ReportWire

Tag: Arsenal

  • Thune steams while Democrats do the country a favor by slowing Trump’s nominees

    [ad_1]

    U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, speaks at Dakotafest in Mitchell on Aug. 20, 2025. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

    U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was hot under the collar. It wasn’t just because of the August weather, or the crowd at the Dakotafest agricultural trade show in Mitchell, or the pole barn where the crowd was jammed in. Thune was hot because of the way he’s being treated by Senate Democrats.

    Those pesky Democrats have thrown up as many roadblocks as they can to delay the filling of more than 1,300 positions in the Trump administration that require Senate confirmation. “We spend two-thirds of our time on personnel in the United States Senate,” Thune said, according to a Dakota Scout story, calling the resistance from the minority party “unprecedented.”

    In a recent op-ed, Thune promised that Senate Republicans are working on a rule change that should hurry the process along.

    Gone are the days of the Senate gentlemen’s club where the prevailing tradition was that a president should be allowed to have the nominees he wanted. Thune said 90% of President Barack Obama’s nominees were approved by unanimous consent, a fast way to approve nominees that skips committee hearings and floor debate. About 60% of President Joe Biden’s appointees were approved that way. In Trump’s first term, about half of his nominees were approved without hearings or debates.

    The downward trend in using unanimous consent is a direct result of the ideological split in this country. To date, none of Trump’s appointees during his second term have been approved by unanimous consent.

    The irony here is that Trump can’t get approval for the people he wants to serve in his administration while, during his first months in office, he’s been busy firing or furloughing thousands of federal government employees.

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has sworn to use every weapon in his arsenal to block the Trump agenda. It looks like that includes slowing the Senate confirmation process to a glacial pace.

    Senate Democrats may have acted more favorably toward Trump’s nominees if his Cabinet choices to be the leaders in his government weren’t so astoundingly unqualified. In Trump’s first term, he chose high-ranking officials as if casting a movie. They had to have the right look, but with the right look came a reasonable amount of competence. In Trump 2.0, the need for competence has been discarded. This time out, the prevailing quality to serve in the Trump administration is blind loyalty to the president.

    There’s no doubting that the likes of Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are loyal to Trump. Their competence at running the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and the nation’s health care are frequently and rightfully questioned. Life probably wouldn’t be so tough for Thune if he and his Senate Republican colleagues had shown some backbone and told the president that competence had to be the standard for Cabinet secretaries rather than just fawning loyalty to the president.

    SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX

    It’s easy to understand Thune’s frustration. However, he and Senate Republicans brought this on themselves by treating Trump’s Cabinet selections as if they were serious choices rather than a presidential power play to show that he could get anyone he wanted approved by the Senate.

    This space has been used before to note that Thune may come to regret, if he doesn’t already, his rise to the top Senate leadership post of his party during a Trump administration. As he complains about the long days he has to put in while fulfilling that role, he should remember that he won the office by claiming that Sen. Tom Daschle was paying too much attention to Senate leadership and not enough attention to South Dakota’s needs.

    Senate Democrats may be throwing up roadblocks to Trump’s agenda, but for Republicans this is a self-inflicted wound developed by currying favor with the president rather than doing their jobs. Despite Thune’s complaints, the slow pace of approval for Trump’s nominees is likely what’s best for the country. That’s particularly the case if the nominees Trump seeks to work in his government are anything like the clown car he calls a Cabinet.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • World Athletics Championships: Team GB target top-eight finish in Tokyo, while new ‘sex test’ is introduced in world first

    [ad_1]

    Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson is in good form going into the World Athletics Championships

    The world’s best athletes will take to the track and field this weekend when the World Athletics Championships get under way in Tokyo from September 13-21.

    Many of the stars who shone at Paris 2024 will be there, including Britain’s 800m Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson and USA’s 100m Olympic champion Noah Lyles.

    One of the major talking points away from the sport has been the introduction of a mandatory SRY or sex test for athletes who intend to compete in female categories.

    All athletes in female category take new ‘sex test’

    World Athletics, led by their President Seb Coe, have taken an unambiguous stance for several years when it comes to talking about and defining new rules around the sensitive issues of the protection of female categories, transgender and DSD (Difference of Sexual Development).

    They became the first global sporting federation to announce they would introduce a mandatory, once-in-a-lifetime gene test, known as an SRY Test earlier this year.

    The test identifies the Y chromosome which causes male characteristics to develop. If an athlete returns a negative result, they are eligible to compete in female categories at world ranking events, including these World Championships.

    World Athletics President Lord Coe says the governing body will do 'whatever is necessary' to protect the female category in the sport after it approved the introduction of cheek swabbing to determine if an athlete is biologically female

    Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

    World Athletics President Lord Coe says the governing body will do ‘whatever is necessary’ to protect the female category in the sport after it approved the introduction of cheek swabbing to determine if an athlete is biologically female

    World Athletics President Lord Coe says the governing body will do ‘whatever is necessary’ to protect the female category in the sport after it approved the introduction of cheek swabbing to determine if an athlete is biologically female

    Coe told Sky Sports he expected every athlete required to take an SRY Test will have done so by the time track and field events get under way in Tokyo, including all French athletes.

    In France, the process has been complicated by French law where the SRY gene test is illegal in France due to a 1994 law banning DNA testing for non-medical, non-judicial purposes to protect family integrity, so French athletes have had to undertake the SRY test by travelling outside of France.

    Coe confirmed that while it is World Athletics’ stated aim to have all athletes tested by the start of the World Championships next month, the results do not have to be known due to the tight time frame.

    For athletes whose national federation hasn’t been able to offer an SRY test yet, World Athletics will step in and offer the test at holding camps in Japan used by athletes prior to competing in Tokyo.

    “By and large, the process has gone pretty smoothly, but it’s not been without its challenges,” Coe said. “The vast majority have been pretty straightforward and we’ve (World Athletics) made a contribution of about US$100 per test.”

    How important are championships for Coe?

    Very.

    He has transformed the athletics governing body since his election in Beijing in 2015 from the tarnished old IAAF to the new World Athletics.

    He’s serving his third and final term as president and while no doubt still pondering his defeat in March’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidency election to Kirsty Coventry, his first love has always been track and field, and during his term as president he has tackled controversial issues like banning Russia and bringing in updated rules on gender eligibility.

    Lord Coe accepts defeat to Kirsty Coventry in the IOC Presidential vote and says he welcomes the fact it's a former Olympic athlete who will take up the role

    Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

    Lord Coe accepts defeat to Kirsty Coventry in the IOC Presidential vote and says he welcomes the fact it’s a former Olympic athlete who will take up the role

    Lord Coe accepts defeat to Kirsty Coventry in the IOC Presidential vote and says he welcomes the fact it’s a former Olympic athlete who will take up the role

    While those issues can be divisive, the progress of time has shown that many, if not most, sporting federations have followed athletics’ lead by watching and then following.

    It’s interesting to note that the new IOC President, whom he lost out to, is preparing the IOC to greater understand and perhaps even lead on gender eligibility and protections for female sports stars.

    He also wants athletics firmly in the position of the world’s second most popular sport behind football by showing off packed out stadia in Tokyo.

    The World Championships take place in the 70,000 capacity Olympic Stadium where during the 2020 Olympics not one fan was able to watch the sport on offer due to a strict Covid-19 lockdown in Japan.

    Many of the sessions during the nine days of competition are sell-outs and, according to Coe, no session will have fewer than 50,000 people in attendance.

    Tokyo heat, humidity and typhoons

    World Athletics deliberately scheduled the start of their marquee championships later than they would normally. Two years ago in Budapest, for example, the schedule ran during August.

    High temperatures and humidity can be exceedingly high in Japan during the months of July and August, as many athletes who competed at the Tokyo Olympics four years ago will testify to.

    The 2025 World Athletics Championships will be held at the National Stadium in Tokyo from September 13-21

    The 2025 World Athletics Championships will be held at the National Stadium in Tokyo from September 13-21

    However, heat mitigation measures will again be in place as Japan has experienced temperatures 2.36 Degrees Celsius above average between June and August, with local temperatures in Tokyo this week reaching 33 Degrees Celsius.

    World Athletics president Seb Coe is of the belief that climate change is not temporary and is here to stay; at these championships, decisions on whether competition will go ahead will not be in the hands of local organisers, but World Athletics.

    Information on drinks, ice baths and cooling techniques has been shared widely with athletes and their federations, while plenty of provision will be in place for spectators.

    Tokyo and Japan, in general, is prone to typhoons at this time of year, indeed many British and Northern Irish athletes were confined to their hotel at their training camp for a few days due to a typhoon. If such a weather system hits Tokyo during the championships, it will again be a decision for World Athletics to make as to whether to postpone or cancel events.

    Where could GB medals come from?

    Great Britain and Northern Ireland haven’t been set a medal target, but a top-eight finish in the medal table is the challenge, with an expectation of several of their world-leading track stars to medal and all relay squads to medal.

    So who are the stars? The women’s 800m final has been scheduled for the last session of the last day of the championships, as it’s been viewed as being a hot ticket in town. Two Brits could well end up on the podium, both friends and training partners coached by husband and wife duo Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter – Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter-Bell.

    Hodgkinson was one of the stars of Paris last year, streaking home to become Olympic champion and, although she has suffered hamstring injuries this year, she has come back to racing in time and is running ferociously quickly.

    Keely Hodgkinson says she is in a good place after receiving her MBE and is fully focused on the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo

    Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

    Keely Hodgkinson says she is in a good place after receiving her MBE and is fully focused on the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo

    Keely Hodgkinson says she is in a good place after receiving her MBE and is fully focused on the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo

    While perhaps not quite the right time for a tilt at the 800m world record, if Hodgkinson feels it, she’ll go for it.

    Elsewhere, medals could come in men’s middle distance, with 1500m runner Josh Kerr defending his world title he won in 2023.

    His battles with Norway’s Jacob Ingebrigtsen have already become legendary, with the two not the best of pals. At the Paris Olympics, one of the two should have taken the gold medal, but their attention on one another allowed the USA’s Cole Hocker to shock them both and cross the line first.

    George Mills, son of Danny – the former Leeds, Manchester City and England defender – is a serious contender for medals in the men’s 5000m. This season he’s beaten Sir Mo Farah’s long-standing British 5000m record and ran the second fastest 1500m by a Brit, so the 26-year-old is well warmed up.

    Katarina Johnson-Thompson is always a threat at major championships, and at Tokyo she will defend the heptathlon world title she won two years ago. She was also crowned world champion in 2019, and took Olympic silver in Paris.

    Dina Asher-Smith will make her seventh appearance at a World Championship and, while the competition is fierce in both the 100m and 200m, she is running quickly this season.

    “I’m just really happy,” she told Sky Sports. “I think the other week in Zurich is testament to what kind of shape I’m in because, honestly, I knew that I’ve been in good shape for a very long time and I know that I’ve been putting together some great races in the past few months, but to run a 10.90!

    !I was picking it out because I know I could have had faster in me that day, but still obviously I’m very happy.”

    Could Dina Asher-Smith medal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo?

    Could Dina Asher-Smith medal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo?

    Also very quick is Daryll Neita, who finished fourth in the women’s Olympic 100m final in Paris, narrowly missing out on a medal. She did, however, take home an Olympic Silver medal from the 4x100m women’s relay and in Tokyo it is expected that Great Britain and Northern Ireland medal in all five relay disciplines.

    Individually, in the men’s sprint events (100m and 200m), Zharnel Hughes should at the very least make finals, as the qualified pilot has run sub-10 seconds in the 100m and sub-20 seconds in the 200m. With age, Hughes seems to get faster, as he broke both British 100m and 200m records in 2023, the same year he took his first ever global medal, a bronze at the last World Athletics Championships.

    “Obviously the experience has been taking me into finals and stuff like that,” he said. “I’ve always been one to be reckoned with when it comes to the championships. I’ve always been able to position myself into the finals at every major championship.

    “Unfortunately, last year it didn’t get to happen due to injury, but I’m feeling confident and I’m looking forward to getting myself on that podium for sure. I’ll be giving it my very best, I’m filled with determination and I’m quite confident in my ability that I can always catch you at the very end.

    “I’m trusting myself and trusting my speed. The work that I’ve put in leading up to this championship has been tremendous. It’s going to be great.”

    While the British team is medal heavy on expectation from the track, also keep an eye on pole-vaulter Molly Caudery. She won the 2024 World Indoor title and won the Diamond League meeting in Doha in May.

    The Cornishwoman is a huge talent was expected to challenge for the gold at the Olympics last year, but had a shocker and failed to even qualify for the final. The 25-year-old is determined to learn the mental lesson from a year ago.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Skysports (Sky Sports)

    [ad_1]

    Make sure the URL in the address bar contains no capital letters or spaces and please check your bookmarks.

    Popular Links

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Voices from the Arab press: The new elite in Egypt

    [ad_1]

    A weekly selection of opinions and analyses from the Arab media around the world.

    The new elite in Egypt

    Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt, August 14

    Until the early 1990s, the upper echelon of Egyptian society largely emerged from the public school system. Ministers, doctors, engineers, diplomats, and countless other professionals began their journeys in village and small-town schools before moving on to public universities.

    Today, however, the equation has shifted dramatically. Although precise studies and accurate statistics remain scarce, it is clear that graduates of private institutions – especially international schools – have risen to form Egypt’s new elite. The mere mention of such a school on a résumé can tip the balance in a young person’s favor, providing them with a decisive edge over their peers.

    Many jobs now demand proficiency in a foreign language, a requirement that leaves the majority of public school graduates – even those with advanced degrees from public universities – shut out from these opportunities. English, in particular, has become the gatekeeper of opportunity.

    If one’s English reflects the colloquial version taught in government schools, career prospects are stunted, no matter the strength of one’s university credentials. Conversely, fluency in polished English opens doors that remain closed to the majority.

    This phenomenon is not unique to Egypt. Across the globe, private schools have entrenched themselves in education systems. Roughly 17% of primary school students worldwide are enrolled in private schools, a figure that climbs to 26% at the secondary level.

    An illustrative image of private school students. (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)

    Yet in Britain, the percentages tell a different story. As Alastair Campbell, former communications director under prime minister Tony Blair, recently noted, 93% of Britons attend state schools. Still, the 7% who receive private schooling disproportionately dominate positions of power across government, the judiciary, the media, finance, and beyond.

    Even though most ministers in the current Labour government hail from state schools, this does not automatically signal that Britain has achieved true meritocracy, or that social mobility ensures that anyone with talent, determination, and resilience can climb to the top.

    Campbell argues that private education confers an enduring advantage, positioning its graduates to occupy senior government offices and claim the lion’s share of society’s wealthiest and most prestigious roles. The so-called 7% club continues to wield vast political, cultural, and economic influence.

    Workplaces, by extension, favor private school graduates. While public school and university alumni strive to adapt, they often encounter a professional environment that feels alien, marked by subtle cues of exclusion. Accents, dress, hobbies, dining habits, and even conversational styles set them apart, reinforcing a sense of division between the world they come from and the world they now inhabit.

    Is this not precisely what we see in Egypt today? Increasingly, workplaces operate in English, even when serving a consumer base that is overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking.

    Sectors ranging from real estate to telecommunications, banking, and even hospitality package themselves as extensions of international firms, though their foundations remain deeply Egyptian. The cultural and social norms of these environments diverge sharply from those of the communities surrounding them.

    If Egypt is to achieve genuine social mobility, the graduates of its public schools – those scattered across its countless towns and villages – must be granted real access to elite positions. It should never be enough for someone to simply wave the credential of a private or foreign school as a passport to privilege. Equity demands more. The path to true mobility begins when opportunity is earned, not through background or accent but through merit, commitment, and ability.
    – Abdullah Abdul Salam

    Where did Iran’s Arab masses disappear to?

    Asharq al-Awsat, London, August 15

    A grave-like silence hangs over the Arab public, untouched by the seismic events shaking the region. No demonstrations, no protests, no sit-ins can be found across Arab capitals – an unprecedented absence, perhaps for the first time in seven decades or more.

    Iran, meanwhile, has endured devastating blows. Its military setbacks and the damage to its nuclear infrastructure are immense, representing the loss of billions of dollars and countless lives, and years of labor. Beyond its ballistic and nuclear ambitions, Tehran has also seen the erosion of its vast network of influence – a popular movement painstakingly cultivated across the Arab world from Iraq toMorocco.

    When theLebanese government made the audacious decision to confiscate Hezbollah’s weapons, the reaction amounted to little more than a few dozen motorcycles roaming the streets of Beirut in protest. So where are the millions once summoned by the party’s leader or by Tehran itself?

    The collapse of Iranian influence across the Arab sphere echoes the unraveling of Nasserism after the crushing defeat of 1967. Stripped of its ability to ignite the street, Nasser’s regime fell back on choreographed displays – pressing Socialist Party loyalists and labor unions into filling venues – after spontaneous, fervent crowds that had once surged into public squares in response to the magnetic pull of radio broadcasts dwindled away.

