Find a Football Team

Our cartoonist on the trouble at Anfield after Egyptian’s stinging response to being dropped by Arne Slot

• David’s favourite cartoons of 2025 | Buy one here

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

With the Sky Sports Monday Night Football cameras rolling at Molineux, Wolves fans seized the additional publicity surrounding their latest inevitable loss to stage a protest against their club’s ownership. When the match against Manchester United kicked off, they massed on the concourse, a sea of old gold and black leaving the stands conspicuously empty for the opening 10 minutes. In a moment of seemingly cosmic irony – or perhaps a cruel act of counter-defiance – referee Michael Salisbury didn’t blow his final whistle until the clock had ticked over into the 10th minute of added time. By then, the game was long over as a contest and Wolves had succumbed to another defeat, a depressing staple of their season. Fans who stayed home and watched the broadcast will have seen the affable James Maddison tell David Jones and Jamie Carragher about enjoying “the little wins” (fathering twins, getting back on the grass and growing a ducktail mullet) during his recovery from serious knee-knack. They must have been wondering if they will ever get to see Wolves register a win again.

Please! No mo’ of the low Slot-Salah show from Peter Oh (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). All his alliteration gave me a pain in the assonance. We all know, though, it’s about the dough” – Justin Kavanagh.

Surprised how negative the English commentary is about Salah. Do I really have to listen to journos and old players rant on and on about team loyalty? Last year turned out to be the final year of Kloppball, not the first year of Slotball. If a manager can’t figure out how to get along with Salah, nor get his very expensive signings to perform in a way that justifies his mistreatment of the Egyptian, he’s not up to it” – Richard McGahey.

After all the much-deserved plaudits he’s received in recent weeks, a final doff of the cap to Martin O’Neill. He rejoined Celtic after they’d just lost to Hearts, by far the best team in the Scottish Premiership (I know, I know), and then signed off with a win, promptly before they had to play against, and inevitably lose to, Hearts again. As O’Neill clearly knows, the secret to great management, like comedy, is timing” – Noble Francis.

Back in those heady days when Trevor Francis and Chris Waddle graced Sheffield Wednesday with their presence, I was working for the club’s official sponsor (the amounts involved would make everyone laugh today). This gave me access – I’m not saying I’m proud about it – to tickets for the FA Cup semi-final between Wednesday and Sheffield United played at the grand old Wembley stadium. On the big day, we all forgot that both teams had fans working for the company until the Unitedites mixed among us jumped in the air to celebrate the first goal! Fighting was avoided, and the game ended better for Wednesday (perhaps Noble Francis was also there?), although we lost to Arsenal in both cup finals that year (and didn’t get into Europe!). Anyway, I was reminded about the experience a couple of days ago when my eldest son, Santander born and bred, went to watch Racing play away at Cádiz and could only get a ticket to sit with the home fans. With a certain amount of luck and perhaps even some help from the ref, Racing scored in the 93rd minute to win 3-2. And yet after the game, as my son and his friends walked back to their lodgings in their green, white and black scarves, no less than five Cádiz fans approached to CONGRATULATE THEM on the win!” – Matthew Kipwell.

• Naz sustained injury against Aston Villa on Sunday

• She will have surgery and will not play again this season

The England winger Jessica Naz will miss the rest of the season after sustaining an anterior cruciate ligament injury in her right knee.

The 25-year-old was withdrawn injured during Tottenham’s Women’s Super League victory over Aston Villa on Sunday. Spurs released a statement on Tuesday saying that Naz would undergo surgery.

In an exclusive interview the younger Chawinga sister talks about missing her older sibling Tabitha, her hopes for Malawi and life at Kansas City Current

Kansas City Current’s Temwa Chawinga has doubled up as the NWSL’s top scorer and MVP for the second year in a row – just two years after Tabitha, her elder sister and mentor, was the Golden Boot winner with Internazionale in Italy’s Serie A Femminile. It is no exaggeration to describe the duo, from Malawi, as football’s equivalent of the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena.

“I hope Temwa and I get to meet them someday,” Tabitha says of the tennis legends. Now with French side OL Lyonnes, the 29-year-old insists that her younger sibling will have a more distinguished career despite setting an extremely high bar in the Swedish, Chinese and Italian leagues, in which Chawinga has won several Golden Boot and MVP awards.

