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It never rains but it pours. Nottingham Forest, forced to cut their ticket prices twice this week to entice a near-capacity crowd back to the City Ground, can’t buy a win at the moment. Twice, now, they have lost to FC Midtjylland in this competition this season after Cho Gue-sung, the substitute, further dampened their spirts on a night when a second-half downpour was so severe the ball started getting stuck in puddles.

What a muddle Forest find themselves in. A single point above the relegation zone, their fourth manager of the season, Vítor Pereira, without a win in his last five games, their global head of football, Edu, on his way out, they now have to overcome this one-goal deficit in next week’s second leg to earn a Europa League quarter-final with Porto or Stuttgart.

Given what had gone before, Unai Emery stressed afterwards, this was a significant victory and a deeply satisfying takeaway for Aston Villa.

In meetings with his squad, he referenced how none of the six Premier League teams in the Champions League last 16 had triumphed this week and as many as four of them may have suffered irrecoverable damage. Then there were the memories of Villa coming here two years ago, when they almost came unstuck in the Conference League quarter-finals, when Emiliano Martínez reannounced himself as public enemy No 1 and made two penalty shootout saves.

This was a severe case of deja vu for Crystal Palace on their maiden European adventure, although at least this time they managed to avoid defeat. After surprisingly losing to Larnaca here 139 days ago in the league stage, Oliver Glasner’s side were again left to rue missed opportunities and a lack of creativity in attack despite the return of Jean-Philippe Mateta as a late substitute.

The France striker received a mixed reception from the home fans after his failed transfer made him public enemy number one for some. But having missed six weeks due to a knee injury that scuppered his move to Milan in January, he could not inspire Palace to victory after coming off the bench to replace £48m club record signing Jørgen Strand Larsen.

Of six teams in the last 16, only two – Arsenal and Liverpool – look more likely than not to get to the quarter-finals. But does it matter?

The coefficient is safe. The coefficient is yours. You’re going home with the coefficient. But perhaps not, on this evidence, with the microwave, the washing machine or the jet ski.

England’s soccer shame. Premier League in EURO MELTDOWN. Robot-ball crisis: how Arteta’s Arsenal destroyed all that is good and true, including the ploughman’s lunch and probably Woolworths. This kind of stuff has begun to do the rounds after this week’s Champions League last-16 matches.

• Striker’s deal runs out in less than four months

• Reiten leaves Chelsea after six years to join Gotham FC

The Women’s Super League’s leading scorer, Khadija Shaw, is close to agreeing a new contract at Manchester City, despite interest from Chelsea, the Guardian understands.

Talks between City and the Jamaica striker are understood to have progressed positively in recent weeks and, although the fine details of an extension are being worked on and nothing has been signed, there is confidence that she will stay with the league leaders.

• Irishman the favourite as O’Neill’s role ends in summer

• Craig Bellamy and Jens Berthel Askou are also targets

Robbie Keane is the frontrunner to become the next Celtic manager, with the club making background plans to heavily restructure football operations at the end of this season. Keane’s work at Ferencvaros and previously Maccabi Tel Aviv is understood to place him as the prime candidate to succeed Martin O’Neill, whose second spell as an interim Celtic manager will end in the summer.

Celtic’s powerbrokers believe Keane could be receptive to moving to Glasgow. There is, however, likely to be competition from other British sides for the Irishman’s services. Keane was linked with another of his former clubs, Tottenham, after the sacking of Thomas Frank but would never have accepted the short-term arrangement taken by Igor Tudor. No formal moves will be made by Celtic until the domestic season ends but Keane is the manager firmly in their sights.

Real Madrid left Erling Haaland marooned and picked off an unbalanced Manchester City in the Champions League

Pep Guardiola’s wry and serial observation is that only victory makes the head coach appear a sage of the tactical battle. If defeat is endured then, fair or not, it is open season on the man who lives and dies by results.

Cut to Wednesday’s 3-0 Champions League last-16 hammering of Manchester City by Real Madrid and Álvaro Arbeloa emanated a seer-like cool in the post-first leg briefings, while Guardiola was forced into explaining why he sent out a 4-2-2-2 that crumpled so easily before Federico Valverde, who scored a memorable first-half, 22-minute hat-trick.

