take first place back from Chelsea.  It was three games ago that the general consensus in the City camp was that every remaining game needed to be won in order to close the gap on Chelsea.  Three games later and Manchester City seem to have a better chance of dropping to third than rising to first.  those three games have symbolized the highs and lows of the entire campaign.  The first game saw City demolish Newcastle to a score of 5-0.  The team also shortened their gap between Chelsea to five after the league leaders tied.  The next game stopped the momentum, however in a crushing loss to Liverpool courtesy of Jordan Henderson and Philippe Coutinho with two wondrous goals.  The final of the three games was an unconvincing victory against the bottom table team, Leicester City. Manchester City are running out of time to rekindle their dominant form.

               The fact that those three games included two wins and one loss just goes to demonstrate how good the opposition is.  Chelsea have been brilliant in the Premier League this season and are led by the pragmatic manager Jose Mourinho and superstars Eden Hazard and Diego Costa.  Mourinho sides have had a huge record of success across Europe and the manager is legendary for never turning over an early season lead.  However, Manchester City have a history of overhauling the leaders at the very end.  The story was such as they chased Manchester United in 2012.  Manchester United at the height of their powers led their local rivals by eight points as the season reached its end.  It took a run of phenomenal games for Manchester City to will themselves back into the title race, and it still required a stoppage time goal from Argentine striker Sergio Aguero.  Last season, it was Liverpool led by PFA Player of the Year, Luis Suarez, who led Manchester City.  That time it was the Ivorian midfielder Yaya Toure who led City back.  This year, it will take both Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure as well as David Silva and Vincent Kompany to defend the title.  Of course, City can not just will themselves back to winning ways.  It will require a change of tactics from Manuel Pellegrini who has come under criticism for poor formations and starting eleven.  The defense will also need to improve quickly.  The normally unshakable Vincent Kompany has been poor for City and needs to get backs to the days when he shut down offenses. Manchester City certainly have the quality to come back, but the question is: will Chelsea crumble, and if they do, can Man City be ready to race by them and win the English Premier League yet again?

Lionel Messi Biography

         
         Lionel Messi stood on the brink of history.  The Finals of the 2014 FIFA World Cup will be viewed by over a billion people worldwide.  In soccer, there is no greater achievement, and it is monumental for the man who has already won everything else.  Countless victories have brought Messi global acclaim and most label him as the best player in the world and quite possibly the best ever.  One more win and his legacy is cemented forever. 

       However, it did not start that way for Lionel Messi.  When he was born in Argentina, he did not have much money to his name.  Now, his skills on the soccer field are worth over one hundred million dollars.  At a young age, Lionel Messi was diagnosed with a growth disorder.  It required an impossibly expensive medication that the Messi family had no way to pay.  They found an answer in their son's left foot, or, rather, what he could make a soccer ball do with it.  Messi's skills in the world's most popular game has brought him more than he could have possibly dreamed.  At thirteen, he signed a exceptional contract with FC Barcelona that not only secured the medication for his disorder but also started one of the greatest careers in the history of sports.  That is pretty good for a kid nicknamed "La Pulga," or the flea.  After signing his first contract on a napkin, Lionel Messi's life changed forever.  He left Argentina behind for Barcelona, Spain where he was enrolled in one of the most legendary youth academies in the history of the sport, La Masia.  It is a school credited with developing some of the world's best players such as Messi's soon-to-be teammates, Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta.  However, Lionel Messi would soon become the greatest player to ever come out of the school.  The FC Barcelona first team was and is one of the best team in the sport worldwide.  Most would train for more than ten years for the chance to play for such a team.  

       Lionel Messi took just four years in La Masia to make his league debut at seventeen years old.  In the 2006/2007 season, Messi was part of the Barcelona squad that won the Spanish Premier League and the European Champions League.  One year later at 20 years of age, Lionel Messi was starting for the champions of Europe.  It was a spot in the lineup that he has not relinquished to this day and what followed was an unprecedented era of utter dominance.  The 2008/2009 season in particular was one of the most famous of all time with Messi leading the club to the Treble.  The Treble involved victory in the Spanish League, Spanish Cup, and Uefa Champions League.  Lionel Messi then won the most coveted award in all of soccer, the FIFA Ballon D'or.  It is the award given to the best player in the world.  Players have gone through entire careers without coming close to it.  Messi had his hands on it at twenty-one years old.  Incredibly, Messi won the prestigious award for the next three consecutive years.  In those three years Messi cd another European Championship and two more Spanish League victories.  Those three years also included the ridiculous 2012.  Messi had always been the greatest goal scorer and soccer.  However, in 2012, Messi broke every record there was on the way to 91 total goals for the year.  It is the greatest goal scoring achievement of all time.       

        Despite all this success at the club level of soccer, Messi did not win so effortlessly on the Argentina National Team.  That is, until the FIFA World Cup 2014.  Messi scored 4 goals in the 7 game competition and led his team to the finals.  On that day, he did not do what he had done all his life.  He failed to win.  He was honored as the MVP of the tournament although it was not the trophy he wanted to bring home.  That loss capped what has been a disappointing year for Messi standards.  His team failed to win any trophies, and he lost the Ballon D'or for the second consecutive time.  2015 appears to be a brighter year.  Messi has broken the all time La Liga goal scoring record and the all time European League record.  He has started 2015 well and has played fantastically.  Lionel Messi looks well on his way to do what he always has done again: score goals and win games.

Reaction to "Sacking the Super Bowl" by Steve Almond

                           I recently read the article "Sacking the Super Bowl" by Steve Almond, and I found it to be a well written  article that does an exceptional job of making the reader question the ethics of the most popular sport in America.  The beginning of the article is a spectacular attention grabber that appeals to the sympathy of the reader.  It is not about football at all, but rather a sad story about the writer's mother and her struggles with a form of dementia.  This opening works to grab the sympathy of the reader, and then apply it to football.  This is because the next thing the writer does is compare his mother's illness to the illnesses of retired players.  The writer then goes on to describe the lucrative nature of the NFL in terms of their mass wealth which comes from the public as a whole while the NFL remains tax-exempt.  The author then brings up the danger football poses to the players and asks the reader what the reward is for them.  Steve Almond encourages readers to ask ourselves if football is really safe.  This question also influences the reader to wonder how they can then support football.  At the end of the article, the writer leaves the decision in our hands about whether or not to watch football.  This article is extremely well written with the ending especially standing out.  Steve Almond knows that he has no chance convincing a large group of people to give up on football, so instead he leaves it to our conscience.  He hopes that this article will stick in the mind of people watching the game and that it might encourage them to come around to his way of thinking.  Ultimately, I will continue to watch football.  The truth is that the players are paid a lot for what they do and each one knows the risks.   Football players play football because they love it, and not even the risks involved could convince them to stop playing.  This is the reasoning I will use to clear my conscience every year when I sit down to watch the Super Bowl.