• Inter Miami star scored 29 goals with 19 assists

• Messi won MLS Cup MVP in South Florida on Saturday

After a season in which he led Inter Miami to the club’s first MLS Cup, Lionel Messi has been named the Landon Donovan MLS Most Valuable Player for the 2025 season. League commissioner Don Garber made the announcement on Tuesday, capping a season in which Messi scored 29 goals with 19 assists in 28 appearances, one short of Carlos Vela’s record for goal contributions in a single season (though Vela’s was done in 31 games).

Messi joins Kansas City Wizards legend Preki as the only players to win the MVP award twice, with Messi being the first to win two such awards consecutively. At 38, Messi is not the oldest MVP in MLS history – that distinction also goes to Preki, who was the oldest MVP in the history of North American professional sports when he won the award at age 40 in 2003.

Club gets boost for development of Racecourse Ground, but move comes months after it received £14m state aid

The Wrexham AFC owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have sold a stake in the company to the US private equity investors Apollo, less than three months after the football club was given £14m in state aid.

The Welsh club on Monday announced the investment by Apollo Sports Capital, part of the New York-listed investor. It did not reveal the size of the investment, but said Reynolds and McElhenney, who has changed his name to Rob Mac, would remain majority owners.

The former England striker on stepping up to tackle racism, protecting his sons and Liverpool’s woes

Emile Heskey was about 14 years old when he was chased from Leicester City’s old Filbert Street stadium all the way into town by a man shouting racist abuse. He was a Leicester fan who had no idea he was abusing a player who would go on to help his club win promotion to the Premier League and two League Cups before a move to Liverpool for what, at the time, was the club’s record transfer fee.

“Fast forward three years that same guy would’ve been chanting my name in the stadium,” Heskey says now. “This is our reality.”

MPs, media and supporter groups accuse club of attacking press freedom with bar after reporting on owner

Brighton & Hove Albion has been accused of setting a “dangerous precedent”, as it faced criticism for banning Guardian reporters and photographers from home matches after reports on allegations concerning the club’s owner.

MPs, media and football supporter groups accused the Premier League club of attacking press freedom after its decision to bar the Guardian from the Amex Stadium, after coverage of allegations relating to Tony Bloom.

• Draw also features League One Exeter at Manchester City

• Aston Villa will go to Tottenham in all-Premier League tie

The non-league club Macclesfield will host the FA Cup holders, ­Crystal ­ Palace, in the third round of the tournament this season, in one of the standout ties of the draw.

Macclesfield, who are 14th in National League North, will face Oliver Glasner’s Palace, fourth in the ­Premier League, in a classic David and Goliath pairing when the fixtures are played on the weekend of 10-11 ­January 2026.

HSV are back in the Bundesliga and remain a huge club even if they have adjusted expectations this season

Alexander Røssing-Lelesiit did not play for Hamburg in Sunday’s stellar win, and he will hope that his career has more decisive contributions than this one in store. As the final whistle went on a breathless Nordderby victory over Werder Bremen, the 18-year-old bobbed in front of the visitors’ bench and celebrated wildly, prompting some afters between the two squads in a game that bubbled excitedly without exploding into disorder.

Those from Bremen were less than impressed. Justin Njinmah, who had looked like saving a point for Werder when equalising at 2-2 less than 10 minutes after coming on as a substitute, named no names but complained that “some injured HSV players ran on to the field and thought they had to gesticulate and talk shit. That pisses me off. But I guess that’s part of a derby.”

Yes, this is a derby, and then some. Njinmah needed no reminding – he is from Hamburg after all – but there has been plenty of time to forget just how big this is. Sunday’s edition was the first top-flight Nordderby in 2,843 days, and it didn’t disappoint. If Werder’s goal to take the lead at the end of the first half, an ice-cold finish by Jens Stage, felt like it might have been transplanted from a different game, the blue touchpaper was really lit after the interval. Albert Sambi Lokonga levelled for Hamburg just after the hour, as the roof raised and the emotion started to flow.

English manager says ‘it’s not the time to panic’ but Alsace club want a return on their €100m+ summer investment

By Get French Football News

As one of the few areas of France which celebrate Saint Nicholas Day, Alsace had festive processions and performances taking place across the region last Saturday. The travelling Strasbourg fans, though, were in no mood for a party on their way back from Toulouse after a third consecutive defeat.

