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• Croat failed to win a league match during 44-day tenure

• Spurs hoping former Brighton manager can arrest slide

Tottenham have parted company with Igor Tudor after seven games and 44 days in a desperate attempt to halt their slide towards relegation from the Premier League. According to the club, the decision was mutually agreed. Spurs have now moved once again to try to persuade Roberto De Zerbi to come to their rescue and join them straight away.

The club considered a move for De Zerbi, the former Brighton manager, after they sacked Thomas Frank on 11 February and before they appointed Tudor. De Zerbi had just left Marseille but he decided he needed a break from the game and would most likely look to resume work in the summer.

• Pregnancy, contraception and menopause to be covered

• Groundbreaking changes an ‘incredibly welcome’ step

Female athletes are to benefit from a major breakthrough in insurance cover for pregnancy, contraception, menopause and other health conditions, as part of the implementation of recommendations in the Carney review.

The Women’s Football Taskforce ­commissioned Loughborough University – announced recently as the world’s No 1 ­university for sports-related subjects for a 10th consecutive year – to work with ­leading ­insurance providers and brokers to ensure female athletes are offered appropriate support in their ­insurance coverage.

Gabriel Zakuani played over 400 EFL games and captained the Democratic Republic of the Congo – now he helps his country recruit talent like Aaron Wan-Bissaka

A Costa Coffee in Purley was the unlikely venue for Gabriel Zakuani’s meeting in 2022 with Sébastien Desabre, the newly appointed manager of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but they were there on a secret mission. Aaron Wan-Bissaka was at Manchester Unitedand holding out for an England call-up after representing the under-21s. But Zakuani, who was raised in London but born in the Congolese capital Kinshasa and played for DRC at three Africa Cup of Nations tournaments, had different plans.

“The manager contacted me out of the blue and he was in London,” the former Peterborough defender says. “It was a very random trip – he just wanted to watch players that potentially could play for Congo. We met at Costa and less than an hour into the conversation I had rung up Aaron’s family and we were at Aaron’s house. We were having a conversation with his mum and dad about potentially getting him to change his nationality. It snowballed from there.”

• Only 2% thought VAR ‘makes football more enjoyable’

• 81% prefer watching games without video technology

Football supporters remain thoroughly unconvinced of the merits of video assistant referees (VAR), with new research suggesting as many as 91% of them believe the game is better off without it.

More than eight years after the first trials of VAR in the English game, an annual survey by the Football Supporters’ Association shows widespread dissatisfaction with the system, including the tweaks that have been brought in to improve how it is used.

The Three Lions have not beaten a good side under their coach and no A-list players have emerged since the last World Cup

Maybe we’re just not that into us. There are times when trying to rationalise the makeup, reach and ultimate capacities of the England football team can feel a bit like living inside the frantically hyper-formalised New York dating scene of the 1990s.

Here we go again. Picking over the details. Hung up on what-ifs. Arguing about The Rules of the Game. Don’t be too available. Never text first. Do wear a wizard hat. Learn magic tricks. And be rude to people. Also, be endlessly mysterious. No, more mysterious than that. Seriously, where do you get off not having enough mystery?

• Véron Mosengo-Omba was target of varied criticism

• ‘I can retire with peace of mind and without constraint’

Véron Mosengo-Omba, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) general secretary, has resigned after repeated calls for his removal and at a turbulent time for the game on the continent.

Mosengo-Omba said he was retiring but his departure comes amid a crisis of confidence in the organisation’s leadership, with a growing fallout over the decision to strip Senegal of the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) title and calls for an investigation into alleged corruption at African ­football’s governing body.

Relegation playoff against a WSL2 side beckons if Rick Passmoor’s team cannot end seven-game losing run

The sight of two unwaveringly optimistic young girls waving their “Foxes never quit” flags proudly in the air – despite the swirling rain at the King Power Stadium – summed up the never-say-die attitude required for a relegation battle that Leicester are going to need now more than ever, after their chances of staying up decreased significantly with this defeat on Sunday.

Even before losing against Brighton, Leicester’s hopes had sustained a big blow with the sight of Oona Siren hitting a superb, looping volley into the net to secure a valuable point for 11th‑placed West Ham in the lunchtime kick-off. The 1-1 draw at home against London City Lionesses edged West Ham further away from the bottom side Leicester, who went on to be deservedly beaten 1-0 by Brighton and find themselves four points adrift with four games remaining.