    What remained was a collective sense of shock and despair in a region that had long pinned its hopes on the liberation of Palestine.

    Iran, too, once commanded a similar popular reach. It defied attempts to ban its ideas, molding generations of Arabs through ideology and outreach. Tehran embraced Sunni extremists – including al-Qaeda figures – despite their anti-Shi’ite dogma, and threw support behind Sunni opposition movements challenging their regimes.

    It forged organic ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, held semiannual conferences for Arab nationalists and Communists, and invested heavily in cultivating intellectuals and artists. Poems, books, and speeches extolling the virtues of the imam’s regime poured forth, while Tehran’s reach extended across Shi’ite, Sunni, and Christian circles, drawing in voices from the Gulf, Egypt, the Levant, North Africa, Sudan, Yemen, and Western Arab diasporas. Many Arab media outlets echoed Khamenei’s messaging.

    Somehow, Tehran managed to reconcile contradictions that seemed irreconcilable. In Tripoli, a city marked by historic tension with the Shi’ites of Beirut, Sunni factions remained loyal to Tehran since the 1980s. In Jordan, elements of the Muslim Brotherhood pledged allegiance to Tehran’s leadership. Publications appeared across the region defending its policies, while conferences in the Gulf celebrated sectarian “rapprochement” under historical banners.

    Yet none of this was undertaken in the name of God or to genuinely heal sectarian rifts; it was always part of a calculated political project aimed at domination. For decades, Tehran orchestrated both elite circles and street movements across Arab cities, mobilizing protests not only against regimes but against films, novels, and peace negotiations.

    But since the wars following the October 7, 2023 attacks, that once-unshakable dynamism has evaporated. The reasons are clear: People turn away from the defeated, and the agencies that fueled these movements have seen their lines of communication severed and their resources dry up. The Arab street venerates victors and abandons them when they fall, only to embrace the next rising force.

    Iran’s followers have been stunned by repeated defeats, just as Nasser’s admirers were traumatized by the failures of the 1960s. Today, the central challenge is whether Tehran can retain even its Shi’ite base, which has borne the greatest burden and remains in shock.

    Sooner or later, Lebanon’s Shi’ites will confront a painful realization: They are victims of Hezbollah and Iran, not beneficiaries. For four decades, they have carried the weight of this alliance, suffering economic collapse, the destruction of their neighborhoods, and punitive sanctions targeting their livelihoods and remittances from Africa, Latin America, and North America. What they have endured is not the empowerment of a community, but the crushing cost of serving as Tehran’s front line. – Abdulrahman Al-Rashed

    Bombing civilians without a clear strategy

    Al-Ittihad, UAE, August 15

    On August 8, while commenting on the deaths of civilians in Gaza caused by Israeli airstrikes, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee sought to justify the attacks by invoking the Allied firebombing of Dresden in February 1945. His remarks, provocative as they are, raise a broader issue worth examining: the long and deeply contested history of aerial bombardment against civilians.

    The use of air power against noncombatants dates back to World War I, when German Zeppelins dropped bombs on British cities. Though casualties were relatively limited compared to the slaughter inflicted by artillery on the European front lines, the psychological impact was immense, signaling a new era of warfare.

    In the interwar period, air raids were deployed in colonial campaigns across the Middle East and North Africa. In Europe, the most notorious case was the German bombing of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Though only a few hundred people were killed, the attack targeted a market day and became immortalized through Pablo Picasso’s iconic mural, which conveyed the horror of modern mechanized destruction.

    The Sino-Japanese War which erupted that same year marked an even more brutal expansion of this tactic. Japanese forces unleashed devastating air raids on Chinese cities, killing tens of thousands in Chongqing and contributing to mass civilian deaths in Nanjing.

    World War II cemented the role of air power in civilian carnage, with estimates of one to one and a half million people killed across multiple fronts. The German bombing of Warsaw in 1939, the flattening of Rotterdam, and the Blitz against Britain in 1940 foreshadowed the sheer scale of devastation yet to come.

    As the war intensified, the Allies responded with massive bombing campaigns across Germany, creating “firestorms” that consumed cities such as Hamburg, Kassel, and Dresden, while others – Cologne, Berlin, Hanover, Stuttgart, and Magdeburg – were left in ruins.

    In the Pacific theater, American raids on Japan culminated in the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, which incinerated more than 100,000 civilians, and later in the atomic annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The use of air power against civilians did not end with World War II. In Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of thousands perished in bombing campaigns, and the region suffered the ecological and human toll of Agent Orange, a chemical weapon aimed at destroying crops and forests.

    In later decades, wars in the Middle East and South Asia saw comparatively fewer deaths from airstrikes, yet the protracted bombing campaigns in Gaza have triggered some of the fiercest debates in recent memory.

    The ubiquity of raw, daily video footage – images of families digging through rubble, children starved and displaced, and entire neighborhoods flattened – has amplified global accusations that Israel is committing war crimes, even genocide.

    This moral quandary is not new. At the end of World War II, the destruction of Dresden was criticized by British officials, church leaders, and ordinary citizens alike, though it was not classified as a war crime, largely because the revelation of Nazi atrocities overshadowed such debates.

    Likewise, the moral reckoning over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was muted by the widespread belief that the atomic bombs spared millions of lives by forcing Japan’s surrender and avoiding a ground invasion.

    Today, Gaza presents its own moral labyrinth. While Hamas bears responsibility for embedding its operations among civilians, Israel faces mounting criticism for what increasingly appears to be a war without a clear exit strategy. The grim lesson of history is that aerial bombardment of civilians invariably raises doubts about both morality and strategy, doubts that reverberate long after the bombs have fallen. – Geoffrey Kemp

    Hezbollah’s weapons never intended to safeguard Lebanon

    An-Nahar, Lebanon, August 15

    The Islamic Republic says one thing and its opposite when it comes to Lebanon. Before Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, arrived in Beirut, Iranian officials – including Larijani himself – dismissed outright the Lebanese government’s stance on Hezbollah’s weapons. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even proclaimed that the Lebanese government would “fail” in any attempt to disarm the party.

    Yet as Larijani’s visit approached, the rhetoric shifted. Suddenly, Iranian officials were speaking of “Iran’s support for the Lebanese people,” not merely for Hezbollah.

    This change in tone appears to have been one of the conditions set by the Lebanese side to grant Larijani meetings with President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who insisted during a cabinet session on fixing a deadline – by year’s end – for dismantling Hezbollah’s arsenal. The president raised no objection, underscoring that the Lebanese authorities have but one option: to adopt a definitive position on the illegal weapons of a party that is Lebanese in name only.

    The difference between mounting a hostile campaign against the Lebanese government and claiming to “support the Lebanese people” is stark.

    Those who defend Hezbollah’s arms are, in truth, standing against the Lebanese themselves, given the devastation those weapons – extensions of Iran’s arsenal – have inflicted on the nation, including on its Shi’ite citizens. Hezbollah’s weapons have never been intended to safeguard Lebanon; their purpose has always been to transform it into a state orbiting within Tehran’s sphere of influence.

    Larijani could not maintain even a veneer of moderation. At a press conference following his meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, he reverted to reiterating Iran’s opposition to any timetable for Hezbollah’s disarmament – in essence, resisting the dismantling of the Islamic Republic’s weapons stationed throughout Lebanon.

    He urged the Lebanese to “preserve the resistance,” ignoring that the primary cause of Lebanon’s misery is precisely this so-called resistance, which has impoverished the south and dragged the entire country into becoming little more than a battleground for Iran’s messages to Israel, and previously for the exchanges between the Assad regimes in Syria and Israel.

    There is a reality in Lebanon that Iranian officials like Larijani refuse to acknowledge: The “resistance” was never more than an Iranian instrument, advancing Tehran’s agenda under the guise of Lebanese struggle. Iran seized on the US-led war in Iraq in 2003 to push its expansionist project further across the region.

    What, after all, explains the assassination of Rafik Hariri and his companions, and the long chain of killings that followed – including the assassination of Lokman Slim – if not Iran’s determination to dominate Lebanon and suffocate any effort to revive its national life, especially in Beirut?

    Who can forget Hezbollah’s paralyzing sit-in in downtown Beirut, or the bloody events of May 7, 2008?

    Nor is there any need to revisit in detail the 2006 summer war, which preceded Hezbollah’s incursion into Beirut and Mount Lebanon. That conflict, with its devastating aftermath, exposed the depth of collusion between Iran and Israel, culminating years later in the election of Michel Aoun as president in 2016 and, before the close of his term, in the maritime border demarcation agreement with Israel that served Israeli interests.

    Iran acts solely for its own benefit. Every Lebanese child knows this.

    Every Lebanese child understands that the Islamic Republic has done nothing but dismantle Lebanon and displace its people. Iran has no allies in Lebanon – only tools it wields in the hope of striking a grand bargain with its “Great Satan,” the US, to cement its regional dominance.

    Larijani came to Beirut after first stopping in Baghdad, where he signed a security pact with Iraq aimed at salvaging what remains of Iran’s expansionist vision. At this moment, the Islamic Republic seeks nothing more than to prove it still has leverage in the region, Lebanon included.

    To that end, Larijani falls back on tired, hollow language that glorifies the “resistance” while deliberately ignoring the calamities it has unleashed, including the “Gaza Support War.”

    That war devastated Lebanese villages, most of them Shi’ite, and drove their people into displacement. It effectively reimposed the Israeli occupation, and Hezbollah’s insistence on clinging to its weapons now stands as the surest guarantee of its indefinite continuation.

    Larijani has no shortage of rhetoric and “advice” for the Lebanese, but he offers no answers to the obvious questions: Why did Hezbollah open a front in southern Lebanon? Who will bear the cost of the party’s crushing defeat? Who will rebuild the villages of the south? Who will return the displaced to their homes? Who will remove the Israeli occupation – an occupation Iran itself, through its proxy, has all but restored?

    Finally, the Iranian envoy, who claims to know the region well, seems to have forgotten Iran’s own most painful wound: the loss of Syria. Syria matters to Tehran as the indispensable corridor to Lebanon, and thus to Hezbollah.

    Until Iranian officials confront this new reality – that their wars can no longer be waged by proxy militias in Arab lands but must be faced within Iran itself – they will continue to repeat the same hollow script, even as the region around them moves on. – Khairallah Khairallah

    Translated by Asaf Zilberfarb/The Media Line. All assertions, opinions, facts, and information presented in these articles are the sole responsibility of their respective authors and not necessarily those of The Media Line, which assumes no responsibility for their content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • West Indies v England scorecard

    West Indies v England scorecard

    [ad_1]

    Latest score from Antigua as England begin their three-match ODI series against West Indies, with Liam Livingstone standing in as captain.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • London has several major football clubs. Why does Paris only have one?

    London has several major football clubs. Why does Paris only have one?

    [ad_1]

    Follow live coverage of Arsenal vs PSG in the Champions League today

    When European club competition was originally devised back in 1955, it was in the form of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, the predecessor to the UEFA Cup and Europa League.

    As the name hints, the competition was originally designed to promote European trade fairs, and had a strict ‘one club per city’ rule. On that basis, this week’s Champions League clash between Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain is, in basic terms, pretty much what you’d expect. On the basis of domestic titles won, this is the most successful club from each of Europe’s biggest two cities (discounting Russia) playing each other.

    But there are several complications.

    First, PSG might be France’s biggest club today, but back in 1955, they were 15 years away from being formed.

    Second, Arsenal are one of seven top-flight London clubs in 2024-25, and have often finished behind Chelsea and Tottenham in recent seasons. PSG, meanwhile, have been the only top-flight Parisian club for the last three decades.

    And when you look at the average attendances of the biggest clubs in both cities last season, the difference is stark.

    So how have western Europe’s two major cities managed to do club football quite so differently? Or, more to the point, how come Paris can only support one major club?

    The British clubs

    London is unique, in terms of boasting so many major football clubs. If we’re slightly generous with our definition of city boundaries, Madrid and Lisbon often feature four top-flight sides, Athens effectively has five this season, while Istanbul can offer six. But London’s seven is highly unusual, and a further three London clubs — Charlton Athletic, Queens Park Rangers and the old Wimbledon FC — have previously played in the Premier League since its formation in 1992. Millwall featured in the top flight between 1988 and 1990 too.


    London has a network of intense football rivalries (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

    Paris, on the other hand, is highly unusual in contributing just one top-flight club. The standard approach for big cities — Rome, Milan, Manchester — is generally two. But while Paris is an outlier in European terms, it isn’t in French terms. In 2024-25, France’s top-flight features 18 teams from 18 different settlements.

    In keeping with many other major European cities, the first Parisian football clubs were formed by Britons. Sides with English-language names like the Standard Athletic Club and White Rovers came into existence in the final decade of the 19th century, and primarily featured British players. In comparison with Nordic, Mediterranean and central European nations, football was slow to develop in France. The authorities considered the rugby version of football to be more sophisticated, and association football was barely played in schools.

    The first Olympic football tournament was held in Paris in 1900, and won by Great Britain — or, in reality, by an East London outfit named Upton Park. They had no link to nearby West Ham and were an amateur side, as professional athletes were, at that stage, not allowed to compete in the Olympics. Britain had a hold over Parisian football already.

    Meanwhile, as noted by Chris Lee in his book Origin Stories, when France formed a cup competition in 1910, quality and interest was so low from within France that the tournament was an invitational event open to English sides. Therefore, while this was not the Coupe de France — which would be formed in 1917 — the first three winners of a major cup in Paris were Swindon Town, Clapton Orient (now Leyton Orient) and Fulham. They defeated Barnsley, Millwall and QPR respectively at the Parc des Princes, the same site PSG play on today, between 1910 and 1912.

    In that sense, you can reasonably argue that London was more influential than Paris in the rise of French football. While the key figure in France’s belated footballing development was Henri Delaunay, the man after whom the European Championship trophy is named, he was inspired after attending the 1902 FA Cup final at Crystal Palace between Sheffield United and Southampton.


    Scenes from the 1902 FA Cup final between Sheffield United and Southampton, an inspirational match for Henri Delaunay (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

    The French clubs

    So what about actual Parisian clubs themselves?

    Well, the other famous French football innovator of this time — and another with a major international trophy named after him — was Jules Rimet. He formed Red Star, a Parisian multi-sport club, in 1897. They are the only true constant of the last 125-odd years.

    When Ligue 1 was originated in 1932, Red Star were one of four Parisian clubs in the top flight. The others were Club Francais (as the name suggests, the first Parisian club formed by French players, and represented France at the aforementioned 1900 Olympics), Cercle Athletique de Paris and Racing Club de Paris.

    But these clubs struggled to grow. The Tour de France was created in 1903 and cycling was unquestionably the biggest sport in France. Rowing and gymnastics were also favoured, and rugby was still more popular. Football was, in contrary to what was happening in England, not the sport of the working class — it was favoured by the anglophile liberal metropolitan elite of the early 20th century. Paris was clearly the centre of that, but the game was treated as a pastime rather than to build a town around.


    Cycling became France’s most important sport in the 20th century, not football (AFP via Getty Images)

    Intra-city rivalries didn’t develop anywhere in France. With some early French competitions only accepting one club per region, combined with minimal public support and a reliance on local councils for income and building stadia, French clubs found that mergers were more conducive to success than city rivalries. Of the aforementioned four clubs, Club Francais were relegated from the inaugural Ligue 1 season and essentially ceased to exist after a merger in 1935. Cercle Athletique de Paris were also quickly relegated, managed another three decades and then also fell victim to a merger, becoming an amateur side.

    It was really only Red Star and Racing Club which survived.

    Red Star are more notable for being a left-wing club than a successful one, attracting a committed cult support and experiencing a turbulent time on the pitch. In the 21st century, they’ve competed at every level between the sixth and the second tiers.

    Racing Club, meanwhile, were briefly managed in the 1930s by Jimmy Hogan — referred to as ‘the most influential coach in football history’ by Jonathan Wilson in his history of football tactics, Inverting The Pyramid — and won a single Ligue 1 title three years after his departure in 1936. They suffered serious financial problems in the 1960s and tumbled through the divisions, but were revived by a famous French businessman, Jean-Luc Lagardere, in the 1980s. He was most notable for his stewardship of Formula 1 team Matra, who won the world championship in 1969.

    Lagardere threw money at the side, signings the likes of David Ginola, Luis Fernandez, Pierre Littbarski and Enzo Francescoli, and even appointed Artur Jorge as manager immediately after he’d led Porto to the European Cup in 1987. Lagardere was serious about Racing Club, although it attracted few supporters. After a desperate attempt to increase the profile of the club, and his brand, by renaming it Matra Racing, Lagardere eventually conceded defeat and withdrew his financial support. The club was relegated from Ligue 1 in 1990, and financial problems meant they were double-relegated to the third tier.


