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• Goalkeeper says ‘it’s looking very, very good’ for Arsenal

• Gunners have won 10 of their first 12 games of the season

David Raya has said competition for starting spots is driving Arsenal’s blistering form and the goalkeeper believes the “incredible” depth of Mikel Arteta’s squad means they are capable of challenging on multiple fronts.

The 4-0 thrashing of Atlético Madrid on Tuesday was Arsenal’s sixth successive victory and their 10th win from their first 12 matches. Arsenal have conceded only three goals – the fewest at this stage in the club’s history – to help establish a one-point lead at the top of the Premier League and a perfect record in the Champions League after three matches.

• Global rights available for first time for 2027-31 cycle

• Dazn hoping to follow up on Club World Cup success

Dazn is preparing to bid for global broadcasting rights for Champions League games from 2027 in another significant move into football by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi’s Surj Sports Investment bought a 10% stake in Dazn for $1bn (£746.94m) in February, two months after the streaming platform agreed to pay the same sum to Fifa for exclusive global rights for the Club World Cup. Dazn claimed an audience of 2.7 billion for the Club World Cup, a figure understood to relate to total views rather than individual viewers, and social media engagement of 10bn using the same metric. Encouraged by these figures, Dazn wants global rights for the Champions League, the main innovation in Uefa’s Champions League tender process for the 2027-31 cycle, which was launched this month.

• La Liga president laments promoters’ decision to cancel

• Tebas criticises Real Madrid and players’ union

Javier Tebas has vowed that La Liga would try again after plans to take a game abroad fell through when promoters announced they were cancelling Villarreal’s meeting with Barcelona in Miami on 20 December.

The league had been informed of the decision on Tuesday, with an announcement made at half-time of Villarreal’s Champions League game against Manchester City at the Estadio de la Cerámica, where they will face Barcelona, instead of at the Hard Rock Stadium. The timing of the announcement was described as “a complete lack of respect” by the Villarreal coach, Marcelino García Toral.

• Ringleaders earned tens of thousands of euros a game

• Tourists were primary targets with tickets up to €800

Porto have dismantled one of the largest ticket-scalping networks uncovered in football, reclaiming hundreds of seats at their Estádio do Dragão that had been exploited for profit on the illegal resale market. The operation was earning its ringleaders tens of thousands of euros a match.

Porto said one alleged ringleader had convinced dozens of people to hand over personal details, which he used to register them as club members and purchase season tickets in their names. “These schemes reached an impressive scale, with dozens of seats controlled by a single individual,” the club said in a statement to the Guardian. “We also identified businesses processing hundreds of transactions, serving as fronts for this unlawful activity.”

• Technical problems prevent takeoff for nearly four hours

• Four-match losing run precedes Champions League game

Liverpool’s problems have extended to preparations for their Champions League match at Eintracht Frankfurt after their flight to Germany was delayed by almost four hours because of technical difficulties with the plane.

Arne Slot and his squad were scheduled to depart Liverpool John Lennon airport at 4pm on Tuesday having completed a pre‑match training session at the club’s base.

• Chelsea are bottom of Premier League fair play table

• ‘I prefer to help them understand, and do the right things’

Enzo Maresca has admitted Chelsea’s disciplinary record must improve but the head coach is adamant he will never punish his players for getting red cards.

Chelsea, who will be without the suspended João Pedro when they host Ajax in the Champions League on Wednesday night, were reduced to 10 men for the fourth time this season when Malo Gusto received a needless second yellow card during the closing stages of Saturday’s 3-0 win against Nottingham Forest.