The United States’ collapse in a 5-2 loss to Belgium made clear that the gap between the sides in 2014 has yet to narrow

Mauricio Pochettino was literally unmoved.

To his left and right, his assistants pumped their fists, clapped their hands, rose to celebrate. Not Pochettino. After Weston McKennie put the US ahead with an end run around the Belgian defense that freed him up at the far post to tap the ball past Senne Lammens in the 39th minute, Pochettino just sat there, stoically, hunched forward in his seat, two fingers to his mouth.

Rasmus Højlund is back among the goals at Napoli while Kakub Kiwior has helped make Porto solid in defence and Largie Ramazani has given Valencia a creative spark

The Dane, like many others, struggled under Ruben Amorim at Old Trafford and was packed off to Naples. He scored on his debut, a 3-1 win over Fiorentina, and has been consistent since, netting 10 goals in 26 games for Serie A’s third-placed team. “Now it’s portrayed as if I’m back and just doing really well,” Højlund, who cost United £72m when they signed him from Atalanta in August 2023, said to Denmark’s TV2 last week. “But inside myself my thoughts are in a completely different place. I’m self-critical. I still want to be even better, more involved in the games and score more goals, but it’s fun to observe how the image of me is constantly changing.”

Players are not covering the distances of old – they are not being lazy but adapting to demands of an arduous campaign

There is nothing English football admires more than honest endeavour, which is perhaps a consequence of the league’s origins in the industrial cities of the north and Midlands. “He put in a shift.” “She did her job.” “He gave his all.” The language of football is the language of the pit or the factory floor.

All top-level players these days are supremely skilled, but still we demand that they be exhausted by the final whistle, legs leaden with effort, hair soaked with sweat. Which was why it seemed to cause such consternation when Alan Shearer mentioned on Match of the Day last Saturday that Chelsea have run less than their opponents in every Premier League game they have played this season.

Minnows have all but sewn up the Swiss Super League title with seven games to go having been favourites to go down

The FC Thun heroes do not hide their amusement and amazement when speaking about what has been an incredible season. They giggle when asked if they could possibly have expected such a scenario. They know that the situation is surreal and illogical. The words “incredible” and “unbelievable” are used frequently.

When Thun were promoted in May to the Swiss Super League, they were predicted to struggle. The Berner Zeitung journalist Adrian Horn says: “A lot of pundits identified them as No 1 relegation candidates. Expectations were very low, and fans thought that avoiding relegation would be a major success.”

England’s head coach still rates injury-prone Manchester City defender and seems likely to be a fundamental part of his squad this summer – if fit

Every manager reserves the right to make an exception to the rules. For Thomas Tuchel, it is John Stones. The England head coach has watched Stones endure a lost season at Manchester City; another one, really, because things were similar for him last time out – certainly in terms of appearances.

Once again, there have been injury problems, the sense that Stones cannot get himself fully right compounded over this past week with England. The 31-year-old struggled in training and when he felt something in a calf muscle on Thursday, Tuchel was forced to leave him out of the Wembley friendly against Uruguay on Friday night. He started Fikayo Tomori alongside Harry Maguire in central defence in a drab game that ended 1-1, while Stones has gone back to his club and will play no part against Japan on Tuesday.

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The tiny Caribbean island nation has a familiar face in their ranks whose time with Australia in 2018 is proving crucial ahead of the tournament

Curaçao have been in dreamland since qualifying for a first World Cup last November but geopolitical reality kicked in as the team headed to Australia for games against China and the Socceroos. Due to war in the Middle East, Curaçao’s long-haul flight that should have been Amsterdam to Sydney via Dubai became instead Frankfurt to Singapore with lots of logistical stress and separate journeys.

The two island nations – though Australia is about 17,000 times bigger than the Caribbean country – meet in Melbourne on Tuesday. Curaçao has a population of 155,000 making it the smallest nation to make it to the global stage. Despite the differences, the two teams have more than just 2026 World Cup preparation in common.