    David Ginola playing for Matra Racing in the 1980s (Marc Francotte/TempSport/Corbis via Getty Images)

    There’s a wider question about quite how football-crazy France is, compared to other European nations. The country didn’t really capitalise on the national side’s fine performance in finishing third at World Cup 1958. Then the national side didn’t qualify for a major tournament between 1966 and 1978. David Goldblatt, in his seminal book The Ball is Round, writes that, “While in Britain the new youth and musical cultures of the 1960s interacted with football, in France they stood as an alternative and an opponent. The counter-cultures of the late 1960s explicitly rejected football and its antiquated provincial hierarchies.”

    The lift-off moments were the national team successes on Parisian soil in 1984 and 1998, but the boosts to domestic football — and in particular, domestic support — were negligible. The heroes of those sides soon moved abroad, if they hadn’t emigrated already, in part due to high taxation rates in France.

    The modern clubs

    So where did PSG come from?

    Well, in a sense it was a new club, and in another sense it was another merger. While generally mocked for a relative lack of history — even before the Qatari takeover in 2011 — PSG are interesting in that they were born due to a crowdfunding campaign that attracted startup capital from 20,000 ‘supporters’ who were prepared to contribute to the foundation of a new club, although two wealthy businessmen were the figureheads.

    Slightly confusingly, PSG was originally a merger of Paris FC (a club only formed the previous year) and Stade St Germain, although two years after the formation of PSG, Paris FC split from the new club because the city’s mayor refused to financially support a club which technically played outside the boundaries of the city. Paris FC re-established themselves as an independent entity, retained the club’s players and Ligue 1 status, while PSG were relegated to the third tier and had to work their way through the divisions again.

    PSG’s first golden era came in the 1990s, when they were taken over by television giants Canal+, but attendances were always relatively modest considering the size of the city they represented. PSG, of course, are unlike any clubs in London in that they carry the name of the city, something they’ve been increasingly keen to take advantage of over the last decade. They’ve made ‘Paris’ more prominent on their crest, and like their name to be abbreviated to ‘PAR’ rather than ‘PSG’ on television graphics.


    PSG won the Coupe de France three times in the 1990s (Christian Liewig/TempSport/Corbis via Getty Images)

    Also worthy of mention is US Creteil, from the south-eastern suburbs of Paris. Formed in the 1930s, they played in the second tier regularly at the start of the century, and as recently as 2016, although even at that stage only attracted attendances of around 2000. They’re now back in the fourth tier.

    But Parisian football is at its strongest point for many decades. Red Star won the third-tier Championnat National last season and are competing in Ligue 2 alongside Paris FC — who are currently top of the table, and aiming for promotion to Ligue 1 for the first time since relegation in 1979. Paris FC also have a strong women’s side, who regularly finish third in the Premiere Ligue (formerly known as Division 1 Feminine) behind PSG and Lyon, and eliminated Arsenal in the Champions League qualifiers last season, although they were soundly beaten by Manchester City this time around.


    Red Star’s players celebrate winning the 2023-24 Championnat National (ANTONIN UTZ/AFP via Getty Images)

    But those two clubs are still struggling for support. Paris FC averaged 5,500 last season, the 13th-highest attendance of the 20 clubs in Ligue 2. Red Star attracted around 3,500. And the reality is that their dual rise owes little to local support, and more to what many would consider the twin evils of modern football: state ownership and multi-club ownership.

    Since 2020, Paris FC have been 20 per cent owned by by the Kingdom of Bahrain, who have seemingly been inspired by PSG’s Qatari-led dominance. Bahrain also act as the club’s main sponsors. “They join us for many objectives — mainly to help them to spread the image of Bahrain in France and Europe,” said director general Fabrica Herrault said in an interview upon the takeover.

    The situation at Red Star also feels familiar, and somewhat unsatisfying given their long history of being a left-wing club. In May 2022 they were purchased by a US investment firm, 777 Partners, who also own the likes of Genoa, Hertha Berlin and Vasco da Gama. That attracted serious opposition from supporters, and their protests led to the postponement of a league match two years ago.

    With a major fraud claim recently brought against 777, Red Star have been the subject of interest from another American, Steve Pagliuca, who owns Atalanta and is part-owner of the Boston Celtics. According to Bloomberg, Pagliuca “saw opportunities to invest in French football, where lower broadcast revenue has left clubs in need of capital.”

    Average attendances in French football are currently positive. Ligue 1 recorded its highest-ever attendance last season of 27,100, while Ligue 2’s figure was 8,650, the best figure for 15 years — although that was boosted by two traditional giants, Saint-Etienne and Bordeaux, unusually, being in the second tier. The Ligue 2 stadiums, in general, were still only 55 per cent full.

    In the capital, Paris FC’s 20,000-capacity stadium is only around a quarter full most weeks, while Red Star at least manage to make a modest 5,600-capacity ground in the northern suburbs look busy.

    And while the nature of these clubs’ ownership is relatively modern, this is the history of Parisian football. The financial investment arrives before the support — if the support ever arrives at all. Of course, PSG have won 10 of the last 12 Ligue 1 titles and attract an average attendance of over 45,000, although there have been waves of unhappiness from supporters in recent years, and there are sporadic reports that Qatar might consider rethinking its investment.


    Arsenal’s Ian Wright taking on PSG in March 1994 (Anton Want/Getty Images)

    In general, French clubs are still struggling to generate their own money. Ligue 1’s new television rights deal represents a 12 per cent decrease on the previous agreement, and that’s a joint agreement with DAZN and BeIN Sports, the latter being Qatar-owned and surely less likely to stick around if Qatar isn’t investing in PSG. Unlike in England, domestic football has never become appointment television viewing in France.

    If Paris FC continue their fine start to the campaign, next season there will be a top-flight Parisian derby in Ligue 1 for the first time since Racing Club’s relegation in 1990. But with seven top-flight sides, London boasts 42 derbies a year. The difference owes to many factors, including the historic structure of competitions and clubs’ reliance on local councils for funds.

    But more than anything else, it’s simply a reflection on wildly varying levels of interest in football.

    (Header photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

    [ad_2]

    The New York Times

    Source link

  • Mikel Arteta’s time at Man City and the training drill that transformed Raheem Sterling

    Mikel Arteta’s time at Man City and the training drill that transformed Raheem Sterling

    [ad_1]

    It is the training drill that helped transform Raheem Sterling from a zippy winger who narrowly reached double figures each season into a back-post assassin who was among the most lethal goalscoring wingers in Europe.

    The change happened in the 2017-18 season, Pep Guardiola’s second in charge of Manchester City, the club Sterling returns to face this Sunday as an Arsenal player.

    It is Sterling’s current manager, Mikel Arteta, Guardiola’s assistant from 2016 until 2019 when he left for the Emirates, who played a key role in extracting that staggering efficiency in front of goal.

    Guardiola had assistants more senior than Arteta, who was in his first coaching role, so he had the bandwidth to focus on specialisms and learn from as many departments as he could.

    GO DEEPER

    Mikel Arteta: The Manchester City years

    He kept finding himself gravitating to analysis, with his inquisitiveness leading down many a rabbit hole. His thirst to understand specific moments in the game on a granular level helped focus the work of Arteta and the analyst team but it also saw their research become part of the first-team decision-making process.

    There were several projects they worked on which produced dramatic improvements: goalkeeper penalty tactics, the diagonal full-back-to-winger pass that Ben White and Bukayo Saka have perfected, and quantifying what made a penalty-box predator.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    How Arsenal used White to unlock the attacking abilities of Saka and Odegaard

    Arteta started looking at wingers around the world, searching for the sweet spot with the use of data. He and the analyst team broke it down into which area these wingers scored most often from, how many touches they took and how quickly a shot had to be taken.

    The higher the level, the less time and space players have to shoot. There were also zones identified where most goals are assisted and scored.

    From that, a drill was deduced in the academy which Arteta modified and introduced into the first-team environment for Sterling to work on.


    Arteta modified a training drill at City to help improve Sterling as a winger (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

    Guardiola’s fitness coach Lorenzo Buenaventura is credited with ensuring City train the way they play by making sessions game-realistic. Again, the club’s research informed their thinking as they found fast breaks required far longer sprints than would usually be associated with counter-attack training, so Buenaventura implemented a 60-yard sprint at the start of the exercise.

    Sterling then had to shoot inside a marked square under pressure from defenders but the sprint meant that, by the time they got there, they had a lack of oxygen in the brain, which makes decision-making more difficult.

    Arteta carried a stopwatch during the drill and if the shot was not taken in the allotted time, he called it dead and they would start over. The emphasis was on the need to act decisively, not to overcomplicate, which is what those privy to Sterling’s evolution at City believe was the key lesson he learned.

    With little time to train due to the relentless schedule, these sessions after training were important in hammering home the message. Video work helped, too, with clips of wingers such as Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery, whom Guardiola worked with at Bayern Munich, used in combination with the 16 cameras at the training ground to show exactly what they were looking for.


    Clips of Ribery and Robben, who were at Bayern with Guardiola, helped explain what they wanted from Sterling (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)

    Sterling arrived in 2015 as a 20-year-old who had electrified Anfield with his dribbling as part of the Brendan Rodgers team that came agonisingly close to winning the Premier League in 2013-14. Manuel Pellegrini was the manager but when Guardiola arrived a year later there had to be a change to his game or he would not fit into his system.

    As the change to Jack Grealish’s game since moving from Aston Villa in 2021 has shown, Guardiola asks his wide players to be more subservient to the team structure than some other managers.

    One of the principles Guardiola introduced at City was the need to always look for the free man in possession. To do that, a player had to understand when he was in a clear one-v-one situation. If that was the case, they were encouraged to be aggressive and take on their man, but if they were doubled up on, logic dictated a team-mate must be free elsewhere.

    Sterling got 10 goals and 15 assists in all competitions in 2016-17. It was a healthy return for a young player. He had got 11 and nine in 2014-15, and 11 and eight in 2015-16.

    But it was not elite level and neither was Leroy Sane’s total of nine goals and five assists in his debut season after joining from Schalke. Once Arteta started working with the forwards more in that second season, it unlocked numbers that had hitherto been out of reach for players who thrilled but often flattered to deceive.

    Success reinforces the habits, though, and that is why Sterling was so receptive to diluting some of his natural game in pursuit of being the difference-maker.

    It almost became comical how many of his goals were scored from the same location. But this was not coincidence, it was design by Guardiola.

    The most potent assist zone was identified as the byline area inside the penalty box. City worked tirelessly on finding their wingers in that position, and if one was there then the other should be on the opposite side ready for the cutback or to tap home the square ball across goal.

    In 2017-18, Sterling got 23 goals and 14 assists. His shot conversion rate almost doubled from 10.9 per cent to 20.7 per cent as City won the league with 100 points — a total no other team has reached.

    The next season, he got 25 goals and 14 assists, with Arteta’s final season at City (he left for Arsenal in December 2019) seeing Sterling record his highest goals tally of 31.

    Sterling record with Arteta

    His numbers dipped slightly the next two seasons, albeit still scoring in double figures, before moving to Chelsea. His struggles there are no surprise when you consider the stability and structure of Guardiola’s football.

    It had been the perfect platform, whereas Chelsea have adopted so many different identities and such an aggressive recruitment strategy that continuity and consistency were hard to find.

    After being bombed out of the Chelsea squad this summer, with manager Enzo Maresca backtracking on previous comments about his importance, Sterling still had tens of millions he could have collected.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Sterling and Chelsea: Broken trust, briefing wars and a bleak future

    When Arsenal’s sporting director Edu Gaspar presented the opportunity to reunite Arteta with his former winger, understandably, he had questions. Sterling is 29 now and has achieved almost everything there is to achieve.

    “The first call I had with him, I knew in the first 10 seconds we have to bring him,” said Arteta earlier this month.

    “That was my only question mark: what stage is he at in his career? After 10 seconds I knew already, before the next questions, that we needed him here.

    “He looks great. He’s got a lot of energy, a smile on his face and he’s at it. He wants to prove a point and when someone’s got that in his belly, you sense it straight away. Obviously, I don’t need to know anything else about his quality and what he can bring to the team.”

    The timing of Sterling’s arrival could not have been better. He had two weeks during the international break with only a handful of senior players to refresh his muscle memory on Arteta’s methods and the principles that took his game to a different level.

    It has been five years since they last worked together, in which time both have evolved. Sterling has leant into fatherhood and his religion, while Arteta is a different beast to the coach he worked with one-on-one, having seen how he commands an entire squad. They will hope that shared maturity can make a difference on Sunday against City.

    Sterling has performed well individually against his former club, scoring in both of Chelsea’s meetings against them last season. He has proven he knows how to hurt them and gave Kyle Walker a very difficult evening in the 4-4 draw last November.

    Arteta has found a way to access Sterling’s untapped reserves before. He will be hoping he can do it again.

    (Top photo: Arteta and Sterling at City in 2019; Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

    [ad_2]

    The New York Times

    Source link

  • After winning Olympic gold with Team USA, Ashburn, Va. native Emily Fox wants more success with Arsenal – WTOP News

    After winning Olympic gold with Team USA, Ashburn, Va. native Emily Fox wants more success with Arsenal – WTOP News

    [ad_1]

    After winning gold in the Paris Olympics, Virginia native Emily Fox explains how the U.S. women’s soccer team improved during the tournament and how she looks forward to her club season.

    U.S. women’s national team defender and Arsenal’s Emily Fox interacts with elementary-age students from DC Scores at George Mason University on Aug. 20, 2024, in Fairfax, Virginia.
    (Courtesy David Price/Arsenal FC)

    Courtesy David Price/Arsenal FC

    PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 11: U.S. Olympian Emily Fox poses for a photo at the USA House at Paris 2024 on August 11, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for USOPC)
    U.S. Olympian Emily Fox poses for a photo at the USA House at Paris 2024 on Aug. 11, 2024 in Paris, France.
    (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for USOPC)

    Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for USOPC

    U.S. defender Emily Fox
    U.S. defender Emily Fox in action during of the women’s soccer semifinal match between United States and Germany during the Olympic Games at Stade de Lyon on August 06, 2024 in Lyon, France.
    (Getty Images/Claudio Villa)

    Getty Images/Claudio Villa

    United States defender Emily Fox fights for the ball with Germany’s Nicole Anyomi during a women’s semifinal soccer match between the United States and Germany at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, at Lyon Stadium in Decines, France.
    (AP/Silvia Izquierdo)

    AP/Silvia Izquierdo

    Emily Fox DC Scores students
    U.S. women’s national team defender and Arsenal’s Emily Fox interacts with elementary-age students from DC Scores at George Mason University on Aug. 20, 2024, in Fairfax, Virginia.
    (Courtesy David Price/Arsenal FC)

    Courtesy David Price/Arsenal FC

    PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 03: Trinity Rodman #5 of the United States celebrates scoring with Emily Fox #2 during extra time against Japan during the Women's Quarterfinal match during the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Parc des Princes on August 03, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Brad Smith/ISI/Getty Images)
    Trinity Rodman #5 of the United States celebrates scoring with Emily Fox #2 during extra time against Japan during the Women’s Quarterfinal match during the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Parc des Princes on August 03, 2024 in Paris, France.
    (Photo by Brad Smith/ISI/Getty Images)

    Photo by Brad Smith/ISI/Getty Images

    As the final whistle blew in Paris on Aug. 13, the U.S. women’s national soccer team rejoiced as it defeated Brazil to win its first Olympic medal in 12 years.

    The victory was a mission accomplished for Ashburn, Virginia, native Emily Fox, who wrote a paper in elementary school about her dream of playing in the Olympics. After all the celebrating, Fox planned to take the gold medal back to England with her when she resumed her club career with London side Arsenal.

    However, once she arrived home to Ashburn, the 26-year-old elected to leave it behind with her parents. While one of her teammates exposed how fragile the medal was played a factor in her decision, Fox said moving forward with her career was the biggest factor.

    “I was like, ‘this is too much stress and responsibility,’ so I didn’t even need see that,” Fox said.

    Fox returned home to the D.C. region in late August to take part of Arsenal’s preseason preparations while enjoying some downtime with her family in Virginia. Coming back to the region was a full-circle moment for the defender, who, before the games, spent over a month at home in Ashburn, the longest break she experienced in over a year.

    “It’s a lot, but it’s a privilege in many ways is how I think about it,” Fox said, adding that she is “grateful” to representing the United States.

    Winning Olympic gold

    Fox was featured in all six Olympic matches for the U.S. as a key cog in the defense playing as an outside back. She played the second-most minutes in the back line (572), focused on limiting right-sided attacks by their opponents.

    The U.S. “were just clicking” throughout the two weeks, Fox said, in implementing new head coach Emma Hayes’ strategies while handling the demands of playing a match every three days.

