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• Lage goes after 3-2 Champions League defeat by Qarabag

• Benfica play Mourinho’s former club Chelsea this month

Benfica are closing in on the appointment of José Mourinho after sacking Bruno Lage in the wake of their defeat by Qarabag in the Champions League.

Mourinho is on the market after leaving Fenerbahce last month and is in advanced talks over a return to his former club, who he briefly managed in 2000.

Enzo Maresca’s side return to the site of the club’s first Champions League win but the team face a battle against their former striker

A trip to the Allianz Arena offers Chelsea fond memories of the greatest night in their history, a meeting with two what‑might‑have-beens and a swift reunion with a player desperate to prove they were wrong to let him go.

Perhaps Enzo Maresca will be feeling nervous if his team have to face Nicolas Jackson when they open their Champions League campaign against Bayern Munich on Wednesday night. There are plenty of examples of loanees coming back to haunt their parent club in the tournament and Jackson will not be short of motivation if he features against Chelsea less than a month since he left on loan.

• Italian preparing to face Napoli, whom his mother supports

• De Bruyne, McTominay and Højlund could face City

Gianluigi Donnarumma has said he believes Pep Guardiola will help improve his ball-playing skills and that Manchester City were interested in signing him before the summer.

Donnarumma joined from Paris Saint-Germain for about £30m (€35m) on transfer deadline day. The move caused surprise because of the view that the 26-year-old is not as accomplished with his feet as Ederson, who left for Fenerbahce, or James Trafford, the £27m signing from Burnley in July.

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A year ago to the day, Aston Villa’s 2024-25 Bigger Cup adventure – one that would take them to a mesmeric quarter-final with eventual winners PSG – started with a 3-0 victory over Young Boys, a performance with more fluidity than a Jamie Carragher drive-by and the Birmingham side’s first game back in Europe’s elite club competition in 41 years. In the next round of Bigger Cup fixtures, Bayern Munich were duly dispatched by Villa in a performance with more fluidity than a Bavarian title parade. Unai Emery could seemingly do no wrong and had everything from Jhon Durán’s left foot to John McGinn’s backside marching to the beat of his drum, with his team and tactics looking more fluid in the season’s early stages than Ozzy Osbourne’s long locks gently rocking in the soft Birmingham breeze (OK, that’s enough – Football Daily Ed).

I don’t want to talk about a single player but of course if you sub somebody at half-time you are not pleased with his performance. I will talk to him in person and then it’s up to him to show improvement. That’s it” – Oliver Glasner, there, not wanting to single out Romain Esse for criticism yet somehow managing to magnify his ruthless half-time hooking of his new Crystal Palace midfielder in the Milk Cup win (on penalties) over Millwall.

Qarabag ‘whipping-boy chaff’ (yesterday’s Football Daily). Funny, Bruno Lage thought so too” – Richie Philpott.

Has it ever occurred to my learned friends at Football Daily (OK, our sarcasm antennae is really starting to twitch now – Football Daily Ed) that perhaps one of the reasons three dozen teams are playing a dozen-dozen games in Bigger Cup’s first stage and some people still turn up to watch, is because they actually like football. Whether a particular fixture confirms their own team as crowned champions of Europe is maybe for most fans not of great import. I presume most followers of the ‘whipping-boy chaff’ go for the love of their team and some maybe even for the love of the game. Whilst no doubt generating a fat load of dosh, Uefa’s ‘Swiss Model’ also allows fans to watch more football and see their team play more other teams. Is this such a bad thing? Even if this means enduring ‘meaningless’ fixtures such as last night’s mind-numbing dead-rubber between Juventus and Borussia Dortmund. I also presume that the legendary Algerian goalkeeper Albert Camus enjoyed playing in goal for Racing Universitaire d’Alger, even though he was convinced that life was entirely devoid of meaning” – John Waugh.

