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• Barça’s 28th title caps fine debut season for Hansi Flick
• Lamine Yamal scores stunner in 2-0 win over local rivals

The day the league title race began, Wojciech Szczesny was sitting on the beach in Marbella, lighting up a cigarette, enjoying his retirement; the day it ended nine months on, he was on the pitch at the RCDE Stadium, 1,000km north, celebrating alongside the friends old and new with whom he had just become a champion again. At 35, the Polish goalkeeper had been convinced to come out of retirement for one last job, and what a job it was, a season he hadn’t even expected to play ending with a league and cup double after a 2-0 win at rivals Espanyol.

He was joined at Barcelona by a stellar cast, a whole new generation that includes a kid 17 years and three months his junior – a teenager at the other end of a career that might yet be one of the best there has ever been.

Goodbyes to Goodison and Vardy, Palace and City brace for Wembley and the return of Kai Havertz

Aston Villa could not conceal their anger after their game at home to Tottenham was brought forward 48 hours. Villa’s director of football operations, Damian Vidagany, said shifting the game from Sunday to Friday was “clear prejudice” against the club and Villa objected to Spurs’s request for it to be moved to aid their preparations for Wednesday’s Europa League final. Villa were also privately perplexed at Bournemouth’s game with Manchester City being rearranged for Tuesday, after Saturday’s FA Cup final, which is guaranteed to have implications on whether eighth place qualifies for the Europa Conference League. The flipside to all of this is Villa can get on the front foot, kicking off 45 minutes before Chelsea entertain Manchester United and two days before Nottingham Forest head to West Ham and Arsenal host Newcastle. Victory for Villa could hoist them as high as fourth before a final-day trip to Old Trafford and, psychologically, that could prove a knockout blow. Ben Fisher

Aston Villa v Tottenham, Premier League, Friday 7.30pm (all times BST)

Chelsea v Manchester United, Premier League, Friday 8.15pm

Crystal Palace v Manchester City, FA Cup final, Saturday 4.30pm

Matty Godden’s late strike sent Charlton through to the League One playoff final after a 1-0 win over Wycombe. Godden scrambled the only goal over the two legs after 171 minutes of attritional football to secure a Wembley date against Leyton Orient on 25 May. The Charlton manager, Nathan Jones, sank to his knees as fans invaded the pitch in emotional scenes after the final whistle.

Lloyd Jones had earlier missed a golden chance for Charlton, while Kayne Ramsay made two stunning blocks to deny Wycombe. But Lloyd Jones made amends by setting up Godden to fire Charlton to within one match of a return to the Championship, five years after they were relegated.

• Fifa president arrives late at congress after Gulf trip
• Europe delegates walk out in protest at schedule changes

Uefa has accused the Fifa ­president, Gianni Infantino, of pursuing ­“private political interests” ahead of his responsibilities to football. The shock intervention from European football’s governing body came after several national delegates walked out on the annual Fifa congress earlier on Thursday.

The delegates, who included the president of Uefa, Aleksander Ceferin, and the chair of the Football Association, Debbie Hewitt, did so in protest at alterations to the meeting’s schedule, caused by Infantino arriving late to proceedings after accompanying Donald Trump on a tour of Gulf states.

• Club escaped Championship relegation on final day
• Spaniard won nine of 27 league games in charge

Hull have sacked their head coach, Rubén Sellés, after less than six months in charge.

The club escaped Championship relegation on the final day of the season on goal difference, having been bottom when Sellés was appointed in December. The 41-year-old Spaniard is the third manager sacked by the Hull owner, Acun Ilicali, in the past 12 months and the club now begin their search for a fifth permanent coach since the Turkish media executive took control in early 2022.

• La Liga complained about state aid to European Commission
• Submission reportedly provided insufficient evidence

Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain will face no action from the European Commission after allegations they breached EU competition law. La Liga’s president, Javier Tebas, had filed complaints about the clubs’ alleged use of state resources under the EU’s foreign subsidies regulation.

Tebas alleged in his submission in July 2023 that City and PSG receive resources under non-market conditions from the governments of Abu Dhabi and Qatar respectively, disrupting markets by enabling them to spend more than their rivals on players and coaches, and that the clubs obtained sponsorship income at levels that did not align with fair market value. The clubs denied the allegations and pointed to their accounts as proof of no wrongdoing. They also claimed Tebas had a history of attacking them owing to envy of their success and financial resources.