The MLS postseason starts on Wednesday night. We assess the contenders for the championship, and take a look back at the talking points from the regular season

How little there was between the top teams. When all was said and done, just seven points covered the top six teams in the standings. The Supporters’ Shield race was settled with a game to spare, but any one of several sides could have finished top of the pile, which bodes well for the playoffs. Even by MLS standards, the field is wide open. GR

In the absence of their talisman, Australia have taken more steps back than forward and her presence in the squad this week is timely just four months out from the Asian Cup

Looking back at a largely forgettable Matildas victory over Taiwan in Perth almost two years ago, the smile stands out. Sam Kerr grinned after scoring the scrappy second goal, then beamed celebrating a job well done with the bench after she was substituted.

That was the last appearance for the national team of Australia’s greatest goalscorer. Two months later she suffered a serious knee injury, and a long rehabilitation has left Kerr stranded on 69 goals.

Plus: Austria’s full-house of goals and assists, more free-kick purple patches and seeing red after scoring a hat-trick

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Is Ange Postecoglou’s 40-day spell at Nottingham Forest the shortest for a full-time manager in the English top flight?” asks Donna Stevens.

Any Nottingham Forest manager aspires to emulate the achievements of Brian Clough at the City Ground, or at least pay some kind of success-based tribute. Alas, Ange Postecoglou’s spell at Forest was more reminiscent of Clough’s time at Leeds – short and sour.

Ron Futcher, Charlton 5-3 Barnsley, Division Two, March 1985
Futcher’s hat-trick put Barnsley 3-0 ahead; he was then sent off with the score 3-3 before Charlton completed a spectacular comeback.

Hristo Stoichkov, Atlético Madrid 1-4 Barcelona, La Liga, September 1992

Benni McCarthy, Porto 5-3 Santa Clara, Primeira Liga, April 2002

Marco Gabbiadini, Sunderland 4-0 Ipswich, Division Two, March 1989
Quite an achievement, this one – after 87 minutes Gabbiadini had scored only one goal. He added two more in the 88th and 89th before being sent off in the 90th for an alleged right-hander.

Chris Iwelumo, Preston 1-3 Wolves, Championship, September 2008

Hugo Almeida, Werder Bremen 3-0 St Pauli, Bundesliga, November 2010

Manager inherits a group of players that suits him and has a track record of creating camaraderie in his squads

Sean Dyche was often spotted at the City Ground while out of work. The Nottingham Forest job has been of interest to him for a long time, and not only because he lives close by. The circumstances in which the role has become available are not ideal for an incoming head coach but his appointment is the pragmatic choice in ludicrous circumstances.

Ange Postecoglou was never the right man, inheriting a squad that did not suit his style and did not adapt quickly enough, though it did not help that he told the players their previous achievements meant nothing. His tenure will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. Dyche, on the other hand, has plenty of respect for what Forest achieved under Nuno Espírito Santo and is far more aligned with that conservatism than with what was witnessed under Postecoglou.

The celebrated film largely still holds up and inspires, But, with a sequel in the works, its handling of a player/coach dynamic shows how times have changed

In the proposed upcoming sequel to the “feel good”, “uplifting” film Bend It Like Beckham (one of the Guardian’s best movies about football), a leading character has been banned from the game for life. At least that’s what could, and probably should be revealed, preferably as early as possible.

Seem dramatic? It isn’t. Though Bend It Like Beckham brilliantly tackles issues around racism, gender norms, homophobia, culture, immigration, and feminism with an endearing comedic twist, a core point of the plot rests on an adult coach pursuing a romantic relationship with a teenage player. In 2025, after multiple high-profile instances of inappropriate player/coach relationships have been reported in women’s soccer, and after the harm inherent in those relationships has been exposed, the normalization of one in a celebrated film is hard to ignore.

When José Mourinho arrived on Tyneside and immediately showered Eddie Howe and his players with lavish praise, Newcastle fans feared the worst. Yet in lauding the terrifying pace of Howe’s wingers, not to mention his team’s aggression and organisation, Benfica’s manager was perhaps not being disingenuous after all. By the end his insistence that Newcastle’s modest Premier League position is false certainly rang true.