Kevin Mac Allister (aka Alexis Mac Allister’s brother) scoring the winner for Union Saint-Gilloise away at PSV gives me the excuse to bring out one of my favourite, pointless pieces of trivia. He is named after the Kevin McCallister character in Home Alone played by Macaulay Culkin but he wasn’t aware of it and used to joke about the coincidence whenever it was mentioned, until he found out from his parents when he was 18 that he actually was named after him. To quote the great Philip Larkin, ‘They mess* you up, your mum and dad.’ The language has been changed as the original is far too rude, but Larkin was bang on …” – Noble Francis.

Re: ‘There’s a tradition in the Mediterranean, especially in Greece and Cyprus, of doing some olive oil really early in the season. It’s not new. It’s thousands of years old’ (Tuesday’s breakout section – full email edition). That endless Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta was sparked by a disputed offside call, it turns out” – Mike Slattery

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

• Partey’s trial scheduled for November 2026

• He remains able to play for Villarreal and Ghana

The former Arsenal footballer Thomas Partey has pleaded not guilty to five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault at Southwark crown court.

The 32-year-old is accused of raping two women and sexually assaulting a third woman. The alleged offences took place between 2021 and 2022, when he was an Arsenal player.

• CEO praises performance ‘during such a challenging year’

• £36.6m exceptional items include paying off Erik ten Hag

Manchester United have revealed record revenues of £666.5m for last season but still reported a loss of £33m for the financial year. The club were without Champions League football in 2024-25 and finished 15th in the Premier League but their revenue marginally increased by 0.7%.

Accounts for the year ending 30 June 2025 show United’s operating loss fell from £69.3m to £18.4m compared with the previous 12 months. Overall losses dropped from £113.2m to £33m after the co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe oversaw wide-ranging, and often unpopular, changes at a club he claimed in March had “gone one off the rails” as a business. The British billionaire warned United would have gone “bust at Christmas” if they had not taken “really tough decisions”.

• Alexander Isak in squad for match on Wednesday

• Liverpool have won all four top-flight games late on

Arne Slot has said Liverpool have exceeded his expectations by winning their opening four Premier League matches but must improve as they start their Champions League campaign on Wednesday at home against Atlético Madrid.

Liverpool’s perfect start has them top but they have won each game late, becoming the first Premier League side to win four consecutive matches with goals scored after the 80th minute. The results follow the death of Diogo Jota and more than £400m of signings designed to make the squad more suited to Slot’s vision.

Plus: national teams with top-10 scorers in the 21st century, different kits in the same match (2) and a referee’s coin toss

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Who is the most prolific player with the initials XG?” asks Oliver Forrest. “And who has the highest goals and assists of players with the initials GA?”

There are only a handful of male* footballers with the initials XG – here is an exhaustive list. The diminutive journeyman Greek midfielder Xenofon Gittas scored 17 goals across his club career (plus three for Greece Under-21s) but cannot match the scoring exploits of Xhevdet Gela, who is our winner with 44 goals across all competitions including the Europa League with the Finnish sides MyPa and Lahti. Unusually, during a spell between 2019-2022 in which Gela was playing for Ekenäs in Finland, he was also the full-time manager of a fourth-tier side, Esbo, a club around 80km away. Gela returned to the manager’s role at Esbo in January this year, although not in a playing capacity.

• He sees similarity in persona and dealing with pressure

• Coach praises in-form Malard before crucial Brann tie

Marc Skinner has likened the Manchester United striker Melvine Malard’s persona to that of Eric Cantona. The head coach compared the Frenchwoman to the club’s revered former forward as he reflected on the top form Malard appears to have hit before Thursday’s decisive Women’s Champions League qualifier.

Manchester United are 1-0 down going into the second leg against the Norwegian side Brann but were boosted by Malard’s double in their 5-1 victory at London City Lionesses in the Women’s Super League on Sunday.

