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Things can always get worse. Much, much worse. If there is a place below rock bottom, Tottenham seem determined to go there. The Champions League may not be a priority, Igor Tudor publicly declaring survival their concern, but that didn’t make it any less painful, nor easier to forget. Instead, this will linger. It wasn’t even the 5-2 defeat that hurt, not really, and it certainly wasn’t their now inevitable exit from Europe: it was how it happened, the opening period here quite possibly the stupidest, most absurd, most astonishing minutes of football you have ever seen.

If, that is, you can really call it football; this was a dramatic act of self-destruction that ‘Spursy’ doesn’t get anywhere near, the final ridiculous scene of a tragedy, the ultimate humiliation. Only, terrifyingly, that may still be to come, because if the Metropolitano was a testing ground for the fight against relegation, as the manager said, the conclusion can only be that they are horribly ill-equipped to escape the abyss. This was both deeply comic and also desperately sad, especially when poor Antonin Kinsky departed down the tunnel, broken, substituted on 17 minutes having gifted two of the three goals Atlético Madrid had already scored.

It was a night when the Tyneside passions pulsed; the nervous energy, too, because this was something unprecedented – a first Champions League knockout stage tie in Newcastle’s history. It was not just the gilded level of the opposition that fired the excitement, the imagination. Eddie Howe was in little doubt that it was the biggest game Newcastle had ever played.

Newcastle had to do more than subdue Barcelona, the champions in Spain last season and league leaders this time out. They had to manage the occasion because it was one that came to rest on the edge of a knife. As the minutes ticked down, the clear chances so scarce, they knew that one moment was likely to be decisive. At either end.

The good news for Liverpool is that the situation is salvageable, when it really might not have been. The bad news is that they were ­distinctly ­second best for the first ­three-quarters of the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie.

Nobody who saw their second‑half collapse away against Juventus in the playoff round could be confident that Galatasaray are a team ­capable of squeezing the life out of the ­second leg. There is a nervousness about them at the back, a persistent sense of misfortune about to strike, but going forward they are breezy, quick and fun. Their only regret will be that, having taken an early lead through the former Wolves midfielder Mario Lemina, they did not add a second goal to give them more to defend at Anfield.

• Millwall close gap on Middlesbrough to one point

• Leicester out of relegation zone after beating Bristol City

Millwall rode their luck to bolster their bid for promotion with a 1-0 win against Derby. Alex Neil’s side took the lead through Josh Coburn’s goal in the 43rd minute at the Den. Barry Bannan’s free-kick was not cleared and the Millwall defender Tristan Crama hooked the ball back into the six-yard box, where Coburn glanced his header in at the far post.

That was enough to secure a fourth successive Championship victory for third-placed Millwall, as they closed the gap on second-placed Middlesbrough to one point. The Derby striker Patrick Agyemang hit the post in stoppage time after earlier missing another golden opportunity to equalise in a second half dominated by the visitors.

• Forward says knee injury was ‘most painful’ of his life

• German expected to start against his former club

Kai Havertz has said the knee injury that forced him to miss the first half of the season was the most painful experience of his life but that it has given him “new hunger” to win trophies with Arsenal.

The Germany forward missed more than 20 games after having surgery on the injury he picked up on the opening day of the season in the victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford.

• ‘You have to be who you are,’ manager says

• Madrid will be without the injured Mbappé

Pep Guardiola has urged Manchester City to face Real Madrid with their true identity in the Champions League last 16 and “earn the tickets” for the next round.

The opening leg at the Bernabéu on Wednesday will be the 12th occasion the teams have played in Guardiola’s decade in charge and the 16th in total; each side has won five times, with five draws. Guardiola said his team must be true to who they are if they are to progress to the quarter-finals.

Liam Rosenior has unlocked the forward and must do the same with Cole Palmer for the team to reach their potential

João Pedro had been a Chelsea player for less than two weeks when he faced Paris Saint-Germain in the final of the Club World Cup last summer. The settling-in period was intense. The forward had an impactful substitute appearance when he made his debut in the quarter-final win over Palmeiras, struck a clinical double when Fluminense were downed in the semi-finals and then, on a thrilling, sweaty afternoon in New Jersey, delivered the coup de grace when Chelsea became world champions thanks to a stunning demolition of PSG.

It was 3-0 when João Pedro lifted a clever finish over Gianluigi Donnarumma in the 43rd minute, and the manner of the humiliation was hard for PSG to accept. Heads were scrambled as the newly crowned European champions felt their aura of invincibility ebb away at the end of an epic season. João Neves was shown a red card for a tangle with Marc Cucurella – who else? – and the loss of discipline even involved Luis Enrique, the PSG manager, appearing to slap João Pedro in the face when a mass brawl broke out at full-time.