At the final whistle no one doubted Mourinho’s sincerity as he strode up to Anthony Gordon and informed the England left-winger that he had been “absolutely brilliant”.

Villarreal were just the latest in a long, long list of Erling Haaland’s victims, a 12th consecutive game clocked up with the Norwegian scoring. It was only one, which is not many for a man on 24 in his past 14 matches for club and country, but his early strike opened the way towards a win sufficiently dominant to suggest that a team is emerging once again. Pep Guardiola said: “We have the feeling that again we can control the games … that in many things you are coming back to what you were in the past.”

If Haaland is inevitable, he is not alone. Bernardo Silva added the second towards the end of a first half of notable superiority, before there were brief moments in which Manchester City allowed their hosts the illusion of making a game of this when it was gone.

• Portsmouth 1-2 Coventry; Millwall beat Stoke to go third

• Bristol City 3-1 Southampton; Ipswich 0-3 Charlton

Brandon Thomas-Asante’s double secured Coventry a fifth successive victory as Frank Lampard’s side extended their lead at the top of the Championship table by defeating Portsmouth 2-1.

Thomas-Asante converted his seventh and eighth goals of the season to move the unbeaten Sky Blues four points clear, before Middlesbrough visit Sheffield Wednesday on Wednesday.

• ‘There’s real talent here, so our job is to find that balance’

• Dyche will be in dug-out for Thursday’s visit of Porto

Sean Dyche has insisted he will give Nottingham Forest the “freedom to play” attacking football after being appointed as the club’s third head coach of the season. The former Burnley manager has replaced Ange Postecoglou after the Australian’s calamitous 40-day tenure.

Dyche has signed a deal until 2027 at the City Ground, where he started his career as a youth player but never reached the first team. He has brought the club legends Ian Woan and Steve Stone back as part of his backroom staff. One of the key reasons Forest chose Dyche was because of his record of building defensively solid teams at Burnley and Everton but he will be aiming to utilise the attacking talent available to him too.

• Team from a town with a population of under 1,400

• Jacob Bergström and Tom Pettersson score in 2-0 win

Mjällby scored twice in the first half to secure a 2-0 victory at IFK Gothenburg and claim a sensational first Allsvenskan league title for the unfancied club from a tiny fishing village in the south of the country.

Jacob Bergström scored with a close-range bicycle kick in the 21st minute and Tom Pettersson poked home a second goal seven minutes later as their side took an unassailable 11-point lead over second-placed Hammarby with three games left to play.

From PSG’s Ibrahim Mbaye to Brazil’s next hope, we select some of the most talented players born in 2008. Check the progress of our classes of 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 … and go even further back. Here’s our Premier League class of 2025

We pick the best youngsters at each club born between 1 September 2008 and 31 August 2009, an age band known as first-year scholars. Check the progress of our classes of 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 … and go even further back. Here’s our 2025 world picks

The duo face Germany and Sweden respectively in this week’s semi-finals and should each have enough to win

First leg: Friday, Düsseldorf, 4.45pm (all times BST). Second leg; Tuesday, Caen, 8.10pm

The club’s new 38-year-old manager Sébastien Pocognoli has to improve results, change the team’s style and integrate new players – all during an injury crisis

By Get French Football News

Time is a precious commodity that has been in short supply for Sébastien Pocognoli. The precocious 38-year-old has not needed much of it to forge a reputation as one of the most promising young managers in the game, but he has had to maximise every second since joining Monaco as he plots a course through the chaos.

His first training session with his new players, last Tuesday, was a microcosm of the job at hand for the man who led Union Saint-Gilloise to their first Belgian title since 1935 last season. “In the first training session, there was too much intensity. It was pretty chaotic. I had to calm them down,” said Pocognoli, who nonetheless insists on a high-energy approach and set the tone himself, physically grappling with his new players as he took part in the drills as the sun set on the club’s performance centre in La Turbie.