After becoming first club from the country to win a regional trophy, team set their sights on the CAF Champions League

First there was Letsile Tebogo, who put Botswana on the sporting map when he won gold in the 200m at the Paris Olympics. Now, there is Gaborone United Ladies, who became the country’s first football team to win a regional trophy and will make history when they appear at the CAF Champions League this year.

United claimed the Cosafa Women’s Champions League Cup – a tournament played among southern African clubs – when they defeated the Zambian side Zesco Ndola Girls 4-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in August and their victory means they will represent the region at the eight-team CAF Champions League tournament this year.

Newcastle’s new striker makes his mark, Martínez is in Villa’s good books again and Madueke has dream week

• Premier League top scorers 2025-26: who is leading race?

Is Gianluigi Donnarumma a Pep Guardiola goalkeeper? He may or may not be, but he is an exceptional goalkeeper. Manchester United didn’t offer enough of a test even to begin to assess whether Donnarumma is good enough with the ball at his feet to allow City to play as Guardiola would like them to. Nor did they test whether his starting position is advanced enough to sweep up behind a high defensive line and prevent the sort of chances City yielded up to Tottenham and Brighton. But his save to keep out a Bryan Mbeumo volley, hurling himself to his right to push the ball wide, was spectacular, and drew congratulations from pretty much all his teammates. Even if he is not the perfect stylistic fit, Donnarumma’s presence, his commanding stature and the aura he projects make him the right goalkeeper for now as City begin the process of rebuilding with a notably young squad. Jonathan Wilson

Match report: Manchester City 3-0 Manchester United

Match report: Burnley 0-1 Liverpool

Match report: West Ham 0-3 Tottenham

But can he do it in the Champions League? It was one of the grumbles from the Tottenham fanbase when their club appointed Thomas Frank given how his experience of European football extended to little more than a handful of Europa League qualifiers with Brondby more than a decade ago.

It was a nervy big-time debut for the manager, his team retreating into their shells after half-time, looking to hold on to the lead they were presented with at the outset by one of the ultimate goalkeeping howlers.

• Arsenal manager says Brazilian fully deserved goal in Bilbao

• Arteta embraces rugby rebranding of substitutes

Mikel Arteta said he adores Gabriel Martinelli after the Brazilian scored within 36 seconds of coming on to set Arsenal up for victory in their Champions League opener at Athletic Bilbao. The head coach also praised the collective spirit within the squad, insisted that it “hurts” when he has to leave a player on the bench, and revealed that he has embraced terminology from rugby union, preferring to call those he brings on to the pitch “finishers” rather than “substitutes”.

It was still 0-0 at San Mamés when Martinelli was introduced, but Arteta said he could see in his eyes that he was ready and with his first touch he dashed away and beat Unai Simón to score the first in the 72nd minute. He then played the pass that set up Leandro Trossard, another substitute, to secure victory in the 87th.

Kylian Mbappé converted two penalties to secure Real Madrid a 2-1 victory against Marseille in their Champions League group-stage opener despite playing the final stages with 10 men after their captain, Dani Carvajal, was sent off.

Carvajal had not started the match, coming on after five minutes when Trent Alexander-Arnold pulled up with an apparent hamstring injury.

• Qarabag fight back from 2-0 down to beat Benfica

• Union Saint-Gilloise win at PSV on league phase debut

It was a dramatic opening night in the Champions League, with Juventus and Borussia Dortmund sharing eight second-half goals while Qarabag shocked Benfica.

Dusan Vlahovic and Lloyd Kelly scored in stoppage time to inspire a dramatic Juventus escape, as they secured a 4-4 draw in a game where all eight goals came after the break.

Any Crystal Palace supporters looking for good omens will know beating Millwall is a good place to start.

