Socceroos star Nestory Irankunda scores first goal for Watford with stunning free kick

  • Teenager curls home goal in another strong performance for new side

  • He says his ambition is to ‘make the crowd go wild’ at Vicarage Road

The young Socceroos star Nestory Irankunda has scored his first goal for the Championship side Watford with a stunning free kick.

The 19-year-old winger, who starred at Adelaide United but struggled to get game time at Bayern Munich, curled home a glorious 25-yard free kick to give the Hornets the lead at Swansea in the 35th minute of their 1-1 draw on Saturday.

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European football: McTominay and De Bruyne power Napoli to win over Sassuolo

  • Milan slip up in home defeat against Cremonese

  • Aubameyang scores double in Marseille romp; Atlético held

Napoli launched their Serie A season in style with a 2-0 win at Sassuolo, as Scott McTominay powered in a first-half header before Kevin De Bruyne curled home a free-kick after the break.

The former Manchester United midfielder McTominay bulleted a header into the net from Matteo Politano’s curling cross after just 17 minutes to put Napoli ahead. De Bruyne, who moved to Italy after his Manchester City contract expired, doubled the advantage after 57 minutes, bending a free-kick from a tight angle over the crowded box and into the far bottom corner. McTominay told Dazn: “It’s an honour to have De Bruyne in the team. I’m the one who has to learn from him, not the other way around.”

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Arsenal 5-0 Leeds: Premier League – as it happened

Viktor Gyökeres and Jurriën Timber both score twice as the Gunners rout Leeds, though injuries to Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka remove some of the gloss

Leeds get the ball rolling. Arsenal soon take it off them.

… and now the players ready for tonight emerge. Arsenal in their traditional red and white, Leeds in second-choice blue. A genuine buzz in the stadium, a heady mix of first-home-fixture-of-the-season excitement and new-signing thrill. We’ll be off soon, but just before kick-off, there’s a moment of applause in memory of former Arsenal director and board member Richard Carr, who died recently.

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Championship roundup: Coventry celebrate stadium news with 7-1 rout of QPR

  • Sky Blues rampant on momentous day

  • Stoke defeat Southampton with 10 men

Haji Wright, Jack Rudoni and Victor Torp all scored twice as Coventry marked a momentous day in their history with a 7-1 demolition of an abject QPR. Earlier on Saturday, the club, owned by Doug King, announced they had bought the Coventry Building Society Arena for the first time since it opened 20 years ago.

The Sky Blues then completed a day few of their fans will forget as they ruthlessly exploited QPR’s generosity in defence to make it back-to-back wins in the Championship in stunning fashion.

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Spurs stun the Etihad again as Johnson and Palhinha strikes sink Manchester City

How to rally Tottenham after the Eberechi Eze farrago: turn up at Manchester City and mastermind a dominant 2-0 triumph that takes your side to the top of the Premier League – for a few hours at least.

By doing so Thomas Frank issued a fine calling card regarding his professionalism, and suggested his Spurs project will be as strategic as Ange Postecoglou’s was gung-ho. Witnessing how the visitors caused Pep Guardiola’s men headaches caused one wag to question if Eze might change his mind (again) about which club to join.

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Tense meeting awaits after Crystal Palace’s bitter European battle with Forest

Police are on alert for Sunday’s Premier League match after Nottingham Forest had a hand in the Eagles’ demotion

Crystal Palace against Nottingham Forest isn’t usually a Premier League fixture that would have the Metropolitan police on red alert. But after a summer spent at each other’s throats at the court of arbitration for sport as well as on social media over Uefa’s decision to demote Palace from the Europa League to the Conference League, to Forest’s advantage, supporters of both clubs are preparing to come face-to-face on Sunday afternoon.

“Forest aren’t our rivals – they’re nothing to us,” says the Palace fan Chris Waters. “But all of a sudden this game has a bitter edge to it.” Sanad Attia, AKA Wolfie, who presents the Forest Fan TV YouTube channel, says: “We’ve never really had any kind of issue with Palace – I was quite happy for them winning the FA Cup. But they have been wanting to blame everyone but themselves. And in particular, Forest and Evangelos Maranakis.”

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The undeniably massive Alexander Isak affair has created its own sub-reality | Barney Ronay

Battle between real and fake is an active front in sport and the Newcastle striker transfer saga is vast but strangely hollow

Depraved. Sickening. Toxic. Foul, but also pestilent. The end of days? That last thing wasn’t the end of days. This right here is the end of days.

But is it though? Is it really? Going on a summer holiday is always a bit strange when your life involves staring at sport. Taking a break just as football is preparing to enter its own sweaty, steamy eight-month meat pocket is extra tough. Re-engagement can be difficult. Oh look. There’s football hiding behind a bush in the car park again, frazzled and wired from staying up drinking crystal meth negronis and writing a presentation about merging marketing and sales, all the while gripped with a gathering sense of horror that it’s just not possible.

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West Ham 1-5 Chelsea: Premier League – live reaction

Chelsea thrashed the Hammers to pile the pressure on Graham Potter

A big blow for Chelsea / boost for West Ham before kick-off. Cole Palmer has tweaked something in the warm-up, and is out. Estêvão, Chelsea’s new 18-year-old wing sensation, takes his creative brief.

Chelsea will sport their new third kit this evening. Take a quick glance, and you could be forgiven for thinking they’re cosplaying as Scotland. Closer inspection of the commemorative golden disc will however reveal two words that categorically clear up that particular confusion in double-quick time. Chelsea also become the latest club to go retro with their crest, reviving the mid-80s lion sprawled across the letters CFC, as though elegantly wasted on a chaise longue.

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Napoli and Conte stand as a rare point of continuity before Serie A restart

Twelve clubs have changed manager, including six of the top eight, in a season with more questions than certainties

It did not take long after Napoli had won Serie A in May for some journalists to ask whether their manager would desert them. Antonio Conte had grumbled for months about transfer decisions. Even in this moment of triumph, his body language around the owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, remained frosty.

Recent history hung over Napoli. Luciano Spalletti stepped down after leading the Partenopei to a Scudetto in 2023, riding off into the sunset in his newly pimped out Fiat Panda and citing a “personality clash” with De Laurentiis. But Conte is his own man with his own imperatives. Three months later, he stands as a rare point of continuity in a league determined to eschew it. Twelve of 20 clubs have changed manager – a drop, admittedly, from 14 last summer – including six of the top eight finishers.

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