“It’s not the time to panic,” Liam Rosenior insisted after his Strasbourg team failed to find a response to Emersonn’s early opener for Les Violets. “We have to stay consistent and keep working hard. I won’t change our style of play, because it’s brought us success.”

Hosts were shown five cards in 38 seconds before Williot Swedberg delivered the coup de grace that left them bereft

Sunday night’s final scene at the Santiago Bernabéu was the way a final scene should be. Like something from a war film or a western, a heist movie or the truest romance, Williot Swedberg just walked calmly through the chaos and the noise, nothing the defeated could do now. Some had fallen, others just froze: all of them left behind with only the realisation, watching in slow motion as he went, their fate sealed and his victory secured, the story finished even before he had. Suitably cinematic and so cool.

When did you last see someone literally walk the ball in? Here, of all places, it happened, and it was the perfect picture. An hour had gone when Swedberg, unseen, appeared like a shadow, providing a flick so subtle it wasn’t seen at first either and so soft it was like he was wearing slippers. That had deservedly delivered the opening goal, Celta leading 1-0. Now, into added time 19 years since they last won a league game here and having resisted the bugle call, the Bernabéu doing its Bernabéu thing, it was time to add the coup de grace.

• Every game will pause 22 minutes into each half

• Breaks will essentially split games into four “quarters”

• Fifa said the change is in the interest of player safety

Fifa says it will include three-minute hydration breaks in each half of every game at next year’s World Cup, not just those played in hot weather.

The referee will stop the game 22 minutes into each half for players to take drinks, regardless of the temperature, the host country – the United States, Canada or Mexico – or whether the stadium has a roof and air conditioning.

• Forward says he is ‘building confidence’ with Maresca

• Manager praises Atalanta before Champions League tie

Alejandro Garnacho has said that he has no regrets about the manner of his departure from Manchester United, and that it was a straightforward decision to “take a step forward” by ­joining Chelsea last summer.

Garnacho has had a steady, rather than sparkling, first few months since he joined Chelsea in August. His relationship with Ruben Amorim had collapsed by the end of his five‑year stint at United and he was banished from the squad in pre‑season. Amorim felt he had failed to follow tactical instructions and, before the transfer was completed, said he sensed Garnacho wanted “a different thing with different leadership”.

• Wales could meet Canada at World Cup after playoffs

• Bellamy riled by Jesse Marsch’s high fives in September

Craig Bellamy has revived his feud with Jesse Marsch after Wales were put on the same World Cup path as co-hosts Canada.

Bellamy felt slighted by Marsch and his staff celebrating with touchline high fives before the final whistle sounded on Canada’s 1-0 September friendly victory in Swansea. The Wales head coach reacted to those premature celebrations by saying after the game: “I hope I see you at the World Cup.”

Ex-footballer targeted pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko, and broadcaster Jeremy Vine, in ‘sustained campaign of online abuse’

The former footballer Joey Barton has been sentenced to six months in custody, suspended for 18 months, over a series of offensive social media posts between January and March 2024.

Barton, 43, was found guilty last month at Liverpool crown court of six counts of sending a grossly offensive electronic communication with intent to cause distress or anxiety for posts he made targeting the football pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko, and the broadcaster Jeremy Vine.

• Yang extorted £153,000 from former Spurs player

• Co-conspirator receives two-year sentence in Seoul court

A woman has been sentenced in Seoul to four years in prison for blackmailing South Korean football star Son Heung-min.

The woman, identified only as Yang, was charged with extorting 300 million won (£153,000) from Son in 2024 after sending him an ultrasound photo of a baby that she claimed was his and demanding money to stay silent.

Kick off your afternoon with the Guardian’s take on the world of football

Every weekday, we’ll deliver a roundup the football news and gossip in our own belligerent, sometimes intelligent and – very occasionally – funny way. Still not convinced? Find out what you’re missing here.

Try our other sports emails: there’s weekly catch-ups for cricket in The Spin and rugby union in The Breakdown, and our seven-day round-up of the best of our sports journalism in The Recap.

Living in Australia? Try the Guardian Australia’s daily sports newsletter

Get our roundup of women’s football for free twice a week, featuring the insights of experts such as Ada Hegerberg and Magdalena Eriksson

Join us as we delve deeper into the wonderful world of women’s football in our weekly newsletter. It is informative, entertaining, global, critical – when needed – and, above all, passionate. Written mainly by Júlia Belas Trindade and Sophie Downey, expect guest appearances from stars such as Anita Asante, Ada Hegerberg and many more.