• Sonia Bompastor praises ‘game-changing’ cash injection
• Funding boosts manager’s Champions League hopes

Sonia Bompastor has described the £20m investment of the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in Chelsea Women as “a gamechanging investment for the women’s game” before their FA Cup final against Manchester United on Sunday, at which the new minority owner will be in attendance.

“We speak about the investment but it is also the values underpinning it,” the Chelsea manager said of the move by the husband of the tennis great Serena Williams, the winner of 23 grand slam singles titles. “That’s really important for the women’s game but also for the game in England. It shows we are in a really great place at the moment.

• No clause in loan deal that stops other clubs buying him
• Striker eager to join Champions League side

Marcus Rashford could move for £40m to a team other than Aston Villa should Manchester United receive a bid of this value despite the Midlands club having an option to buy him for that sum.

Rashford signed for Villa on loan in January and it is understood there is no clause in their agreement with United that prevents other clubs from buying him for the same price if the parent club and forward agree to the move.

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Denied a nail-biting denouement by the Best League In The World™, where the champions and relegated sides were all but mathematically confirmed about 15 matches ago, more than a few Premier League observers have spent the past couple of weeks glancing towards the Netherlands while exhibiting hitherto unprecedented symptoms of a malaise Football Daily is diagnosing as Eredivisie Envy. For so long the neglected cousin of Europe’s Big Five, the Dutch top flight is largely left to its own devices while its English, Spanish, German, Italian and French relatives chew the fat at European football’s Big Boy table, only diverting their attention towards the low countries when it comes to hoovering up emerging talent. On Wednesday, however, the pancake-flat land of tulips, wooden footwear and uncomfortably forthright conversation stole continental headlines as European heavyweights Ajax completed their latest pratfall en route to what could be one of the most apocalyptic chokes in football history.

How do you go from being a kid watching Everton from the Boys’ Pen to having a statue on Goodison Road? If someone had presented me back then with a history of my life, I’d have said: ‘Don’t be silly, nothing like that is ever going to happen to me.’ But it did. When I was told the statue was going to be made it was one of my proudest moments. I’ve had a fantastic football life and it amazes me when I look back on it” – Colin Harvey gets his chat on with Andy Hunter in an interview so heartwarming even your Daily was glowing inside.

Final against Dynamo Kyiv had edge, flares and burning Russian flags but some of the enmity has gone; as one fan says: ‘Aggression must stay in the war zone’

Valeriy Bondar vaults a perfunctory metal fence, is handed a flare from somewhere in the melee and waves it around in the night sky. Shakhtar Donetsk have won the Ukrainian Cup, finally beating Dynamo Kyiv on penalties: light and smoke fill the air in Polissya Stadion’s south-west corner but there is something else, too. A trickle of supporters have been allowed back into many of the country’s arenas since February 2024 but more than 5,000 are packed in this time and the scenes are redolent of a different era. There has been no occasion quite like this on Ukraine’s soil for well over three years.

Fireworks have been a theme all day. Ninety minutes before kick-off in Zhytomyr several dozen Shakhtar ultras from different groups convene on a footbridge that dramatically spans the River Teteriv, towards the outskirts of this neat provincial city, and march towards the ground in a pyrotechnic haze. “It’s the first time in years that we’ve all been together in numbers like this,” says one of them, Taras, whose organisation sends equipment to soldiers at the front. About 70% of those present on the bridge are in active service, he estimates.

Dan Ndoye’s goal secures a 1-0 win over Milan and sparks scenes of joy in the Piazza Maggiore once again

Vincenzo Italiano knew there was a little bit of poison in the chalice offered to him last summer but accepted it anyway. The opportunity to manage Bologna was a chance to lead a Champions League team for the first time in his career. It was also an invitation to become the public face of a project that had nowhere to go but backwards.

What could he possibly do to improve on the work of the previous manager, Thiago Motta, who led Bologna back into Europe’s top club competition for the first time in 60 years? Italiano would not even have the same group of players to work with. Joshua Zirkzee, the top scorer, was on his way to Manchester United and the newly capped Italy defender Riccardo Calafiori to Arsenal. Lewis Ferguson would be out for months with a cruciate ligament tear.

