It would be a great step forward for Ricciardo to take Hamilton's place at Mercedes later on. While we are talking about how much his performance has dropped down, this would be a golden opportunity for Ricciardo. He is normally a very talented driver but he hasn't performed as he expected to do at McLaren so far. His days with Red Bull and Renault were quite good and it might be the same at Mercedes as well.

I wonder how much competitive he would be against Russell. I wouldn't expect the same level as Ricciardo - Verstappen rivalry for sure. 

Xavi has really started to take the right actions in this kind of situations. Dembele and Raphinha both weren't much effective against Real Madrid. Dembele has been underperforming in the recent times actually and he needed to be replaced to help him find out what he was doing. He likes to play selfishly mostly and this harms the team also. He needs to become a complete team player to be more useful. He can still use his skills in that case as well in the end.

There were many positive signs against Villarreal. They seemed to have left the result of El Clasico behind. Keeping the mental condition solid is always important for them. They need to push hard while Real Madrid are still unbeatable. They need Lewandowski to perform like this as much as possible. And he needs to do this in big matches also which he hasn't done yet I'm afraid.

Complexity and BIG were huge surprises today and I bet that many people lost their bets because of them. Complexity lost to Sharks which were at the 167th position in the world rankings. It was even a 2-0 defeat. I don't know what's wrong with Complexity now because they were successful in a much bigger tournament recently. They were fighting hard against even top tier teams. BLAST Premier is one of the most prestigious tournaments and it is the end of the road for them.

BIG are also out now due to losing 2-1 to Sangal. Sangal are one of the teams on the rise for months actually but they were still not a better team than BIG anyway. BIG had very special players and even syrsoN was enough to make a big difference. But BIG were still not able to leave their bad days behind and there was still gaps in their performance as a team. Sangal did a great work here by beating a team near top 10. I wonder when BIG will be able to bring back their old days. After this elimination I guess their ranking would drop a little more.

The reason why Çağlar Söyüncü doesn't play is that he is still not good enough in training. At least Brendan Rodgers stated this not much time ago. Otherwise he was one of the crucial players in their defense before as you remember. I don't know why he is still struggling to be a part of the starting eleven though. There is an information like he has a knee injury on Transfermarkt now. But I don't know how much true it is either.

Leicester got the win by 2-0 by an average performance. After finding the 2-0 advantage in the first half already they started to focus on keeping it until the end. This was helpful for Leeds to find many chances in the second half. But Leicester were still good at keeping the score. I still can't trust them about maintaining a winning streak of course. The same thing happened against Nottingham and Leicester couldn't improve their form later on.

14. Charles Oliveira
13. Aljamain Sterling
12. Petr Yan
11. Beneil Dariush
10. Manon Fiorot
9.  Belal Muhammad
8.  Caio Borralho
7.  Nikita Krylov
6.  Zubaira Tukhugov
5.
4.  Abubakar Nurmagomedov
3.  Armen Petrosyan
2.  Muhammad Mokaev
1.  Karol Rosa

Match 14 winner Total Strikes: 71

1. AZ
2. NO
3. AZ
4. Yes
5. Under
6. 2nd
7. Odd
8. Even
9. AZ
10. AZ


Final Score prediction  21-24

Even though Verstappen has officially become the champion the season is still continuing for all of us here especially. We are on another race week and the location is the USA this time.

This race was dominated by Lewis Hamilton in the past for long years until 2017. But since then we have seen different drivers winning the race like Kimi, Bottas and Verstappen respectively. Verstappen is the biggest favourite to win again now. Maybe he is the champion but we all know how much competitive he is in every condition. He would still fight for winning the rest of the races. I've checked the odds for qualifying session as well and seen this:



There is a very small gap between these drivers for pole and it isn't surprising of course. Leclerc has won 9 poles in this season so far. So it might be worth betting on Leclerc to win pole position in this race.

Do you think that Ronaldo can find a big team that compete in the Champions League for himself? To be honest I don't think he can do this in January.

The reason is that teams are making their plans according to the start of a season and they try to finish their transfers before it starts. The only team I see in need of a striker are now Bayern Munich. But I'm not sure if they would be willing to sign Ronaldo. Because I don't feel like Ronaldo would be the right choice to fill Lewandowski's place. Lewandowski had incredible stats and they would like to sign a striker who can be a deadly striker like him. I think Ronaldo doesn't fit this definition anymore as we understand it from his performances.

We have just left Astralis vs Eternal Fire matchup behind. While everything was coming to an end on Nuke after Astralis made it 15-9, Eternal Fire players started to give their best into the match and carried it to OT. We watched even double OT in fact but still they couldn't prevent a defeat by 22-20.

To be honest, this matchup was definitely winnable for Eternal Fire. They should have won on Dust2 above all else. They had a good score advantage but couldn't keep it for long. It was feeling like we were having the same scenario on Overpass but thanks to XANTARES they equalized the series. Nuke was actually one of the most unsuccessful maps for Astralis because they had 2 wins and 7 losses. The statistics were like the opposite for Eternal Fire. However they still had big struggles. XANTARES started the map with a weak effort and they were really bad at the beginning. There was a hope in OT but they couldn't make it. This team still need to work harder to play more consistent as a team. Because we still see exactly the same faults by the players in every matchup.

I had a 2-1 Manchester United win prediction in the pool and it was really close.  