A deal with Rangers collapsed but success in Asia for the Australian coach – who is transformed from the fiery player he once was – means more European opportunities will arrive

A week ago it looked as if there were going to be two Australians in prominent head coaching roles in the UK. But then Ange Postecoglou was fired by Nottingham Forest and Kevin Muscat’s move to Rangers collapsed. Postecoglou has much thinking to do, but there is no reason for Muscat to wait much longer to make his move to Europe.

According to reports, a return to Glasgow to the club where Muscat won the treble as a player in 2003 was nixed as he wanted to finish the three remaining games of the Chinese Super League season with leaders Shanghai Port. If so, Muscat is to be commended, but even if he fails to deliver another league title in the next month, his options in Europe should not be limited to former clubs. Indeed, the recent links can be useful in showcasing a coaching career that ranks alongside that of his former mentor.

Unconvincing Ibrox leadership team had no reason to be reactive but have ended up placing their new coach in an invidious position

No football club paralysed by fear over the impact of decision-making can progress. Rangers’ leadership team are permanently scared; of getting it wrong, of antagonising supporters, of their own shadows. So little of what emerges from Ibrox feels decisive.

Had Rangers believed more than a fortnight ago that Danny Röhl was the man to remove them from on-field doldrums, they should have displayed the courage of their convictions. Röhl could have been in situ within 24 hours of Russell Martin’s departure. Rangers have been longtime admirers of the 36-year-old German, who was available, and could have sold his arrival as something that should have happened when they instead turned to Martin after a recruitment drive that rumbled on for months. Röhl is a highly rated coach who has a solid enough reputation to be spared ridicule. Comparisons to Martin are unfair.

Borussia Dortmund belatedly sprung into life … only for their English youngster to suffer a moment of misfortune

Every league needs its flagship, its clásico, classique or derby. An event which rouses the senses regardless of current form or fortune. Bayern Munich appeared ready for the moment and Borussia Dortmund perhaps less so. Despite itself, Der Klassiker eventually sparked into life – and we were left with a sense of what could have been.

The cliche describes a game of two halves; this was more like a game of one half. We had 45 minutes of an attack-v-defence training session, followed by the real match, the one that we came for. By then, perhaps, it was a little too late for the blue touchpaper to be lit. We were more in the realm of sparklers than catherine wheels.

Injury-hit and under pressure, Hansi Flick turned to defender turned makeshift striker to take them top of La Liga

“I told my teammates: ‘If I go on, I’ll score,’ and everybody laughed,” Ronald Araújo said but they weren’t laughing now. Actually, wait, no: they were laughing now. Laughing and shouting and swearing and scrambling to escape the bench, like someone had set fire to it. Someone like him: 6ft 3in and 15 stone of Uruguayan beef, tearing off his top and leaping over the boards advertising Kicking My Feet, fists thudding at his bare chest while Barcelona’s players chased him, Frenkie de Jong leapt on for a ride, and over on the far side of Montjuic the manager who wasn’t supposed to be there let rip. “It’s football, it’s emotion,” Hansi Flick said.

When it’s like this especially. On a weekend when the first 15 seconds of every game weren’t played at all and weren’t always broadcast either – La Liga distracting everyone from the 22-man standstill protests over their unilateral decision to go to Miami by encouraging cameras to look elsewhere and commentators to talk about something else – the best was instead saved for the final seconds when attention was actually on the pitch. And there it was all kicking off. Properly, this time.

• Potter takes charge of November’s final two qualifiers

• Sweden aiming for March’s playoffs via two routes

Graham Potter has been appointed Sweden’s head coach on a short-term deal with the goal of qualifying for the World Cup. The 50-year-old, sacked by West Ham less than a month ago, will take charge of the final two qualifiers next month and his contract will be extended to cover the playoffs and next summer’s tournament should the team get there.