Oliver Glasner’s side saw off their south London rivals on their way to winning the FA Cup last season and it required heroics from the debutant Walter Benítez in a penalty shootout to overcome Alex Neil’s Championship battlers this time around after a late equaliser from Ryan Leonard cancelled out the opener from Chris Richards. But while Palace stretched their unbeaten run to 16 matches in all competitions, this was another night to forget for Romain Esse as he was substituted at half-time following a very public display of dissatisfaction from his manager.

Our cartoonist tells the ancient Greek tale of one godlike figure’s pursuit of glory at the City Ground

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• David’s new book, Chaos in the Box: buy it now

Athletic Club’s goalkeeper on hosting Arsenal in the Champions League and the magic of San Mamés

“Sometimes you need some luck; that was mine,” Unai Simón says. “What I thought might happen in five, six, seven years happened in 19 days.”

It was August 2018, Simón was 21 and although he had been training at Athletic Club for a decade, and with the first team for three years, the son of police officers from Vitoria didn’t think there was a chance of playing in Bilbao any time soon, if at all. It was all he wanted but he didn’t even live there any more, moving 800km in search of an opportunity with second division Elche. Which is when weird things started to happen.

Russo shines in the No 10 role, bluntness costs Liverpool and London City struggle with juggling act

Alessia Russo opened her account for the season in style, powering an effort from the edge of the box into the top corner and converting a second from the spot in Arsenal’s 5-1 defeat of West Ham. The England forward also provided the assist for Stina Blackstenius’s goal to put the visitors in front in the second half. Russo showed how effective she can be in the No 10 role as well, her goals and assist coming once she had dropped deeper after Blackstenius came on. “She is really good from those positions – that’s why we’ve been working with Less every now and then in that position,” said the head coach, Renée Slegers. “We have two really good 9s and sometimes we need a Russo player type in the 9 and sometimes we need the Blackstenius player type in the 9, and then we know that Less can do the 10 as well.” SW

Match report: West Ham 1-5 Arsenal

Match report: Everton 0-2 Spurs

Coach broke with tradition after first league win of season that helped calm talk about ability to take club forwards

Happiness was this once; now there is only relief but it is something. In fact, for a little while on Saturday night, it feels like everything. At the end of each game when the final whistle goes, so does Diego Simeone: sprinting down the tunnel and straight up the stairs, not a word to anyone and not outrun by anyone either, no stopping and no looking back. This time, though, is different. Juan Martínez Munuera brings Atlético Madrid’s 2-0 win over Villarreal to a close a little before 11pm, 63,312 fans erupting; a little after 11pm, at the top of the steps under the stand where the fourth official awaits his colleagues and the visitors trudge past tearing off tape and turning right, there’s still no Simeone.

Usually the first through, not even slowing here once he’s safely out of sight of supporters and cameras, a figure in a skinny black suit dashing past a pair of security guards, down the corridor to the left and into an empty dressing room, this time Atlético’s manager is outside under the lights instead. He heads on to the pitch, embracing his players. He screams at Koke, his captain, crushing him with a cuddle. Pulls Antoine Griezmann close and whispers something in his ear, only he has to shout to be heard over the noise. High fives his son Giuliano, who is also one of his wingers. And then joins the rest of them celebrating before the south stand, communion complete.

A sensational game had siblings as frenemies, an English defender’s first Serie A goal and a teenage match-winner

Igor Tudor sat down, straightened his tie and acknowledged we had all just witnessed a “particular game”. Seven goals (including some absolute screamers), back-and-forth lead changes, brothers as frenemies, a star turn from one of Serie A’s emerging talents and a deciding goal from a teenager. “Particular” was one word for this season’s first Derby d’Italia. “Completely bonkers”, might be two more.

Let us go back to the beginning. Juventus were hosting Inter on Saturday evening in a game that felt like it might have arrived a little too soon for everyone involved.