• Summit set NWSL record with 63,004 spectators

• Expansion side draw 0-0 with Washington Spirit

The expansion Denver Summit’s match against the Washington Spirit on Saturday broke the National Women’s Soccer League record for attendance with its announced crowd of 63,004.

Fans at the Denver Broncos’ home stadium broke the previous NWSL record of 40,091 who attended Bay FC’s match against the Spirit last season at Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.

The latest leg of Manchester City’s victory lap took them to Old Trafford and they did not simply show Manchester United why they are going to become the Women’s Super League champions. They tore them apart in the process, while also damaging United’s hopes of qualifying for Europe next season.

The away side’s symbolic 3-0 win at the home of their embarrassed neighbours demonstrated their vast superiority, and perhaps the only surprising thing was that they did not score more than Vivianne Miedema’s two headers and Kerstin Casparij’s far-post finish from a Lauren Hemp cross. It could easily have been five or six, with Hemp hitting the bar before a disallowed Rebecca Knaak goal, which left everybody in the stadium confused, in a first half when the visitors carved open the home defence with ease.

• Belgium score four in second half, Lukebakio nets double

• USA face Portugal on Tuesday night in Atlanta

The US men’s national team entered its matchup with Belgium at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Saturday riding a wave of momentum, needing a solid performance to continue to build excitement ahead of this Summer’s World Cup, played in part on home soil.

Instead, they struggled mightily against a talented Belgium side and left with more questions than answers. The 5-2 defeat, featuring five straight goals for the Belgians after a US opener, was an embarrassment and easily among the USMNT’s worst losses of head coach Mauricio Pochettino’s tenure. At times, it felt the margin of victory could’ve been significantly wider.

• Former Burnley and Forest manager linked with Spurs

• Igor Tudor under pressure after dismal run of results

Sean Dyche has quashed rumours he is in talks with Tottenham but described the relegation-threatened Premier League team as a “brilliant club” amid speculation over Igor Tudor’s position.

Spurs are without a fixture until 12 April but a run of five defeats in seven matches under the interim head coach Tudor has placed his job at threat, with their league position a precarious one.

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Nedum Onuoha and Will Unwin, featuring very sad voice notes from Barry Glendenning and Elis James, looking back on disappointments for the Republic of Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland

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On the podcast today: Wales and the Republic of Ireland took penalties at exactly the same time, both going ahead but missing at crucial moments … and with it having their World Cup dreams dashed.

Northern Ireland looked good against Italy, but there was just no cutting edge. In the end, two bits of real quality from Sandro Tonali and Moise Kean took the Azzurri one win away from their first World Cup in 12 years.

The panel run through the other qualifiers and discuss Mo Salah’s Liverpool legacy. Plus, there’s the vasectomy to end all vasectomies, and your questions are answered.

Chapters:

00:00 - Coming up...

00:43 - Ireland and Wales out on pens

25:54 - Italy knock NI out

32:38 - Play-offs round up

47:38 - Mo Salah to leave Liverpool

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Norwich winger on ‘perfect setup’ of Toronto and Vancouver games as co-hosts look to punch above their weight this summer

Ali Ahmed watched the last World Cup at home with friends and family. “It was goose bumps seeing Canada walking out,” the winger says. “I haven’t seen that in my lifetime. It was surreal.” This time around he will again be at home but also very much at the heart of the action in two cities that are dear to him.

Jesse Marsch’s side face Qatar and Switzerland in Vancouver after an opener against a European playoff winner (possibly Italy) in Toronto. Italy in Toronto, Ahmed’s home town, would be special, not only because of the city’s vast Italian population – “the stadium might be more blue than red,” Ahmed jokes – but also because his parents, who are from Ethiopia but lived for two years in Italy, are big calcio fans. “Football was ingrained in all of us in our family,” he says.

Portugal head coach, who describes the country as a ‘football school’, explains why he is ready to take risks in pursuit of World Cup glory

‘You get there and the mountain is so big, you have no objective other than survive.” It was summer 1995, Roberto Martínez was 21, he had made one brief appearance for Real Zaragoza and just completed military service while playing regional football back in his home town of Balaguer. A complete unknown, he was heading to Wigan, wherever that was, and didn’t speak a word of English. He was also heading to the Third Division, where whatever they played it wasn’t football, not as he knew it. “There is fear: ‘No,’” he says. “But my attitude was always: ‘Why not?’”.