Sweden are bottom of their qualifying group with one point from four games and play in Switzerland on 15 November then at home to Slovenia three days later. They could reach the playoffs even if they do not finish second because they won Nations League group C1. The 12 qualifying group runners-up will be joined by the four best-ranked Nations League section winners in March’s playoffs.

• The Argentine is widely expected to win league MVP

• Playoffs begin with wild-card matches on Wednesday

Lionel Messi left no doubt on Decision Day.

The Argentine icon scored a hat-trick in a 5-2 victory over Nashville on Saturday night to wrap up Major League Soccer’s Golden Boot award with 29 goals this season.

• Serie A: Como 2-0 Juventus, Milan 2-1 Fiorentina

• Juve now winless in six games in all competitions

Juventus lost 2-0 at Como in Serie A on Sunday, suffering another disappointing result after five successive draws in all competitions for Igor Tudor’s side.

Como took the lead in the fourth minute when the defender Marc-Oliver Kempf volleyed in from close range at the far post following Nico Paz’s curling cross. Juventus thought they had equalised in the 36th minute when Jonathan David slotted home from close range, but the Canadian’s effort was ruled out for offside in the buildup.

• Atlanta finished 14th in the East and missed the playoffs

• High expectations after high-spending offseason

Atlanta United coach Ronny Deila was fired Sunday, one day after the end of a 5-13-16 season that was the manager’s first in charge of the team. The club had posted just one win in its past 18 matches and finished with 28 points, good for 14th place in the Eastern Conference.

There were high expectations for the season after the club hired an MLS Cup-winning coach in Deila, paid a reported $22m transfer fee for forward Emmanuel Latte Lath from Championship side Middlesbrough FC and re-signed Miguel Almirón from English Premier League side Newcastle United.

Arne Slot will hope forward builds on encouraging signs for Egypt when Manchester United visit Liverpool on Sunday

It has been a while, but Mohamed Salah was back playing the starring role last week with two goals in Casablanca that sealed Egypt’s place at the 2026 World Cup. The main man stepping on to centre stage yet again. Liverpool need him to stay there.

There are numerous reasons why inconsistent, unconvincing performances have been the common thread running through Liverpool’s start to their title defence, whether they produced seven straight victories or, before Manchester United’s visit to Anfield on Sunday, three consecutive defeats. The upheaval from so many summer changes, Arne Slot’s search for his best XI, Diogo Jota’s death; Salah has felt the effect of them all during his uncharacteristically subdued opening to the campaign.

More than half the 26 places appear to be locked down but big names are at risk with qualification secured and the tournament looming

Fresh from breaking Gordon Banks’s record for consecutive England clean sheets, Jordan Pickford remains the undisputed pick in goal. A miserly defensive record is a positive for Thomas Tuchel, even if the shutouts have come against poor sides. John Stones, such an elegant centre-back, is back in the team and will start at the World Cup if he stays fit. But who will partner him? Tuchel likes Ezri Konsa, whose versatility also makes him an option at right-back, and Marc Guéhi; big Dan Burn also looks established after making his international debut in March. It is more uncertain at left-back, but Reece James will play at right-back as long as his body does not let him down.

In this mailbag edition of his newsletter, Jonathan answers questions about the evolution of tactics, heat and World Cup outsiders

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Do you believe playing styles are developing incrementally or cyclically? Will things naturally come back around, or is it more a matter of rock, paper, scissors where one style counters another for a short while, as the current style gets broadly adopted? – Paul

I dislike the term “cyclical” for tactics because it implies inevitability. Winter, spring, summer, autumn is a cycle; what happens in football tactics is not. When older ideas are repurposed for the modern age, they come with knowledge of what went before. So, to take an extreme example, when Pep Guardiola started fielding teams in a sort of 3-2-2-3 shape, it wasn’t the W-M used by Herbert Chapman in the late 1920s, because in the 100 years since, football has changed enormously: players are fitter, pitches are better, kit is better, we understand pressing, we have data and sophisticated analytical modelling.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