Try our other sports emails: as well as the occasionally funny football email The Fiver from Monday to Friday, there are weekly catch-ups for cricket in The Spin and rugby union in The Breakdown, and our seven-day roundup of the best of our sports journalism in The Recap.

Living in Australia? Try the Guardian Australia’s daily sports newsletter

Our editors’ favourite sporting images from the past week, from the spectacular to the powerful, and with a little bit of fun thrown in

The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s action

Subscribe to get our editors’ pick of the Guardian’s award-winning sport coverage. We’ll email you the stand-out features and interviews, insightful analysis and highlights from the archive, plus films, podcasts, galleries and more – all arriving in your inbox at every Friday lunchtime. And we’ll set you up for the weekend and let you know our live coverage plans so you’ll be ahead of the game. Here’s what you can expect from us.

Try our other sports emails: there’s daily football news and gossip in The Fiver, and weekly catch-ups for cricket in The Spin and rugby union in The Breakdown.

Living in Australia? Try the Guardian Australia’s daily sports newsletter

Manchester City show their resilience, Spurs eye the Champions League and Liverpool look to splash the cash

How much has Manchester City’s mentality evolved and strengthened? After they overcame a stubborn Leicester City side 3-0 on Sunday to claim a ninth straight win, it would appear the answer to that question is “significantly” compared to recent seasons, as they demonstrated a unity and a composure that has perhaps evaded many title hopefuls of old. December last year brought moments when Manchester City’s campaign began to unravel, through a combination of injuries and surprise defeats. On Sunday they looked like potential champions in the sense that they found a way to win what could very easily have become a frustrating game, against a back five in a low block. Andrée Jeglertz pointed to this professionalism and calmness at full time: “I’m very proud and pleased with the patience the players are showing, the trust, the belief. They are not starting to yell at each other, they just keep believing in each other and believing in what we are doing.” Tom Garry

Mohamed Salah’s row with Liverpool follows a long line of player-club spats – here are some of the most memorable

When players break dressing-room code by airing their grievances publicly, the result is almost always the same: a breakdown of trust and an unceremonious exit. After Mohamed Salah became the latest to express his dissatisfaction, we look at the others whose explosive comments sealed their fate.

Club legends in opposing dugouts, Turin giants as underdogs against the juggernaut Partenopei … it was a weird night at the Maradona

The man with the Napoli tattoo was met with hostile whistles on his return to the Stadio Maradona. Luciano Spalletti had the club’s emblem inked on to his arm, together with a Scudetto badge, after leading the Partenopei to their third Serie A title in 2023. The design made it appear as though someone had torn into his flesh, revealing his true essence, a connection more than just skin deep.

But then he accepted the manager’s job at Juventus. For many Napoli supporters this was the ultimate sin, joining the club they hate the most. From others there was a measure of understanding. Spalletti had been out of work for four months after being sacked by the Italian national team in the middle of an ailing World Cup qualifying campaign. The opportunity to succeed Igor Tudor in Turin at the end of October was a chance to get his career back on track.

Friday’s ceremony in Washington DC was cringe-inducing and craven enough to make football fans nostalgic for the reign of Sepp Blatter

Well, that was awful, wasn’t it? Donald Trump’s heroic victory over a field of one to claim the inaugural Fifa peace prize, on-stage banter so dead it was already fossilized, Gianni Infantino doing crowd work, and Wayne Gretzky struggling through the pronunciation of “Macedonia” and “Curaçao” in the draw’s linguistic group of death: even with the benefit of a few days’ distance it’s impossible to overstate how impressively bad the draw for the 2026 World Cup, held last Friday at the Trump-purged Kennedy Center in Washington DC, was.

“This is America, so we have to put on a show!” roared Fifa president Infantino, resembling a Sphinx cat in a borrowed suit, at the beginning of the ceremony. And put on a show Fifa did – just not one that anyone wanted to watch, least of all a desperately bored-looking Trump, who sat through Andrea Bocelli’s Nessun Dorma with the granitic joylessness that has become his default expression at each of the sporting events he’s ruined with his presence this year. Just let the man get back to the White House; he’s the president of the United States, for god’s sake, he has bathrooms to redesign.

