Kickin' It: Defenders in tears, cranky ultras

Monday Night Football: Arsenal vs. Aston Villa Moved to Jan. 13| The Short Fuse

If you're in the UK this may very well be good news, but for those of us in the Western Hemisphere it's pretty lame. My weekends revolve in some par, around watching Villa; when games get moved to the middle of the work day, it kind of sucks.  Hopefully a two-hour lunch is an option.

Home Teams, Not Players | MarkYesilevsky.com

You might know the name Mark Yesilevsky as one of the founders of SB Nation's Bolton Blog Lion of Vienna Suite. He's now doing a series of football illustrations that really cannot be done justice with words; it's a really creative concept that's come together wonderfully, and though he hasn't gotten to Villa quite yet, you're still going to be impressed with his work.

Gareth Bale Quite Literally Reduces Rayo Vallecano Full-Back Anaitz Arbilla To Tears | Who Ate All the Pies

Gareth Bale hasn't gotten off to the start he likely would have hoped for with Real Madrid, but he's still apparently good enough to make an honest-to-god professional footballer break down in tears. This is a lot more depressing than I thought it would be. Poor guy :(

Cristiano Ronaldo gives his shirt to girl in the stands, Rayo Vallecano ultras make her throw it away | Dirty Tackle

This is really just the game that keeps on giving. The headline says it all here; it's tempting to think Cristiano knew this would happen in the first place.

Red Star beat Partizan 1-0 in troubled Belgrade derby | Reuters

And here we have a case of the headline burying the lede; "troubled" is really kind of an understatement considering that the Partizan fans damn near set the entire stadium on fire. Kind of puts the isolated flare thrown at the linesman thing into perspective.