The team is climbing up the Ligue 1 table but fans are sick of being treated like ‘pawns’ by the Chelsea owners

By Get French Football News

Strasbourg are a club torn between inertia and evolution. Change is visible all around the Meinau: in its recently developed stands and on the pitch where, in two years, they have gone from perennial relegation strugglers to Champions League candidates. The motor for change was BlueCo’s purchase of the club in 2023. The takeover was met with stout opposition and the team’s upward trajectory since has done little to remould public opinion.

“I feel like we are back at the beginning. I am so disappointed with the reaction,” complained Liam Rosenior on Sunday, exasperated by the latest fan protests. You needn’t scratch too much to uncover the resentment that bubbles beneath the surface of the Meinau. The 15-minute strike, where the club’s ultras remain silent at the start of matches, is now just a common feature of Strasbourg fixtures, and you are never more than a few weeks away from a lengthy and often explosive supporters group communique denouncing some facet of the management of the club.

Forty-eight teams will participate in next summer’s World Cup and 30 places are still up for grabs

Forty-eight teams will participate in next summer’s World Cup, with the hosts, Canada, Mexico and the United States, granted automatic entry. A further 43 places are determined by qualifying competitions from the six confederations and the remaining two will be decided at March’s six-team intercontinental playoffs in Monterrey and Guadalajara. After this month’s internationals, 18 countries have places booked. The draw is due to take place on 5 December at Washington’s Kennedy Center.

An upbeat Jamie Vardy insists he is ‘never to old to learn’ on his unveiling at the newly promoted Serie A club

In Cremona everything is about music: the city, located in the heart of the Po Valley, is where the greatest luthier of all time, Antonio Stradivari, was born. His violins – unique pieces, each identified by a name – are today in the hands of some of the greatest musicians in the world and can fetch a price of more than £10m.

So it was no coincidence that the Violin Museum, in Piazza Guglielmo Marconi, was chosen to unveil who the city’s football team, Cremonese, hope will become their greatest soloist: Jamie Vardy.

Shutting out a hefty majority of countries – 35 out of 47 – is a risky strategy for premier club competition in the world’s biggest continent

There are plenty of similarities between the Champions Leagues run by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and Uefa. The two tournaments now follow the same calendar – Asia recently transitioned from a spring start to an autumn one – and the group stage, which kicks off next week, has the same unwieldy format whereby teams play eight opponents once. Also, neither competition involves many Asian nations. Uefa’s version has two – Israel and Kazakhstan – while the AFC’s has 11, with Australia coming in from Oceania to complete the dozen.

However, whatever the problems with Europe’s biggest club tournament, every country is represented and has a theoretical chance of getting to the group stage and, ultimately, all the way to the title. Fifty-three out of the 55 member associations (Russia and Liechtenstein are the absentees) have at least one hopeful. That is true of only 12 of 47 in the AFC Champions League Elite. Three-quarters of Asian countries are either nowhere to be seen or located in the two lower-tier tournaments, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.

Brazil lost qualifiers in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia … just like they did before the 2002 World Cup

Despite how it might look on paper, Brazil did not necessarily hit a new low at high altitude by losing 1-0 against Bolivia this week. As their place at the World Cup was already reserved, Carlo Ancelotti could afford to field a second-string side with seven changes. It looked like they would return home from 4,000 metres above sea level with a draw until Bruno Guimarães gave away a penalty.

Miguel Terceros smashed the spot-kick past Alisson, securing a place in the playoffs for the hosts, who are now dreaming of reaching the World Cup for the first time since 1994, which is, of course, when Brazil won the tournament in the US. This has been a successful campaign for Bolivia. Not so Brazil, who finished fifth in the table with just 28 points from 18 games, making it the worst qualification campaign in their history.

Two of the summer’s biggest transfer moves from Germany to the Premier League are starkly contrasting prospects

What must a footballer who costs €80m, €100m or more be able to do and prove? He should be a promising prospect at the age of 17 to 20; occupy a clear position on the pitch; be one of the five most important players in a team; perform consistently over many years; prove himself in international competition; and be physically strong. This applies to virtually all those players in this price range: Kylian Mbappé, Neymar, Ronaldo, Erling Haaland, Jude Bellingham and Ousmane Dembélé.