    A scary moment occurred during the second extra time period in the quarterfinal match against Japan as Fox collided with striker Riko Ueki, who attempted a shot off a corner kick. The defender was pulled for the remainder of the match and needed help to walk off the field. Fox’s injury history — tearing her left ACL twice during her collegiate career — weighed heavily on fans’ minds.

    But she returned to play both the semifinals and finals without an issue. The defender said the collision was a “suck it up and just do it” moment that each player faced as part of the demands of winning the goal medal.

    “I feel like for all of us, no matter what, we want to learn, we want to grow, and we embraced it,” Fox said. “I just feel like (after) each game during the Olympics, we got better and better.”

    Moving forward with Arsenal

    After completing a childhood dream, Fox said she likes to remain active and busy. Less than two weeks after standing on the Olympic podium, the defender joined Arsenal in its preseason training at George Mason University in Fairfax. Despite not playing in the actual match, she participated in warm-ups during the Gunners’ preseason finale against Chelsea on Aug. 25 on D.C.’s Audi Field.

    But it hasn’t only been work on the field: She also joined several of her teammates for a poetry master class with students from Bancroft Elementary School in a partnership with DC Scores, a community-based nonprofit that blends soccer and community service for D.C. Public School students.

    Fox also admitted seeing a sports psychologist following the Olympics to help with the process of moving on.

    “I think that’s really important, just in terms of having a closing chapter on a huge event, and then being ready for a whole another year,” Fox said. “That’s been very helpful of navigating my feelings for the rest of the season.”

    With the Olympics in the rearview and the next Women’s World Cup two years away, Fox’s attention shifts to accomplishing a new career goal: competing in the UEFA Women’s Champions League. After finishing third in league-play last season, Arsenal must win a two-game mini-tournament to qualify for Europe’s largest women’s soccer club competition.

    Fox called the prospect of playing two must-win matches “nerve-racking,” but, like the Olympics, she welcomes the challenge.

    “I’ve always wanted to play in the Champions League, so I think we’re really excited for the opportunity. I think we’re doing everything we can to be the most prepared to start strong and fast for that game,” Fox said. “Every game we want to win, so I really feel like the mentality shouldn’t change. It is win or lose, but if we treat every game like that, we’re doing good.”

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    [ad_2]

    Jose Umana

    Source link

  • ‘Bleak’, ‘Gutting’, ‘Disastrous’: What was your Premier League club’s worst transfer window and why?

    ‘Bleak’, ‘Gutting’, ‘Disastrous’: What was your Premier League club’s worst transfer window and why?

    [ad_1]

    When transfer windows go right, they can set a manager and a team up for a successful season or kick off a new era.

    When they go wrong, however, they can go very wrong.

    From the early departures of managers after a disappointing summer to relegations or even financial turmoil, a disappointing transfer window can prove disastrous for clubs.

    Having already brought you our selection of the best transfer windows for each club last week, now it’s time to look at those that didn’t quite work out so well.

    Get the latest transfer news on The Athletic¬

    Worst window: Summer 2015

    If there was a window to sum up the frustrations with Arsenal’s passivity in the market it was summer 2015, when their only signing was a 33-year-old goalkeeper.

    Though that goalkeeper was Petr Cech — who later kept 16 clean sheets to win the Golden Glove — the 2015-16 campaign was one of opportunity. Arsenal’s traditional rivals faltered and they finished second, 10 points behind Leicester City and there has always been a thought of ‘what if’ had they invested in even one outfield player that summer.

    A close runner-up is the summer window of 2011. Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Gael Clichy — all entering their mid-20s — left despite being vital parts of Arsene Wenger’s side. Arsenal then signed Gervinho and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and although their deadline-day dash brought Mikel Arteta and Per Mertesacker, it was a scattergun end to a gutting summer.

    Art de Roché


    Should Arsenal have gone stronger in summer 2015? (Ian Kington/AFP via Getty Images)

    Worst window: Summer 2015

    The summer of 2015 was when everything went wrong. The season started — and basically ended — in Bournemouth on the opening day, where new signing Rudy Gestede scored the only goal to give Villa three points and the only sense of optimism in an altogether horrendous campaign, finishing rank bottom with 17 points.

    That opening-day win served as a false dawn, with Micah Richards captain and one of 12 new signings that joined. Gestede came and went, the three Jordans — Ayew, Veretout and Amavi — became annoyingly good once they left Villa, as did a young Adama Traore.

    Scott Sinclair was already on the slide and Joleon Lescott’s time at Villa would be known for his apparent accidental tweeting of a new car immediately after relegation was sealed. Idrissa Gueye was the only solid buy. A bleak summer.

    Jacob Tanswell

    Worst window: Summer 2022

    Bournemouth’s hit rate since their first promotion to the Premier League in 2015 has been good, based on recruiting unearthed gems and, recently, young talent from abroad.

    Still, Scott Parker’s brief top-flight stay in 2022 was littered with in-fighting and squabbles over recruitment, exacerbated by the ownership flux, with incoming owner Bill Foley waiting to be rubber-stamped.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Scott Parker’s Bournemouth sacking: Criticisms, transfers and a summer of tension

    It meant Parker had what he viewed as little support in the market, claiming his side were “under-equipped”. Goalkeeper Neto and midfielder Joe Rothwell signed for free, while resources stretched to sign Marcus Tavernier and Marcos Senesi — two good players who are flourishing under Andoni Iraola, but not who Parker wanted.

    Jacob Tanswell

    Worst window: Summer 2022

    Fans thought the 2020 window had been a disaster after Brentford lost the Championship play-off final to their west London rivals Fulham and then sold Ollie Watkins and Said Benrahma. But Ivan Toney and Vitaly Janelt arrived and Brentford finished the season by winning the play-offs so it looks far better in hindsight.

    The reverse logic could be applied to 2022. Keane Lewis-Potter, Aaron Hickey and Mikkel Damsgaard were signed for around £45million ($58.1m at today’s conversion rates) combined but injuries and dips in form mean they have not shown their best. Thomas Strakosha arrived as competition for David Raya but left after two years having made more appearances for Albania (12) than Brentford during that time (six). Ben Mee joined for free but Christian Eriksen turned down a contract to join Manchester United.

    It may be too soon to definitively call this their worst window in history but it certainly stands out as being below par by Brentford’s lofty standards over the last decade.

    Jay Harris

    Worst window: January 2018

    Brighton’s business has not always been as good as it has been in the majority of recent windows.

    The outcomes were sketchy when they were still finding their feet as a Premier League club after promotion in 2017.

    In January 2018, they splashed out around £14million on Jurgen Locadia, a club-record outlay at that time. The forward proved a big disappointment, playing only 46 games and scoring six goals. Brighton make big annual profits now, but they were still incurring substantial losses back then, so it was a costly mistake.


    Jurgen Locadia was a club-record signing at the time (Steve Bardens/Getty Images)

    The same was true of Alireza Jahanbakhsh in the summer of 2018 for £17million from AZ Alkmaar, but fans still fondly recall the Iran winger’s overhead kick against Chelsea. Also, his arrival was accompanied by Yves Bissouma and Jason Steele.

    Andy Naylor

    Chelsea

    Worst window: Summer 2017

    The disastrous summer of 2017 still sparks shudders in Chelsea supporters.

    Fresh from winning the Premier League title, Antonio Conte felt he had earned a big voice in Chelsea’s recruitment. He submitted a list of high-profile targets that included Romelu Lukaku, Virgil van Dijk, Alex Sandro, Radja Nainggolan and Kyle Walker.

    Chelsea tried to bring Lukaku back from Everton but were outflanked by Jose Mourinho and Manchester United, before pivoting to Alvaro Morata of Real Madrid. Conte also had to settle for Davide Zappacosta (Torino), Tiemoue Bakayoko (Monaco) and Danny Drinkwater (Leicester City), with the latter pair becoming liabilities long before they were released as free agents.


    Danny Drinkwater was among Chelsea’s 2017 signings (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

    The sale of Nemanja Matic to United for £40million aged well but deprived Conte of vital midfield experience. The club also took a loss on sending Juan Cuadrado back to Serie A and sold Nathan Ake to Bournemouth for £20million — much less than his peak transfer value.

    Liam Twomey

    Worst window: Summer 2017

    A memorable window for all the wrong reasons with Palace’s new manager Frank de Boer sacked 10 days after it closed, just four games into the Premier League season — all of which his team lost, all without scoring.

    Mamadou Sakho joined from Liverpool for £26million after an excellent loan spell in the second half of 2016-17 but was unable to reach those same levels again. Jairo Riedewald arrived from Ajax for £8m, and although he proved to be an excellent mentor for the club’s younger players, his contribution on the pitch was limited. He did, however, spend seven seasons at Palace covering various positions and made 106 appearances in all competitions.

    Midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek impressed to such an extent on a season’s loan from Chelsea that he made the England squad for the following summer’s World Cup, but Timothy Fosu-Mensah struggled at right-back after being loaned from Manchester United.

    The squad had been insufficiently strengthened in this window but De Boer’s replacement Roy Hodgson was still able to guide them to an 11th-place finish.

    Matt Woosnam

    Everton

    Worst window: Summer 2017

    There is an obvious answer here for anyone who follows Everton; one that shines a light on the glaring dysfunction of the Farhad Moshiri years.

    Let’s go back to the summer of 2017 and the arrival of not one, not two… not even three… but four No 10s in the form of Wayne Rooney, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Davy Klaassen and Nikola Vlasic.

    Mad, right? Well, that’s what happens when so many different people are feeding into the recruitment process — owners, board members, managers and other staff — and each one gets a pick. The bizarre splurge left Ronald Koeman’s side lacking balance — particularly out wide — and also led to financial problems later on.

    A case study on how not to do your recruitment.

    Patrick Boyland


    Davy Klaassen failed to impress (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

    Fulham

    Worst window: Summer 2012

    There have been some bad windows at Craven Cottage in recent years.

    The summer of 2015 did bring Tim Ream, Tom Cairney and Ryan Fredericks, but it also brought nine other new players, the most notable of which was Jamie O’Hara. January 2014, meanwhile, saw a record fee spent on a striker, Kostas Mitroglou, who would play only 151 minutes (three appearances, zero goals) in the club’s unsuccessful fight against relegation.

    But the winner here is the one at the start of the 2012-13 season.

    It set in motion a tricky decade, as Fulham sold Clint Dempsey and Mousa Dembele, their crown jewels at that time, to Tottenham Hotspur and their only signing that paid off was Dimitar Berbatov. The Bulgarian striker was a popular addition, but on his own couldn’t stem the tide.

    This window marked the start of a downward spiral which would end in relegation the following season, and then four years in the Championship.

    Peter Rutzler

    Worst window: Summer 2020

    Both of Ipswich’s summer windows pre-relegation featured costly mistakes: in 2001, destabilising a unified squad, and in 2018, replacing Championship players on the cheap with those of predominantly League One quality.

    But for the sheer volume of underwhelming signings, the 2020 summer transfer window takes it.

    After ending the previous season 11th in League One — the club’s lowest finish since 1953 — just three permanent signings were made. David Cornell, Oliver Hawkins and Stephen Ward on free transfers in a feeble attempt to escape the third tier.

    Only Ward became a regular and striker Hawkins managed just a single goal. All three left the club after one season.

    Ali Rampling

    Leicester City

    Worst window: Summer 2021

    After just missing out on Champions League qualification in the previous two seasons, Leicester were looking to push to the next level as 2021-22 approached.

    The business they did that summer may not have set the wheels in motion for a decline which brought relegation less than two years later, but it certainly was a factor. A total of £55million went on Patson Daka, Jannik Vestergaard and Boubakary Soumare, while Ryan Bertrand joined on a free.

    Besides a few promising moments, striker Daka has not had the impact expected, and midfielder Soumare has also been a disappointment. Denmark international centre-back Vestergaard looked at first to be a disaster of a signing until his performances in the Championship last season earned him a new contract. Champions League winner and former England international Bertrand’s spell at Leicester was a mishap, due mostly to injuries, and he retired this summer aged 34.

    The reality for clubs of Leicester’s stature is they must be prudent in recruitment and reinvest after selling a major asset. They cannot afford to get it wrong.

    In summer 2021, when they didn’t sell a major asset, that’s exactly what happened.

    Rob Tanner

    Worst window: Summer 2010

    Rewind 14 years to the 2010-11 pre-season, and Liverpool were in a mess. Rafael Benitez’s reign had just ended, debts were piling up under the hated ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and fan protests were gathering pace.

    Liverpool appointed Roy Hodgson as manager at the start of July and, with money tight, what followed proved to be a dreadful transfer window.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Milan Jovanovic: Hodgson’s Liverpool, rejecting Real and a Neighbours shoutout

    The hype that surrounded signing Joe Cole on a free transfer from Chelsea proved misplaced, as the England midfielder flopped badly. Milan Jovanovic was another free-agent arrival that summer who ended up costing Liverpool a fortune in wages.

    The names Christian Poulsen (£4.5million from Juventus) and Paul Konchesky (a reported £3.5m from Fulham) still send a shiver down a Kopite’s spine as they struggled badly and looked completely out of their depth.

    Raul Meireles (£11.5million from Porto) was the only one of the new arrivals to give the club any kind of return on their investment.

    It was all too much for star midfielder Javier Mascherano as he pushed through a move to Barcelona before the deadline. You could hardly blame him.

    James Pearce


    Paul Konchesky was one of Liverpool’s stranger signings (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

    Worst window: Summer 2012

    City famously built on their 2011-12 Premier League title by bringing in Javi Garcia, Jack Rodwell, Matija Nastasic, Scott Sinclair and Maicon.

    In fairness to them, this was the same summer they also tried to sign both Robin van Persie from Arsenal, losing out to Manchester United, and Eden Hazard of Lille, who chose new European champions Chelsea instead.

    City were clearly trying to put the hammer down and cement their place at the top of English football (not to mention the fact that a few months later they were pushing hard to bring in Pep Guardiola from Barcelona as manager, not long after Roberto Mancini’s finest hour).

    They obviously felt the signings they did make in that window, including two young English players seen as having bags of potential, would be able to take the club forward, but none of the moves worked out and summer 2012 has gone down in history as a missed opportunity.

    Sam Lee


    Jack Rodwell’s move to City did not work out (Paul Thomas/Getty Images)

    Manchester United

    Worst window: Summer 2013

    It’s the obvious answer. Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill, the chief executive, had both departed at the end of the 2012-13 title-winning season. David Moyes had arrived from Everton as the new manager. Thiago Alcantara, Leighton Baines and Ander Herrera (who they did sign a year later) were pursued but eventually fumbled before Marouane Fellaini arrived on deadline day… for £4million more than the £23m release clause which ran out a month earlier.

    A special mention to the summer(ish) window of 2020-21.

    Disrupted by Covid-19 and a mere 35-day gap between completing one season and beginning another, United pushed and pushed and pushed for Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho, but to no avail. Instead, Edinson Cavani, Donny van de Beek, Alex Telles and Facundo Pellistri arrived in an assorted grab-bag.

    Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did well in the season that followed, with United runners-up in the Premier League and Europa League, League Cup semi-finalists and reaching the last eight of the FA Cup, but the club missed a crucial opportunity to back their manager while rivals were in a mild state of flux.

    Carl Anka

    Worst window: Summer 1997

    John Barnes. Stuart Pearce. Ian Rush. How is that a bad window? Because this was 1997, not 1990. Barnes was 33, Pearce was 35 and Rush was 35.

    Far worse windows (summer and winter windows were introduced in 2002) were to come in terms of talent, but this was the tipping point for the next two decades: the Kevin Keegan bubble had burst, replaced by Kenny Dalglish’s stultifying pragmatism. Jon Dahl Tomasson and Shay Given also arrived, but out went David Ginola and Les Ferdinand, and Alan Shearer had a long-term injury.

    The boom was over, contraction taking hold, a club being deflated like a soiled airbed after a festival.


    John Barnes joined Newcastle at the wrong end of the 1990s (Clive Brunskill /Allsport via Getty Images)

    Pearce was fine, and Barnes played in all but one of Newcastle’s Champions League matches, including the 3-2 win against Barcelona. Barnes was also Newcastle’s top scorer in the league, but with just six goals — the Entertainers had been thoroughly dismantled.

    The Champions League run ended at the group stage and Newcastle finished 13th in the Premier League. Joylessness loomed. The sad cherry on top? Signing Paul Dalglish. Nice work if you can get it, which you can if your dad’s the manager.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Paul Dalglish: Coping with the family name, cracking America – and becoming an agent

    Andrew Hankinson

    Worst window: January 2020

    Before Cooper, there was Sabri Lamouchi. The old line about being able to cope with the despair but it’s the hope you can’t stand, was perfectly encapsulated for Forest fans by the 2019-20 season.