This book extract details how Pozzo, the only manager to win two men’s World Cups, had his character shaped in an Italian Alpine regiment during the first world war

Vittorio Pozzo, the only manager to win two men’s World Cups, in 1934 and 1938, is often celebrated as the competition’s greatest manager. But long before he masterminded the Azzurri’s twin triumphs, Pozzo was a young officer enduring the brutal realities of the first world war. Pozzo’s experiences in the trenches from 1915 to 1918, by his own admission, forged the discipline, resilience and leadership that defined his coaching philosophy.

Born in Turin in 1886, Pozzo fell in love with football while watching Manchester United in his youth. By 1911 he was back in Italy, helping found Torino FC and managing the club’s early teams. When Italy entered the war in May 1915, the 29-year-old volunteered immediately as a lieutenant in the 1st Alpini Regiment, elite mountain troops specialised in high-altitude combat.

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

• Subscribe to Moving the Goalposts, our free newsletter

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, John Brewin and Seb Hutchinson to discuss Mohamed Salah’s explosive interview, Arsenal’s late defeat at Villa and the best of the weekend’s Premier League action

On today’s pod: Mohamed Salah goes nuclear after being left out at Elland Road, questioning his head coach, his role and seemingly everything around him, as Liverpool throw away another late lead in a chaotic 3-3 draw with Leeds. The panel discuss the fallout of Salah’s words and reflect on Liverpool’s dismal run of form.

Meanwhile, Arsenal slip up at Villa thanks to an injury-time scramble, while Rayan Cherki’s rabona (or rotunda) helps keep Manchester City in the title hunt. The panel discusses all the weekend’s action, including the battle for fourth, as Palace move up into the top four, Everton somehow rise to sixth, and Spurs finally win at home.

Plus: Brighton bans the Guardian from the Amex after a week of revelations, as John Brewin discusses not being at the game. Plus reflections on the World Cup draw, including England’s path, Scotland’s group of doom and Gianni and Trump’s unforgettable stagecraft.

• US drew Australia, Paraguay, Euro play-off team

• Pochettino: friendlies tell little about WC tests

• Manage wants ‘final’ mindset for every match

Mauricio Pochettino said that it is “neither an advantage nor a disadvantage” that the United States’ World Cup group consists of two – and perhaps three – teams that his team will have played in friendlies within a year or so before kickoff of their opening game.

The US were drawn with Australia, Paraguay and the winner of a European play-off involving Turkey, Romania, Kosovo and Slovakia. The US played Australia in a friendly in October, winning 2-1 in Commerce City, Colorado. They played Paraguay in another friendly in November – a game that marked Gio Reyna’s return to form with the national team in a 2-1 win. Turkey, should they make it through the play-off, would have a leg up on preparations, having beaten the US 2-1 in a pre-Gold Cup friendly in June 2025.

Inaugural prize expected to be handed to Donald Trump but ‘process’ for choosing future winners to be proposed by controversial tycoon’s committee

It was the timing that set off the first alarm bells. With Donald Trump brooding over missing out on the Nobel peace prize, and shortly before Gianni Infantino, the president of world football’s governing body, Fifa, was due to meet the US president in Miami, an announcement was made.

In a press release and a post on his personal Instagram account last month, Infantino said Fifa would launch its very own peace prize, to be awarded each year to “individuals who help unite people in peace through unwavering commitment and special actions”.

How each team qualified, who will be favourites to progress to the knockout stage and which games to look out for

The opening game in the Azteca will be a repeat of the opener in 2010 when South Africa drew 1-1 with Mexico in Soccer City, Soweto. Mexico have won one knockout game at the World Cup, beating Bulgaria last time they hosted, in 1986. Their manager, Javier Aguirre, was a forward in that side and will be targeting their third quarter-final as hosts. South Africa, coached by the veteran Belgian Hugo Broos, qualified for their first World Cup since hosting, finishing above Nigeria and Benin, despite having a game against Lesotho they appeared to have won awarded against them for fielding a suspended player.

England manager happy to ‘focus on what we can influence’ after a draw that will live long in the memory and not for the right reasons

At the end of an extraordinary day in the US capital and a World Cup draw that lurched between the ridiculous and the sublime (with a greater emphasis on the former, if the truth be told), Thomas Tuchel and England now know. Croatia in Toronto or Dallas. Ghana in Boston or Toronto. Panama in New Jersey or Philadelphia. And that is just the group games.