Best left Bermuda at 17 and joined West Ham, with Bobby Moore among his teammates, but he also faced horrendous abuse

‘I did what I had to do,” Clyde Best says as he recalls leaving Bermuda at the age of 17 and travelling to England for a trial at West Ham. There was no fear, no thought of homesickness. Best saw opportunity. It was 1968 and, before setting off on his journey, the boy who would go on to be hailed as English football’s first black superstar received some unforgettable advice from his father, a naval officer who later worked as a deputy commissioner in Bermuda’s prison service.

“My dad told me: ‘When you go to England, you’re not playing for yourself, you’re playing for those coming after you,’” Best says. “I always knew that I had some responsibility, and I had to carry myself in a certain way and behave myself in a certain way. I’m not going to do anything stupid and mess it up. If you listen to what your parents tell you, nine times out of 10 you’re not going to have problems.”

The Gillingham owner, Brad Galinson, issues warning and wants to find a fix as costs spiral amid ‘the Wrexham effect’

Brad Galinson has a warning for anyone looking to invest in English football’s lower leagues. “Almost every single club in the EFL is about seven days away from suffering the same fate as Sheffield Wednesday,” the Gillingham owner says. “Everyone is chasing dreams.”

Many have blamed the “Wrexham effect” for spiralling costs as investors from all over the world have flocked to buy clubs down the pyramid. Only two in League One have a playing budget of less than £3.5m this season compared with 13 two years ago, and several are thought to be operating on more than £10m.

All the managers since Pochettino have drained life from the club, which appears interested in anything but football now

Sad news coming out of Tottenham this week: Ryan Norys’s talk at the South by Southwest festival on Friday will no longer take place. The club’s chief revenue officer, who has overseen a 40% rise in commercial revenue over the past three years, was due to speak on “how Tottenham is evolving beyond football to become a global cultural brand”. And given the rich seam of cultural content Spurs have been providing the world over recent weeks, you have to say it’s been a stunningly successful initiative.

Alas, when Norys posted an advertisement for the event on his LinkedIn page this week, Spurs fans exploded with anger, forcing the talk to be cancelled. Fortunately, those still interested to see how Tottenham are evolving beyond football can simply observe their recent performances on the pitch. Igor Tudor’s Tottenham Hotspur: proudly evolving beyond defending. Beyond possession. Beyond goalkeeping. Beyond tactics, beyond teamwork, beyond competence, beyond the basic bipedal human ability to stand up straight. And – who knows? – perhaps even beyond the Premier League.

We look at the 14th regular season before it kicks off on Friday with two expansion sides: Boston Legacy and Denver Summit

The National Women’s Soccer League’s 14th regular season starts on Friday with a rematch of last year’s semi-final between the Portland Thorns and Washington Spirit. From there, 16 teams will compete in a 248-match season, with eight teams qualifying for the playoffs.

We look at four themes that may define the year.

• Uefa: ‘Disciplinary proceedings have been instigated’

• Portuguese player had apologised for push after game

Pedro Neto is at risk of being banned after Uefa opened an investigation into the winger pushing a ballboy during Chelsea’s 5-2 defeat at Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of their last-16 Champions League tie on Wednesday.

Neto apologised for the incident and gave his shirt to the ballboy after the game but that has not been enough to avert the possibility of disciplinary action. Uefa said it was investigating the Portugal international for “unsporting behaviour” and that its “disciplinary bodies will take a decision on this case in due course”.

• Tottenham want fans to have ‘full clarity on next season’

• Redknapp claims Levy would have brought him in

Tottenham have pushed back the deadline for supporters to renew their season tickets to allow them more time to make their decisions based on which division the club will play in.

In the previous two campaigns, fans have had to renew very shortly after the final game but this time, as the team fight for their Premier League survival, they have been given until 7 June – two weeks after the last match, which is at home against Everton on 24 May.