Martínez now stands in the hallway at the Portuguese federations’s base in Oeiras near Lisbon, arms out in a warm welcome. Trophies sit in cases, the Nations League the latest addition. Only one cup is not there, which is why Martínez is. Seventy-five days until the World Cup starts, he takes Portugal into their final pre-tournament international break with matches against two of the co-hosts, Mexico and the United States. The man whose favourite goal was against Scunthorpe at Springfield Park leads a team who are among the favourites to triumph this summer, willing to dream precisely because he never dreamed any of this.

As a player, Mauricio Pochettino suffered under World Cup pressure. As a manager, he hopes to help the USMNT’s belief in the face of it

US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino probably understands the pressure of playing for your national team in a way few of his players can.

Pochettino was not involved in Argentina’s World Cup plans in 1994 and 1998. He finally made the squad as a veteran in 2002, part of a stacked team favored by many to win the entire tournament. The country itself was in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis and an entire nation turned to La Albiceleste for a bit of hope.

With their non-league sides in effect serving as national teams for the crown dependencies they have dreams of climbing higher in the football pyramid

Clad top-to-toe in Jersey Bulls paraphernalia, Andy Lane takes a brief step away from drum-banging duties on the Springfield Stadium touchline and rolls up a sleeve to reveal the tattooed badge of a football team in only their seventh year of competition. The bull rearing up Lane’s right forearm matches that on his wife Jojo’s left calf, encapsulating the impact the club has made on the local community. “It’s about pride,” Lane says.

Bulls’ latest visitors are Hassocks, a club hailing from a village just north of Brighton. Like every other team in the eighth-tier Isthmian League South East Division, this away day was the first they sought out when the fixture list was unveiled last summer, and more than 50 supporters have flown over for the occasion. “It’s a great novelty fixture,” says the Hassocks chair, Patrick Harding.

Head coach constantly looks to the future but defeat by Bosnia and Herzegovina is not without consequences

Craig Bellamy predicted a sleepless night and he will not have been the only one. Most of Wales, population a little more than three million, will have pulled the curtains, struggling to shift the pervading sense of an opportunity missed. “My heart hurts,” he said approaching midnight in Cardiff and the gravity of it all may only fully sink in when Bosnia and Herzegovina, after prevailing in a World Cup playoff in the capital, host Italy on Tuesday for a place at this summer’s showpiece.

Wales fell at the penultimate hurdle, chalking up another near-miss after the anguish of another penalty shootout defeat, two years on from their last against Poland. Bellamy has breathed life into the team, renewing optimism and arming his players with naked belief, but this is unmistakably a blow. The easy thing to do at this juncture is preach about the green shoots but at this point nobody wants to think too hard about the merits of being promoted to the top tier of the Nations League or the home nations Euro 2028.

Netherlands striker opens up on the condition that temporarily derailed her career and left her in so much pain she was in bed for three days

When the sharp, stabbing pain in her abdomen became so severe she had to be substituted at half-time during a match last season, Katja Snoeijs knew what she was experiencing was not “normal period pains”.

The 29-year-old Everton and Netherlands striker has since been diagnosed with endometriosis, which affects roughly one in 10 women of reproductive age. She says she counts herself lucky because she received her diagnosis within 12 months and was shocked to learn the average wait in the UK is nine years.

• Team make gesture before loss to Nigeria in Turkey

• Attack on Iranian school killed more than 175 people

Iran’s players wore black armbands and held schoolbags as their anthem played before a friendly in Turkey on Friday in what a team official said was a protest over the killing of schoolgirls on the first day of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Iran were facing Nigeria in the resort town of Belek before the World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada, where their participation is in doubt over the conflict.

The toughest cuts for the World Cup roster will likely come at the position the US manager considers to be the most important on the field

Throughout his tenure as US men’s national team manager, Mauricio Pochettino has needed to be experimental in the heart of the park. The player pool he inherited had a first-choice midfield trio – Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Yunus Musah – with few adequately tested alternatives. There has since been ample rotation, testing partnerships and combinations.

With 11 weeks to go until the World Cup, one thing has become clear: the tournament squad’s harshest cuts will come in midfield.