• Team fighting for top five and Conference League trophy
• Maresca: ‘Show desire to bring club where it has to be’

Enzo Maresca has urged Chelsea’s players to take responsibility in the season’s closing weeks, with the club fighting for a top-five finish in the Premier League and preparing for the Conference League final.

Fifth-placed Chelsea meet Manchester United at Stamford Bridge on Friday night in their penultimate league fixture before a trip to Nottingham Forest, another side battling for Champions League qualification, on Sunday week.

• Dutch international came through Manchester City ranks
• Trent Alexander-Arnold exit leaves right-back gap

Liverpool are set to trigger Jeremie Frimpong’s €35m (£29.5m) release clause after contacting Bayer Leverkusen and holding talks with the defender as they seek a replacement for Trent Alexander-Arnold.

The Netherlands international has been of interest to his compatriot Arne Slot for a lengthy period. Frimpong was born in Amsterdam but spent much of his childhood in Manchester and came through the ranks at Manchester City before moving to Celtic as a teenager. Under Uefa regulations, he would count as a homegrown player in England.

• The 38-year-old to miss away finale and bow out at home
• Title-winning teammates expected for Sunday’s game

Jamie Vardy is expected to call time on his Leicester career after his 500th appearance for the club this weekend. Vardy, regarded by many as Leicester’s greatest ever player, has spent 13 years at the club and is poised to make his final appearance for them at home to Ipswich on Sunday and then not feature in their final Premier League match, at Bournemouth.

The 38-year-old striker, who is poised to captain Leicester for the final time, announced last month, after relegation to the Championship was confirmed, that he would leave the club at the end of the season. He was central to Leicester winning the Premier League against all odds in 2016 and the FA Cup in 2021 but conceded he wanted to depart on a better note, after a desperate season in the top flight, describing his own campaign as a “total embarrassment”. He will hope to score a 200th goal in a Leicester shirt against Ipswich.

• Asencio and three former Madrid youth players accused
• Gran Canaria incident in 2023 involved ‘a female minor’

The Real Madrid defender Raúl Asencio and three former youth players at the club could face trial in connection with the alleged filming and distribution of a sexual video that has left two women, one of them a minor, with symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

In a statement released on Wednesday, a judge on Gran Canaria said he had concluded his preliminary investigation into the recording and distribution of the incident, which is alleged to have taken place in a private area of a beach club on the island on 15 June 2023.

• FA chair among those to walk out of annual meeting
• Infantino arrived late after Donald Trump trip

Representatives from several European Fifa member associations walked out of the governing body’s annual congress in Paraguay in protest of president Gianni Infantino’s late arrival to the proceedings on Thursday. Infantino had been in the Middle East this week along with Donald Trump visiting leaders from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and arrived in Paraguay hours late for a scheduled 10.30am start time to his organization’s annual meeting.

The departing members included eight European members of the Fifa Council – the main decision-making body that sets the agenda for the wider congress. Uefa’s representatives on the Council to have walked out include Uefa president Alexander Čeferin and Football Association chair Debbie Hewitt. Other delegates to have left proceedings in protest include Norway Football Federation president Lise Klaveness, who called Infantino’s late arrival “disappointing” and “concerning.”

Manchester United’s captain, her dad and a youth team coach reminisce about the first steps of her career before Sunday’s FA Cup final against Chelsea at Wembley

Black and white jerseys hang from a washing line tied to a shipping container and, inside the adjacent clubhouse, a group of lads are sipping cold beers on a bank holiday Monday afternoon. This is St Martin’s AC, a quintessential community club hidden down the narrowest of side roads on the island of Guernsey. Hanging proudly in a frame above the club’s bar is a No 4 shirt bearing the name: “Le Tiss”.

As the Manchester United captain enters her old clubhouse to greet former teammates, they immediately exchange banter. Maya Le Tissier is back home among those who saw her grow up from a toddler kicking a ball around to a 23-year-old who will, on Sunday, lead her team out at Wembley.

Senegal forward’s signing last summer was years in the making and his double helped fire Palace to the FA Cup final

Ismaïla Sarr hasn’t had many more memorable weeks. But most remarkable about his match-winning performance for Crystal Palace in the FA Cup semi-final against Aston Villa is that it came after his wife, Fatou, had given birth to twins a few days earlier. “It was a surprise – nobody knew,” said the manager Oliver Glasner after Palace’s thrilling victory at Wembley thanks to two goals from the Senegal forward.