• Coventry beat Preston 3-0 to go eight points clear

• Boro lose ground with 1-0 home defeat by Charlton

Coventry moved eight points clear at the top of the Championship with a 3-0 win over struggling Preston. Goals from Tatsuhiro Sakamoto and Brandon Thomas-Asante in the first half were followed by Matt Grimes’s penalty after half-time for their 23rd win of the season.

Coventry’s sixth consecutive win opened up an eight-point gap to second-placed Middlesbrough, who lost 1-0 at home to Charlton, and returned them nine points clear of third-placed Millwall.

After Antonin Kinsky’s Spurs woes at Atlético, we recall five more matches the keeper in question would sooner forget

The score at the City Ground was goalless as Manchester City’s Andy Dibble captured an aerial cross and assessed his options. Little did he know that the Nottingham Forest midfielder Gary Crosby had spotted that he had rested the ball, casually, on one hand. “All I thought was: ‘He’s got to have it in two hands,’” said Crosby, who would steal up behind Dibble before stooping to head the ball out of his grasp and tap into the net. Despite concerted visiting protestations, the referee, Roger Gifford, remained unmoved and the goal stood. “I can never escape it,” admitted Dibble in an interview 14 years later. Crosby, meanwhile, has said: “It’s the one thing I get remembered for.” Dibble, now 60, retired from professional football in October when knee replacement surgery prompted his departure from his role as Accrington Stanley’s goalkeeping coach. He played for 18 clubs in a 24-year career that earned him three Wales caps.

Whoever runs Bayer Leverkusen’s social media accounts obviously meant it as a joke. But even they could not have predicted that a cheeky post hours before kick‑off would almost end up being such a good omen for Kasper Hjulmand’s side. “No corners allowed,” it read in a clear dig at Arsenal’s favoured modus operandi this season, before adding. “Worth a try …”

Nonetheless, the plan seemed to be working for almost the entire cagey first half when neither side managed to muster a single corner until injury time. But everything changed at the start of the second half when Leverkusen’s captain, Robert Andrich, headed home their second corner of the evening. “Well, this is awkward,” the Leverkusen social media team piped up.

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Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nicky Bandini and Archie Rhind-Tutt as Premier League sides fail to win any of their games in this week’s Champions League last-16 first legs

On the podcast today: another disappointing night for the Premier League clubs in the Champions League. Federico Valverde with one of the touches of the season, cushioning it over Marc Guéhi before hammering home a first-half hat-trick.

Elsewhere, in Paris, Chelsea were good until Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s introduction and an unfortunate Filip Jörgensen mistake meant they left the Parc de Princes 5-2 down. Arsenal scraped a draw in Leverkusen … but Bodø did it again!

Plus, a Premier League preview, the pod discuss Iran, the World Cup and the Iranian women’s team in Australia. We’ll answer your questions and wish Barry a very happy birthday.

Our cartoonist takes a look at the impossible situation the Iran players were put in at the tournament in Australia

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Because nobody ever mentions them when the subject of Bodø/Glimt comes up, Football Daily knows neither the imaginary line of latitude they are located within nor the population of the small Norwegian town they call home. Despite our lack of knowledge, we remain mightily impressed by their scorching recent run of form in Bigger Cup. While the one major blot on their copybook in their maiden campaign remains a draw with Tottenham in a match they really ought to have won pulling a sled, Bodø/Glimt have put that particular embarrassment behind them to record five successive wins in Europe’s top-tier competition, not so much bloodying the noses of Manchester City, Atlético Madrid, Inter (twice) and Sporting as splattering their lofty reputations all over the back pages like a dropped tub of herring guts.

All six of the Premier League’s last-16 teams have plenty of work to do in their second legs. Bodø/Glimt, meanwhile, have eyes on a fairytale quarter-final

A rude awakening for the English Premier League, a week when European football reasserted itself; financial dominance need not mean dominance on the field. Real Madrid’s first-half destruction of Manchester City was chastening. This was a Madrid team shorn of Kylian Mbappé, Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham and yet City were soundly beaten 3-0. Arsenal’s drab 1-1 draw with Bayer Leverkusen showed Mikel Arteta’s team will require more than set pieces to prevail in the competition.