Two German footballers moved to the Premier League for such a sum in the summer. One of them meets these criteria. Florian Wirtz’s career has been impressive. He caught the football’s attention as a teenager. It was only a matter of time before he made his breakthrough.

What goes on tour, stays on tour as Uefa meets to discuss La Liga’s and Serie A’s request to play competitive matches abroad

The caramel-coloured tiles on the facade are long gone, and the name changed eight years ago, and there are now wraparound LED screens and an “immersive” museum experience and a lot more bright yellow than you would ideally want. And it’s harder to park right next to the ground like you used to, and many of the locals still insist on calling it El Madrigal. But still they come every other weekend, and buy horchata from the stalls out the front, and sit with the same old friends in the same old bars with the same old faded photos on the wall. Because for all that has changed over the years, this is still their town, their team, their tradition. And when their beloved Villarreal are playing there is nowhere else they would rather be.

But when they play their home game against Barcelona the week before Christmas, the Estadio de la Cerámica is likely to be sitting empty. For the small industrial town of 50,000 just off the A7 motorway, it will feel just like any other night. The classic club anthems will reverberate not in Castellón but more than 4,000 miles away in the Miami suburbs. And football’s dystopian, fungible future will never have been closer to becoming its dystopian, fungible present.

Major step to qualification with win in Serbia brings back memories of Waddle, Gascoigne and Italia 90 for head coach

Thomas Tuchel has not been short of recommended reading material since his appointment as England’s head coach. Or documentaries to watch. The suggestions have come from everywhere, but especially the media, who are eager to help out with presumed gaps in his knowledge of the nation’s football history. This is the real cost of turning to a guy from overseas.

Has Tuchel seen the fly-on-the-wall programme with Graham Taylor from 1994: An Impossible Job? No? He has to put that right. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if Tuchel could allow the cameras in for a sequel as he targets glory at the 2026 World Cup? It was put to him a few months back. Strangely, he did not seem keen.

Nuno exit was inevitable after he went public but successor will need to win over squad and learn from errors

Crossing the Nottingham Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, is rarely a wise move. When Nuno Espírito Santo went public about the deteriorating relationship between the two most important men at the City Ground, a parting of ways became inevitable.

Nuno deserved better after leading Forest back to Europe after 30 years away and his popularity within the club means it will be difficult for Ange Postecoglou to replace him. Players and staff will not immediately embrace the change because of the admiration and warmth they felt for Nuno.

Our cartoonist looks back at a departed hero’s memorable moments after his 25-year reign at Spurs

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Former Brentford striker missed out on England’s qualifiers but he believes the standard of Saudi football should not be ignored

Ivan Toney is aware of the outside noise. He hardly needs reminding that plenty of people have had their say since he swapped the Premier League for the Saudi Pro League just over a year ago. An Asian Champions League winner’s medal and 35 goals for Al-Ahli later, the striker is defiant, even if he found himself on the outside as England played their latest World Cup qualifiers.

“Those that know me, know that I do what I want to do,” Toney says. “If there is something I want to go for, to try, then I will do it. If people want to talk, they can talk. It doesn’t hurt me, doesn’t bother me, I just concentrate on myself. I do what makes me happy.”

TV host explains how a new Premier League initiative can help to end the taboo around mental health issues

“I go to football every week, all my life. Home, away, England away, all of it,” says Roman Kemp. “And there is something about it that is transcendent. It almost feels like religion to me. Like if you go on holiday and you go into a church, even if it’s empty, you can feel the energy it’s got in there. A football stadium is the same.”

Kemp, the kind of Gooner who performs his own statistical analysis of Arsenal’s season (“I look at the league and I do a side-by-side comparison of points gained, points lost”), brings to his passion for football the same all-encompassing enthusiasm that has made him a star of TV, radio and podcasting. And he believes that the game, and its unique place in society, can play an important role in addressing another subject close to his heart: suicide.