In the afterglow of the Asian Cup, Australia will begin preparations for the 2027 Women’s World Cup with a friendly series alongside three low-ranked teams

Did someone forget to include Matildas head coach Joe Montemurro on the emails?

Barely a week ago, after Australia’s agonising defeat to Japan in the Asian Cup final, Montemurro said his team needed “more regular, top international competition” to build on the progress and momentum that the tournament had begun.

George Raynor led Sweden to Olympic glory and a World Cup final, but he was never appreciated back home

By The Set Pieces

Nobody wanted him. An ambitious young English coach who was bursting with new ideas grew more and more frustrated as his efforts to land a job in his homeland fell flat. Application after application came to nothing, his reputation as a lower-league player meaning he rarely received a reply. But then came hope. A new opportunity opened up in Sweden. It was a relative football outpost, but it was the foothold the coach had been craving. George Raynor was finally going to be a football manager.

Raynor’s big break in 1946 has a few parallels to the path that Graham Potter has taken in management. Potter is unlikely to win an Olympic gold medal or lead Sweden to the World Cup final but that was not the aim for Raynor either. Swedish football was very different when Raynor took the job in the 1940s. The domestic league maintained a staunch amateur philosophy that extended to the national side.

As well as being one of the team’s best performers, midfielder has become a talisman who is aware of the club’s spirit and traditions

The video of Bruno Fernandes kicking in the door is very good, if you haven’t already seen it. In a way, it explains a lot. His Sporting team are drawing 1‑1 at Boavista in 2019 and Fernandes has just been sent off for a fully deserved second yellow. As he stalks down the tunnel he takes furious aim at the two doors, the sheer force of the kick knocking him off his feet.

The doors make a magnificent shotgun sound, but do not yield. “Fuck you!” Fernandes shouts as Boavista security guards try to intervene. “I’ll pay for the fucking doors! Go fuck yourselves!”

Sadness over the Egyptian King’s departure from Liverpool is matched by gratitude for the goals and glory he gave supporters

The first time I saw Mohamed Salah play was in August 2017. Arsenal were the visitors to Anfield. Liverpool were sensational on that sunny Sunday afternoon. Bobby Firmino and Sadio Mané had fashioned a 2-0 first-half lead, before the third member of Jürgen Klopp’s new attacking trio added his name to the scoresheet.

Arsenal’s corner was cleared to Héctor Bellerín, about 30 yards out. Salah was on him instantly, robbing the hapless Spaniard easily. His whirring legs blurred like the Road Runner’s as he raced into the Arsenal half and towards Petr Cech. I’d never seen a player bear down on the Kop goal so rapidly.

The Herons are out of the Champions Cup after defeat to Nashville. Now it’s back to the same old hits for the club

Concacaf may not have the world’s most hallowed Champions League. The confederation is so aware of that fact that it rebranded the competition as a Champions Cup two years ago.

Nonetheless, winning the continental competition is the ultimate aim for MLS’s most ambitious clubs, even though (or perhaps because) only one of its last 25 installments has seen an MLS team crowned as Concacaf’s best. Liga MX continues to dominate the competition, boasting 21 winners since 2001, even as MLS improves. Even Costa Rica’s Liga Promerica has more titles since the turn of the century thanks to back-to-back victories for Alajuelense and Saprissa in the mid-2000s.

The head coach is not responsible for many of the problems at Anfield but he is the most obvious target for those seeking reasons for the team’s decline

It was the coffee bar at the training ground, installed by the Fenway Sports Group’s chief executive, Michael Edwards, after he got the idea from visiting Roma. It was Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, added to the post-match playlist by Alisson and which could be heard booming out of the Liverpool dressing room after victories. It was the video analysis. It was the data. It was the pre-season fitness tests. It was the close collaboration between the football and sports science departments. It was everything that changed from the Jürgen Klopp era. It was everything that stayed the same from the Jürgen Klopp era.

Victory brings a dazzling clarity. Particularly a victory as resounding as Liverpool’s unexpected 10-point romp to the Premier League title last season. It turns the cogs, powers the houses, confers a sunlit aura of genius on everyone involved. So with a certain uncharitable hindsight, it is instructive to go back to late April 2025 and read about how everyone thought Liverpool had done it. And why everyone – wrongly – thought they were going to do it again.