With the excitement running wild and, well, England being England, their determination to bring it home to the fore, it was not long before the permutations were being scrutinised. It could be Mexico at the Azteca in the last 16 – the scene of the Hand of God in 1986. It could be Brazil in Miami in the quarter-finals. Tuchel pulled a face as if to say: “Wow.” There had been a lot to process. And that is before we talk about the Honourable Donald J Trump and his Fifa peace prize glory.

Each nation’s World Cup is defined, for good or bad, by huge, indelible moments. With a favorable draw, the onus is now on the US to create them

Christian Pulisic vividly remembers watching it with his family. So does Tyler Adams, who saw it with his friends from soccer camp. Memories of Tim Howard catching an Algerian header in Pretoria, and hurling it upfield to ignite the counterattack that would lead to Landon Donovan’s instantly iconic goal. The goal that spared the United States men’s national team’s blushes at the 2010 World Cup, sneaking them out of the group stage at Algeria’s expense. One of the most iconic moments in US socer history.

Pulisic was a few months from turning 12. Adams had just turned 10. Matt Turner would be 16 the next day, and Howard’s heroics made him wonder if he ought to devote himself fully to becoming a goalkeeper.

Perhaps the data-soaked discourse of modern football actually does this Premier League centurion something of a disservice

Stack them up. Pile them high. Sort them and arrange them, parse them and categorise them, order them to your table like items in a Chinese restaurant. Personal favourites? Give me the No 33 against Arsenal, the one with the flowing hair. I’ll also take a No 81 against Chelsea, when he spots a hapless Robert Sánchez out of goal, and lobs him deliciously from the edge of the area.

Give me a No 98 against Bournemouth, in which he deliberately slants his run around the keeper, slots it in from a tight angle, tries to clamber atop the advertising hoardings in triumph, loses his balance, collapses in peals of giggles. And maybe chuck in a No 53 against Brentford, in which Kristoffer Ajer somehow manages to fall over without being touched, spooked into incoherence by his very presence.

Our cartoonist on what inspired him to draw some of his finest cartoons this year

• Buy a special print from his collection here

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

“Denis Law is one of the few footballers I’m too young to have seen play live, but like all followers of the game, I’m aware of his impact and talent. What I hadn’t fully appreciated was what a kind and generous person he was – something that became obvious as I read the many tributes to his character, in preparation for this cartoon”.

That he stayed after relegation in 1978 and lifted the FA Cup with the team still in Division Two typified his commitment

Some players embody a club but few have ever embodied their side more than Billy Bonds, who died on Sunday at the age of 79. He was not a one-club man but by the time he finally retired, at the age of 41, in 1988, he felt like one, having racked up a record 799 appearances for West Ham. Just as significantly, he had lifted the FA Cup twice as captain.

There was applause at the London Stadium on Sunday as a montage was shown on the big screens. It featured a number of spectacular long-range strikes because it’s easier to show somebody scoring goals than preventing them, and still harder to somehow sum up leadership.

For a man who insists football isn’t political, the Fifa boss is putting a lot of effort into courting the most divisive politician on Earth

Gianni Infantino was 18 years old the first time he ran for office. It was a presidential election at FC Brig-Glis, the local amateur football club in the small Swiss town where he grew up. Running against two older men, and with no discernible footballing record of his own, the little red-haired kid with freckles was, unsurprisingly, the rank outsider in the race.

But he had a vision. He had a ferocious work ethic, boundless enthusiasm, well-established networks in the town’s Italian immigrant community. And even at this tender age, he had a flair for an eye-catching scheme. To the shock of many veterans at the club, Infantino surged to victory: partly on the back of his pledge to attract new sponsors and revenue streams, and partly on something more tangible. Infantino promised that if he won, his mother Maria would wash all the players’ kits, every week, for as long as he was president.

Leaders wary of the topsy-turvy nature of a competitive fifth tier which is an obstacle course as well as a marathon

There is arguably no tougher feat in modern football than gaining automatic promotion from the National League. Even Wrexham, with all their Hollywood money, took three seasons to crack the code of the solitary automatic spot. There is an illustrious list of former Football League clubs queueing up at the summit of the fifth tier with an eye on the promised land, all upwardly mobile and thriving after battling through various crises. All but two– one up automatically, one through the playoffs – will end the season disappointed.