Eberechi Eze said the BBC pundit Alan Shearer had awarded him player of the match “a bit prematurely” before Sarr’s second. “I’ll be giving this to him inside – he’s a top player and he’s helped us so much this season,” the England forward said.

Everton won the first derby they hosted, Dixie Dean set his goals record there and Pelé made World Cup history

Goodison Park is officially opened by Lord Kinnaird, president of the Football Association and the only man to have played in nine FA Cup finals. Everton directors had purchased Mere Green Field, as it was known, after a rent dispute with John Houlding, the club’s former president and landlord of their previous home of nine years – Anfield. The new stadium was built in three months by the Walton building company Kelly Brothers, and at a cost of about £3,500, with stands on three sides and a bank of cinders on the Goodison Road side. The turf came from Aintree.

The former Newcastle stalwart on his admiration for Eddie Howe, a brutal pre-season with Paolo Di Canio and a fairytale finish to his career captaining Portsmouth

It is not the first time Matt Ritchie has heard the line suggesting he should have been driving Newcastle’s open-top bus when the squad paraded the Carabao Cup before 300,000 supporters between St James’ Park and the Town Moor. “I’m not sure I could because I think it’s a different licence for commercial use,” he says, smiling, alluding to the LGV Category C one he obtained in the last of his eight seasons at the club.

There is no haulage sideline but rather he and his wife, Emma, who enjoys equestrian and showjumping, took the tests so they could drive a horsebox. “It is easy … you just have to take the corners a bit wider. I loved doing it because it was out of my comfort zone. The theory test was the hardest, hazard perception … there are tricks in there. It was like being a kid again: ‘I want to get this right.’”

Plus: hat-trick heroes who didn’t get a medal, shot-shy matchwinners and Jimmy Hill being caught off guard

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“The Inter keeper Yann Sommer was named player of the match against Barcelona despite conceding three goals. He made some great saves so it wasn’t undeserved, but I wondered if there were other unusual PotM awards,” says John Barrow.

This season’s Champions League tie between Real Madrid and Atlético will be remembered for Julián Alvarez’s two-touch penalty being ruled out. Before that Alvarez had inspired Atlético to a 1-0 victory on the night that took the tie to a penalty shootout; he was Uefa’s player of the match. Nick Berry could have written a song about it.

New home and away kits for the US men’s and women’s national teams are bound to elicit opinions. Here’s what our experts think

The primary kit, white with a star print, will be worn only by the US women to start. Dubbed the “Brilliant Kit,” the marketing pitch says it’s a “tribute to the trailblazers who have shaped soccer and inspired generations. Star details are drawn directly from iconic past WNT kits, fused with a modern silhouette to reflect the optimism, leadership, and evolution of the game.” Does the kit accomplish this, to you?

I appreciate Nike saying the modern silhouette is reflecting all of those very nice-sounding buzzwords and not just “we put this design on one of our current kit models instead of reproducing shirt sizes from 1999 because no one wants to run around in baggy polyester any more.” Are the star details from past USWNT that are referenced supposed to be the stars they got from winning World Cups? If so, that’s a good flex. Unfortunately, the biggest visual reference this one conjures to me is the ‘94 men’s denim kit (which the women did not wear – the USWNT and USMNT designs didn’t match up until a couple decades later). I like the retro feel of it all and so that look-back-at-the-past direction succeeds. I can do without the rest of the blurb. AS

Santiago Montiel scored a dramatic goal from outside of the area to seal a 1-0 win for Club Atlético Independiente against Independiente Rivadavia.

Captain has swapped rejection for affection and added to a season of unbelievable highs in thrilling clásico

Barcelona couldn’t get the player they wanted so they just had to settle for the best. At the end of another wild, joyous and exhausting afternoon, another clásico won their way, the captain called them all into the middle of Montjuïc. And where Raphael Dias Belloli calls, his teammates follow, all the way to the title. Which was why, an arm raised, a wrist wrapped in a blue bandage lifted above the crowd like a symbol of strength, the Brazilian who has been better than anyone anywhere, now gathered them round and led them into a lap of honour together. It was time to give thanks; time to get thanks, too.