Our cartoonist steps into the mind of Gianni Infantino as Australia prepare to host the tantalising new global event

The minnows just need to win a playoff against Turkey at home to complete a qualification campaign that has become a rallying cry for national pride

They are a World Cup fairytale, a footballing nation barely a decade old with fewer people than the state of South Australia. A Balkan West Virginia, but with a fraction of the area, and a chequered past.

Minnows Kosovo are one game away from their first appearance at a World Cup, and a place beckons in Group D alongside Australia, Paraguay and co-hosts the United States.

Transformative 999-year deal is a massive moment in the history of the club and the violent cultural push-pull of London

I have in my hand several hundred pieces of paper. Dog-eared, scribbled with rewrites, and stained with sweat and ancient Bermondsey vinegar. But a wodge of paper that may just guarantee, finally, what passes for peace around here.

There was a moment at the Den on Saturday afternoon that carried its own strictly localised sense of history. An hour before kick-off in Millwall’s Premier League playoff-push game against Portsmouth, the key personnel gathered in a wedding-style lineup around the centre circle.

Former Norwich defender lived for years in an LA motel, cut ties with his family for more than three decades and is now the subject of a documentary

“I hated it,” Tony Powell says on a spring afternoon in Los Angeles of his past as a secretly gay professional footballer for Bournemouth and Norwich in the 1970s. Powell is 78 and now lives in a very different world compared with when he was a husband, the father of two young daughters and Norwich’s player of the season in 1979.

Powell is not a demonstrative man and, having been forced to bury his true self for decades, does not make a fuss about the pain he endured. But there is an ache in his English accent, which remains intact after 45 years in America. “I just wanted to be who I am, but at that time it was not a good idea to come out.”

Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning went to the SXSW festival in Austin Texas last week. With only a few months to go before the World Cup, the pair are joined live on stage by The Guardian’s senior US soccer editor, Alexander Abnos, and star of the hit TV show Ted Lasso, Brendan Hunt.

Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning went to the SXSW festival in Austin Texas last week. With only a few months to go before the World Cup, the pair are joined live on stage by The Guardian’s senior US soccer editor, Alexander Abnos, and star of the hit TV show Ted Lasso, Brendan Hunt.

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Pass the paracetamol because Football Daily’s neck is in absolute bits. Two penalty shootouts at the same time will do that to you, eyes bouncing from Wales’s heartbreak in Cardiff to the Republic of Ireland’s agony in Prague. Alas, neither will feature at the Geopolitics World Cup after their playoff semi-final defeats. For Ireland, it’ll be a minimum of 28 years between appearances at the big show. At least they’ll always have Troy Parrott’s glorious week in November. For Wales, it’s … ah, the long wait ended at the Human Rights World Cup in 2022. Never mind.

We spend a day with the surprise package of the Première Ligue to find out how they have taken the top flight by storm

There is one video that is on repeat on the Nantes players’ phones: Lucie Calba’s goal in last weekend’s 3-0 win against Strasbourg, an exceptional passage of play in which eight players touched the ball to move it up the entire pitch in only 18 seconds.

“It’s very satisfying because we’re able to reproduce everything we work on in training in matches,” says Camille Robillard, the team’s No 10 and a product of the club’s academy, clearly fascinated by the goal getting so much attention. A goal “in the Nantes style”, referring to the men’s team of the 1990s, known for their attacking, fluid play and constant movement.

Only existing since 2024, the team, who came fourth at the world championship, has changed its players’ lives

“We are the first, but we will not be the last.” The rallying cry came from Eliane Gonçalves, a 39-year-old midfielder of the Brazilian women’s blind football national team during one of their training camps. The team’s psychologist had suggested the team come up with something to shout before matches. Gonçalves offered that line – and it stuck.

The team had existed for less than a year when they landed in Kochi, India, in October 2025. In their opening game of the world championship, Brazil beat the host nation 1-0 – and Gonçalves scored the goal. She had started playing only two years earlier after gradually losing her sight to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa. Sport had pulled her through the hardest period. “When I started losing my vision, I was very lost. Everything was completely different,” she says. “Sport took me out of depression. It gave me a better perspective on life, new dreams.”

