Category: Football (Soccer)

German and French clubs are showing in the Champions League they can make the most of the benefits of not having to play in a gruelling domestic competition

Paris Saint-Germain have won 11 of the past 13 French league titles and, going into this weekend, stood four points clear of Lens at the top of Ligue 1. Bayern Munich have already wrapped up this season’s Bundesliga title, their 13th in 14 years. According to Deloitte, Bayern are the third-richest club in the world by revenue, PSG fourth.

They meet in the Champions League semi-finals on Tuesday as two modern super-clubs. The idea of a top-five European league feels outmoded. Rather there are the best Premier League clubs, plus perhaps five or six others of whom PSG and Bayern are the outstanding two still left in this season’s competition.

Roberto De Zerbi had said he wanted no crying in his camp after Brighton scored their late equaliser last week, and it was just as the Wolves fans had started chanting “You’re going to cry in a minute” that the substitute João Palhinha struck the goal that briefly helped Tottenham climb out of the relegation zone and avoid a club record of 16 consecutive league games without a win.

The Spurs manager ran on to the pitch, pumping his fists, after the Portugal midfielder, played onside by the former Spurs defender Matt Doherty, slid in to score after Richarlison had scuffed a shot goalwards when Pedro Porro’s corner fell his way in the 82nd minute.

Eberechi Eze’s early goal was enough to secure a win against Newcastle and keep Arsenal’s title dream within reach

Mikel Arteta’s pre-match thoughts

[On making only one change from the City game] We did a lot of great things, with some connections that we really liked througout the game.

[On how long Bukayo Saka might be able to play from the bench] We will see how the game goes. We have alternatives in the front line to change the game; we’ll use them in the right way.

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2 min The first foul is committed by Morgan Rogers, needlessly, on Sander Berge – they were in the centre circle.

1 min Fulham kick off and play the ball around at the back. They’re in all white, so they bear a very slight resemblance to Real Madrid. Villa are in a lot of claret and a little blue.

Fans of both sides are feeling similar levels of stress at different ends of the Premier League table

Zadie Smith once wrote that “the square mile around Arsenal’s stadium could be a suitable surrogate for the whole wide world”. Perhaps you only really glimpse this on a match day, when the jerk chicken grills and paella pans fire up and belch delicious smoke across the rows of terraced houses, when the locals in weathered replica shirts brush shoulders with tourists bearing selfie sticks, when a small group of dedicated volunteers at a kiosk by the Ken Friar Bridge accepts non-perishable donations for the Islington food bank.

And you shall scoff, and you shall sneer, because there is a north London of the popular imagination, and Islington in particular, which has become a surrogate for something else entirely. A slur, an insult, a byword for privilege and entitlement and metropolitan effeteness, the place of Blair and Corbyn and Starmer and a shrink on every street corner. North London is elite, north London is out of touch, north London looks down on the rest of you while eating plates of £16 pasta.

Elliot Anderson completed a stunning victory for Forest, who moves eight points clear of relegation after thrashing Sunderland

3 min A regrettable square pass from Sadiki, deep in his own half, is nicked by Hutchinson. Alderete makes an immportant challenge on the edge of the area and Anderson’s long-range shot deflects over the bar for a corner.

The corner is half cleared to Williams, who mishits a difficult volley well wide.