Hat-trick hero played as an auxiliary right-back before excelling everywhere in midfield in one of the great European displays

Fede Valverde made his way down the tunnel at the Santiago Bernabéu wearing the captain’s armband and the No 8 shirt Toni Kroos had wanted him to have. He carried the pennant commemorating what was going to be the match of his life, touched palms with the kids in the sponsored shirts that lined the route on right and left, and then stepped out into the light.

When he headed back inside again 45 minutes later, the first off the pitch at half-time, he paused briefly and clenched his fist, which was a pretty low‑key reaction considering what he had just done.

Plus: privately-educated players, surviving despite away-day woes; and the trophy-less 1909 Scottish Cup

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Are the 23 red cards shown in the game between Brazilian clubs Cruzeiro and Atlético Mineiro in the Campeonato Mineiro final a record?” asks Tom Reed.

In case you missed it, the Campeonato Mineiro final descended/ascended into a festival of hand-throwing. Cruzeiro won the football match 1-0 and the red card contest 12-11. We had a similar question back in 2002, when the world record was 20 in a Paraguayan league match between Sportivo Ameliano and General Caballero. But modern life is febrile, and that record was obliterated by events in Claypole, Argentina, in February 2011. Don’t take our word for it, read this excerpt from Guinness World Records:

The highest reported number of players sent off in a single football match is 36 in the Argentine Primera D game between Club Atlético Claypole and Victoriano Arenas refereed by Damián Rubino (Argentina) at the Estadio Rodolfo Capocasa, Claypole, Argentina, on 27 February 2011. All 18 players on each side (11 on-field players and seven substitutes) were sent off following what the referee described in his post-match report as a ‘Generalised Brawl’ that seemed to have been the result of a series of confrontations and heavy tackles that had taken place throughout the feisty encounter. The game was the 23rd round of matches in the Primera D, the fifth tier of Argentine football, in what was in theory a regulation league match, there was no historic rivalry between the sides.

Over the course of a 20-year playing career from 1995 to 2015, Gerardo ‘the Beast’ Bedoya (Colombia) was sent off 46 times. The tough-tackling defender/defensive midfielder earned 49 caps for his national team. On 24 March 2016, Bedoya made his debut as a coach of Colombian side Independiente Santa Fe during their match against Atlético Junior, and was sent off after 21 minutes for berating the officials.

Australia are no strangers to the team’s bizarre protests but they will need to keep frustrations in check in Women’s Asian Cup quarter-final

Boos are barrelling around Parramatta Stadium. Wang Shuang, China’s star midfielder who had given her side a 2-1 lead in stoppage time of the first half, is gesturing to the crowd to get louder.

The referee is in the centre-circle, staring furiously at the sideline where all North Korea’s players are gathered, refusing to return to the field. Their captain, An Kuk-hyang, keeps pointing at the VAR screen and then, condescendingly, to her own eyes. Wang’s goal had initially been ruled offside but was then awarded after VAR review.

The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions. Today, Graham Ruthven endeavors to answer three of them

Sergiño Dest’s World Cup is at risk. The 25-year-old limped off with a hamstring injury during PSV’s Eredivisie win over AZ Alkmaar on Saturday, immediately starting a countdown clock in the minds of US men’s national team supporters who now fear Mauricio Pochettino’s first-choice right back could miss this summer’s tournament. Dest said on social media he hopes to be back by the end of the season, but nobody truly knows when he’ll return.

Full-back has struggled since his move but fierce strike took his side seven points off neighbours who could wobble

Pervis Estupiñán called it “the most important goal of my career”. He does, admittedly, have only 12 to choose from, but to score the winner in a Milan derby is something few players ever experience. It could only feel better for having done it towards the end of a difficult first season in Italian football.

The Ecuadorian was billed as a replacement for Theo Hernández when he joined Milan from Brighton last summer, lumbered with unreasonable comparison from the start. Hernández, at his best, was one of the most effective attacking full-backs in the world. Estupiñán, at 28, is yet to put himself in that conversation, but the hope was that he could offer some of the same directness and ability to get up and down the left flank.