The Gunners have a nine-point lead in the Premier League. But recent run-ins, and their loss to City on Sunday, will keep them wary

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Some day, probably quite soon, Arsenal will win something again. Quite probably something much bigger than the Carabao Cup. But until then, there is only going to be anxiety, and it is going to get worse after Sunday’s second-half freeze against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final, which City won 2-0. Wembley could have seen the start of the Arsenal era, perhaps even the first leg of an unprecedented Quadruple; instead it was City celebrating, and with a gusto that suggested the past couple of years of dearth have served as a useful reminder that these occasions can never be taken for granted.

Claims that victory in this final could be a huge psychological blow in the title race are perhaps a little fanciful. One game is one game. Professional athletes, robust self-belief integral to their existence, recover from defeats. But still, that flatness in the second half, the way Arsenal were pinned back and unable to break forward, has to be a concern. City were able to use the way Arsenal like to control the pace of the game against them, the short passes out from the goalkeeper used as a way of penning them in as they closed down passing lanes, allowing their defenders to have the ball and denying them options. What was that? A tactical triumph for Pep Guardiola? Exhaustion from Arsenal? Or the familiar mental fragility returning?

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Nedum Onuoha and Will Unwin, featuring very sad voice notes from Barry Glendenning and Elis James, looking back on disappointments for the Republic of Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland

On the podcast today: Wales and the Republic of Ireland took penalties at exactly the same time, both going ahead but missing at crucial moments … and with it having their World Cup dreams dashed.

Northern Ireland looked good against Italy, but there was just no cutting edge. In the end, two bits of real quality from Sandro Tonali and Moise Kean took the Azzurri one win away from their first World Cup in 12 years.

Plus: swift ascents up the pyramid, Steve Palmer’s maverick set of shirts and an infamous 2004 Olympic penalty

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“During a rather animated discussion at the pub recently, the topic of footballers ‘retiring from international football’ came up,” says Edd Crick. “We were reminiscing about the days when footballers simply stopped being picked for international games, so who was the first to come out and declare their retirement this way?”

We assumed this was a fairly modern development, but it goes back at least as far as the 1950s. Let’s look at the leading answers in reverse chronological order, starting with one of the stars of Italia 90. “Roger Milla is arguably responsible for popularising the concept of international retirement (not to mention elaborate goal celebrations) by famously unretiring at the request of the Cameroon president Paul Biya to play in the 1990 World Cup,” writes Tom Reed. “Milla had formally retired from playing for Cameroon at a jubilee event following victory in the 1988 Africa Cup of Nations.”

Max Rushden is joined by Seb Hutchinson, Dan Bardell and John Brewin to review Manchester City’s 2-0 win over Arsenal at Wembley, ending hopes of Arteta’s side winning the quadruple

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Manchester City won the Carabao Cup. Two goals for Nico O’Reilly as Pep Guardiola danced with anyone and everyone. He played a reserve keeper who was good. Mikel Arteta played a reserve keeper who wasn’t, but the rest of the team also didn’t really turn up. What does that mean for the rest of the season? Could Arsenal really come second in everything?

Kobbie Mainoo needs a power boost, Everton revel in home comforts but Brentford must rediscover their buzz

• Premier League top scorers: check the latest standings

One theory behind Manchester City’s subpar 18 months is that the end is sliding into view on Pep Guardiola’s glorious reign, and the fact that he may be considering life after City is transmitting itself to his players. Sunday’s Carabao Cup win goes some way to refuting that. Not only did he see off the challenge of his former apprentice Mikel Arteta, but it was vintage Guardiola on the touchline. He looked gobsmacked when decisions didn’t go his side’s way, produced a Chuck Norris tribute kick to an advertising hoarding when City took the lead then sprinted down the touchline, fists pumping, when Nico O’Reilly scored his second of a fairytale final for the club’s local lad. If Guardiola’s intense level of care has dropped, he’s disguising it well. Anybody writing off him – and City’s league title ambitions – would do well to remember just what level of manager we are dealing with here. Alex Reid

Match report: Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City

Player ratings: Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City

Match report: Tottenham 0-3 Nottingham Forest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Meet the judges | See how every judge voted

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

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

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

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