{"id":78584,"date":"2026-09-12T04:55:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T09:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/12\/this-weeks-soccer-questions-were-we-wrong-about-man-city-and-does-the-ballon-dor-ignore-americans\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T04:55:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T09:55:05","slug":"this-weeks-soccer-questions-were-we-wrong-about-man-city-and-does-the-ballon-dor-ignore-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/12\/this-weeks-soccer-questions-were-we-wrong-about-man-city-and-does-the-ballon-dor-ignore-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"This week\u2019s soccer questions: were we wrong about Man City and does the Ballon d\u2019Or ignore Americans?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We look at Enzo Maresca\u2019s takeover in Guardiola\u2019s shadow, shifting dynamics in women\u2019s soccer and Raphinha\u2019s incredible form at Barcelona<\/p>\n<p>Squint hard enough and Manchester City still look like Manchester City. They\u2019re still playing the same possession-hungry soccer. Erling Haaland is still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/sep\/08\/porto-manchester-city-champions-league-match-report\">scoring<\/a> goals. They even have a new manager with vaguely the same appearance and oeuvre as their old manager. An AI Pep Guardiola in the dugout.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/sep\/12\/manchester-city-ballon-dor-uswnt-raphina-barcelona\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We look at Enzo Maresca\u2019s takeover in Guardiola\u2019s shadow, shifting dynamics in women\u2019s soccer and Raphinha\u2019s incredible form at Barcelona Squint hard enough and Manchester City still look like Manchester City. They\u2019re still playing the same possession-hungry soccer. Erling Haaland is still scoring goals. They even have a new manager with vaguely the same appearance &#8230; <a title=\"This week\u2019s soccer questions: were we wrong about Man City and does the Ballon d\u2019Or ignore Americans?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/12\/this-weeks-soccer-questions-were-we-wrong-about-man-city-and-does-the-ballon-dor-ignore-americans\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about This week\u2019s soccer questions: were we wrong about Man City and does the Ballon d\u2019Or ignore Americans?\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}