Mallorca’s Vedat Muriqi and Osasuna’s Ante Budimir have 31 league goals between them this season, with three coming in a dramatic draw on Saturday

This is the story of the Pirate and the Swan. When Vedat Muriqi was little, which he never really was, he couldn’t always find boots to play in. An adult and a giant before his time, working and shaving at 14, a striker starting out for KF Liria in Prizren, Kosovo, he was 6ft 4in, his feet were size 15, and back home back then you couldn’t get anything that big. Fortunately, one day an aunt in Finland came across a pair of European 48.5s and, pleased as could be, sent them his way. As he opened the box, Vedat realised they were made for rugby but he didn’t have the heart to tell her and, anyway, at least they fit.

They also fit. The man whose former coach had described him as “a strange, ugly beast” you would “cross the street to avoid” and who couldn’t help but agree, admitting: “If I saw me I’d cross over too,” wasn’t much good, or so he said. For a time they called him the Cannibal – a name he identified with, albeit “one that doesn’t eat children” – and soon they called him the Pirate, which he liked more, placing a patch over his left eye when he scored, but a player? That was something else. Someone else too: “I look at Sergi Darder and Dani Rodríguez: if they’re footballers … what am I?” he asked. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t play football; I play a different sport.”

Monaco are flying but PSG are in bad shape before their Champions League last-16 tie against Chelsea

By Get French Football News

Sébastien Pocognoli doesn’t like to talk about “foundational matches” but there are moments that can shape a season for better or for worse – and they do not necessarily come on the pitch. Sometimes they come in restaurants.

Monaco hit a low at the Bernabéu at the end of January. Their 6-1 defeat to Real Madrid was their heaviest in European competition and followed a run of seven defeats in eight games in Ligue 1, the worst record in the club’s history. After their humbling defeat in Madrid, the squad remained in the city until the afternoon of the following day to come to terms with the deepening crisis. The club’s coaches and staff held a meeting to talk things through. The players also gathered to thrash things out. “We thought it was important to have one as players, to be open, to try to find solutions,” said Folarin Balogun. “It was positive.”

Fewer than 100 days out, host cities haven’t received promised funding, and fears about ICE’s presence are widespread

On Sunday 19 July, the final match of the 2026 Fifa World Cup will be played in East Rutherford, New Jersey. For one day, our community will be the center of the world.

But as that moment approaches, I find myself spending less time thinking about the games at MetLife Stadium, and more time worrying about whether we are ready. Because if Washington doesn’t get its act together, we risk turning a generational opportunity into an international embarrassment.

The Fifa president’s sycophancy towards the US president has left the organisation facing a new nadir, but any reckoning seems a distant prospect

Mr President. Fellow exco members. We’re going to need a bigger Board of Peace. How many mini‑pitches are we up to now? Gaza got 50 of them last month. What will it take to football-fix the global conflict being set in train by Fifa’s own Peace Prize Boy? A hundred mini-pitches? Four billion mini-pitches? All the mini‑pitches in the universe?

In a more sane version of what we must, out of habit, call the real world, it would seem absurd to talk about sports administration in the context of the US, Iran and the airborne conflict being played out across the borders of their allies.

Breaking from European traditions would bring a TV boost and help build a schedule that works both for players and fans

The announcement that Major League Soccer (MLS) is to switch from a summer season to a winter one has reignited the debate about the National Women’s Soccer League’s (NWSL) schedule.

This is not a new conversation: the pros and cons of alignment with the European calendar have been considered for many years by the NWSL.

If every win is going to be painful from here, you may as well just take the painful wins – welcome to Arsenal’s late title stagger

On Thursday night at a swanky London hotel so luxuriously risk‑averse the toilets are equipped with wireless thermostats to control to within half a degree the heat of the seat, the Premier League chief executive, Richard Masters, spoke in detail for the first time about the prospect of “Premflix”, the direct‑to‑consumer model of the future, an app that will sluice this irresistible footballing opiate directly into the eyeballs of 8 billion rapt humans.

