Close to ten months after Germany lifted soccer's biggest prize, six of the 12 stadiums built or renovated for the 2014 World Cup are already in financial difficulty, while local governments across Brazil are scrambling to find productive uses for these newly-built state-of-the-art sports arenas. For anyone who takes even a passing interest in following the economic aftermath of hosting a World Cup, this is a story we've heard before.

Even if Euro 2016 qualifying hasn't been as straightforward as anyone imagined, most of the traditional powers will still qualify with ease, thanks to the expanded format. But the biggest beneficiary of all, assuming it can get its act together in the final five games, will no doubt be the Netherlands. The Dutch have been awful almost every time they've played together since Guus Hiddink took over for Louis van Gaal following the World Cup.

The Economist, the highly-regarded British pub covering politics, finance and anything else it thinks smart people (or in the case of Off The Post, people who use its opinions as proxies for their own when they want to sound smart at cocktail parties) should know about, thinks it has definitely solved the case through a very detailed (and very hard to follow) statistical analysis about who really is the best soccer player in the world: Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi.

Newcastle United has some image rebuilding to do after midfielder Jonas Gutierrez on Thursday revealed that he will never forgive the Premier League club for the way it treated him during his two-year battle with testicular cancer. And yet remarkably, the Argentine says he wants to stay at St James Park beyond the expiration of his contract this summer thanks to the support he's received from the club's fans

A bad month for Real Madrid winger Gareth Bale got much worse on Tuesday, as the Real-leaning Spanish sports daily AS released a survey in which a whopping 68 percent of its readers said they want to see the Welshman dropped from coach Carlo Ancelotti's starting eleven. That's up from the 46 percent of readers who wanted to see him dropped after Real's 1-0 loss at Athletic Bilbao on March 7. Now, Off The Post certainly understands when fans grow tired of players under-performing-but all this for a bad month or two?

Few will be surprised to hear this morning that Manchester United duo Radamel Falcao and Angel Di Maria are making headlines today. While Falcao barely makes the substitute bench under coach Louis van Gaal these days, Di Maria over the last few months has looked a shadow of the player who contributed three goals and six assists in his first ten games following his 60 million pound ($89 million) move from Real Madrid. Could it be that both players, who less than two years ago were considered among the worlds' best in their respective positions, have simply become worse under …

As usual, "El Clasico'"didn't disappoint, for neutrals anyway. After pouring through this morning's papers, the general consensus is that Real Madrid was the better the team for the first hour of the game, but few would deny that Barcelona deserved the three points, especially after Luis Suarez's scored Barca's second. Luka Modric tiring and Gareth Bale failing to perform well certainly contributed to Real's loss at the Camp Nou on Sunday, but what about the club's generally poor form recently? What's happened to the team that reeled off a record 22 consecutive victories in all competitions last fall?

Just in case you missed the UEFA Champions League round of 16-and the subsequent complaining and analyses that followed-, no English teams will be represented in the quarterfinals. Sorry, Premier League fans. Not this year. And despite the finger-pointing (Mourinho: it's the players!) and excuse-making (Wenger: it's the away goals rule!) that followed the exits of Chelsea and Arsenal in particular, each of England's three round of 16 representatives was deservedly beaten.

Prior to becoming a full-time fan of the beautiful game, Off The Post had a background in marketing and advertising-and anyone who has worked in that industry knows a thing or two about PR. Which brings us to our question for today: who is running PR for Chelsea Football Club these days? Or rather: who is letting Jose Mourinho run PR for CFC?

On Feb. 5, Cristiano Ronaldo turned 30 -- a dreaded age for any professional soccer player as it signifies the beginning of what can be a rapid decline in one's ability to keep up with the astonishing pace of the professional game.