Football (Soccer) News
Lionel Messi will leave Paris Saint-Germain at the end of season after two years in Ligue 1, the club confirmed on Saturday.
“After two seasons in the French capital, Leo Messi’s adventure with Paris Saint-Germain will come to an end at the conclusion of the 2022-23 campaign,” PSG said in a statement.
Continue reading...Ilkay Gundogan scored two volleys, the first after 13 seconds, as Manchester City won a hard-fought game to move within one game of the treble
Third round Everton (H) 3-1
Fourth round Reading (H) 3-1
Fifth round West Ham (H) 3-1
Quarter-final Fulham (H) yep, 3-1
Semi-final Brighton (N) 0-0 (7-6 pens)
Third round Chelsea (H) 4-0
Fourth round Arsenal (H) 1-0
Fifth round Bristol City (A) 3-0
Quarter-final Burnley (H) 6-0
Semi-final Sheff Utd (N) 3-0
Continue reading...Coming off the back of a record breaking Socceroos performance in Qatar, you could have been forgiven for thinking Australian football was primed to take a leap forward. Alas not. And the decision to sell hosting rights to the grand final to NSW shortly after the World Cup has played its part in continuing the divide between supporters and administrators that has held the game back for decades.
Joey Lynch filed the following last December:
Ten days. That’s how long it has been since Australia played Argentina in the World Cup’s last 16; a week and a half since Garang Kuol came within a whisker of sending the game into extra-time. Now, Lionel Messi and co are bound for a World Cup final, while Australian football has descended into a resentful civil war that is threatening to irreparably sever the relationship between the A-Leagues and its most devoted supporters.
Two days on from the initial announcement, the furore surrounding the Australian Professional Leagues’ (APL) move to sell hosting rights for the next three men’s and women’s grand finals to Sydney shows no signs of abating. If anything, it’s getting worse.
Continue reading...The first all-Manchester FA Cup final is framed by City’s pursuit of total supremacy and making their old foes suffer
It was a small and inconsequential moment but one that said plenty about a mood and a rivalry. Manchester City were 6-2 up in the Premier League derby against United at the Etihad Stadium last October and we were into the 89th minute.
Previously, after Phil Foden had made it 6-1 on 73 minutes to join Erling Haaland as the scorer of a hat-trick, the City fans had joked that they wanted 10. Or maybe they were not joking. Now, shortly after the United substitute Anthony Martial had pulled one back, City built in midfield only for João Cancelo to play a loose pass, Bruno Fernandes intercepting for the visitors. There was an audible groan from the home support.
Continue reading...Pep Guardiola has told Manchester City fans to be on their best behaviour at Wembley on Saturday when the club play Manchester United in the FA Cup final for the first time.
There is heightened tension because United have a chance to stop City securing a treble to match their own in 1999. There were 34 arrests when the teams met in the semi-finals at Wembley in 2011 and authorities will be hoping to avoid a repeat.
Continue reading...Erik ten Hag denied that Manchester United required the luck of a controversial Bruno Fernandes goal to beat Manchester City in January’s derby, with the manager pointing to his side’s superior expected goals (xG) in the game.
That match at Old Trafford ended 2-1 to Ten Hag’s team and came after the champions had humiliated United 6-3 in October’s reverse fixture. City took the lead through a Jack Grealish header before Fernandes equalised. The goal was initially ruled out because Marcus Rashford was in an offside position but was awarded after the forward was deemed not to be interfering with play. Rashford later scored the winner.
Continue reading...Manchester United were the original domestic powerhouse but Manchester City’s modern brand threatens to eclipse them
Now for the big series-ender. You have to hand it to the FA Cup. Football’s grand old patrician knockout pot may have grown a little mildewed and liver-spotted with age. But, like some geriatric sovereign stepping out from the shadows and striding the shopfloors one last time, it still knows how to twitch the threads. Saturday’sToday’s final at Wembley already looks like that rarest of things, a genuine multilayered epic.
At the end of a season that seems to have been going on for at least three years, when so many storylines have faded in and out, fractured by the outage at its centre, here is an end note to the domestic calendar that comes prepacked with fat, wet, impossibly ripe storylines. Power, succession, legacy. A heritage-gold 3pm kick-off. Frankly the Cup hasn’t looked so vital or hip in years.
Continue reading...The manager got lost in the kind of cynical rage that dominates the digital world, but football should not follow his example
“Like Jaws if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws.” Watching José Mourinho circle the touchline at the Puskas Arena on Wednesday night, giving off that horribly persuasive eau de la haine, it was hard not to be reminded of the words of cousin Greg, Succession’s beanpole idiot savant, describing a similar scene of top-down toxicity.
We know that Mourinho energy by now, the toxic theatre, the performative rage, the love of conspiracy and imagined injustice. What does he look like these days, with his perfect shock of white hair, the quicksilver glare? An arms dealer on his way to play golf? A wrongly convicted serial killer who lives in a palazzo and drinks fine wine and turns out at the end of the movie to be a serial killer after all? Some kind of sporting dark lord: wronged football Jesus?
Continue reading...The Manchester United manager, Erik ten Hag, has urged his players to take the 'great opportunity' in front of them and win the English FA Cup at the expense of their local rivals Manchester City at Wembley on Saturday. While City are seeking to lift England's oldest trophy for the seventh time, the Reds are hoping for a 13th triumph. City are also seeking the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League titles – a feat only previously achieved by United in 1999.
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Saturday, Wembley Way. The tribes will gather, demarcated by red and blue – though Mancunian fashion by-laws dictate all adult males must wear white ankle socks below thigh-revealing shorts, should temperatures top 15 degrees. It’s likely to be bad-tempered; it always is between these two, but rail strikes and lengthy motorway delays from Congleton downwards are hardly likely to ease the mood.
Continue reading...The Manchester United midfielder discusses facing City, his friendship with Bruno Fernandes and his first FA Cup final
Casemiro has a simple way of shrugging off the spectre of Manchester United’s 6-3 trouncing by Manchester City in October as he prepares for Saturday’s FA Cup final and 190th derby.
“Every game is a different story, a different film as we like to say,” says the Brazilian. “You have to be realistic, and I like to be very much a realist. They were better than us in that game. They deserved to beat us but when you talk about a 6-3 in the context of a league, it’s still three points that you get.
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