In doing so Masters was echoing the words of Todd Boehly on the same stage 12 months earlier, who had talked about the Premier League as a kind of fire stolen from the gods, source of the next great tech platform, an engine of empire, tool of world domination, of lassoing the moon out of the sky.

Our cartoonist reflects on the FA Cup fifth round, including Ben Waine’s commitment to the bit

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Former striker recounts experiences of racism at Atlético Madrid but says he ‘didn’t have it as bad’ as Vinícius Júnior

The sad thing for Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is that the cycle of racism feels endless. It was prevalent in football before his playing days and throughout his career as a prolific striker, and it has persisted since he retired in 2008.

Football’s racism problem has been thrust back into the spotlight in recent weeks after Vinícius Júnior accused Gianluca Prestianni of racially abusing him in Real Madrid’s Champions League tie with Benfica, and four Premier League players were racially abused on social media across a single weekend, prompting police investigations.

The 77-year-old’s 21st managerial role could be a final act and even if it is brief he will sprinkle the sixth tier with quintessential quips and well-aimed digs

There is a specific, restless energy to Neil Warnock that defies the traditional laws of ageing and the modern conventions of football management. At 77, he still wakes up in the dead of night to obsess over the overlapping runs of a National League South full-back.

“When I was thinking about the system this morning at four o’clock, [I was like]: ‘What are you doing?’” he said, a smile cutting through the post-match gloom at Ebbsfleet. The setting was hardly Premier League-like – a crowd of 1,467 huddled under a gloomy sky – but for Warnock, the stakes of the dugout remain existential. Even if the reality of his years occasionally intrudes on his tactical scouting. “When you get to my age, you have to go to the toilet a few times [which is why he was awake] … but I’m enjoying every minute of this.”

A win at Bristol City tightened leaders’ grip at top of the Championship and boosted hopes of top-flight return

After securing a fifth straight victory, Coventry City’s players, staff and supporters savoured the moment as one. “We are top of the league,” was the chorus stuck on loop. As Frank Lampard left the pitch with a sold-out away end at Ashton Gate serenading him, the fans invariably obliged when he asked them to turn up the volume. Josh Eccles, who joined the club aged seven, was the last to head in. To lean into an analogy parroted by the Coventry owner, Doug King, who refers to squads as decks, Lampard’s hand is akin to a royal flush.

No wonder Lampard was nonplussed this week when asked about clubs voting to extend the Championship playoffs to six teams next season. With 10 games to play, Coventry are nine points clear of third-placed Millwall and it seems increasingly likely that they won’t be in the division to live the change. They may require only a handful of wins to return to the top flight for the first time since relegation in 2000-01. “I left Ipswich last summer and in many ways you can compare what the two clubs have been through,” says the Coventry defender Luke Woolfenden. “Both were relegated to League One and when you get that promotion, you can feel something special happening. It is a good feeling and it can take you a long way; now we’re into the final straight.”

There is no tokenism in Ingolstadt hiring a female manager, and the German club’s pioneer recognises the power of her presence in the game

Home is indeed where the heart is. On Friday Sabrina Wittmann signed a new deal to stay at FC Ingolstadt, continuing a partnership whose roots go back nearly two decades but which became of wider public interest when the third-tier club appointed her as the first female coach of a German professional football team in summer 2024.

There is no tokenism in the club’s choice, underlined not only by the contract extension but by the 34-year-old’s recent completion of her coaching pro licence, awarded to her just over a month ago. “I’ll always be the first woman in Germany coaching a professional men’s team,” Wittmann says, “but I want to be seen as a coach.

Players and coaches demand more accountability from Caf after latest decision further disrupts preparation schedule

On 13 February, Patrice Motsepe, the president of the Confederation of African Football (Caf), promised that this year’s Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon), scheduled to be played in Morocco between 17 March and 4 April, would go ahead as planned. One of the reasons he had to make that statement was the 2024 tournament had been postponed for a remarkable 19 months, until July 2025.

That supposedly solemn presidential promise was broken on 5 March, 12 days before the start of the tournament, with many of the teams – including Nigeria, the defending champions, Cameroon and Ghana – playing friendlies across Africa and Asia to prepare for the showpiece, which also determines which teams get to represent the continent at next year’s World Cup.