Rochdale believe they can be the chosen ones. Saved from liquidation last year by a £2m takeover by local family the Ogdens, the club are now thriving on the pitch under Jimmy McNulty and hoping for a return to the EFL, where they enjoyed a 102-year unbroken stay between 1921 and 2023.

Liverpool have dropped to 12th in the table – matching the lowest finish by reigning Premier League champions

By WhoScored

Six defeats in 12 top-flight games is not just a wobble. It’s one of the worst starts ever made by defending Premier League champions. The last team to begin their title defence this badly was Leicester City in 2016-17. They finished 12th that season – where Liverpool are now – with Claudio Ranieri sacked midway through the campaign. The same fate befell José Mourinho at Chelsea in the 2015-16 season. They started with seven defeats in 12 games, a collapse so severe that Mourinho was shown the door a week before Christmas. For Liverpool and Arne Slot, the warning signs could not be clearer.

The transformation from champions to chaos has been stark. Just six months ago, Slot was heralded as a record breaker, the man who had taken on the unenviable task of replacing club legend Jürgen Klopp and done it with apparent ease. Under his guidance, Liverpool clinched the title with four games to spare, an achievement only three other teams have managed. Slot became the third-youngest manager to win the Premier League, the fifth to win it in his first season in England and, most importantly, he brought the title to Anfield for just the second time in 35 years.

Handing the Egyptian a contract extension while also bringing about a new identity has backfired terribly

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

There is perhaps nothing in a career as hard as the leaving of it. Unless something utterly remarkable happens, Mohamed Salah has played his last game for Liverpool. Left out of the starting lineup for each of the last three matches, he trained on Monday after his extraordinary post-match tirade following the 3-3 draw with Leeds but he has not been selected for the Champions League against Inter on Tuesday. He may or may not be with the team for Saturday’s game at Anfield against Brighton (“I don’t know if I am going to play or not but I am going to enjoy it,” he said). After that, he will be in Morocco for the Africa Cup of Nations with the Egypt national team and the transfer window will have opened by the time the tournament is over.

How has it come to this? Salah is one of Liverpool’s all-time greats. He lies behind only Ian Rush and Roger Hunt in their all-time goalscoring charts. Across all clubs, only Alan Shearer, Harry Kane and Wayne Rooney have scored more Premier League goals. He played a key role in two Premier League titles and a Champions League. He’s won the Premier League Golden Boot four times and been named player of the year three times by both his fellow players and soccer writers – including last year. He’s only 33 and there has been no obvious sign yet of him fading with age. This is not the end anybody would have wanted.

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

Won’t somebody think of the journalists? Having been forced to rewrite their on-the-whistle match reports at the speed of light due to a late equaliser, the members of the Fourth Estate covering the six-goal thriller between Leeds and Liverpool were already in a bad mood. As they took in the post-match managerial press conferences, filed the last of their follow-up copy and packed away their laptops, they had no idea their misery was about to get worse. A profession that regularly decries the pointlessness of post-match “flash” interviews, they will have been further incensed to learn that for only the third occasion in his time at the club, Mohamed Salah had elected to stop to talk to a hopeful hack. The ensuing scorched earth soliloquy was delivered with a calm composure that belied its incendiary nature and anyone who squinted could actually see the soul of a nearby Liverpool media-handler ascend from his body as he eavesdropped with mounting horror on each passing rapier thrust.

I was sorry to read this but as I’m back from my little antipodean sojourn and have reclaimed my Amex season tickets I’m happy to file a report from Brighton’s home matches if necessary. However, there’s no real need as the story rarely changes; intricate passing football, 68% possession, the away team goes 1-0 up, Hürzeler gets a yellow card, on 80 minutes everyone in the East stand goes home, Brighton get a 94th-minute equaliser exquisitely curled in from 25 yards, final whistle. Save yourselves all the trouble” – Tony Crawford.

As a concerned Liverpool fan, I really hope the club are able to sort out the dilemma with their disgruntled Egyptian talisman before the European trip this week. If they don’t, they’re risking some major Salah situation iteration alliteration: Seriously sticky San Siro Slot-Salah standoff” – Peter Oh.