Offloading the error-prone goalkeeper has added to rather than solved the goalkeeping conundrum at Old Trafford

Altay Bayindir: age 27, seven Premier League appearances for Manchester United and a catalogue of game-costing errors. Senne Lammens: age 23, has never played in English football. Tom Heaton: age 39, last Premier League game January 2020, for Aston Villa. André Onana: age 29, 72 Premier League matches, Champions League and Europa League finalist, and a catalogue of game-costing errors.

The first three are goalkeepers Ruben Amorim can field on Sunday in the derby at Manchester City and beyond. The last is the keeper who is joining Trabzonspor for the season in what appears to be one more head-scratching development at a club that continues to seek clarity.

British prime ministers have been pretty much invisible on the terraces … until now. And football is always telling you things

If you’d told Keir Starmer last summer that just over a year after his election as prime minister he would single‑handedly, and by the sheer force of his own personality, have stopped England fans from singing songs about the IRA and Ten German Bombers, he would no doubt have been delighted. I guess they must really like me then. Phase One Goals. You warned me off, Jeremy, but I knew the Arsenal thing was a good idea.

Either way Starmer has now made this happen. England fans are not singing about those things any more. They are instead singing about him being a wanker and how he should fuck off, something they continued to do this week from Birmingham to Belgrade. So, a partial success then, Sir Keir. Delivery. Pragmatism. Yes, I think we can work with this.

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After enduring the slog of one season of Bigger Cup with its “Swiss Model” 36-strong league table, where each team plays eight matches against different sides, Football Daily still hasn’t decided if Uefa’s experimental new format is better, worse or much the same as the fairly jeopardy-free group stage it replaced. Instead of needing what seemed like an already excessive 96 matches to whittle the 32 competing teams down to 16, as its name suggests, Bigger Cup now requires a whopping 144 matches to eliminate just 12 of the 36 teams lining up on this season’s grid. A $uper €eague in all but name, Uefa is painfully aware its flagship club competition is now an even more unwieldy, bloated mess that places unreasonable and unnecessary demands on the bodies of exhausted footballers but doesn’t appear to care. When it means it gets to pit Manchester City against Real Madrid for the 11th time in six seasons and the cash keeps rolling in, then who is Uefa to concern itself with Mikel Arteta looking increasingly forlorn at the sight of a succession of Arsenal players pulling up lame with hammy-twang as they sprint from the Duty Free checkout to the boarding gate for their flights to Bilbao, Prague or Milan?

With all the offers he has received, I think it is really, really brave [to stay]. Everyone says to him, ‘you should do this, or you should do that’ and I think he is true to himself. He believes in what we are doing here and knows the grass is not always greener on the other side. [Ole Gunnar] Solskjær went to Besiktas and he’s not there anymore. He has done a hell of a job and the loyalty he has to the club, to the people and the project is extraordinary … the easy part would be to go for the money and hop on to somewhere else” – Bodø/Glimt suit Havard Sakariassen tempts fate by praising manager Kjetil Knutsen’s “extraordinary” devotion to the Norwegian minnows, who he has led to Bigger Cup despite heralding from a fishing town in the Arctic circle that Football Daily could fit into its back pocket.

Chris Wilder has the ideal opportunity to out-Ange the new Forest boss at Sheffield United (yesterday’s Football Daily) and declare the arrival of trophies on his third tenure” – Callum Taylor.

Lovely quote of the day yesterday concerning the Thuram brothers and their dad. A far cry from the last time I played a match against my brother: he executed a double-footed, over-the-ball tackle into my knee that left me unable to walk for a month, and with a scar that’s still visible 40 years later. To add literal insult to injury, the referee (who happened to be our dad) didn’t even book him, let alone send him off, claiming not to have seen the incident, despite it happening three feet in front of him. Happy days” – Paul Taverner.