They had earned it. Real Madrid, who were supposed to be invincible, had been beaten again. Sunday was the fourth time time this season, a record unmatched in 125 years: four victories in as many cities, Barcelona scoring four goals to go with the three, five and four in the previous clásicos, a circle closed. The first was the statement that started it all, a declaration of intent at the Bernabéu; the second won the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia; the third brought the Copa del Rey back from Seville; now they had virtually secured the league, a 4-3 win taking them seven points clear with nine left, double almost done.

An astonishing array of outcomes remain possible with two games left in tantalisingly unpredictable end to season

Antonio Conte characterised it as Napoli’s “bonus” game, a free swing, the mistake they could yet afford. A 2-2 draw at home to Genoa left a bitter taste, after having taken the lead in both halves, but this was no time to panic. “Before this we needed seven points to win the Scudetto,” said Conte. “We took one, so now we must win our last two games.”

It sounded so simple, put like that, but we had just been reminded of why it will not be. Genoa at home was supposed to be the most straightforward of Napoli’s remaining fixtures, against opponents with no objectives left to play for.

• Australia skipper not included among 23 players to face world No 33
• New-look team to play two matches in Melbourne and Canberra

The long wait for Sam Kerr’s return to competitive football continues with the Matildas skipper missing from Australia’s squad for upcoming friendlies against Argentina.

Kerr is into a 16th month of recuperation after undergoing surgery on a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament sustained in January 2024, and while she tentatively returned to the training field at her club Chelsea towards the end of the Women’s Super League season, she is not yet deemed ready for a recall to the national set up.

Assistant referees need more scope to use their common sense as opposed to simply relying on VAR

It was an accident waiting to happen. Anyone with an ounce of common sense could see the potential for the International Football Association Board’s offside protocols in the era of the video assistant referee (VAR) system to cause serious injury. Needless collisions are inexcusable. It should not have been allowed to reach the point where we are wondering whether Nottingham Forest’s Taiwo Awoniyi being placed in an induced coma will act as a red flag for the authorities.

Injuries happen. What is not acceptable is the safety of players being compromised as a result of technology warping the game and officials being instructed not to flag for offside if a goalscoring opportunity is on the cards. Thankfully, he was reported to have woken from his coma on Wednesday evening.

Stormy Anfield reaction to news of full-back’s exit on a free gives Liverpool coach a choice to make as trophy lift nears

A large portion of Liverpool’s match‑going support delivered a damning verdict on Trent Alexander-Arnold’s career choice on Sunday and, in one short sentence, Virgil van Dijk explained perfectly why there is no need for an encore when the champions return to Anfield to collect the Premier League trophy on 25 May. “There’s a lot more players that also deserve an amazing day,” the Liverpool captain said. There is no division or dissent on that score.

Arsenal’s visit to Anfield should also have been one long celebration, as well as an opportunity to demonstrate the gulf between the Premier League’s first and second-placed teams this season. The first half played out exactly that way. Arsenal may have produced a reaction that increased Mikel Arteta’s anger before Alexander‑Arnold’s introduction – “I hate reaction, I like action” – but the party was over as soon as the Real Madrid‑bound defender replaced Conor Bradley in the 67th minute.

Murals of McTominay in Naples? Don’t rule that out with the volatile manager who never stays long despite serial success

There’s always a Tottenham exception. Since leaving Siena in 2011, since he got his first break with a club that had a realistic chance of winning trophies, Antonio Conte has won league titles with Juventus, Chelsea and Inter. Going into Sunday’s matches, with three games remaining, his Napoli lead Inter by three points. In a decade and a half he has won a trophy with every club he has managed, apart from Tottenham.

Maybe Tottenham simply aren’t a club that had a realistic chance of winning trophies. Certainly it’s not as familiar to them as it is to Juventus, Chelsea and Inter. Napoli were Serie A title winners the season before last. Conte led Tottenham for 17 months and although he has the fifth-best win record of any Spurs manager, although he took them to fourth in his first season, having replaced Nuno Espírito Santo in the November, and although they were fourth when he left in March 2023, by the end the situation was so toxic as to be unsustainable.

While Fifa’s chief of global development focuses on offside toes and noses, VAR needs a helping hand somewhere else

Five years ago, Fifa’s chief of global development, Arsène Wenger, outlined his bold plans to change the offside law.

“The most difficult [issue] that people have [with VAR] is the offside rule,” he said. “You have had offsides by a fraction of a centimetre, literally by a nose. It is the time to do this quickly.