However I wasn't expecting such a poor performance from Tottenham to be honest. They are normally one of the most effective attacking teams in the league. But they had huge problems on creating multiple goal chances during the whole match. Manchester United did it again and defended another big team in Old Trafford successfully. This is a really great thing they do so far. We have witnessed it against Arsenal and Liverpool also from them.

I'd also like to see Arsenal becoming very successful. But in this season, I think that they will finish behind Liverpool as the 3rd team in the standings at best. But I guess that all people here would think the same about we will see Arsenal in the Champions League after a long break.

Since 2008, we have seen only Luka Modric as a different player than Messi and Ronaldo to win the Ballon d'Or. But it was until Benzema also won it this year. Real Madrid won the Champions League title thanks to Benzema's priceless help last season. It wouldn't still be enough no matter how much Real Madrid become grateful for his performance. That must be like his best season since he joined Real Madrid and he won the Ballon d'Or by working hard.

I wonder if Lewandowski will be able to win it too before retiring from football. I wonder if he missed that chance by signing for Barcelona or maybe I'm prejudiced about this. It doesn't feel like he can win it this season I mean. Haaland might be the closest candidate if he keeps this performance up and Manchester City become champions in the Champions League as well.

Fenerbahce have been one of the unstoppable teams of the recent weeks indeed. They haven't lost any match for five weeks in the league. Maybe they are still one point behind Adana Demirspor but we shouldn't forget that they still have one match missing on one hand. They are absolutely much better than the previous season also. Because they started to perform this much solid from the beginning already. Jorge Jesus has a great attacking game plan that helps this team be much more effective than before.

I don't know how much longer Adana Demirspor can keep their claim for the league title this season. But at one point I think that they can also drop down from the title race just as the other Anatolian teams experienced many times in the past. But who knows maybe Adana Demirspor might prove me wrong.

1.  Verstappen 
2.  Leclerc
3.  Verstappen 

I really don't get lucky in this pool at all. It was going to be a big morale for me if I was able to finish the week as the first. But unfortunately Bayern Munich increased the goal gap to 5 in the 80th minute. However I still believe in myself to come first on one of the weeks in the future.  

I'd like to appreciate Serab for his success as well.

SunPayus showed his quality in the series against Eternal Fire. His AWP style really resembles syrsoN by the way. He doesn't go for flick shots too often and chooses to take his time a little more. This style helps him play with impressive stats most of the time. It is risky at the same time of course because he can have serious issues against faster players. But for now he can surely be considered one of the best AWPers.

Eternal Fire could have been in the semi-finals but they made serious mistakes and missed the chance. I see that Outsiders destroyed ENCE by 2-0 (16-8, 16-14). This proves that ENCE can be beaten really comfortable as long as you know what you are doing during the whole series against them. Outsiders won $50k + entrance for ESL Pro League Conference at the end of the tournament.

Can we say that the balances are coming back to their old version in the Bundesliga as of now? 

Because the current look of the standings is really interesting. Dortmund have dropped down to even the 8th position after losing 2-0 against Union Berlin. I really appreciate Union Berlin's high effort as they finished the match in the first half already by scoring both goals. Dortmund won only once in their last five league games. I was curious about how quick Dortmund were going to screw up and it is pretty early.    Bayern Munich's incredible effort reminded me of their performances in the previous seasons. Freiburg couldn't do anything as they didn't have even a shot on target. This might be a sign of a recovery in the Bundesliga as well.

I didn't understand what you meant by saying "the final stage". If you meant that they would have one last chance for last 16 then it seems too difficult to happen. Because it would be a huge surprise if Inter lose points against Plzen.

- Plzen are much weaker than Inter.
- Plzen have no aim left in the group stage.
- It is a very crucial game for Inter to guarantee their spot also.

So Barcelona are in the Europa League from now on. It's a big failure but there is nothing to do about it.

Cenk Tosun normally didn't have a chance to play more than 16 minutes in a Super League match in this season so far. This time Valérien Ismaël decided to sub him in at the 68th minute and he scored a goal only two minutes after entering the match. This goal can be crucial for Besiktas to get at least one point as we are in the last minutes and it's still 2-2.

After having a 2-1 advantage in the first half already Trabzonspor started to focus on maintaining the score to get three points here. The second half has been fully under control of Besiktas. Trabzonspor have only two shots in this half. While Besiktas are taking risks I wonder if their opponent can find the winner and devastate them. Besiktas really need to win this to improve their recent form.

Newcastle are preparing a contract offer worth £200,000 a week for Bruno Guimaraes.

As there has been some interest by Real Madrid recently Newcastle don't want to lose him. This would be a pretty solid contract for him to be honest and he is already playing in the starting eleven regularly as well. Real Madrid are one of the biggest teams in the world of course. It's like many players dream of playing for Real Madrid some day. However he should take another fact into account that he might not find this many chances in the starting eleven there. If he is still eager to sign for Real Madrid then it is difficult for Newcastle to convince him to stay.

I have a big respect for the people who bet on Liverpool to win today.    Because it was really like Manchester City were a few steps ahead of them before this match. Liverpool were still struggling with serious defense problems and Manchester City were showing an incredible offense performance at the same time. I thought like there was no way Liverpool were going to stop Haaland.

However they really did and won by 1-0. Manchester City had a disallowed goal before Liverpool's goal due to foul as well. If Haaland didn't make a foul then things might have been much more interesting. Salah was really passionate in this match and he was the hero of the match. My prediction was a 3-1 Manchester City win by the way and it failed hard.