Dynamic pricing, crypto detritus and corporate doublespeak have made the task of buying 2026 World Cup tickets a grim case study in the monetization of emotion

When the first tickets for the 2026 World Cup went on sale last week, millions of fans joined online queues only to discover what Gianni Infantino’s assurance that “the world will be welcome” really means. The cheapest face-value seat for next summer’s final, somewhere in the gods of New Jersey’s 82,500-seat MetLife Stadium where the players are specks and the football’s a rumor, comes at a cost of $2,030 (oxygen tank not included). Most upper-deck seats range from $2,790 to $4,210, according to customers who finally glimpsed the prices that had been closely guarded. The much-touted $60 tickets for group-stage games, propped up by Fifa as evidence of affordability, exist only as comically tiny green smudges on the edge of digital seating maps, little more than mirages of inclusivity.

Fifa had kept the costs under wraps until the very moment of sale, replacing the usual published table of price points with a digital lottery that decided who even got the chance to buy. Millions spent hours staring at a queue screen as algorithms determined their place in line. When access finally came for most, the lower-priced sections had already vanished, many presumably hoovered up by bots and bulk-buyers (and that’s before Fifa quietly raised the prices of at least nine matches after only one day of sales). The whole process resembled less a ticket release than a psyop to calibrate how much frustration and scarcity the public will tolerate.

Our cartoonist looks back at the doomed and very short reign of Ange Postecoglou at the City Ground

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• David’s latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

Former England midfielder has always been a disruptor and says Saturday’s match will show his kids he can fight

David Bentley has never been one to turn down a challenge, even if it is to his detriment. In 2008, on England duty, he got roped into playing what was meant to be a lighthearted game with Jimmy Bullard, shouting “Postman Pat” at Fabio Capello in training, on account of the manager’s likeness to the children’s character. Capello – perhaps unsurprisingly – did not see the funny side and Bentley never played for England again.

Bentley has always been audacious. When coming through at Arsenal, he accidentally sat in the seat of the club captain, Patrick Vieira, in the canteen. When the Frenchman tapped the then teenager on the shoulder, ordering him to vacate the seat in front of the rest of the squad, Bentley refused as a matter of principle. “I wasn’t going to let anyone mug me off,” Bentley says. “If I was on the street, no chance. I’m not moving. There’s a hierarchy but I don’t know, I’m not having that. But I can feel his hand on my shoulder now.” He spent the next three months getting kicked in training by Vieira and excluded from nights out with the team.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed he could take World Cup matches away from US cities he deems ‘unsafe’. Here’s what he said – and what powers he does and doesn’t have

Aston Villa, Chelsea, Leeds and Nottingham Forest fail to respond to questions sent by the Guardian, while Sunderland refuse to comment

Eleven Premier League clubs will have to find new principal sponsors next season when the ban on front-of-shirt advertising for betting companies takes effect. This will represent a financial blow for the clubs concerned: gambling operators are known to pay a substantial premium on standard industry rates. As Karren Brady told the House of Lords in a debate on the football governance bill last November, “the typical difference between gambling and non-gambling shirt sponsorships is around 40%”. The vice-chair of West Ham warned: “For some Premier League clubs, this decision [to ban front-of-shirt gambling advertising] will mean a reduction of around 20% of their total commercial revenues.”

So how to make for the shortfall? Some clubs seem to have opted for the simplest of solutions: to carry on as before, by adapting the nature of their offer to gambling partners accordingly, which includes hidden partnership deals with Asian-facing operators that are unlicensed in the UK and target illegal markets in China, and south and east Asia. The clubs concerned are Sunderland, Aston Villa, Leeds, Nottingham Forest and Chelsea.

