SI:AM | A Colossal Midweek Premier League Showdown

Plus, landing spots for Derek Carr.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I love when there’s a big soccer game on in the middle of the workday.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏆 Men’s NCAA tournament contenders

🤔 Where will Carr land?

🍽️ The Mets’ resident foodie

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A title race hanging in the balance

Domestic soccer matches don’t get much bigger than the one between Arsenal and Manchester City scheduled for today at 2:30 p.m. ET.

We are now past the halfway mark of the Premier League season, with Arsenal sitting in first place with 51 points. Manchester City is second with 48 points. (City has also played one more game than Arsenal.) A win for either team would have enormous title implications. Arsenal hasn’t won the league since the 2003–04 season, while City has won four of the last five championships.

Though Arsenal is the team in first place, it’s City that has the historic advantage. Arsenal has lost 10 straight Premier League contests against City and hasn’t won in 13 tries. Its most recent league win over the defending champions came on Dec. 21, 2015.

The stakes might be highest for City, though. Just last week, the Premier League announced it was investigating alleged serious financial rules violations by the club and its ultra-wealthy owners from Abu Dhabi. There are a whopping 115 charges in total. The scope of the allegations is unprecedented in English soccer, and it’s unclear how long it will take for a final ruling to be made, but the seriousness of the situation is undeniable. City could face a range of punishments, including expulsion from the Premier League.

Winning the league this year, then, before what figures to be a drawn-out legal process, becomes a more urgent goal. Lifting the trophy yet again before being potentially forcibly relegated would be a hell of a middle finger to the league.

As for the game on the field, there are a few interesting questions. City striker Erling Haaland, by far the league’s leading scorer with 25 goals (Harry Kane is next with 17), is dealing with a thigh injury picked during Sunday’s game against Aston Villa. He was taken off at halftime, and his availability for today’s game is somewhat in doubt. But a popular narrative in the press these days is that Haaland—as good as he is at finding the back of the net—might not be the right player for City up front. Haaland likes to charge forward aggressively, while City manager Pep Guardiola has historically preferred a style of play centered on maintaining possession while gradually advancing up the pitch.

The biggest tactical question facing Guardiola’s counterpart, Arsenal manager (and former Guardiola mentee) Mikel Arteta, is whether to rest some of his key players. The Gunners have deployed the same starting lineup for each of their last six Premier League games. Some players got to rest during an FA Cup loss against City on Jan. 27, but Arteta could opt for more fresh legs today—especially because it’s a midweek game.

If this game lives up to the hype, we’ll have a rematch to look forward to. These two teams are set to meet again in Manchester on April 26 when the championship picture will be in even sharper focus.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Porter Binks/Sports Illustrated

• Today’s Daily Cover is our annual Magic Eight, in which we whittle down the list of men’s NCAA tournament contenders to just the teams with a serious chance of winning.
• Our new NFL writer, Gilberto Manzano, ranks the best landing spots for Derek Carr.
• Jonathan Wilson writes that Bayern Munich’s Champions League win over PSG exposed the deficiencies of both teams.
• Mark Bechtel spoke to Mets outfielder Mark Canha about how he became a serious foodie.
• New Mexico State wasted no time in firing men’s basketball coach Greg Heiar.
• Colts owner Jim Irsay is making no secret about his plans for the draft.
• Here are the participants for the NBA’s three-point and slam dunk contests.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Timo Meier’s coast-to-coast goal for the Sharks.

4. Some great dunks by Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, and Shaedon Sharpe.

3. A rare NHL buzzer beater by the Devils to beat the Blue Jackets.

2. Chris Paul’s 19 assists against the Kings.

1. Kingsley Coman’s goal in Bayern Munich’s 1–0 win over PSG.

SIQ

Though far from a hockey power today, which country clinched its only Olympic ice hockey gold on this day in 1936?

• Great Britain
• Belgium
• Poland
• Hungary

Yesterday’s SIQ: On Feb. 14, 2010, the NBA All-Star Game set a record for the largest crowd ever in attendance for a basketball game when it was played at what stadium?

• AT&T Stadium
• Ford Field
• Superdome
• NRG Stadium

Answer: AT&T Stadium. A crowd of 108,713 packed the Cowboys’ new stadium outside of Dallas and saw the East narrowly defeat the West as Dwyane Wade was named MVP.

Dallas hadn’t hosted an All-Star Game since 1986, mostly because Mavericks owner Mark Cuban took issue with how the NBA made it difficult for season-ticket holders to attend the event. But shortly after Jerry Jones’s enormous stadium opened in 2009, the NBA announced that it would host that season’s All-Star Game.

“For attendance and partying, All-Star weekend will make the Super Bowl look like a bar mitzvah,” Cuban said.

Though it’s rare now, there was a stretch in NBA history when All-Star Games were played in football stadiums fairly regularly. From 1979 to ’96, the game was played at the Pontiac Silverdome, Hoosier Dome, Kingdome, Astrodome and Alamodome, but none of those games attracted more than 45,000 fans.