Former footballer accused of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm after incident outside Liverpool golf club

Joey Barton has been remanded in custody charged with attacking the headteacher of a school for children with additional needs.

The former footballer was arrested after an alleged incident outside Huyton and Prescot golf club in Liverpool at 9pm on Sunday.

The furore over not singing their anthem at the Asian Cup was only the start of the drama as players weighed up a chance to seek asylum amid uncertainty about their fate back home

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Rarely has a first touch carried so much consequence.

As the Philippines’ second goal sailed untouched into the back of the net, sealing their victory, the clock started ticking for their opponents: the Iranian women’s team were now out of the Asian Cup tournament.

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

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

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

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

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• Holiday currently chairs ownership group Mercury13

• Mercury13 completed purchase of FC Badalona women

• NWSL plays in summer, opposite of European leagues

Two-time Olympic Gold medalist and 2015 World Cup winner Lauren Holiday has called for the global harmonisation of the women’s soccer calendar to help grow the sport.

Doing so could echo a recent move by Major League Soccer to move to a European, fall-to-spring schedule from July 2027. Holiday, a former USWNT forward, believes the women’s game could follow their example, or do the opposite and have everyone play through the summer.

Given their inability to win a ­knockout tie in normal time, there can be little doubt of the physical impediment that West Ham’s prolonged FA Cup endeavours must make to their efforts of remaining in the Premier League.

But, with an eminently winnable home ­quarter-final against Leeds United now upcoming, the chance of a rare trip to Wembley is the type of happy distraction any relegation-­threatened side can embrace. Momentum can provide a dangerous asset.

• Newcastle host Barça in Champions League last-16 first leg

• Howe: ‘It’s an opportunity to grab a moment we never get again’

For Eddie Howe it was quite a statement. “Barcelona is the biggest game in this club’s history,” said Newcastle’s manager. “It’s massive.”

Given Howe usually seems allergic to exaggeration it was a surprising way to approach Tuesday night’s Champions League last 16 first leg with Hansi Flick’s side.

• Manchester City midfielder admitted FA charge

• Regulatory commission imposes £80,000 fine

Rodri has been fined £80,000 by a Football Association regulatory commission but escaped a sporting sanction for his comments criticising refereeing after Manchester City’s 2-2 draw at Tottenham in February.

The midfielder was unhappy that Dominic Solanke’s 53rd-minute goal, after City had gone 2-0 up, was not disallowed. Solanke appeared to kick through the leg of Marc Guéhi, ­sending the ball off him and in.

Russian oligarch says money is his to allocate despite international sanctions imposed on his assets

The Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has stepped up his row with the British government over the £2.5bn proceeds of his sale of Chelsea FC, insisting that the money is his to allocate despite the international sanctions imposed on his assets.

The UK and EU imposed sanctions on Abramovich in 2022, freezing his assets in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, citing his ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime.

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Robyn Cowen is joined by Barry Glendenning, John Brewin and Jonathan Liew as Manchester City drop points against Nottingham Forest and Arsenal extend their lead at the top of the table to seven points.

On the podcast today: was this the night Arsenal won the title? An unconvincing victory at Brighton thanks to a deflected goal that should have been saved and dropped points for Manchester City at the Etihad see the Gunners go seven clear at the top.

Elsewhere: Michael Carrick is handed his first defeat as Manchester United coach on his return to Tyneside against 10-man Newcastle to shake up the race for Champions League football.

Plus: the rest of the midweek Premier League football, a look ahead to the FA Cup fifth round and your questions answered.

Team’s path to a quadruple appears manageable – give Mikel Arteta and co serious credit for getting to this position

Cruyff’s Ajax, Messi’s Barcelona, Rice’s Arsenal. Stein, Michels, Ferguson, Arteta. The Dark Side of the Moon, The Very Best of The Beatles, Arsenal 2025-26 highlights DVD. Total Football, tiki-taka, hugging the goalie at corners. Get ready. Make room among the greats. It may just be coming.

And yes, you can laugh at this on the internet. You can pull-quote excerpts with mocking emojis. Throw in some Niles from Frasier has really lost it stuff. You can point, with justification, to the fact these other people, the actual greats, did it for a long time, not just one year.

Club’s former owner leads the polls in spiky mayoral race but is accused of putting forward ‘nothing of substance’

Karim Benzema doesn’t often involve himself in French politics. At the end of January, though, the striker gave a glowing endorsement of Jean-Michel Aulas, the former Lyon president who is leading the city’s mayoral race.