    Under Lamouchi, Forest enjoyed a brilliant first half of that season. There were a few dips here and there but, by the end of January, they were not just ensconced in the unfamiliar surrounds of the play-off places, but knocking on the door of the automatics too. The first XI was good, but the thing that might have pushed them over the line was a few quality additions that January.

    It would be unfair to blame the players who did arrive for the eventual collapse that would see them miss out on the play-offs in that Covid-interrupted season. But it did feel fitting that one of them, the striker Nuno da Costa, scored an own goal in the 4-1 home defeat to Stoke on the final day, which drove a stake through the already pretty dead heart of Forest’s promotion hopes.

    Nick Miller

    Worst window: January 2018

    Six words from January 2018 that are enough to bring back nightmares: Southampton sign Guido Carrillo for £19million.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Guido Carrillo: The £19m striker chosen over Jimenez despite staff’s concerns

    A few years on from the dreamy days of beating Inter Milan in the Europa League and Southampton’s infamous black box seemed to be faltering. Locked in a relegation battle under Mauricio Pellegrino — remember him? (Sorry for the reminder, these were desperate times.)

    Needless to say, striker Carrillo, the only arrival in that window despite the sale of Virgil van Dijk, was not the answer. He scored zero goals at a cost of £1.9million per appearance.

    Nancy Froston

    Tottenham

    Worst window: Summer 2013

    Supporters had to deal with the pain of waving goodbye to Gareth Bale in 2013 and, to make matters worse, Tottenham wasted the £85million they received from Real Madrid. Roberto Soldado scored 24 times for Valencia in La Liga during the 2012-13 season, which is more than he managed (16) across 76 appearances for Spurs in all competitions.

    Erik Lamela is a cult hero but never truly fulfilled his potential following a £30million move from Roma. Paulinho lasted two years before he moved to China after barely making an impact. Nacer Chadli was a useful option from the bench but Etienne Capoue and Vlad Chiriches struggled.

    Apart from Lamela, the only other signing who qualified as a success was Christian Eriksen. He spent seven distinguished years with Spurs and was part of the team that came close to winning the Champions League in 2019.

    go-deeper

    Jay Harris

    Worst window: Summer 2022

    In the summer of 2022, West Ham spent £165million on Gianluca Scamacca, Lucas Paqueta, Emerson Palmieri, Thilo Kehrer, Maxwel Cornet, Flynn Downes, Alphonse Areola and Nayef Aguerd — the most they had spent in a window.

    But integrating eight players into the team proved difficult for manager David Moyes, which led to West Ham losing five of their first seven league games.

    Scamacca and Kehrer have since joined Atalanta and Monaco respectively, Cornet has been an underwhelming signing, while West Ham are open to offers for Aguerd and Downes could rejoin Southampton having returned from his season-long loan. Only Paqueta, Palmieri and Areola have improved the side.

    Roshane Thomas

    Worst window: Summer 2011

    It may seem difficult to beat the summer of 2022, when Wolves spent a combined £80million on Matheus Nunes, Goncalo Guedes and Nathan Collins. But at least that side avoided relegation.

    Eleven years earlier came a window just as poor but with worse consequences as Wolves broke up the limited but spirited squad Mick McCarthy had built and signed the higher-profile duo of Roger Johnson and Jamie O’Hara.

    It was supposed to take the club to the next level — but the next level was down. Two relegations in two seasons were the result of disturbing the dressing-room dynamic.

    go-deeper

    Steve Madeley

    (Top photos: Getty Images)

    [ad_2]

    The New York Times

    Source link

  • Fight for the Champions League’s future threatens an age of uncertainty in Europe

    Fight for the Champions League’s future threatens an age of uncertainty in Europe

    [ad_1]

    A love story. Florentino Perez called it a love story. Speaking to reporters on his way out of Wembley Stadium after Saturday’s Champions League final, the Real Madrid president sounded like a man in thrall to the mystique, the allure and the romance of a relationship that has spanned seven decades and so many special times.

    “It’s a magnificent night, because this competition is the one we like the most,” Perez said after Madrid, 2-0 winners over Borussia Dortmund, were crowned European champions for the 15th time. “It was created by Santiago Bernabeu (the club’s president from 1943 to 1978) along with L’Equipe newspaper, and it made us important in the world. Some (clubs) leave and others come, but this competition is very much ours.”

    There is a beautiful story there: the all-conquering Madrid team that won the first five European Cups from 1956-60, inspired by Paco Gento, Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas; a sixth title in 1966, and then an unthinkable 32-year wait before three more around the turn of the century, won by a team illuminated by the homegrown Raul Gonzalez and embellished by the arrivals of Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane before the Perez-driven galacticos project lost its way; their re-emergence over the past decade with a side initially built around Cristiano Ronaldo and other A-list talents, but now extensively rebuilt around the young talent of Vinicius Junior, Rodrigo, Jude Bellingham and, coming soon, a bona fide galactico in Kylian Mbappe.

    No club have contributed more to the game’s growth in the European Cup era. Equally, no club have grown more with the game. It is, on one level, a beautiful relationship, particularly when they are led by coaches such as Carlo Ancelotti and Zidane, whose personal history with the competition dates back to their illustrious playing careers.


    Perez wants to overhaul a tournament Madrid have dominated (Angel Martinez/Real Madrid via Getty Images)

    But it is a strange kind of love story when Perez appears intent on killing the Champions League as we know it.

    He has the European football landscape he dreamed of — a vast and enormously lucrative competition, so elitist that it now attracts talk of fairytales if the second-biggest club in Germany make it to the final — but it is still not enough. Nothing will ever be enough.

    One way or another, European football is approaching a tipping point.

    It has felt that way for several years now, as if the unprecedented financial advantages enjoyed by the biggest, richest, most powerful clubs in the biggest, richest, most powerful leagues just aren’t enough anymore.

    Perez wants the European Cup to be replaced by a Super League. Why? “We are doing this to save football at this critical moment,” he told Spanish television show El Chiringuito around the time of the failed Super League launch in the spring of 2021. “If we continue with the Champions League, there is less and less interest, and then it’s over. The new format which starts in 2024 is absurd. In 2024, we are all dead.”

    And now here we are in 2024. Perez is still pushing the Super League project, emboldened and encouraged by the outcome of the latest court case in Spain, and continuing to wage war on UEFA, the game’s governing body on this continent, which he has accused of running a “monopoly” on European football.

    UEFA, for its part, has responded to the constant demands for more matches by introducing a new Champions League format from next season: the so-called “Swiss model”, where 36 teams will play eight games each, not in a group format but in a notional 36-team “league” from which 24 of them progress to the knockout phase. This is what Perez has described as “absurd”. And he might well be right.

    It sounds… bloated, convoluted, unwieldy, all the things that European competition should not be. It looks like a forlorn, misguided attempt to go with the flow when what the game really needed was for UEFA to do the impossible by stemming and reversing the tide.

    It is designed to placate the demands of the biggest, richest, most powerful clubs.

    Some of us would say UEFA has acceded far too much over the past two decades in particular, creating a financial model that has created a chronic competitive imbalance between leagues and within leagues. Perez and others have already concluded next season’s reforms don’t go anything like far enough.

    Sitting at Wembley on Saturday evening, soaking up the atmosphere created by their supporters, it felt like something of a throwback to see Dortmund in the final again. If it felt that way the previous time they got there, in 2013, when Jurgen Klopp characterised them as a “workers’ club” against a commercial juggernaut in fellow German side Bayern Munich, it certainly felt that way when they played Real Madrid in this season’s showpiece.

    It was similar when Inter Milan reached the final against Manchester City last season. Inter have won the European Cup as many times (three) as Manchester United and indeed they have won it more recently, but they too seem to have been left behind in the modern era. The latter stages of the Champions League felt like their natural habitat in the 2000s. By 2023, reaching the semi-finals, never mind the final, seemed extraordinary.

    And that is Dortmund and Inter — never mind other former giants such as Benfica, Porto and Ajax (to say nothing of Celtic, Red Star Belgrade and the rest). The 21st-century financial landscape has put these clubs far beyond most of their domestic rivals but unable to compete financially with even mid-ranking Premier League clubs, let alone the Champions League elite.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    What comes next for Borussia Dortmund?

    The European game is at such a strange point in its history.

    The football itself is frequently enthralling, highly technical and played at an astonishing speed, but the structure of the sport’s European model feels increasingly broken: by greed, by entitlement, by the biggest clubs demanding an ever greater share of revenue and ever more protection against underperformance. Attempts to preserve wild-card places for underperforming big clubs have so far been resisted, but that is clearly the direction of travel.


    Dortmund reaching the final feels almost like a fairytale in the modern game (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

    UEFA’s solution, as always, is to give the elite more of what they want — but not enough to please most of them. The solution proposed by Perez and others is for the most powerful clubs to wrestle power from UEFA and to be allowed to do as they please.

    “To fix a problem, you have to first recognise that you have a problem,” Perez said in 2021, before making clear his belief that European football’s issue was not dubious ownership models, nor the spread of multi-club networks, a bulging fixture calendar or a chronic financial and competitive imbalance across the continent. The only problem he was interested in was the one that could be solved by “top-level games year-round, with the best players competing”.

    But Perez doesn’t necessarily mean “top-level games” between the best teams of the day. He wants the most marketable matches.

    If he feels short-changed by a Champions League campaign in which Madrid faced Napoli, Braga, Union Berlin, RB Leipzig, City, Bayern and Dortmund, you suspect he would be happier to have played Juventus and Liverpool (who didn’t qualify), Manchester United (who were knocked out in the group stage) and Barcelona (beaten in the quarter-finals).

    Provided his team still ended up winning, of course.

    Two great contradictions arise from the past decade of European competition.

    The first, much discussed elsewhere and not greatly relevant to this article, is that this period of Madrid domination, unprecedented in the Champions League era, has felt strange as far as the quality of their performances is concerned.

    It is undoubtedly strange that they have come to dominate an era while rarely dominating their matches against top-class opponents. It must leave Pep Guardiola wondering how on earth, beyond the small margins of knockout football, his City side have just one European Cup to show for their sustained excellence over the past seven seasons.

    The second contradiction — perhaps linked to the first, perhaps not — is that, in an era when the biggest clubs have enjoyed access to revenue streams that were previously beyond their wildest dreams, several of them have lost their way due to serious mismanagement.

    Barcelona, Madrid’s fiercest rivals, have flirted with financial calamity and have reached the Champions League semi-finals just once in the past eight seasons; Manchester United have reached just two quarter-finals in the past 13 seasons under the Glazer family’s miserable, directionless ownership; Juventus reached the final in 2015 and 2017 while in the midst of winning nine consecutive Serie A titles, but they have fallen away from the top tier of European football as ownership and management issues escalated.

    It is almost as if some of these ownership regimes became so fixated on driving up revenue streams and reimagining European football’s future that they lost sight of their own club’s present.

    That is not an accusation that could be levelled at the Perez regime.

    Obsessed as he might be by his Super League dream and his power struggle with UEFA, he has overseen Madrid’s evolution into a club that plays the transfer market shrewdly, always looking for the next big talents in world football (Vinicius Jr, Rodrigo, Bellingham, incoming Brazilian teenager Endrick) and always respecting experience and knowledge while recognising when it is right to let a fading A-list talent grow old at another club’s expense.

    Barcelona and Manchester United, from a broadly similar financial position, have spent enormous sums of money in a wildly erratic manner and allowed dysfunction to take hold. By contrast, Madrid have established a clear vision, made good appointments and built a winning environment.

    They have also without question ridden their luck at times in the Champions League. That needs to be emphasised: both the luck they have had in some of their winning campaigns (not least the last two) and the assurance Ancelotti and his players have shown in being able to ride it. In some of the individual success stories — Ancelotti, Nacho, Dani Carvajal, Toni Kroos, Vinicius Jr, Bellingham — there is so much to like.

    The most uplifting stories of the past few seasons in European football, though, have come away from the Champions League’s spotlight, with Europa League final successes for Villarreal, Eintracht Frankfurt, Sevilla and Atalanta, as well as the success of the initially derided third-tier Conference League, which Roma, West Ham United and Olympiacos have won in its first three years.

    The joy in those celebrations, particularly after Olympiacos beat Fiorentina in the Conference League final last week, was truly something to behold.

    It has shown there is still life and ambition among those clubs who have been conditioned to accept their place in the game’s 21st-century order and be grateful for whatever crumbs might fall from the top table.

    Former Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli once infamously asked whether Atalanta truly merited a place in the Champions League while on their way to a third consecutive third-placed finish in Serie A. When it comes to outperforming expectations and resources over recent seasons, few clubs in Europe have been more deserving.

    Surely that is the lesson for European football to draw from the past decade: that, in 2024, there still has to be such a thing as upward mobility, that a club like Olympiacos can win a European trophy, that clubs like Atalanta, Bologna and Aston Villa can still reach the Champions League, that a club like Bayer Leverkusen can break Bayern’s monopoly of the Bundesliga. In an era when hope has been crushed — when Bayern have been able to sleepwalk their way to some of their 11 consecutive Bundesliga titles, often sacking coaches as they go — Leverkusen’s success under Xabi Alonso has been particularly inspiring.


    Olympiacos fans celebrated their own European triumph in huge numbers (Giorgos Arapekos/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    But such love stories rarely seem to endure these days. It seems inevitable that, before long, Leverkusen will fall prey to those clubs higher up the food chain, seeing their best players whisked away, just as Klopp’s Dortmund team did, just like the Monaco team of 2016-17 or the Ajax of 2018-19 did. Maybe their manager, too.

    And at the very top of that food chain are Madrid, the sport’s apex predator, now champions of Europe for a 15th time, somehow re-establishing their dominance in an era when they felt threatened like never before.

    Leaving the stadium after Saturday’s final, it was hard to escape the feeling that European football, having allowed its problems to pile up over a long period of time, is entering a period of uncertainty and seismic change.

    This convoluted “Swiss format” will be the most inescapable change in next season’s Champions League, but, whether it has the desired effect or not, you can imagine the Super League mob clinging to its success or failure as irrefutable evidence of the need for radical reform.

    The game needs proper leadership. It needs someone to stand up and fight for tradition, for jeopardy, for the romance that runs through the history of European competition.

    Hearing his heartening words on his way out of Wembley, you might have imagined that person would be the 77-year-old president of Real Madrid, the man who talks fondly and reverently about the European Cup and his club’s enormous contribution to it.

    But no, Florentino Perez has a different perspective on that relationship these days. As love stories go, it’s increasingly complicated.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Real Madrid’s Champions League party: Speeches, cigars, Carvajal’s dad on horseback

    (Top photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)

    [ad_2]

    The New York Times

    Source link

  • Fear and gloating on the Premier League title trail: watching three contenders in three nights

    Fear and gloating on the Premier League title trail: watching three contenders in three nights

    [ad_1]

    One of the closest, most enthralling Premier League title races in many years is careering towards a climax.

    Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City played out crucial games on consecutive nights this week — and The Athletic went to all three to survey and convey the emotions of three very different clubs and fanbases.

    An Arsenal fan briefly comes up for air between substantial munches of a doner kebab: “The internet is gonna be a f****** joke tonight.”

    Welcome to The Emirates. They are a different breed here; still rabid football fans all the way to their inner core, but perhaps with slightly different priorities on a matchday.

    The number of selfies being taken in front of the giant Arsenal lettering opposite the Hornsey Road roundabout, for example, is well above average for your typical football ground.

    One man films a staged video of his friend slowly walking towards the camera outside the ground, club-shop bag in hand, shades on. They both watch the video back to make sure it looks good, then they wrap their freshly purchased red and white scarves around their necks. Job done.

    There are still all the normal football pre-match sights and sounds. Alcohol, meat, cigarette smoke, anticipation.

    “We’ve still got an hour to drink,” one fan informs his mate. “An hour?” he replies. “You’ll be wearing one of them mate,” he cackles as he points to a passerby wearing a protective cast boot.

    It does, though, feel pretty normal around the ground. Should it? Arsenal are top of the Premier League with five games left. They haven’t won a title for 20 years.

    This place should be brimming with feverish expectation. And yet, the dead-behind-the-eyes robotic football machine that is Manchester City dictates that whatever Arsenal do tonight is irrelevant, in Premier League parlance.

    At least, that’s how some Gunners fans see it.


    Arsenal fans prepare for their team’s match with Chelsea as best they can (Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)

    “The Villa defeat was obviously gutting but otherwise we’ve been basically perfect since the turn of the year,” season ticket holder Jamie says, referring to Arsenal’s otherwise outstanding record of 12 wins and one draw (0-0 at the Etihad) in 2024.

    “We’ve only been behind in one game since last year and that was the Villa game. It’s ridiculous, really, how perfect you have to be to beat City. I know we had that run around Christmas (four points from their last five matches of 2023) but yeah, I’m proud of us, we’re pushing them closer than last year.