Congratulations to the franchise known as Inter Miami, which sensibly doesn’t have a ‘history’ section on its website given that it had never kicked a ball before 2020, for winning the Philip F Anschutz trophy, which has an even greater history, going back all the way to 2008. Looking at what the franchise refers to as its ‘roster’, they seem to have combined some of the greatest names in world football from 10-15 years ago, like Leo Messi, Jordi Alba and Luis Suárez, with some of the greatest names in world football, like Baltasar Rodríguez, Israel Boatwright and Maximiliano Falcón” – Noble Francis.

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

Unbeaten in Europe and with eight wins in eight games domestically, the club are aiming high after name change

When the Olympique Lyonnais women’s team officially became OL Lyonnes on 19 May, they came with a new mantra: “New story, same legend”. The eight-time European champions, now owned by Michele Kang and part of Kynisca – a multi-club ownership group dedicated to women’s sports that also already includes the Washington Spirit – are a “new project” with the aim of “developing as a women’s club with our own model”. As Kang put it: “The women’s team cannot just be a little sister to the men’s section.”

The OL Lyonnes era kicked off on 7 September, coinciding with the Lyon’s 1,000th match in the French women’s top division, against Marseille. Kang was present, alongside Mikel Zubizarreta, Kynisca’s global sporting director, who was poached from Barcelona Femení last year. On the pitch, new recruits snatched from other European clubs this summer – Jule Brand, Lily Yohannes, Ashley Lawrence, Ingrid Engen, Korbin Shrader and Marie-Antoinette Katoto – discovered what it will be like to play at the Groupama Stadium, where the men’s team plays, for the entire season.

Sports Interactive has included the women’s game after its tireless effort of collating a comprehensive database

Within minutes I am in the deep end as the Arsenal manager before the start of the 2025-26 season, sizing up a transfer budget that does not match my ambitions for the club. I am immediately at odds with the board when I launch a rogue bid to sign Aitana Bonmatí, which is immediately rejected.

I manage to recruit Alex Greenwood to shore things up in the wake of Leah Williamson’s injury and my late bid for Patri Guijarro, who wants to be part of my project, falls through at the last minute with the budget once again the problem. I demand answers from the board as to why they will not release more funds when the player-in-question wants to join, pointing out that our scouting report says she’s a necessary replacement for Lia Wälti.

Arsenal feel effects of defensive injuries, Liverpool rue Konaté’s mistakes and Brentford struggle on the road

• Latest Premier League table | Top scorers

When the team sheets landed at Villa Park, Arsenal’s matchday squad again appeared imperious. Their bench included a £64m striker in Viktor Gyökeres, a trio of tricky wingers in Leandro Trossard, Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli and arguably England’s most exciting teenagers in Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri. But Arsenal arrived top-heavy, the only centre-back among the substitutes the 16-year-old Marli Salmon. By the time Emiliano Buendía clinched victory for Aston Villa with almost the final kick, it was clear Arsenal lacked the defensive solidity behind their pace-setting start; this defeat was only the fourth time since the start of 2022-23 that Mikel Arteta’s side began a league game without Gabriel Magalhães or William Saliba – and it showed. Cristhian Mosquera, potentially sidelined until the new year, was also absent. The good news for all parties – which probably extends to second-placed Manchester City – is that Arsenal and Villa will duke it out again on 30 December in the reverse fixture. Ben Fisher

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Jacob Steinberg as Chelsea lose 3-1 away at Leeds, Sunderland earn a draw at Anfield and Arsenal secure another straightforward win

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: another almost perfect night for Arsenal as title rivals Chelsea lose away at Leeds. The big man and big man strike partnership could turn Daniel Farke’s fortunes around.

Plus: the shambles that was 1950 World Cup qualifying, and plenty more brawling teammates

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Has any player been shown a second yellow card while being substituted for not leaving the pitch correctly?” wonders Ken Foster.

They have indeed, Ken. Let Robin Horton take you back to a bitter January in 1980, when Stoke City were the visitors to Burnley in the FA Cup third round. “Stoke’s Denis Smith, already on a yellow card, limped towards the touchline with an injured ankle, only to linger on the touchline as substitute Paul Johnson was not properly warmed up,” Robin recalls. “Referee Kevin McNally therefore sent Smith off for time-wasting. McNally was not in Stoke’s good books; Burnley won the tie via a penalty, and Stoke’s Ray Evans also got his marching orders, for what manager Alan Durban described as ‘heavy sarcasm’.” That’s as good a reason for a dismissal as we can remember.

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

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

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