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In an embarrassing climbdown, the game in Miami is off with the league having alienated the players and even Villarreal, the club that was on its side

If there is a moment that defined La Liga’s fourth failed attempt to play in Miami, an image to explain why everything went wrong, it may have been the moment it was all over. On Tuesday night, Spanish television broadcast reaction to the news from the Estadio de la Ceràmica, live and unfiltered.

Cameras caught someone else who felt dismissed and disrespected, treated as if they didn’t count. This time it was someone who was supposed to be on the league’s side, but now appeared as a portrait of poor planning and poorer communication, a lack of consideration that pushed the project to collapse.

Today’s newsletter looks at the next World Cup hosts as they prepare to take on England and Italy with a squad with an average age of just 24

The road to the 2027 World Cup is long and winding for all teams hoping to qualify – apart from the hosts, Brazil. Having won their ninth Copa América Femenina in the summer, their next major tournament will be the World Cup in 20 months.

That may seem like a long time but the head coach, Arthur Elias, is aware that every minute of preparation counts, starting with their friendlies against England in Manchester on Saturday and then Italy in Parma on Tuesday.

Arsenal are on course to break one of the most impressive records in Premier League history

By Opta Analyst

In an era when human performance and sports science continue to advance at a remarkable pace, there are very few football records that remain truly untouchable. But Chelsea’s 2004-05 Premier League campaign remains one of the great exceptions. José Mourinho’s side conceded only 15 goals on their way to winning the title, a record that has stood unchallenged for two decades.

No team has come close since. Chelsea themselves conceded 22 times the following season and, along with Manchester United in 2007-08 and Liverpool in 2018-19, came closest to the magical 15 number. But even then, those three teams were still seven goals shy.

• Players went to airports but told not to travel

• Many said to have felt retraumatised by experience

The United Arab Emirates rejected visa applications for members of the Afghanistan women’s refugee squad who were due to travel there for the team’s first matches. Players went to airports, but were told not to board flights and many are said to have felt retraumatised by the experience.

Afghanistan had been due to play in the UAE against the hosts, Chad and Libya in the Fifa Unites: Women’s Series, with games running from Thursday to Wednesday. The 23 players selected via talent identification camps for the team, Afghan Women United, were due to fly to Dubai on 11 October for a training camp.

• ‘I wanted to say some things,’ he says

• Losing streak ended in Frankfurt

Virgil van Dijk has said he called a players’ meeting after Liverpool’s defeat by Manchester United to lift the mood and remind the squad how quickly their fortunes could change. Liverpool ended a run of four consecutive defeats with a 5-1 rout of Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League on Wednesday, with Van Dijk one of five goalscorers. Arne Slot changed personnel and formation to spark an improvement in Germany.

His captain believes the clear-the-air talks contributed to the recovery. “On Monday, everyone was sad because we lost to Man United at home,” Van Dijk said. “We haven’t lost many games at home during my time at Liverpool. It was tough under the circumstances, so on Monday we came together, but it wasn’t a crisis meeting. We all know how things can change. We’re only in October.

The very public face of his club has shown disdain for football’s structures, from the Premier League to VAR

I feel a rush everywhere when I see you
You become a silent scream
In the mind, in the body, in the secret moments
And in the lost logic
In your kiss, in your embrace
In the curse and the blessing
We will all burn together

Exapsi (Excitement), vocals by Natasa Theodoridou, lyrics by Evangelos Marinakis.

• Kick It Out Israel finds 367 instances in 2024-25

• Of those, 118 were linked to Maccabi supporters

Racist chanting by Israeli football fans grew rapidly over the past year, data shows, with Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters the most likely to engage in discriminatory behaviour. The research was conducted by Kick It Out Israel, which is funded by a civil society organisation, Givat Haviva, that works towards the “creation of a shared society for Jews and Arabs”.

It found 367 instances of racist chanting at Israeli Premier League (IPL) matches in the 2024-25 season, a record total and an increase of 67% on the previous campaign.