    “I just feel the pressure is off now. If City win every game from now on, they deserve it and we’ll be back next year, we’re growing, on an upward curve. I’m not sure you can say the same for City, (Kevin) De Bruyne is probably less influential and (Erling) Haaland isn’t scoring as many. And Liverpool will obviously change a lot this summer. We’re all good.”

    It’s a philosophical attitude, one that seems to reflect a club comfortable in its own skin.

    There isn’t much skin on show as 60,000 people amble into the stadium. People wear hats, scarves and parka jackets. It’s 6°C on April 23.

    The cranky sound of AC/DC song Hells Bells fills the enormous red bowl inside. With its talk of high temperatures, it feels like a piss-take.

    After a plod-along run of two defeats, one draw and a laboured win over Wolves in their previous four, the question in the air is if Arsenal still have the minerals for this title fight.

    The answer comes within 30 seconds. Red swarm over blue like it’s the 1997 General Election all over again, Kai Havertz is sent through on goal (although is marginally offside) and the next few minutes are a blur of aggressive tackles, jinky movement and nimble passes.

    The crowd is immediately fully engaged and Arsenal are immediately in front.


    Leoandro Trossard celebrates scoring Arsenal’s first of the evening (Charlotte Wilson/Offside via Getty Images)

    By way of retort, Chelsea, with their 58 per cent possession and higher xG in the first half, play with a freedom that spells danger — Nicolas Jackson and Conor Gallagher flashing balls across goal that elicit nervous, leaning-back, pursed-lipped oooohs in the home stands, then spontaneous applause en masse by way of encouragement. Arsenal are a more united bunch these days.

    Greater teams — with the emphasis on team — would prey on Arsenal’s fragility, but not Chelsea.

    The freedom they are playing with also extends to their defenders, who run in odd directions and blame team-mates for their own mistakes.

    Mauricio Pochettino, for the time being, is a picture of calm amid the storm of an unceasing first half. Mikel Arteta buzzes around his technical area like a wasp who has accidentally sniffed some chilli powder.

    At half-time, Rollin’ by Limp Bizkit is inexplicably played in full. It feels like the early 2000s again, a sentiment Arsenal take literally as they regale their glory days by demolishing Chelsea over the next 25 minutes.

    The loudest cheer is for the third goal, orgasmic groans at Martin Odegaard’s wand-ish through ball, then euphoria as Havertz finishes it off.

    As the goals fly in, the giddiness elevates. All four sides of the ground are on their feet and the noise is overpowering at times. As a stadium, an entity, a feeling, this place is unrecognisable from three years ago. There is a tangible feeling of unity and delirium.

    “Who put the ball in the Chelsea net? Half the fucking team did,” they sing. Technically only three of them have scored, which is 27 per cent of the team, but you get the sentiment.

    The ultimate indignity arrives in the final minutes as they shout ‘ole’ at a rare sequence of Chelsea passes.

    “You have to react and face the moment,” Arteta says of Arsenal’s return to form. “And the moment is beautiful. We’ve been working for it for nine months.”


    Arsenal’s players are restrained, but the fans are not (David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

    On the pitch at full time, the celebrations are fairly restrained. Outside the ground, this is not the case.

    People aren’t just walking away chatting about the match; they’re singing, hugging and dancing. There is an incessant buzz of unfiltered, intoxicating joy.

    The scenes are so rhapsodic they bring to mind the end of the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, set amid Arsenal’s 1989 last-minute league title win at Anfield, when fans poured onto the streets back home.

    “I feel like I’m walking out of a festival and we’ve just watched the headliner,” one fan says to his friends. Everyone is high on Arsenal.

    A group of three lads are dropping the c-word (champions), while another is shouting about goal difference.

    At the Tollington pub, the chant on repeat is not about the title, it’s about Chelsea getting battered. Whatever happens in the next three and a half weeks, this night will not be forgotten anytime soon.

    With Liverpool stumbling through Jurgen Klopp’s Last Dance, they shouldn’t mind that Everton are their next opponents.

    It might be a local derby, where form is supposed to ‘go out the window’, but this fixture has been massively skewed towards the Reds since the turn of the century.

    They have beaten Everton 28 times since 2000; the Toffees have won just five.

    “You wouldn’t get chips like that at Anfield,” a father tells his lad as he passes him one outside the Blue Dragon just a few feet from Goodison Park, with the chips in question being proper chips, and the insinuation being Everton are the proper club. Or the people’s club, as they say in this part of Liverpool.

    If Everton are a proper club, then lord knows what a disjointed one looks like in 2023-24. It has been a season of upheaval and strife and the visit of their neighbours is not necessarily being relished.

    Klopp stands impassively as he surveys the opening minutes of his final Merseyside derby, his feet encased by fluorescent orange trainers.


    Jurgen Klopp assesses the scene ahead of his last Merseyside derby (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

    Perhaps he’s just taking it all in, his last visit to the grand/creaking/traditional/outdated (delete as applicable) old stadium, arguably unique in English football (there are other ancient grounds, but not of this size). Or perhaps he just knows what’s coming.

    Liverpool are submissive and compliant to the point of BDSM as they fail to cope with an Everton side who look like they’ve been locked up in darkness for the last week, caged and made to listen to the Z-Cars theme tune on repeat.

    As with Arsenal, the tone is set within the opening minutes, but on Liverpool’s part this means meek surrender. The wobbly wheels are in motion. They win 25 per cent of all duels in the opening half an hour, a ridiculous statistic.

    If The Emirates is an arena, a colosseum, Goodison is 38,000 people shouting into an empty tin can. It’s being sat in a wheelie bin while burly blokes beat the outside of it with baseball bats.

    There is an unceasing air of frantic desperation in their pleading yells for their team to tackle, to pass, to shoot, to block. No Premier League fanbase gets off on an agricultural sliding tackle more than at Goodison. Nowhere else is more spittle rasped for the tenacious blocking of a powerfully struck opposition shot.

    When the merited opener arrives via Jarrad Branthwaite’s left foot, Liverpool’s fans begin to fear the worst.

    Everton are willing to hoof the the ball out of play to clear a corner when they have all 11 players behind the ball… in the first half. Liverpool are not.

    The rabid home team are seemingly prepared to do and sacrifice anything to win this football match. Liverpool are not.

    “Games likes these, the bare minimum is fight,” Virgil van Dijk says later. “We were lacking that at so many moments.”

    Liverpool are creating chances, but they are losing all the key moments; missing chances (or shooting straight at Jordan Pickford), conceding chances and losing tackles and loose balls.


    Jarrad Branthwaite’s shot squirms under Alisson (Daniel Chesterton/Offside via Getty Images)

    The game is being played almost exclusively in Everton’s half. “We’re going to see record possession statistics for Liverpool in this half,” one home fan says.

    But his fears are not realised. Dominic Calvert-Lewin heads home a second, the roof comes off. One man sat in the home seats does not move, remaining seated and wearing a wry smile, if not a red shirt.

    Hope is lost in the away end. Defiance is not in their repertoire tonight, they are too despondent for that.

    They are told their “support is f***ing s***” and can only retort with muted sarcastic applause from a few hundred of them.

    Nerdy statistical models would have Liverpool winning this 19 times out of 20. But the Opta supercomputer does not allow for Sean Dyche wearing a tracksuit.

    “F**k off to Norway, the city is ours,” rings around Goodison (a dig at what they see as Liverpool’s tourist-heavy fanbase). As the whistle blows on an iconic Everton performance, the line “and if you know your history” from It’s a Grand Old Team must be one of the most thunderous noises heard in English football this season.

    Fourteen years of no home victories over Liverpool, the fact that survival is all but secured, that Liverpool’s title bid has been seriously dented, and Klopp’s farewell party severely sullied, plus the points deductions, the fury, the injustice, it all pours into that noise.

    “You lost the league, at Goodison Park,” is the refrain being sung over and over, more so outside the ground as people literally jump into each other’s arms outside the Winslow.

    Liverpool’s fans have long since scarpered, the away end emptying within a couple of minutes at full-time.

    The post-match quotes are telling. Calvert-Lewin says Everton were happy to let Liverpool have the ball because “we never feared they were gonna really hurt us”.

    Van Dijk criticises his team mates. Klopp apologies to his supporters and says that historically City and Arsenal don’t drop the number of points they’ll need to for Liverpool to stand a chance now. His words don’t say the title dream is over, but his face does.


    Klopp and Van Dijk after Liverpool’s potentially costly defeat at Everton (Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

    “We were rubbish,” Neil Atkinson of The Anfield Wrap sums up succinctly.

    “I’d rather have lost 4-2, but we didn’t have that card to play, there wasn’t a point where we thought they could make it a mad game. They didn’t have that gear. All I saw coming was the fact we had to score first.”

    The Athletic’s naivety around whether this was still a “friendly derby” for Liverpool, at least in comparison to the rivalry with Manchester United, is very quickly dismissed.

    “It’s absolutely horrendous losing to Everton,” Neil clarifies. “I’m always hugely perturbed when we lose to them. It doesn’t happen very often.

    “Klopp looks tired. You wonder now if he felt (when announcing he was leaving) his race was run… maybe we can see this manifesting itself more now than we could at the time he announced it.

    “If he’d looked this way in November, people would have understood it more. He now looks really rather grey.”

    And all the while they sing in the pubs around Goodison: “You lost the league, at Goodison Park, you lost the league, at Goodison Park.”

    Yep, they probably did.

    There are two football teams playing at the Amex but the focus is directed at just one. Manchester City are in town.

    “Fancy bus, innit?” a Brighton fan says to her friend as they walk past City’s coach which has five 10ft-high trophies emblazoned across its side. They both have their picture taken by it.

    “I like (Jack) Grealish for England but not City,” another Brighton fan says.

    Brighton are concentrating on City… and so are City. For them, Arsenal and Liverpool’s results are irrelevant if, as everyone expects, they enter ‘closer’ mode and win all their remaining fixtures.


    Guardiola stepped off the Man City team bus knowing a win at Brighton was essential (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

    “I didn’t watch either game this week,” City season ticket holder of 30 years, Mike Hammond, says, but not from a position of irrelevance. “It’s just no good for your mental health, I can’t be doing with it,” he adds.

    Mike is, as he puts it, a legacy fan. From Maine Road, to League One, to the Etihad and the Champions League trophy. Hell of a journey.

    But while Arsenal have a party and Liverpool stretch their emotions thin like butter scraped over too much toast, how are City’s fans feeling about the possibility of another Premier League title?

    “You get a mix,” Mike says. “Some are presumptuous, they’ll say; ‘Yep, been here before, we’re at our best now and it should be straightforward’. Most are pretty realistic and, yeah, to be honest, most think we’ll do it.

    “I thought Arsenal might not drop any points but that Villa result has made a big difference. We’ll have to win every game to win the title, but we’ve done that before.

    “I’m not massively confident, tonight won’t be easy. We’ve struggled a bit with Brighton, they’ve got a good system that we struggle with sometimes.”

    Brighton’s fans don’t share Mike’s lack of confidence in a City win.

    “What are you doing missing this? We could have been 3-0 down by now,” a woman jokes as someone walks in late to sit next to her with two minutes on the clock. No, that comes in the 34th minute.

    City had been well below their best when edging past Chelsea in their FA Cup semi-final last weekend, days after being knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid.

    Like Arsenal, they had appeared to look tired and lethargic. Like Arsenal (and unlike Liverpool) they come correct at the Amex from the opening whistle.

    Their passing is sharp, their pressing is on point and full of energy, their movement is balletic.


    De Bruyne and Foden celebrate as City demolish Brighton (Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)

    They are fortunate when Phil Foden falls over and is awarded a free kick by Jarred Gillett — and luckier still when said free kick deflects into the net — but otherwise this is an utterly dominant victory against meek opponents.

    In their previous 44 matches this season in all competitions, the lowest amount of possession Brighton had kept in a game was 45 per cent. Tonight they have 35 per cent of the ball.

    “That’s so easy, they’re taking the piss,” a Seagulls fan screams as Julian Alvarez scores City’s fourth in the second half. They are.

    The celebrations at full time are fairly restrained. This kind of victory is bread and butter for City, especially in April. It’s job done. Five to go.

    As a fan who regularly attends away games as well as home, Mike is one of a select few thousand who are in the inner sanctum of watching this title race unfold in the flesh.

    “It is a privilege,” he says. “And the away games are great, always a good atmosphere, most people really look forward to the away days.

    “It’s not ‘pinch yourself’ like it was in the first few years of Pep, the manner in which he did it, the football he’s introduced, he’s something else that guy. The best you’ve ever seen.

    “Obviously we’re going for the fourth in a row. We’ve done three, it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t happen this year, but the team know how to do it and this is kind of where we come good.”

    Just like at The Emirates and Goodison Park, there is a song on repeat at the Amex as the evening draws to a close.

    “Champions again, ole ole, champions again, ole ole.”

    In some ways it has been an extraordinary week, what with Liverpool’s first defeat at Everton for 14 years probably ending their title hopes and Arsenal’s biggest victory over Chelsea for, well, ever.

    In some ways it has also played out to type – Arsenal loving life, Liverpool on the emotional rollercoaster and City utterly serene.

    (Top photo: Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)

    [ad_2]

    The New York Times

    Source link

  • This is still a three-horse title race – the 10 reasons why Man City might drop points

    This is still a three-horse title race – the 10 reasons why Man City might drop points

    [ad_1]

    It seems unlikely that north London denizen TS Eliot was an Arsenal fan, but his poetry suggests otherwise.

    “April is the cruellest month,” begins The Waste Land. “I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,” laments The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. “This is the way the challenge ends; not with a bang but a whimper,” was probably the first draft of The Hollow Men.

    Sunday was a disappointing day not just for Arsenal and Liverpool fans, but neutrals who wanted to see the three-way title battle continue. Liverpool’s 1-0 loss against Crystal Palace and Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat to Villa leaves Manchester City two points clear at the top of the league and, as frontrunners, Pep Guardiola’s side are near infallible.

    “I have known it all already, known it all,” moans Eliot. But cheer up, Tommy. There is hope yet.

    Here are 10 entirely realistic reasons why City could still drop points.

    This is a serious article, so let’s start seriously. Can a team do the treble twice in a row? With injuries mounting, games tripling, emotions deepening — can City rouse themselves once more?

    There is a reason why a treble — or a double, for that matter — is so rare. Playing in multiple competitions does have an impact. When the margins are so tight, fatigue levels, tactical planning and mental freshness are even more crucial.

    When cup competitions are straight knockout, league matches against lower-ranked opponents are naturally the games which can slip out of focus. City host Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-finals on Wednesday, play Chelsea in the FA Cup three days later, before travelling to Brighton five days on.

    Guardiola has already said City are in “big, big trouble” with fatigue and injuries. So that is surely cause for hope for Liverpool and Arsenal?


    Manchester City might need a bigger trophy room (Jan Kruger/Getty Images)

    The Spurs

    Won two, lost five. Has Guardiola ever had a record that bad? Taking on Lionel Messi in the crossbar challenge? Credit card roulette at Manchester’s finest restaurants? Family games of Uno?

    City have always struggled at Spurs. Their Premier League record in north London is poorer than any other fixture. Yes, they may have beaten them in the FA Cup this January — but that record does not include their Champions League quarter-final defeat in 2019.

    Every manager’s mind has a dark room where they store their worst defeats. Guardiola’s contains a Beavertown brewery and a retractable NFL field.

    Tottenham may have been overwhelmed by Newcastle, but both their meetings with City this season have been close. They still have the Champions League to chase, and they will not back down.


    Guardiola tends to be dumbfounded by league trips to the Tottenham Hotspur stadium (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    Is 30 goals in 37 matches really a down season? Since when did that make you, as Roy Keane suggested, a League Two player? Anyway.

    If Haaland fails to score for the rest of the season, perhaps then there is a conversation to be had. For now, City’s rivals simply have to hope the wheels come off.

    Pep overcomplicates it

    “I always overthink,” said Guardiola in 2022. “I always create new tactics and ideas, and tomorrow you will see a new one. I overthink a lot, that’s why I have very good results. I love it.”

    “If it works I am brave, if it doesn’t work then I’m overthinking,” he added one year later. So go on — be brave.

    When you already play four centre-backs, why stop there?

    Play a back four of Nathan Ake, Manuel Akanji, Ruben Dias, and Josko Gvardiol. John Stones is virtually a central midfielder already. Plonk Kyle Walker (yes, he can count as a centre-back) on the right wing.

    The rest of them? Recall Taylor Harwood-Bellis from Southampton and put him up front in the Andy Carroll role. At 6ft 5in (196cm), Finley Burns must be decent in nets. Luke Mbete can return from Den Bosch and use his left foot from the left wing. Max Alleyne, at 18, has been on the bench this season. Fancy joining Stones in the double pivot? There is already chatter about 16-year-old Stephen Mfuni’s technical quality. Stick him in at No 10.