“He has everything it takes to do well,” Benzema said in a video played on the news channel LCI as Aulas was being interviewed. “He’s someone who people listen to, he knows where he wants to go and he has a lot of experience,” the former Real Madrid player added. The Lyon-born striker was later joined by Bafétimbi Gomis in showing support for their former boss.

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

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

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

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It’s been a troubling season at Tottenham and while there is a slim chance it will end in glory, ignominy is looking more likely

How do you solve a problem such as Tottenham Hotspur? They’re the ninth-richest club in the world, who pride themselves on a thrilling style of play – “To dare is to do” – and have been blessed through the years with a pantheon of household names: Blanchflower, Hoddle, Ardíles, Gascoigne, Bale, Kane, Son. Last August they were seconds from beating Paris Saint-Germain to win the Uefa Super Cup, which would have made them – tenuously – the best team in Europe. Seven months later they’ve wilted into a shell-shocked laughing stock careering towards the Championship. They’re the club that launched a thousand memes.

In this most Spursy of seasons, hiring Mr Fixit Igor Tudor as interim manager looks like being the biggest misstep yet. The Croatian hard man has taken a squad who needed an arm round the shoulder and stuck them in a vice-like headlock. He has openly suggested there’s only three things wrong with them: they can’t run, they can’t score and they can’t defend. You could count the number of fans who backed his appointment on the fingers of Captain Hook’s bad hand, and if three crushing defeats are anything to go by, his shock treatment is going down like a cup of cold West Ham lasagne. Is there any way out?

With its credibility swaying in the wake of a betting scandal, the very last thing the league needed was to be in business with a prediction platform

The timing of the suspensions was unfortunate. Or perhaps it was karmically inevitable.

Forty-two days after Major League Soccer announced a new partnership with Polymarket – a prediction platform that lets its users bet on just about anything, including whether, when, and where one country will bomb another – a press release went out. A pair of Ghanaian-born former MLS players, Derrick Jones and Yaw Yeboah, had been banned from the league for life for betting on games, including their own.

Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on 12 May. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.

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

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

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

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

By Get French Football News

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

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

• Pair also bet on Jones to receive yellow card

• Players overlapped for one season at Columbus Crew

Major League Soccer announced on Monday that it has given Derrick Jones and Yaw Yeboah lifetime bans for “extensive” gambling, including on games involving their own teams. In one instance, the pair won a bet that Jones would receive a yellow card.

MLS said it had received “suspicious betting alerts” and retained a law firm to investigate. The players were placed on administrative leave in late October 2025 as the review ran its course. Eventually, the investigation found that both players betted on soccer extensively throughout the 2024 and 2025 seasons, including on their own teams.

The US head coach has built a deep and talented pool of players as next summer’s tournament in Brazil approaches

The US women’s national team won the SheBelieves Cup on Saturday, capping the three-game friendly tournament with a 1-0 win over Colombia. Alyssa Thompson finally broke the deadlock in a game largely dominated by the hosts.

The Chelsea winger sent an inch-perfect shot into the upper corner in the 81st minute to notch her fourth international goal.

Blue Tigresses have overcome off-field chaos and crises to make this tournament and can look to their women’s cricketers for hope

The Indian women’s football team’s quest for history got off to a bittersweet start in Perth on Wednesday. The players had put aside the off-field turbulence they faced in the lead-up to put up a strong fight on the field, only to concede an injury time goal and go down 1-2 to Vietnam.

Despite the result, the game was significant as a marker of how far the Blue Tigresses had come and where they could go, but also for the atmosphere they were greeted with at the Perth Rectangular Stadium.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our cartoonist on a decade of magic moments in the big job for world football’s leading ‘man of the people’

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

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

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

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

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

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

The south-east London club have promotion to League One within sight in just their second season in the EFL with their manager central to the transformation

With half an hour to go before kick-off, a roar echoes round the ground. MK Dons have levelled with Cambridge United via a penalty deep into injury time, Aaron Collins scoring from the spot to deny the hosts victory.

In the 20-minute interlude between Shayne Lavery’s opener at the Abbey Stadium and the referee’s fateful whistle, Cambridge looked set to go top of the table. Instead Bromley get under way against Accrington Stanley with a one-point lead at the summit of League Two, much to the relief of the home fans.