Clubs’ plan to open new ground in 2031 has been met by local opposition but is required for hosts to stay competitive

A protester outside held a sign insisting “San Siro belongs to the citizens” but Milan’s city council was about to change all that, voting to sell one of the world’s most famous football stadiums to tenants who plan to tear it down. Milan have played home games at what is officially the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza since 1926. Inter moved in with them 21 years later. They propose to build a shared home on the same grounds.

It has been a long time coming. The clubs announced joint plans for a new stadium as long ago as June 2019, with an intention to complete work within three years. International architecture firms were consulted and designs made public, but they never progressed out of this first phase.

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With his towering bouffant increasingly resembling a Coldstream Guards bearskin hat, that Manchester United Fan With The Hair is currently on Day No 380 of his personal “challenge” not to get a trim until Manchester United win five consecutive matches in all competitions. A journey that predates Ruben Amorim’s arrival at Old Trafford and began as a joke between friends, Frank Ilett’s daily dispatches from the frontline of Social Media Disgrace subsequently grew traction due in no small part to his team’s comical inability to win more than one Premier League game in a row under Amorim. Ilett and his increasingly long locks have captured the public imagination to such an extent that several weeks ago a follically-challenged, fellow United fan chose to attack him at Old Trafford for the heinous crime of having a high barnet, while yesterday a Portuguese reporter raised the subject of the challenge with Diogo Dalot in a post-match interview. “We’ll see,” said Dalot, upon being told that Ilett would probably sleep easier for a while, now that United had finally strung together back-to-back top flight wins for the first time under Amorim. “We hope that we can give him that haircut.”

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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It is English football’s Clásico, Klassiker, Classique. The north-west classic, if you will. Use flat vowels. The TV companies are revving up the performance poets, fizzing pints of lager to denote working-class roots are being artfully placed on unpolished pub tables, regional accents exaggerated as the hype machine revs up. The latest renewal of Liverpool v Manchester United finds the historic rivals in less than classic form. That United are playing like a drain is a state of being near-permanent since the year 2013 when twerking was a dance craze, phablets were a must have and “live blog” entered the Oxford English Dictionary (whatever happened to those? – Football Daily Ed). It has been Liverpool riding a rising tide since then.

What game play is actually happening in David Bell’s Sensible Soccer screengrab [yesterday’s letters]? An Arsenal player simulating death in the penalty area? In complete isolation? In the 46th minute? What drama!” – Alun Williams.

Congratulations on England beating the 137th-best team in the world and managing to qualify for the World Cup alongside only 47 other teams. It sounds like it’s just the right time for some overblown England hype. Ah yes, here we are, with England having its best chance to win the World Cup since 1970, just like in 1986, 1998, 2018 and 2022. One day, we will stop jumping on the England hype train at the earliest possible opportunity. However, today is not that day” – Noble Francis.

Re: Thursday’s Daily – I know that it may run contrary to the thrust of the article but I’m sorry, calling Jack Grealish’s winner against Crystal Palace ‘fluked’ is simply ludicrous” – Stuart Ainsworth [judge for yourselves – Football Daily Ed].

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Manchester City and Netherlands player explains why she has become an LGBT Foundation patron and the importance of keeping football free of hate

In April, after scoring for Manchester City against Everton, I kissed a band in the blue, white and pink colours of the transgender flag on my right wrist. I felt very strongly about the supreme court ruling, politically and emotionally. It really hurt me, even though I’m a cisgender woman, and it still hurts me because it targets people within my community.

I really feel part of the queer community because I grew up in a pretty small town in the Netherlands and didn’t have a lot of queer people in my circle or in school, and there wasn’t a lot of representation on TV. I never really felt a part of any community because I didn’t really know it was out there. Growing up and coming out and being in women’s football, which has a very accepting and open environment, and then moving to Manchester, I felt that I could be myself and I became much more in touch with the community. It has been a new, refreshing part of my life.