    Guardiola believes in total football. They’ll be fine. When you’ve won it all, the only way left to win is to… win better.

    Forest’s newest investment finally comes good

    Imagine the scenario: Nottingham Forest are battling for Premier League survival and keeping City at bay. In the 71st minute, Phil Foden finally puts them ahead. With 88 minutes gone, Chris Wood bundles Forest back into it. Bedlam.

    But before the cheers die away, the whistle blows. VAR review. Suspected foul in the box. The referee walks to the monitor. The City Ground has seen this story before. But then he spots something in the crowd — and walks away.

    Amid the depths of celebration, supporters stop for one moment. What made the referee change his mind? They search for an answer — and find it.

    Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Mark Clattenburg.

    This superhero has no cape, but Forest’s referee consultant has the regulations to his front and justice at his back. Gotham City is safe from PGMOL. The Premier League table is level once more.


    This is Clattenburg’s time (Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

    Rodri’s break turns into a gap year

    Rodri has said he needs a break, but remember this is a player who lives the lifestyle of a university student. He lived in student accommodation. He has a degree in business administration. He drove a second-hand Opel Corsa. He is one step away from selling you £2 entry to Tuesday club nights at Pryzm.

    “Spending time with young people the same as you,” he told Manchester City’s website when asked why he considered university the best time of his life. “Studying and going out sometimes. It was good… a great time.”

    But in recent months, with the intensity of the campaign — he has played 3,498 minutes for City across all competitions this season — some of this purity must have fallen away.

    “I do need a rest,” he told reporters after City’s 3-3 draw with Real Madrid, with the dazed air of anyone who has attended a 9am lecture on a hangover.

    One week is a brief break, sure. But why not take three months? Why not find yourself? You’re only in your twenties once. British Airways offers student discounts on flights. There’s a world out there to discover.


    Rodri is knackered and needs a gap year (Oscar J. Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images)

    “Jarrod, maaaaate, how’s it going cuz?”

    “Gaffer? Gaffer? Gaffer? Moyesy?”

    “Kalvin… how’s the new digs? Passport renewed?”

    Declan Rice’s phone bill has never been higher.

    City host West Ham on the final day. By the time it kicks off, there is little more Rice can do, except take care of his own business. The real work, therefore, starts before. West Ham have nothing to play for — it is time for that to change. Every negotiating card is on the table.

    He’s sold his car to Lucas Paqueta. He is willing to withdraw from the England squad in favour of Phillips. David Sullivan has been promised his first-born son. West Ham win.

    Roberto De Zerbi’s job interview to remember

    This season has slightly fizzled out for Brighton & Hove Albion, who are 10th in the league and winless in four. Roberto De Zerbi, still, has been one of the most impressive managers of the past 18 months. Arguably, only Guardiola exceeds De Zerbi in pure madcap, tactical improvisation.

    In the summer, the big jobs are open. Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Barcelona.

    The Athletic might have reported on Saturday that Brighton are increasingly confident of De Zerbi staying, but that comes amid a backdrop of talks over a new contract being put on the back burner and the coach has been publicly non-committal about his future.

    Showing rather than telling is the first rule of job interviews — and De Zerbi has the opportunity to show his tactical acumen by outwitting Guardiola.

    City initially deal with Brighton’s pioneering use of an overlapping sweeper and a pressing pattern based on the Fibonacci sequence, but are flummoxed by the inspired introduction of Jason Steele as an inverted trequartista.


    There is no outwitting De Zerbi (Mike Morese/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    Gary O’Neil’s luck turns

    Gary O’Neil seems an unlikely contender to be on MTV’s Welcome To My Crib, but let’s imagine for a moment that he opens up the doors to his Wolverhampton mansion.

    The doormat is a four-leaf clover. As you enter, seven lucky cats wave their hellos. Rabbits’ feet hang from the kitchen beams. Mirrors are banned, O’Neil tells you, demonstrating how he brushes his teeth in the reflection from the bathroom window.

    There is an almost overwhelming smell of incense.

    No team has been unluckier than Wolves this season. O’Neil has tried reason, he has tried rationalisation. He’s tried avoiding ladders. All that’s left is faith… and Nathan Fraser.

    Foden hits the bar. Jeremy Doku trips over his laces. A wild swipe from Max Kilman deflects in off Hwang Hee-chan’s bum. Molineux erupts.

    City’s 115 charges reach a sudden conclusion

    The metaphorical gavel falls. White smoke emanates from the ceiling of Premier League HQ. This day was thought to be months down the line — but a decision has been made.

    City face 115 charges of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules across nine different seasons. If they are found guilty of at least some of them, points deductions are a realistic outcome.

    Of course, City will say this is impossible, the most ridiculous suggestion on this list. After all, they vehemently deny the charges and are working hard to prove their innocence.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    The Briefing: Arsenal and Liverpool must show title race isn’t over, it’s only two points

    (Top photos: Getty Images)

    [ad_2]

    The New York Times

    Source link

  • The Premier League title race: Every fixture analysed

    The Premier League title race: Every fixture analysed

    [ad_1]

    The Premier League remains a European outlier this season.

    Everywhere you look around the continent, title races have become virtual processions. Paris Saint-Germain are 10 points clear in France’s Ligue 1, Bayer Leverkusen are 16 ahead and one win away from winning the German Bundesliga title, while PSV Eindhoven have a nine-point cushion at the top of the Dutch Eredivisie.

    Elsewhere, Real Madrid lead by eight points in Spain’s La Liga and Inter Milan are 11 ahead of city rivals AC Milan with a game in hand in Italy’s Serie A.

    In England’s top division, however, things are a whole lot tighter. With seven games remaining, just a point separates table-topping Arsenal from third-placed Manchester City, with Liverpool sandwiched between on goal difference. Since the Premier League was launched in 1992, there has not been a season like it.

    So, after Liverpool dropped points at Manchester United on Sunday, who looks most likely to get their hands on the Premier League trophy on May 19 as things stand?

    According to data provider Opta, City have regained the edge as the most likely champions, a triumph that would represent an unprecedented fourth straight Premier League title for Pep Guardiola’s men. Arsenal’s chances were boosted the most by the weekend’s results, rising by nearly eight per cent. Despite Mikel Arteta’s side being in first place, they are currently third-favourites — although the differences between the three teams are paper thin.

    Using Opta’s own Power Rankings, we can also assess how difficult each team’s remaining fixtures are.

    According to that calculator, City have the ‘easiest’ run-in of the three would-be champions, with their only remaining ‘difficult’ game coming away against Tottenham Hotspur, who are currently fourth — with that fixture still yet to be rescheduled as City continue to fight on three fronts domestically and in Europe.

    But how do these run-ins break down, game by game? We asked three of The Athletic’s club experts to assess their side’s remaining matches for potential pitfalls.

    Arsenal

    Sunday, April 14: Aston Villa (H)

    Opponents’ league position: Fifth
    Last five results vs opponents (oldest first): WWWWL
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Three

    With Arsenal hosting Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-finals tomorrow (Tuesday), this is when their squad could be tested. Arteta has trusted his squad in recent games, rotating his starting line-up notably against Luton in midweek before travelling to Brighton on Saturday. With Villa in European action themselves on Thursday, the strength-in-depth of the sides could be vital. Arteta has faced Unai Emery’s Villa twice, winning once and losing once. Both were fairly tight affairs, so ensuring as many factors are in his favour this time is key.

    Saturday, April 20: Wolves (A)

    Opponents’ league position: 11th
    Last five results vs opponents: WWWWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two

    Arsenal tend to fare well against Wolves, having beaten them in five successive meetings — but it is worth noting that this game comes on a Saturday night after Arsenal have travelled to Munich on the Wednesday for a second leg against Bayern that may require extra time and perhaps penalties. Gary O’Neil has overseen a real improvement in his debut season as Wolves coach, so this may be a match where Arsenal’s mental approach is as important as ever. They have shown intent against sides they ‘should’ be beating lately and have been rewarded. Staying in the moment and executing should be the name of the game.

    Tuesday, April 23: Chelsea (H)

    Opponents’ league position: Ninth
    Last five results vs opponents: LWWWD
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two

    Postponed because of Chelsea’s progress to the FA Cup semi-finals, this match falling days before the north London derby could be crucial. Chelsea are inconsistent and should not pose Arsenal a real threat, but tend to play to the level of their opposition, which could be dangerous. This game feels like a major one for Arsenal’s momentum with it coming in midweek. It could give them a confidence boost at just the right time, or prove to be an unwanted pit-stop. As above, Chelsea may be coming off extra time at Wembley in their semi against Manchester City three days earlier.

    Sunday, April 28: Tottenham Hotspur (A)

    Opponents’ league position: Fourth
    Last five results vs opponents: WLWWD
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Four

    Second-half-of-the-season trips to neighbours and arch-rivals Spurs used to have a foreboding feeling for Arsenal, but last season’s 2-0 win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium should reassure the players before this meeting. Spurs will come into the game not just wanting to dash Arsenal’s title hopes, but to boost their own Champions League qualification chances, too. How Arsenal deal with the intensity of this latest north London derby will be vital, but they have shown they can ‘live’ within these types of games well.


    Arteta celebrates Arsenal’s win at Spurs last season with Bukayo Saka (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

    Saturday, May 4: Bournemouth (H)

    Opponents’ league position: 12th
    Last five results vs opponents: DWWWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two (if Arsenal are in the Champions League semi-finals)

    Similar to Wolves, this could be a game where Arsenal’s mental state dictates what happens. Last year’s dramatic 3-2 win over Bournemouth created special memories, but gifting goals to teams cannot be a returning trend this year. David Raya becoming more confident in goal should help in that regard, but the outfield players need to be fully focused on the task at hand, too.

    Saturday, May 11: Manchester United (A)

    Opponents’ league position: Sixth
    Last five results vs opponents: LWLWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two (if Arsenal are in the Champions League semi-finals)

    Arsenal have not played at Old Trafford since early last season, when they played well but lost 3-1. It is too early to say whether an element of wanting to make amends will play a part there next month. Without an away win against United since November 2020, however, this could be a match where their pressing intensity makes the difference. Despite an entertaining draw with Liverpool, Manchester United struggled to show any real control in the game. They could not pass through midfield and struggled to track runners. If these themes remain against Arsenal, Arteta’s side should punish them more. The threat that individuals like Bruno Fernandes, Kobbie Mainoo and Marcus Rashford have will always need to be kept in mind, however. This game may be moved to another day on the May 11-12 weekend for live TV broadcast.

    Sunday, May 19: Everton (H)

    Opponents’ league position: 15th
    Last five results vs opponents: LWLWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Seven

    Arsenal will hope Everton’s fate is already sealed when they travel to the Emirates on this the final day of the Premier League season, whether it be safety secured or relegation confirmed. Their last two home results against them are 5-1, on the last day of the 2021-22 campaign, and 4-0, as they often make use of the extra space of the Emirates Stadium pitch compared to the tightness Everton are used to at Goodison Park. Arsenal have also won on the final day of the league season for the past 11 years, with a 2-2 draw against Fulham in 2011 the last time they dropped points.

    Art de Roche

    Liverpool

    Sunday, April 14: Crystal Palace (H)

    Opponents’ league position: 14th
    Last five results vs opponents (oldest first): WWDDW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two

    Palace are rarely the easiest opposition for Liverpool at Anfield, given their quality on the counter-attack. They have lost some of that prowess, particularly Wilfried Zaha, who scored their goal in the 1-1 draw there at the start of last season. A first leg against Atalanta in the Europa League quarter-finals on the previous Thursday might see Jurgen Klopp rotate, but crucially there will be no further travel involved with the two games at home as players hope to stay as fresh as possible.

    Sunday, April 21: Fulham (A)

    Opponents’ league position: 13th
    Last five results vs opponents: DWWWD
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two

    Marco Silva’s side have fared well against Liverpool this season with last-ditch heroics needed in the 4-3 victory for the home side at Anfield alongside a tightly fought two-leg Carabao Cup semi-final. Liverpool have not won in their last three visits to Craven Cottage (three draws) and there is no indication this will be any easier, with the possibility of extra time against Atalanta in Italy three days before. Liverpool’s last victory there came on the 2018-19 run-in, with a late James Milner penalty saving the blushes of Alisson and Virgil van Dijk over Fulham’s equaliser.

    Wednesday, April 24: Everton (A)

    Opponents’ league position: 15th
    Last five results vs opponents: WWDWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two

    Rearranged to this midweek date after being postponed because of Liverpool’s involvement in the FA Cup quarter-finals, a meeting with your city rivals under the lights is as big as it gets. Sean Dyche’s side will be determined to dent the neighbours’ title hopes and are also likely to still need points in their latest fight against relegation. Five of the past six league derbies at Goodison Park have been draws — and those may be two points Liverpool cannot afford to drop if the theme continues.

    Saturday, April 27: West Ham (A)

    Opponents’ league position: Seventh
    Last five results vs opponents: WWWWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two

    Liverpool’s record against West Ham should give them confidence. They have won five in a row, although their most recent defeat was 3-2 away in November 2021. It is tricky to know what to make of David Moyes’ side — they can look good one week and terrible the next – but the Scot’s record against Liverpool throughout his career should give Klopp reasons to be cheerful.

    Saturday, May 4: Tottenham (H)

    Opponents’ league position: Fourth
    Last five results vs opponents: DDWWL
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two (if Liverpool are in the Europa League semi-finals)

    This fixture has served up some classics at Anfield in recent seasons and we should be in for another one here. In 2021-22, a 1-1 draw in their fourth-last league match represented the last points Liverpool dropped that season as they ultimately fell one point short of Manchester City’s total in the title race. Tottenham’s counter-attacking style has caused problems in the past, especially through Son Heung-min. Under Ange Postecoglou this season, their system has changed, but their threat in transitional moments will remain dangerous. Tottenham will also have the motivation of trying to qualify for next season’s Champions League.

    Saturday, May 11: Aston Villa (A)

    Opponents’ league position: Fifth
    Last five results vs opponents: WWWDW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two (if Liverpool are in the Europa League semi-finals)

    Had this fixture come earlier in the season, such as when Arsenal and Manchester City both visited Villa Park in December, it may have felt even more daunting. Villa’s impressive home record from back then has been dented in recent months, but this will not be a straightforward game. Liverpool exploited Villa’s risky offside line to win 3-0 at Anfield in September and if Darwin Nunez can continue his recent scintillating form, they will hope he causes havoc again. This match may be moved to another date on the May 11-12 weekend for live TV coverage.

    Sunday, May 19: Wolverhampton Wanderers (H)

    Opponents’ league position: 11th
    Last five results vs opponents: DWLWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Seven

    It always seems to be Wolves on the final day, doesn’t it? Backed by the Anfield crowd against a side who will likely have nothing to play for looks to be the ideal match if the title is on the line. Gary O’Neil’s side are not to be overlooked, though, as they have produced a handful of shock results this season and caused Liverpool plenty of problems in September’s reverse fixture before two late goals saw them lose 3-1. They opened the scoring at Anfield on the final day of the 2021-22 Premier League and were not behind in the match until Mohamed Salah’s 84th-minute goal, also suffering a 3-1 defeat.

    Andy Jones


    Mohamed Salah scores against Wolves in 2022 (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

    Manchester City

    Saturday, April 13: Luton (H)

    Opponents’ league position: 18th
    Last five results vs opponents (oldest first): WDWWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Three

    This game is the filling of a Champions League quarter-final versus Real Madrid sandwich, so Pep Guardiola is most likely going to rotate his team for this one, adding more jeopardy than initially meets the eye for a title-chasing side’s home match against one of the bottom three. City will be massive favourites and Luton will not be holding out much hope, but the rotated team we’re anticipating will have to do the business as Guardiola tries to juggle the demands of the three competitions, with an FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea coming up a week later, too.


    Could Erling Haaland be rested against Luton? (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

    Thursday, April 25: Brighton (A)

    Opponents’ league position: 10th
    Last five results vs opponents: WWWDW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Four

    After commitments in the Champions League followed by their FA Cup semi-final, this fixture — postponed from FA Cup quarter-finals weekend — is rearranged to one of the few available days in City’s crammed calendar. Given Brighton’s recent struggles, this might not be quite as difficult as it once looked, although there is always a clash of styles in terms of Roberto De Zerbi’s man-to-man press, which makes things complicated.

    Sunday, April 28: Nottingham Forest (A)

    Opponents’ league position: 17th
    Last five results vs opponents: WLWDW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two

    With the Brighton trip just three days earlier and a possible Champions League semi-final first leg three days later (this will be moved to the Saturday if City reach the Champions League semi-finals and play on the Tuesday), this adds a lot of extra spice. A trip to the City Ground is always going to be tough, with Forest in the relegation argument, and it will be a match that Liverpool and Arsenal fans, whose teams will already have played their games this weekend, watch with some degree of hope — especially given that this fixture last season ended in a 1-1 draw. City should have been 5-0 up by the time Forest equalised with their first shot on target in the 84th minute, though.