In tandem with Game Day Vision, the Premier League club are improving the matchday experience for supporters with a variety of conditions

Thomas Clements’ eyes begin dancing as he recalls in vivid detail his first trip to Highbury. It was 1995 and Ian Wright was among the scorers as QPR were defeated. Clements – named after Michael Thomas, scorer of Arsenal’s decisive second goal against Liverpool in their 1989 title decider – points to his dad, Kevin, standing a metre away. “I was sat on his shoulders in the North Bank,” he says.

That is, in itself, not unusual for a child of the 1980s. However, whereas most regular match-goers might take for granted the seemingly small things – travel arrangements, the journey to the stadium, grabbing food and drink, meeting friends and family, entering and exiting the ground – for disabled supporters such as Clements, careful thought and planning go into all arrangements.

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Sunderland fans have suffered enough to know that no matter how well things might appear to be going, calamity is never too far away. Take, for example, a thirtysomething mackem of Football Daily’s acquaintance who travelled to see Régis Le Bris’s side get dumped out of the FA Cup by Port Vale. Having watched his side lose 1-0 to the worst team in League One – and the one we are still following through the tournament – he cheerfully noted that the result “isn’t even in the top 10 most embarrassing things to happen to Sunderland in my lifetime”. With his team safe from relegation, Le Bris treated Port Vale with maximum respect by picking his strongest side but they still lost to a team that clearly “wanted it more”.

Down here I was looking forward, courtesy of the FA Cup, to a brief break from getting up in the middle of the night to suffer through another disappointing Spurs game. So I sat down in front of the telly on a nice Sunday afternoon to cheer on fellow Aussie Oscar Piastri in the Australian Grand Prix, hoping for a win. Yep … crashed out on the formation lap. There is a pattern here and I am wondering if I have some special curse or power. If you have a particular team or sportsperson that you don’t like and want me to cheer for, my rates are reasonable” – Greg Wynn.

Could we send Sergio Ramos as head coach to Cruzeiro in Brazil. Their playing philosophy appears a perfect fit (see below)“ – Krishna Moorthy.

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In recent weeks, the Premier League has descended into a full-blown existential crisis. VAR is increasingly bobbins, various teams are ruining everybody’s fun by Arsenaling about at set pieces and Arne Slot has made the grim admission that he finds “no joy” in the current lack of swashbuckling action. Naturally, the usual suspects are clutching their pearls, wailing that everything was better back when pitches were bogs and tackles were felonies. Desperate for a Tuesday night shot in the arm, The Best League In The World™ offered viewers a choice of four matches so turgid they bordered on the offensive. One was a goalless void; another’s solitary highlight involved a Leeds substitute pilfering a strategically placed towel; a third saw an Everton win so routine it made a documentary on the history of beige paint look like Mad Max: Fury Road. Ultimately, the only drama to be found was at Molineux – and even there both sets of players decided to wait 70 minutes before bothering to engage in some actual football.

You can only go to the coffee shop so many times, you can only feed the chickens and the ducks so many times, and, you know, it gives you that edge. I had the heart pumping, nervous before the game, things like that, and you forget really. I even feel quite stiff if I’m honest, and I’m not really doing much running, but it’s the adrenaline. It was nice to get a result with the fans as well, because they’ve been superb” – Neil Warnock, back in the dugout at 77 as Torquay caretaker, reflects on their 2-2 Conference South draw with Farnborough.

No, I just won’t believe it. Football Daily supposedly won a match 17-0 in Championship Manager 01-02? (yesterday’s Football Daily). Nope, don’t buy that at all. My memory is a bit fuzzy about whether 2001 was the an older era, or even the time of the long-lost ‘TV and Radio’ listings. But there’s no way that Football Daily’s crack staff [erm, OK – Football Daily Ed] was around way back then. Also, Woking?” – Mike Wilner.

Just to follow up on the original Stroopwafel mention (Monday’s Football Daily), lukewarm is really the optimum temperature. Too hot and that caramel is taking the roof of your mouth off and cold is also suboptimal. Derek Smalls it all the way” – Matt Leuw.

Wolves are the modern-day Robin Hood. They rob the rich and give away to the poor” – Krishna Moorthy.

I don’t know how often Football Daily can be described as required reading, but you achieved it on Tuesday. Your inclusion of David Squires’s take on Gianni Infantino’s ‘accomplishments’ in his 10-year reign, followed by a link to Barney Ronay’s – as you aptly described it – ‘excoriating’ column on this same man, offers us all an opportunity to reflect soberly on what we enjoy about football and what, instead, we should wholeheartedly reject. Thank you” – Mike Fichtner.