Our cartoonist details some notable moments from the 133-year history of one of Britain’s most iconic stadiums

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Elegant player and legendary coach looks back on some of his finest moments at ‘iconic’ Goodison Park

Standing outside a pawnbrokers on Goodison Road, waiting for his dad to emerge through the crowd after the match, a young Colin Harvey could not have imagined what lay in front of him. Standing in the same place today, the great Evertonian would face a statue of himself immortalised alongside fellow members of “The Holy Trinity”, Howard Kendall and Alan Ball. Time has not diminished the 80-year-old’s wonder at his life and legacy at Goodison Park.

“How do you go from being a kid watching Everton from the Boys’ Pen to having a statue on Goodison Road?” he says, with genuine astonishment. “If someone had presented me back then with a history of my life in football I’d have said: ‘Don’t be silly, nothing like that is ever going to happen to me.’ But it did. When I was told the statue was going to be made it was one of my proudest moments. I’ve had a fantastic football life and it amazes me when I look back on it.”

Having waited so long to win his first title, England striker reflects on his journey amid beer-soaked revelry in Munich

It is late in Munich, approaching midnight, when Harry Kane appears. The nondescript, windowless TV interview room below the Allianz Arena could not be more of a contrast to the giddy, beer-soaked, firework-lit riot of celebration going on outside as Bayern Munich savour a 34th league title. There’s also something different about Kane, and it’s not just the gold medal.

The Kane visage that usually accompanies him at the end of a cup final, that little-boy-lost look of overwhelming disappointment, is gone. You cannot help but notice the broad grin, the relaxed body language and the tactile ease in the greeting, a man intoxicated by euphoria. “It’s been a long night,” he says, beaming. “And it’s just the beginning.”

Emily Husband, one of only two female coaches in the league, can create history against Melbourne Victory on Sunday

The Central Coast Mariners weren’t supposed to crash the A-League Women grand final, but they face Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park on Sunday.

Two years ago they didn’t even exist. The Mariners’ women’s programme was in its 13th year of inactivity after being mothballed for financial reasons (serious concerns over the ever-impecunious club’s viability still linger). On the field, they made a celebrated return for the 2023–24 season, riding the wave of momentum born from Australia hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup to stun Victory in an elimination final, before running into the eventual champions Sydney FC in the semi-finals.

Fans protested against the leveraged takeover but were offered little support and the toxicity has had a lasting impact

The first time the Glazer family visited Old Trafford, in June 2005, they paid a visit to the megastore. Outside, hundreds of furious Manchester United fans turned up with banners and placards, shouted slogans such as “Die Glazer die”, and a few clashed with police. Inside, the Glazers were doing a spot of – and here we must stretch the word to its broadest possible definition – shopping.

For Joel, Avram and Bryan had no intention of doing anything quite as undignified as parting with their own cash. Instead they swarmed the aisles, scooped up armfuls of replica shirts and merchandise, which shop staff dutifully ran through the tills and bagged up. When the time came to leave, the Glazers simply took the bags and left. This was, after all, all their own property, theirs to take and use as they pleased. And as a metaphor for how they intended to run Manchester United over the next 20 years, it is about as good as any.

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“Til the End”. That was the message that flashed up on the Stadium of Light’s advertising hoardings as Enzo Le Fée lined up a corner with three seconds left in extra time. Back at the halfway line, both managers were scribbling out lists of penalty takers. Sunderland, having produced an early knockdown by winning the first leg of this Championship playoff semi-final, had spent much of the previous 121 minutes and 57 seconds of Tuesday’s second leg against Coventry on the ropes. Yet here they were. Le Fée lifted the ball towards the near post, where Dan Ballard mistimed his leap spectacularly, ending up in a sort of crouched star jump as the ball deflected off his head, on to the crossbar, and into the net. The pin-drop silence was replaced by an almighty roar, a collective outpouring of relief and joy that seemed to move in waves as the home fans realised what it all meant. After 15 seconds of letting the crowd be heard (and watching Ballard struggle to get his own shirt off), Sky’s Gary Weaver picked up the mic. “An incredible noise that can almost be heard at Wembley!”