It is a sad fact of modern life for Ajax that their name commands more respect than their football these days. They were once the team of the moment, pushing tactical boundaries they ruled the continent in the 1970s, and they even fielded the youngest starting lineup in the history of the European Cup when they won it for a fourth time in 1995.

Yet those days are long gone. Ajax are a shadow of their former selves, a pale imitation under the beleaguered John Heitinga, and do not have the means to keep up when richer clubs invest their vast resources into youth projects of their own.

If nothing else, there is something to be said for the idea that staying afloat in awkward away games is a necessary skill. Little more could be taken from a grim night’s work by Tottenham, who should have been well beaten by an inventive and ambitious Monaco.

The smattering of full-time boos from their travelling fans cut through in a mostly atmosphere-free venue and, while this is hardly a time for alarm bells, the absence of any outfield player capable of seizing the day was stark.

The world’s largest sportswear company was wobbling amid complaints that it had become too safe. Armed with a provocative new slogan, the company reveals the innovations and strategy it hopes will turn its reputation around

The entrance to Nike’s swish global headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon is paved with rough cobbles, designed to remind employees to watch their step when they go forward.

Last summer, though, not even the world’s biggest sports brand could stop itself from taking an almighty tumble.

After eye-catching showings for Aston Villa, piano-playing psychology student is ready to step up for England duty

Lucia Kendall was watching TV, probably a drama, and missed Sarina Wiegman’s call. She wasn’t expecting it. Certainly not this soon. The 21-year-old joined Aston Villa from the WSL 2 club Southampton in the summer but her start in the top division has been so impressive that it has yielded a first senior England call-up for the friendlies against Brazil and Australia.

“It’s surreal really,” Kendall says at the team’s St George’s Park training base. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in. I’m just here to learn as much as possible. This team’s just gone and won back-to-back Euros so to be able to be in their environment is something I really didn’t think I’d get to do so soon.”

• Middlesbrough move to one point of leaders Coventry

• QPR beat 10-man Swansea, Watford edge out West Brom

Morgan Whittaker’s early goal at a near-empty Hillsborough gave Middlesbrough a 1-0 win at bottom club Sheffield Wednesday and lifted them to within a point of Championship leaders Coventry.

Whittaker struck for the second game running in the sixth minute and that proved enough for Rob Edwards’ side, who should have won by a wider margin and had what looked a certain penalty turned down.

It wasn’t a classic but the chorus from the Santiago Bernabéu was. It had been a while and they had missed moments such as this – but for the first time since April Fool’s Day, Jude Bellingham stood before the south end with his arms wide, listening to them sing Hey Jude. There had been a shoulder injury, doubts about his role too, but now he had scored his first goal of the season, ultimately taking Real Madrid to a 1-0 win against a Juventus team that aren’t what they once were but who made a match of it. “We had to sweat for it,” Thibaut Courtois said.

He knew better than anyone, having to rescue a one‑on‑one from Dusan Vlahovic and make another decisive save from Khéphren Thuram in the very last minute to leave Madrid on nine points and Igor Tudor’s side below the cut in this league phase. At the end of a match with more shots than football, the Juventus manager may reflect on a decent start, those saves a great opportunity wasted on 85 minutes; their reality, though, makes worrying reading.

• Five-year deal with Building and Wood Workers’ International

• BWI has criticised Fifa for giving 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia

Fifa has announced new measures for promoting “decent and safe working conditions” at its tournaments after agreeing a five-year partnership with the Building and Wood Workers’ International trade union.

The BWI, which has been critical of Fifa’s decision to award the 2034 World Cup finals tournament to Saudi Arabia, will now partner with world football’s governing body on conducting labour inspections in the Gulf state and elsewhere. The agreement will also incorporate training for workers and their representatives, and the creation of a “time-bound corrective action plan” that will ensure remedy for those workers who are exploited or otherwise impacted in their jobs.

• 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.

• 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.”

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 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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

• 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

• Buy a copy of this cartoon in our Print Shop

• 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

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“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.

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