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

The midfielder on her nomadic life, experiencing Nigerian celebrations and the national team’s World Cup prospects

Being an integral figure in the distinguished history of Nigeria’s women’s team is an experience that will never dim in the mind of Jennifer Onyinyechi Echegini. Seven months on from beating the hosts Morocco in a pulsating Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final at Rabat’s Olympic Stadium, in the process winning a record 10th African title, “Joe”, as her Paris Saint-Germain teammates call Echegini – an acronym of her three initials – is yet to come down from her career high.

“Winning the Wafcon is on another level, you know?” the 24-year-old midfielder says from Paris. “The pride and the achievement that I felt … when you’re playing with a group of girls that you love and care for, it makes it even more special.”

Spurs’ slide from title hopefuls to relegation candidates is a story of complete mismanagement and widespread injury

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Last week, after Tottenham had lost 4-1 at home to Arsenal, Igor Tudor was bullish. It was possible leaving his post-match press conference to think he was a man with the energy and personality to drag Spurs away from the relegation zone. This week, after Tottenham had lost 2-1 at Fulham, Tudor was deflated. The previous week he had spoken of defeat in the North London derby as being part of the process, a game that would startle his players into understanding what was required of them. This week, he just mumbled about having to forget the game and move on. A week in the Tottenham job seemed to have broken him.

Tudor is a specialist firefighter. He has saved teams from worse positions than being four points clear of the relegation zone with 10 games to go, which is where Spurs stand now. But that is what makes his defeatist tone so shocking. He spoke of “big problems”, dismissing a question about his 4-4-2 formation with the snort of a man asked about the shade of the carpet in his hallway as his roof burns down. He talked of an attack that lacks quality, of a midfield that cannot run and a defence that is not prepared to “suffer” to keep goals out. He made fairly explicit that he thinks his players lack the requisite character and pointed out how Fulham were better at reading the game, accusing his players of lacking “brain”.

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The last time the USA hosted the World Cup, drinks breaks – or the lack thereof – became a scorching bone of contention. Upset at having to stand on the touchline listening to the pasty skin of Tommy Coyne, Steve Staunton and assorted other Irish players audibly crackle in 40-degree heat, Big Jack Charlton went to war with Fifa over their refusal to sanction official breaks in play so that his famously thirsty footballers could take on liquids. The rules from on high decreed that players near the dugout could adjourn to the sideline for refreshments while play continued. However, since bottles were not allowed on the pitch, those further away had to try catching flimsy funfair-style plastic bags of water – sans goldfish – thrown from the touchline. Anyone who happened to be out of chucking range just had to flirt with heat stroke for the good of the tournament.

Spurs, and in particular, Thursday’s first half ‘performance’, if that’s the right word, are going to single-handedly put Football Daily and every single professional comedian (and Jack Whitehall) out of business, for good. There’s no competing with that” – Noble Francis.

In the early days of my career I had many brilliant ideas at the workplace but hardly any progress or improvement to the bottom line. My boss told me: ‘You are on the right track but the train is not moving.’ Same with Igor Tudor” – Krishnamoorthy V.

If Tudor thinks his ‘boat’ is heading in the right direction, then presumably he is a big Titanic fan. Looking ahead, some real challenges will be thrown up should the Good Ship Spurs go down. Are, for example, Stoke fans really going to be up for a visit to the cheese room on a cold, rainy Tuesday night?” – Paul Taverner.

Robyn Cowen is joined by Barry Glendenning, John Brewin and Jonathan Liew as Manchester City drop points against Nottingham Forest and Arsenal extend their lead at the top of the table to seven points

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On the podcast today: was this the night Arsenal won the title? An unconvincing victory at Brighton thanks to a deflected goal that should have been saved and dropped points for Manchester City at the Etihad see the Gunners go seven clear at the top.

Plus: hat-trick heroes who were not named player of the match, managers sacked after big wins, and more

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“A few weeks ago, Sandra Jessen started for FC Köln against Essen,” notes James Vortkamp-Tong. “Is this the first time a player has contained the opposing side’s name in their own?”

It’s not actually the first time Sandra Jessen has played against Essen, as Alicia Butteriss points out. “From what I can tell she first started against Essen, for Bayer Leverkusen, on the last day of the 2018-19 Frauen Bundesliga,” writes Alicia. “It would be remiss of me not to add that she scored both of Köln’s goals when they beat Essen 2-1 near the start of this season.”

Robyn Cowen is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jordan Jarrett-Bryan and Seb Hutchinson to review the first batch of midweek Premier League action, including another win for Wolves at home

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On the podcast today: Wolves beat Liverpool in injury time thanks to a deflected André goal, his first in 60 games for Wolves. The great escape surely couldn’t be on … could it?

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