This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts is delivered to your inboxes every Tuesday and Thursday.

The leaders haven’t won the title in more than 20 years. Yet very few neutrals are excited about seeing them as new champions

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What was striking after Arsenal’s grim 1-0 win at Brighton on Wednesday was less Brighton manager Fabian Hürzeler’s attack on the Gunners’ style than the way his criticism seemed to resonate. In England, it feels as though almost nobody, other than Arsenal supporters or anyone-but-City fans, wants them to win the title.

“If I would ask everyone in the room: ‘Did you really enjoy this football game?’ I’m sure maybe one raises his arm because he’s a big Arsenal fan but, besides that, no chance,” Hürzeler said.

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.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nicky Bandini and Archie Rhind-Tutt as Premier League sides fail to win any of their games in this week’s Champions League last-16 first legs

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On the podcast today: another disappointing night for the Premier League clubs in the Champions League. Federico Valverde with one of the touches of the season, cushioning it over Marc Guéhi before hammering home a first-half hat-trick.

Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Tom Garry and Anton Toloui as England beat Iceland 2-0 to maintain their 100% start to their World Cup qualifying campaign

On today’s pod: the Lionesses are two from two in their World Cup qualifiers, a goal and an assist from Lucy Bronze putting England top of the table before their intriguing clash with Spain in April.

Elsewhere, there are wins for Scotland and Wales, while Northern Ireland finally name their new permanent manager.

Max Dowman and Rio Ngumoha staked their claim for more game time while Fulham paid for a lack of ambition

Port Vale have reached the last eight of the FA Cup once before in their entire history, in 1953-54, when they went one stage further, losing their semi-final at Villa Park 2-1 to West Brom thanks to a much-disputed winning goal. If only a video assistant referee had been present then, you might say. In their fifth-round victory over Sunderland this weekend, they were also unfortunate despite the presence of technology. Why was Anthony Taylor not asked to check the TV monitor when George Hall was cynically taken out by the Sunderland goalkeeper Melkor Ellberg, just outside the penalty area with the match on a knife-edge? Even if the striker’s run was going away from goal, he surely had the pace to have got a shot away. Let’s hope VAR give the remaining lower-division teams fair shrift when it comes to the rest of the competition. Peter Lansley

Match report: Port Vale 1-0 Sunderland

Match report: Mansfield Town 1-2 Arsenal

Match report: Newcastle 1-3 Manchester City

Match report: Wrexham 2-4 Chelsea (aet)

Match report: Wolves 1-3 Liverpool

Match report: Fulham 0-1 Southampton

Ousmane Dembélé becomes our seventh winner as he beats Lamine Yamal into second and Vitinha into third on our list of the best players on the planet

• Premier League dominates list | How every judge voted | Our methodology | The top 100 female players for 2025

• 2024 edition | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

The Frenchman, who has been named the best male footballer in the world by the Guardian, has benefitted from PSG’s focus on the team rather than individuals

What makes a good player great, and a great player the best? This question has been occupying me since 2014, when the Guardian first asked me to contribute to its inaugural Next Generation feature. My job was to look for a France-based talent born in 1997 who could go on to have a stellar career.

After a great deal of research, I narrowed it down from my shortlist of five by asking questions not about the players’ football ability, but about other attributes: resilience, adaptability, decision-making, creativity, work ethic, response to feedback and willingness to learn. Qualities we cannot see, and are harder to measure.

Aitana Bonmatí has been voted the best female player on the planet by our panel of 127 experts ahead of Mariona Caldentey and Alessia Russo

• 2024 list | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018

• Meet the judges | See how every judge voted

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The margin may have got smaller but the brilliant Spanish midfielder makes it a hat-trick of No 1 finishes

They say the best things come in threes, and Aitana Bonmatí has written herself into the Guardian’s top 100 history as the first player to finish at the top of the tree for a third consecutive year.

Last year the majestic midfielder emulated her Barcelona and Spain teammate Alexia Putellas by winning for a second year running, but the 27-year-old has now gone one better, establishing herself once again at the top of the women’s game.

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