- The players were back to training with the club today in advance of their clash against Almeria this Saturday, a club sitting on 12 points after 13 matches. Cristiano Ronaldo trained alone while Raphael Varane trained indoors.
- Speaking of Cristiano "Beast Mode" Ronaldo, he feels that this could be his best season to date and even direct rival Lionel Messi had some nice words to offer. Aww, best friends for life!
- Huge, massive, wonderful (insert happy .gif here) news, reports are out that Xabi Alonso has renewed his contract with Real Madrid and will be donning the Whites until 2016! O, happy day!
- If you haven't heard or read yet, Castilla dismissed former manager Alberto Toril after their most recent 6-0 loss. Wishing him the best and hopefully the squad will get things turned around sooner rather than later.
- The players all took part in voting for the FIFA FIFPro World XI 2013 and in addition to that, reports are stating that Iker Casillas has voted for Cristiano Ronaldo for the 2013 Ballon d'Or so no controversy there.
- Fabio Coentrao has suffered a muscle strain on the back of his right thigh. The timetable for his return has not been estimated yet but seeing as how Marcelo will be out for at least another 10 days, a speedy recovery is a must.
- As someone who will be making his career out of advertising, nothing rustles my jimmies more than poorly thought-out ad campaigns and this is one of those. Pepsi Sweden thought it would be cheeky by creating an ad campaign centered around a Cristiano Ronaldo voodoo doll in advance of the Portugal-Sweden matches. Idiots.
- ESPN's Gab Marcotti offers his thoughts on the BDO voting mess, as does Graham Hunter. Interesting to note is Hunter's assertion that the deadline was extended when Portugal and Sweden were deadlocked at 0-0 on Tuesday and before CR went off.
- And with talk of legendary Ferenc Puskás recently, here's our Throwback Thursday clip of Puskás scoring against OGC Niza. Wicked shot with that marvelous left foot of his.