I had high hopes of making a difference when I joined Halifax Women but ended up feeling let down. Clubs have a responsibility to look after their players – at all levels

Football has given me some wonderful experiences. As a young Arab and Egyptian woman playing for Stoke City from 2017 to 2021 I broke barriers and that paved the way for some exciting opportunities. Fifa selected me as a 2022 World Cup ambassador and put me in a film with David Beckham; I also became an Adidas ambassador and worked as an Afcon pundit for the BBC.

But there have been less easy times as well. As an Egyptian international, representing a country that stands 95th in the Fifa rankings, there are obstacles to playing in the biggest leagues. Because of the points system for international players I left Stoke for the chance of playing second-tier football in Spain with Albacete. And since coming back to England, I’ve seen a world very distant from the new riches of the WSL.

Arsenal’s title chase picks up pace, Yankuba Minteh gets one over on Newcastle and Wolves are in a tight spot

The high-stakes duel in one of the fiercest rivalries in the English game came down to a crucial in-game management decision. Arne Slot, a manager lauded for smart substitutions last season, took a gamble in the 62nd minute, making three changes that aggressively shifted Liverpool into a 4-2-4, leaving Curtis Jones and Florian Wirtz dangerously exposed in midfield. The gamble initially appeared worthwhile: after rattling a post twice, Cody Gakpo finally delivered a 78th-minute equaliser to breathe some life into the deflated Anfield crowd. But Ruben Amorim remained calm and trusted his vision. Liverpool were undone just six minutes later after Bruno Fernandes’s fantastic cross found Harry Maguire inexplicably alone at the far post, the lack of defensive bodies evident as he thumped in the winner. Slot was hoping for a high-risk, high-reward outcome but ultimately, United’s grit in the second half paid off. Amorim has his critics – droves of them – but his tactics, including starting Maguire, were vindicated to earn United’s first win at Anfield since 2016. Two league wins on the bounce is a first for Amorim at United. Are the wheels shifting? “It’s an embarrassing stat to have had,” said Maguire. “We have to start putting a bit more consistency together. We have set a benchmark.” Yara El-Shaboury

Match report: Tottenham 1-2 Aston Villa

Match report: Fulham 0-1 Arsenal

Match report: Nottingham Forest 0-3 Chelsea

Match report: Brighton 2-1 Newcastle

Match report: Manchester City 2-0 Everton

Plus: more players ignoring tactical instructions, free-kick flurries and Wembley Stadium’s first resident club

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“Last month, Jeremy Ngakia scored twice for Watford against Oxford to take his career goals total to three from 116 senior club appearances. Excluding players who scored only once, has anybody with 100+ appearances managed a higher percentage of their career goals in a single match?” wonders Peter Skilton.

Denis Boone writes in with the tale of Matthieu Chalmé. “French right-back Chalmé played 362 professional matches during his career, mostly for Lille and Bordeaux,” Denis writes. “He scored four career goals, with three of them coming in a single game. Chalmé netted all three goals in Lille’s 3-0 win at Ajaccio in March 2004, recording the most unlikely of hat-tricks.”

Any more for any more? Mail us with your suggestions.

The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions on a regular basis. In today’s column, Graham Ruthven endeavors to answer three of them

By the time next summer’s World Cup kicks off, it’ll have been 12 years since Italy last played at the tournament they have won more times (four) than any other nation besides Brazil (five) and Germany (also four). The way things are going, the Azzurri’s 12-year wait for World Cup qualification could become a 16-year one at the very least.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Paul Watson and Ben Fisher as the Premier League returns this weekend

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On the podcast today: the panel preview the upcoming round of fixtures including Liverpool at home to Manchester United in a game that feels significant for both sides. Arne Slot has some big decisions to make while a win for Ruben Amorim would potentially blast his side up to the dizzying heights of sixth.

Every deal in the NWSL, WSL, Liga F, Frauen-Bundesliga, Première Ligue and Serie A Femminile as well as a club-by-club guide

• Men’s transfers summer 2025: all the moves