Re: yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs (full email edition). The story of Manchester City rather churlishly firing a barman for wearing a United top (and fair play to him, I’m not that brave) reminds me of a rather amusing tale from my youth. Arriving unfashionably late to an FA Cup replay circa 2008 between Liverpool and Luton, which involved sprinting across Stanley Park, we were met by a steward at the away end who greeted us with a cheerful: ‘I hope you lads win tonight, I [expletive deleted]-ing hate Liverpool.’ [Narrator: Luton did not win.] Still brings a smile to my sadly less youthful face all these years on” – Patrick Brennan.

The attacking midfielder sparkled against United, giving City a boost for the season and England hope for the 2026 World Cup

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One of the many mysteries of last season for Manchester City was Phil Foden. When he was a teenager, everybody knew how good he was. He had been probably the key player shortly after turning 17 as England won the Under-17 World Cup in 2017, and there had been a clamour for him to play for Manchester City long before Pep Guardiola began to start him regularly in 2020-21. For four seasons he was one of the best players in the league and then, suddenly, there was nothing – at least by the exceptionally high standards he had set.

Foden had not had a good Euros in 2024. He has never really produced his best for England, a function perhaps of him playing for a club with such a specific style of play. Take him out of that regimented environment where he knew exactly what runs to make, exactly where his teammates would be moving, and he found it hard to adapt. And England generally did not play well at that Euros, despite reaching the final; the front end of the team was a mess, lacking the balance of previous Gareth Southgate sides.

La Liga’s salary limit applies to the whole club and with six players leaving this summer, is the club’s golden era over?

How times have changed. For the past few years Barcelona have been the team everyone wanted to join: five consecutive Champions League finals, stylish football, leaders in women’s football, a stunning city and Ballon d’Or winners for teammates. However, 10 years after becoming professional, the three-time European champions are a club in trouble.

Restricted by La Liga’s financial fair play rules, the women’s team have had a calamitous summer transfer window. There have been six departures – all to the Women’s Super League – while the midfielder Alba Caño is leaving for the NWSL in January. They made only one signing, Laia Aleixandri on a free transfer from Manchester City.

See which hot shots are leading the way in the English top flight’s goalscoring charts this season

Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Emma Sanders and Tom Garry to round up all the weekend’s WSL action

On today’s pod: the panel rounds up all the weekend’s WSL action as Manchester United and Arsenal both scored five in convincing wins, with Alessia Russo and Melvine Malard stealing the headlines. Chelsea were far from their best but still saw off Aston Villa, with Sam Kerr only needing 13 minutes to mark her return with a goal.

Elsewhere, Leicester held on for a gritty win over Liverpool, Spurs cruised past Everton at Goodison Park, and Manchester City came from behind to beat Brighton. The panel also touches on drama in the Championship, Ash Thompson’s suspension at Sheffield United, England’s newly announced autumn friendlies, and whether Barcelona could really sell off their women’s team.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Lars Sivertsen and Jonathan Wilson as Premier League football returns after the international break

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On the podcast today: Manchester City comfortably win the derby at the Etihad. They were the better side across the pitch and Phil Foden’s performance will be heartening for City fans. Conversely, United make familiar mistakes so the panel ponder what Ruben Amorim is doing to address them.

Plus: more First Division players from unusual places, and the first team with a star on their shirt

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“In their Conference League game away to Legia Warsaw, Hibernian wore parts of all three of this season’s kits – third shirt, away shorts and home socks,” noted Euan Williamson last week. “Has any other team done this before?”

As mixed kits go, the ensemble worn by Hibs in Poland – black shirt, green shorts and green socks – looked good. Hibs, who had lost the first 2-1 at Easter Road, came within seconds of a famous triumph before eventually losing in extra-time.

Any more examples? Email us here…

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