    Saturday, May 4: Wolves (H)

    Opponents’ league position: 11th
    Last five results vs opponents: WWWWL
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two (if City are in the Champions League semi-finals)

    There are potential Champions League semi-final ties on either side of this one. There is also less margin for error against Wolves, who beat City in September, compared to Luton, so Guardiola will have to be especially careful with any rotation. It is normally something City manage well, but they have had some hairy games at this time of year before when they try to spin plates.

    Saturday, May 11: Fulham (A)

    Opponents’ league position: 13th
    Last five results vs opponents: WWWWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two (if City reach the Champions League semi-finals)

    After a potential Champions League semi-final second leg against Arsenal or Bayern in the midweek, this match could be especially tricky, although City do have a great record against Fulham. They dug in for an important 2-1 victory at Craven Cottage late last season, and that kind of performance might be required again given the demands of everything else up until that point. This match may be played on another date on the May 11-12 weekend for live TV coverage.

    Sunday, May 19: West Ham (H)

    Opponents’ league position: Seventh
    Last five results vs opponents: WDWWW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: Two (if outstanding games, see below, are rearranged for the previous midweek)

    What we can say almost for sure in all of this is that if City need to get over the line in this final fixture against West Ham, they will do it. They made hard work of it at home against Villa in the corresponding fixture two years ago but if City battle through all of the above — and probably a rearranged game against Spurs in the midweek — and need three points (or, somehow, a draw) to settle things, you would imagine they will be up to it.

    Date to be confirmed: Tottenham (A)

    Opponents’ league position: Fourth
    Last five results vs opponents: LWLDW
    Minimum possible days rest pre-match: TBC

    It is a good job City beat Tottenham in the FA Cup in January — the first time they had not lost and so much as scored a goal at the Londoners’ new ground in six attempts since it opened in April 2019 — as it gives them some confidence that weird hoodoo is over. City played very well on the night too, completely shutting Spurs down.

    This game is yet to be rescheduled given City’s continued fight in two cup competitions, keeping them on for an unprecedented “double treble”. Whenever the authorities manage to fit this fixture in, you would have to say it is the most difficult one City will face in their remaining Premier League games. Even a draw at Tottenham could be enough to derail the title challenge, depending on how things pan out for their two title rivals.

    Sam Lee

    Players nearing 10 yellow cards

    The three clubs will need to be wary of the second deadline for yellow-card accumulation: any player who earns 10 bookings before the completion of their club’s 32nd league match of the season must serve a two-game suspension. The players in danger of a ban are Kai Havertz of Arsenal, Liverpool duo Darwin Nunez and Wataru Endo and Rodri of City, although all are on eight cautions so would need to be sent off for a second yellow in next weekend’s matches to be banned.

    Additional reporting: Thom Harris and Mark Carey

    (Top photos: Getty Images)

    [ad_2]

    The New York Times

    Source link

  • (Sky Sports)

    (Sky Sports)

    [ad_1]

    New Zealand Women 1st innings

    Total

    207 all out, from 48.2 overs.

    Batting

    Runs
    Balls
    4s
    6s
    SR

    1. Bates
      c Jones b Dean;
      50 runs,
      74 balls,
      6 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 67.57
    2. Bezuidenhout
      lbw b Ecclestone;
      35 runs,
      62 balls,
      2 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 56.45
    3. Kerr (c)
      lbw b Cross;
      24 runs,
      36 balls,
      1 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 66.67
    4. Plimmer
      lbw b Cross;
      17 runs,
      24 balls,
      0 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 70.83
    5. Green
      c & b Bell;
      7 runs,
      23 balls,
      0 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 30.43
    6. Halliday
      c Jones b Dean;
      6 runs,
      12 balls,
      1 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 50.00
    7. Gaze (wk)
      b Bell;
      18 runs,
      23 balls,
      1 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 78.26
    8. Rowe
      c Knight b Sciver-Brunt;
      16 runs,
      20 balls,
      2 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 80.00
    9. Kerr
      b Bell;
      9 runs,
      11 balls,
      1 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 81.82
    10. Tahuhu
      c Wyatt b Dean;
      1 runs,
      2 balls,
      0 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 50.00
    11. Jonas
      not out;
      0 runs,
      2 balls,
      0 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 0.00

    Fall of Wickets

    • Suzie Bates at 90 for 1, from 20.6 overs
    • Bernadine Bezuidenhout at 100 for 2, from 23.2 overs
    • Georgia Plimmer at 139 for 3, from 30.6 overs
    • Amelia Kerr at 148 for 4, from 34.1 overs
    • Brooke Halliday at 157 for 5, from 37.6 overs
    • Maddy Green at 159 for 6, from 38.6 overs
    • Hannah Rowe at 191 for 7, from 44.6 overs
    • Izzy Gaze at 204 for 8, from 46.6 overs
    • Lea Tahuhu at 207 for 9, from 47.4 overs
    • Jess Kerr at 207 for 10, from 48.2 overs

    Bowling

    Overs
    Maidens
    Runs
    Wickets
    Econ

    1. Cross:
      10overs,
      3 maidens,
      24 runs,
      2 wickets,
      and an economy of 2.40.
    2. Bell:
      9.2overs,
      0 maidens,
      41 runs,
      3 wickets,
      and an economy of 4.39.
    3. Sciver-Brunt:
      10overs,
      0 maidens,
      44 runs,
      1 wickets,
      and an economy of 4.40.
    4. Ecclestone:
      10overs,
      0 maidens,
      39 runs,
      1 wickets,
      and an economy of 3.90.
    5. Dean:
      9overs,
      0 maidens,
      57 runs,
      3 wickets,
      and an economy of 6.33.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • (Sky Sports)

    (Sky Sports)

    [ad_1]

    England 1st innings

    Total

    52 for 0, from 15.2 overs.

    Batting

    Runs
    Balls
    4s
    6s
    SR

    1. Crawley
      not out;
      30 runs,
      43 balls,
      5 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 69.77
    2. Duckett
      not out;
      21 runs,
      48 balls,
      3 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 43.75

    Yet to bat

    • Pope
    • Root
    • Bairstow
    • Stokes
    • Foakes
    • Hartley
    • Wood
    • Anderson
    • Bashir

    Bowling

    Overs
    Maidens
    Runs
    Wickets
    Econ

    1. Bumrah:
      7overs,
      1 maidens,
      24 runs,
      0 wickets,
      and an economy of 3.42.
    2. Siraj:
      7.2overs,
      1 maidens,
      23 runs,
      0 wickets,
      and an economy of 3.13.
    3. Ashwin:
      1overs,
      0 maidens,
      4 runs,
      0 wickets,
      and an economy of 4.00.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Pro-Kremlin supporters are fuming after footage appears to show Ukrainian drones decimating an entire Russian armored column

    Pro-Kremlin supporters are fuming after footage appears to show Ukrainian drones decimating an entire Russian armored column

    [ad_1]

    • Ukrainian forces decimated a Russian column of 11 tanks and armored vehicles.

    • Ukraine heavily relied on FPV attack drones to obliterate the Russian armor.

    • Russian military bloggers are increasingly frustrated by Russia’s perceived tactical blunders.

    Ukrainian forces deployed FPV attack drones to help obliterate an entire column of Russian armored vehicles, Metro reports.

    Video appears to show Ukraine exploding drones, finishing off 11 tanks and armored vehicles. It included three T-72 tanks, five tracked amphibious [MTLBS] armored fighting vehicles, and an infantry fighting vehicle, reduced to burning hulks scattered across the battlefield.

    Two tracked armored fighting vehicles were also destroyed, one by an anti-tank guided missile, Metro reported.

    The battle raged near the settlement of Novomykhailivka, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, which Russia has been attempting to capture since October.

    The assault was captured by cameras mounted on the attacking drones and those flying overhead, showing the devastation caused to the Russian column.

    The convoy was maneuvering near the front lines along the east of Ukraine and became vulnerable to fire from artillery and swift and targeted strikes from the air by drones.

    Leveling Russia’s battlefield advantage

    Footage shows the FPV exploding drones accelerating toward the Russian tanks and armored vehicles, with the feed abruptly cutting off just before impact.

    Other footage gives a panoramic view, showing the dark shapes of tanks in motion, some bursting into flames as the exploding drones hit, followed by an aftermath of smoking, twisted wrecks abandoned in winter fields pockmarked with shell holes.

    The video was dated January 30. According to reports, the battle lasted nearly two and a half hours.

    Business Insider could not independently verify the video.

    The apparent victory against the armored column matters because Ukraine increasingly sees relatively inexpensive drone technology as a way of leveling Russia’s battlefield advantage.

    Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, wrote on Thursday for CNN News that with accelerated technical innovations, the nature of war had changed.

    He highlighted the key role played by unmanned weapons systems, such as drones, which help Ukraine against Putin’s forces despite Russia’s significant superiority of manpower and weapons.

    FPV drones are an effective and low-cost weapon employed by both Russia and Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion.

    “Perhaps the number one priority here is mastery of an entire arsenal of (relatively) cheap, modern, and highly effective unmanned vehicles and other technological means.

    Already such assets allow commanders to monitor the situation on the battlefield in real time, day and night, and in all weather conditions,” wrote Ukraine’s top military leader.

    ‘Complete stupidity and incompetence’

    Drone-mounted cameras show a UAV hitting a Russian tank.

    Drone-mounted cameras show a UAV hitting a Russian tank, in a video showing a battle in in the Novomykhailivka area of the Donetsk region.Screengrab.

    While the number of casualties from the wrecked armored column remains unknown, the strikes triggered a backlash among pro-war ‘Z’ channels associated with Putin, expressing frustration over perceived military incompetence, Metro reports.

    Russian military bloggers have become increasingly frustrated by the Russian military’s tactics. Russian forces continue self-sabotage by gathering in large groups to attack Ukrainian positions, making them an easy target for Ukrainian drones.

    The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think tank, said one Russian military blogger expressed dismay at Russian forces‘ tactics at “complete stupidity and incompetence.”

    Another Kremlin-affiliated milblogger argued that the Russian military command needs to stop attacking in mechanized columns due to repeated high equipment losses.

    The milblogger also criticized the military leadership for failing to account for Ukrainian drone operations and to equip Russian armored vehicles with electronic warfare systems, reported the ISW.

    Ukraine, after nearly two years of war, has called on the West to bolster its defenses. The increased use of drone attacks, that have reached targets as far afield as Moscow and Saint Petersburg, has become a strategic focus for Ukraine.

    “It’s a war of armor against projectiles. At the moment, projectiles are winning,” Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator, told The Guardian.

    Read the original article on Business Insider

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • (Sky Sports)

    (Sky Sports)

    [ad_1]

    India 1st innings

    Total

    396 all out, from 112 overs.

    Batting

    Runs
    Balls
    4s
    6s
    SR

    1. Jaiswal
      c Bairstow b Anderson;
      209 runs,
      290 balls,
      19 fours,
      7 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 72.07
    2. Sharma (c)
      c Pope b Bashir;
      14 runs,
      41 balls,
      0 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 34.15
    3. Gill
      c Foakes b Anderson;
      34 runs,
      46 balls,
      5 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 73.91
    4. Iyer
      c Foakes b Hartley;
      27 runs,
      59 balls,
      3 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 45.76
    5. Patidar
      b Ahmed;
      32 runs,
      72 balls,
      3 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 44.44
    6. Patel
      c Ahmed b Bashir;
      27 runs,
      51 balls,
      4 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 52.94
    7. Bharat (wk)
      c Bashir b Ahmed;
      17 runs,
      23 balls,
      2 fours,
      1 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 73.91
    8. Ashwin
      c Foakes b Anderson;
      20 runs,
      37 balls,
      4 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 54.05
    9. Yadav
      not out;
      8 runs,
      42 balls,
      0 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 19.05
    10. Bumrah
      c Root b Ahmed;
      6 runs,
      9 balls,
      1 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 66.67
    11. Mukesh Kumar
      c Root b Bashir;
      0 runs,
      3 balls,
      0 fours,
      0 sixes,
      and a strike rate of 0.00

    Fall of Wickets

    • Rohit Sharma at 40 for 1, from 17.3 overs
    • Shubman Gill at 89 for 2, from 28.5 overs
    • Shreyas Iyer at 179 for 3, from 50.4 overs
    • Rajat Patidar at 249 for 4, from 71.1 overs
    • Axar Patel at 301 for 5, from 85.3 overs
    • Srikar Bharat at 330 for 6, from 90.6 overs
    • Ravichandran Ashwin at 364 for 7, from 100.3 overs
    • Yashasvi Jaiswal at 383 for 8, from 106.5 overs
    • Jasprit Bumrah at 395 for 9, from 110.5 overs
    • Mukesh Kumar at 396 for 10, from 111.6 overs

    Bowling

    Overs
    Maidens
    Runs
    Wickets
    Econ

    1. Anderson:
      25overs,
      4 maidens,
      47 runs,
      3 wickets,
      and an economy of 1.88.
    2. Root:
      14overs,
      0 maidens,
      71 runs,
      0 wickets,
      and an economy of 5.07.
    3. Hartley:
      18overs,
      2 maidens,
      74 runs,
      1 wickets,
      and an economy of 4.11.
    4. Bashir:
      38overs,
      1 maidens,
      138 runs,
      3 wickets,
      and an economy of 3.63.
    5. Ahmed:
      17overs,
      2 maidens,
      65 runs,
      3 wickets,
      and an economy of 3.82.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Alphabet misses expectations on Google ad revenue, sending stock lower

    Alphabet misses expectations on Google ad revenue, sending stock lower

    [ad_1]

    Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) reported its fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday, missing analysts’ expectations on ad revenue, the heart of the tech giant’s business.

    The stock slid 4% lower in extended trading.

    Revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs for the third quarter, was $72 billion versus expectations of nearly $71 billion. That’s higher than the $63.12 billion the company generated during the same period in the prior year. But investors seemed to focus on the advertising miss.

    The company reported continued growth in its cloud business, which has grown in importance to investors because of its usefulness in the development of AI. Google Cloud revenue beat expectations, crossing $9 billion, amounting to a 26% jump from a year ago. The company has been pushing to claim additional market share in the cloud computing market, where it currently sits in third place behind competitors Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT).

    Here are some of Alphabet’s most significant metrics compared to what Wall Street was expecting in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, according to data from Bloomberg:

    • Revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs: $72.32 billion vs. $70.97 billion expected ($63.12 billion in Q4 2022)

    • Adjusted earnings per share: $1.64 vs. $1.59 expected ($1.05 in Q4 2022)

    • Cloud revenue: $9.19 billion vs. $8.95 billion expected ($7.32 billion in Q4 2022)

    • Ad revenue: $65.5 billion vs. $65.8 billion expected ($59.04 billion in Q4 2022)

    During a call with analysts, both CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat noted the importance of streamlining the business to achieve cost savings and efficiency.

    “Across different teams we have wound down some non-priority projects which will help us invest and operate well in our growth areas,” said Pichai.

    Porat said the company is focused on removing organizational layers to boost efficiency, which has resulted in a slower pace of hiring. But she added that the company will continue to invest in top talent.

    The earnings report arrives just weeks after Google laid off hundreds of workers across multiple divisions as the company aims to cut expenses and focus on growth areas, including AI. The tech giant joins several of its peers and others across corporate America that have relied on layoffs to boost efficiency in the wake of significant expansions in the COVID era.

    Google’s executives also responded to concerns that the advancement of AI may disrupt the company’s search products since generative AI chatbots change the way people interact with the web.

    Pichai said that AI tools expand Google’s arsenal, which offers a breadth and depth of information to users who crave a diversity of sources online.

    Google has been widely seen as playing catch-up to Microsoft, which was among the first in the tech world to reap the cultural excitement around consumer AI chatbots. Microsoft invested in OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT.

    Google has embarked on a host of efforts to both augment its search tools with AI (Bard and Search Generative Experience) and to offer new, advanced large language models, like Gemini.

    Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering markets and the economy. Follow Hamza on Twitter @hshaban.

    Click here for the latest stock market news and in-depth analysis, including events that move stocks

    Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance



    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • St Mirren 0-1 Rangers | Scottish Premiership highlights

    St Mirren 0-1 Rangers | Scottish Premiership highlights

    [ad_1]

    Highlights of the Scottish Premiership match between St Mirren and Rangers.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Cyrie Dessers puts Rangers ahead after superb assist from John Lundstram

    Cyrie Dessers puts Rangers ahead after superb assist from John Lundstram

    [ad_1]

    Cyrie Dessers put Rangers in the lead against St. Mirren after a superb assist from John Lundstram.

    [ad_2]

    Source link