My dream now is coming to an end. You have to reinvent yourself. I’m starting to take the blinkers off, opening my eyes. What can I learn? I travelled back and forth from Newcastle to Bournemouth with JT [Jason Tindall] and Purchey [Stephen Purches] for two years. You’d get on the plane: they’d be on the laptop. In the airport, on the laptop, phone. ‘Have you seen this, Purch?’ You can’t switch off. They are constantly thinking about the next game. ‘How can we improve?’ I am thankful for those experiences, I’ve sucked it all up. It has given me a picture of what management might look like” – Matt Ritchie gets his chat on with Ben Fisher about his admiration for Eddie Howe, brutal pre-season training with Paolo Di Canio and a dream finish to his career captaining Portsmouth to safety.

That settles it. England are not one of the great football nations (yesterday’s Football Daily). Thanks for setting the record straight” – Steve Mintz.

Let me be one of 1,057 people to wonder about ‘In the modern era none of the great football nations have countenanced appointing a foreign manager’. It seems only yesterday that Sven took England to Munich and beat Germany 5-1. If that wasn’t the achievement of a great football nation, I have to wonder about your definition of ‘the modern era’” –Mike Walsh.

So, Sunderland are going to a Wembley final as underdogs. Now that’s never happened before (and as a Leeds fan of over 55 years standing, I was only just getting over it)” – Allastair McGillivray.

Could I use your space to defend myself against Nick Jeffery at the head of his hoard of 10000100001 barcode supporters (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). The Newcastle strip is clearly not a barcode. The stripes are equal width and equal spacing, and there is no obvious start or end point. Add to that the puzzle of working out a player’s arm and sleeve position which leaves handball calls looking like no-brainers. And obviously, not everything that is black-and-white is a barcode. Why, think of a badly scorched polar bear on a pedestrian crossing ... The RFID chip may solve many of Newcastle’s 21st-century digital desires, but it’s hard to imagine a goalscorer proudly thumping or kissing an anonymous area of shirt to demonstrate his allegiance to an invisible piece of firmware. No, the QR code it has to be. I’m already picturing some massive QR tifos, with dubious messages, sending the suits off to decode is it just Geordie vernacular or is it genuinely inviting Mr Infantino to do 000001?” – Ken Muir.

Mikel Arteta has explanations for his team’s shortcomings that may hold water, but ultimately the Gunners simply couldn’t get it done when needed

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The problem is that when the game doesn’t matter, other elements begin to take over. In other circumstances, Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Liverpool on Sunday would have been an intriguing minor classic; but then, in other circumstances, it might not have gone like that. As it was, with the title won and Arsenal secure in the Champions League qualification slots, a clash between the top two became the stage for discussion of the booing of Trent Alexander-Arnold and a weird confected online fury about whether Myles Lewis-Skelly had applauded Liverpool with sufficient gusto in the guard of honour.

At least, from Arsenal’s point of view, the game followed the opposite pattern to the one with which we’ve become familiar. Arsenal have dropped 21 points from winning positions this season (Liverpool just 13), while Liverpool have gained 22 (Arsenal just 13). If they’d matched each other in those respects, Arsenal would be two points clear at the top of the league; that essentially is the difference between them.

The Copa do Brasil is back after a nine-year break but there are concerns about Brazil’s top flight before a first World Cup in South America

After a nine-year hiatus, fans of Brazilian women’s football will once again be able to support their clubs in the Copa do Brasil. The cup will bring together 65 clubs from the three divisions of the national women’s football league, starting with a preliminary round on 21 May and concluding with the final in November. It is a return that has long been requested by the women’s football community in Brazil in order to expand the calendar for lower-division clubs and gives high-profile teams such as Flamengo, Corinthians and Santos another opportunity to compete for silverware.

However, all is not rosy on the Brazilian club scene only two years before Brazil are to host the Women’s World Cup for the first time. There have been a few years of growing sponsorship and visibility in the top tier, the Brasileirão A1, but this season has exposed the challenges facing the game.

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Union captain Lisa Heiseler, who has been at the club since she was 13, talks about promotion to the Frauen-Bundesliga

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In a campaign notable for exciting imports and spectacular goals, there was consensus on the outstanding manager

Phallon Tullis-Joyce looked assured for Manchester United all season, unfazed by the Mary Earps-sized gloves she had to fill. Her command of the goal and her ability to make crucial saves propelled Manchester United up the table. With 13 clean sheets she shares the Golden Glove with Hannah Hampton. Xaymaca Awoyungbo

PSG and Inter will play for the crown at the end of the month but there were plenty of twists and turns before the finalists were decided

Inter