Author: Joe Soriano

Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2010. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has run sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling.

Champions League Power Rankings: The 10 best managers for the 2025/26 season
30Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Rankings

Champions League Power Rankings: The 10 best managers for the 2025/26 season

The 2025/26 Champions League draw for the league phase is set, with the matches to begin next month in mid-September, and it's anyone's guess as to how this year's tournament will ultimately play out. Obviously, the players are the one who play the game, but the spotlight has become increasingly focused on the manager, and there's no one style that makes someone successful in the Champions League. Carlo Ancelotti won two of the last four Champions League titles on chaos, Pep Guardiola won one on structure while embracing the virtues of a free-scoring No. 9 in Erling Haaland, and Luis Enrique finally brought the big one to Paris by embracing a more team-oriented playing style without Kylian Mbappe. It's not easy ranking managers at baseline, but ranking them from different leagues ...
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Champions League Power Rankings: The top 12 strikers before the 2025/26 season
30Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Rankings

Champions League Power Rankings: The top 12 strikers before the 2025/26 season

There isn't a single position on the football pitch that receives as much attention as the striker position, It is the marquee position, because there's a school of thought that every great team needs a great player who can finish off the goals. Although Real Madrid have won a Champions League title in recent years without a true No. 9 and Manchester City have won the Premier League without one, those are exceptions to the rule. Because Real Madrid have also dropped Champions League titles without a true top goal-scorer, while Manchester City only became Champions League winners after they added Erling Haaland, a record-breaking striker. Ahead of the 2025/26 Champions League season, which will officially begin next month with the league phase, let's do an intial power ranking of t...
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The 10 best Arsenal Women players of all time
29Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
All-Time Lists

The 10 best Arsenal Women players of all time

If you look up the list of the clubs with the most FA WSL titles in history, you'd get the impression that Chelsea are the greatest team of all time in women's English football, as they've won eight FA WSL titles to Arsenal's three. But when you expand to all English women's leagues under any name, Arsenal are the ones who come out clear winners with 15 titles to their credit. And if there were any doubts that Arsenal are the greatest side in women's football in England, they put that all to rest by being the first English team to win the Champions League since they themselves last did it in 2007. So yes, they are the only women's team in England to have won the Champions League. So naturally, Arsenal have a rich history of great players, and to honor that, I want to give you, in no ...
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What can we expect from Gio Reyna at Borussia Monchengladbach?
29Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Analysis

What can we expect from Gio Reyna at Borussia Monchengladbach?

There's nothing American football (wait, sorry, soccer) fans love more than hyping up one of their own, and finally, in the 2020s there have been a slew of young American footballers actually worth hyping up. Most of them found their first foothold in the Bundesliga, and with the success of Christian Pulisic, who would bag a Champions League trophy at Chelsea before becoming an even better player for AC Milan, there's been no shortage of fans scouring the German top flight for the next big thing in the USMNT. It was only natural, then, for the next big American talent at Borussia Dortmund, Gio Reyna, to be the next vict- I mean, uh, subject of the hype machine that is the entirely niche - and mostly stupid - so-called "mainstream" American soccer punditry. I call them "mostly stup...
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How good is Jorgen Strand Larsen?
29Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Analysis

How good is Jorgen Strand Larsen?

As Newcastle do their best to hold onto Alexander Isak thinking that making a "statement" - whatever that means - is worth keeping around a notoriously moody player who clearly doesn't want to be at the club, they are still doing their due diligence to sign a striker to replace Isak, should he end up moving to reigning Premier League champions Liverpool anyway. Isak was the best striker in the Premier League last season, so it's only natural for Newcastle fans and everyone else to wonder how far the downgrade will go to the next No. 9. Yoane Wissa scored 19 goals for Brentford alongside newly-minted Manchester United signing Bryan Mbeumo, and he's on Newcastle's radar despite doing what is essentially a harsher version to Brentford of what Isak is doing to Newcastle. The latest st...
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Premier League Power Rankings: Every Big 6 defense from worst to first in 2025/26
29Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Rankings

Premier League Power Rankings: Every Big 6 defense from worst to first in 2025/26

I'm not sure how much the American football saying "defense wins championships" holds true in world football, but it seems pretty appropriate when you look at the difference between teams that were and were not successful in the title races last season. For example, Napoli won Serie A against the odds over one of the best striker tandems in European football in Inter Milan with only Romelu Lukaku as a true standout forward. And they did so because they were so organized defensively and structurally under Antonio Conte. In the Premier League, Manchester City fell out of the Premier League title race entirely because their defense was no longer a stalwart engine, as they clearly suffered from Rodri's torn ACL. Liverpool and Arsenal, meanwhile, had the best defenses in the league. So...
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Why Manchester United is so bad year after year
28Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Analysis

Why Manchester United is so bad year after year

If you are reading this article, I assume you are an intelligent football fan, because I don't know of many blithering idiots who stumble onto The Trivela Effect. No, no, usually those trolls end up somewhere like Diario Gol or Don Balon while they fiddle with their dial-up connection. Because you are an intelligent football fan, you acknowledge that Manchester United are indeed bad. Very bad. In fact, they are so horrendous that it almost defies belief that a club that has given the world so many of the finest footballers of all time - Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Scholes, Nemanja Vidic, David Beckham, Eric Cantona, Bobby Charlton, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney, George Best, Denis Irwin, Roy Keane...OK I'll stop now - could be such an abject failure in 2025. It has been more than a decade sin...
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The 5 best Real Betis players you need to know for the 2025/26 season
27Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Analysis

The 5 best Real Betis players you need to know for the 2025/26 season

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a bigger club that still gets treated like a small club than Real Betis. Year after year, they are in the hunt for Champions League football, and just last year, they made it to the Conference League Final against Chelsea. Some of the biggest legends of Spanish football have come through Betis, such as Joaquin, and reigning Champions League winner Fabian Ruiz actually got his first breakout with Real Betis...alongside a certain Real Madrid center midfielder by the name of Dani Ceballos. Real Betis have designs on making it back to the Champions League this season, but who are the main protagonists leading the charge after the Verdiblancos finished sixth in the league last season? I'll take you through the five players I think you should kno...
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Premier League Power Rankings: The 10 best U21 players for the 2025/26 season
27Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Rankings

Premier League Power Rankings: The 10 best U21 players for the 2025/26 season

Even though it's been just two games, the 2025/26 Premier League campaign is already giving us the impression that this is going to be a season written by the young stars of the league. And I'm not just talking about players who are indeed young but are already established Premier League superstars like Erling Haaland, Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer, Martin Odegaard, and now Florian Wirtz. No, I'm talking about players who haven't even turned 21 years old yet or are just teenagers, already scoring decisive goals and shining for some of the Premier League's biggest clubs. So with the 2025/26 Premier League campaign now fully under way, let's preview the youngsters who could have a big say on the final table, ranking the top 10 U21 players in English football right now. 10. Arsenal LB My...
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Champions League Power Rankings: The 5 most likely first-time winners
24Aug By Joe SorianoNo Comments
Rankings

Champions League Power Rankings: The 5 most likely first-time winners

The usual suspects are the favorites to win the 2025/26 Champions League, with reigning champions PSG joining the holy trinity of Bayern Munich, Barcelona, and Real Madrid, as well as last year's Premier League winners Liverpool, as the top five favorites to conquer European football this season. However, what's just as interesting is talking about which teams could break through and win their first Champions League title in history. And not all of those teams are underdogs, as sides like Atletico Madrid that have been regulars or Premier League title contenders Arsenal are also among the list of teams still seeking their first taste of the very summit of European football. Perhaps the 2025/26 Champions League season will be the one that gets one of these historic clubs off the schne...
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