All 30 Major League Soccer teams are unveiling new jerseys this week ahead of the 2025 season. Here's a look at each.
Bayern’s Scottish adventures: from wrath against Raith to a shock at Aberdeen
Before the German club face Celtic in a Champions League playoff we recount a rich history that goes back decades
Given Bayern Munich’s lengthy and storied history in European competition, it may come as no surprise that they have jousted with Scottish clubs over several decades. But the variation and drama attached to many of those fixtures gives cause for contemplation as the German team return to Glasgow for a Champions League playoff against Celtic.
Bayern are heavy favourites to progress, largely because of the economic tilt towards clubs of their standing in the modern era. It was not always thus, however, as a glance at the record books outlines.
Continue reading...‘It’s just bad decisions’: Guardiola rues late goals as City slip to Madrid defeat
- City conceded twice in final six minutes of 3-2 loss
- ‘Everyone has to take accountability – I take it’
Pep Guardiola admitted that Manchester City cannot be competitive if they continue to concede late goals as they did when surrendering an 86th-minute lead in Tuesday’s 3-2 home defeat against Real Madrid in the Champions League playoff first leg.
City held the advantage at the Etihad Stadium through Erling Haaland’s 80th-minute penalty, with the striker’s 19th-minute opener having been cancelled out by Kylian Mbappé on the hour. Yet Guardiola’s side collapsed as the final whistle approached.
Continue reading...Championship roundup: Leeds rout Watford as Farke hails ‘poetry in motion’
- Leads win 4-0 away to surge five points clear at top
- Preston and Coventry boost playoff hopes
Daniel Farke hailed Leeds’s “top level” forwards after the emphatic 4-0 win at Watford increased their lead at the Championship summit to five points.
Dan James opened the scoring in the 20th minute after latching on to a misplaced pass from Edo Kayembe. The Wales winger made it 2-0 eight minutes later when Watford were caught out by a swift counterattack. Manor Solomon saw a shot deflected in for the third before half-time, with Joël Piroe slotting in the fourth midway through the second period after Watford were undone with some quick passing in tight spaces.
Continue reading...Manchester City 2-3 Real Madrid: Champions League playoff player ratings
Erling Haaland impressed despite defeat and Jude Bellingham showed up when his team needed it most
Ederson Brilliant low second-half save from Kylian Mbappé before Erling Haaland strike. Sharp saves early on but poor clearance makes the No 1 culpable for Brahim Díaz’s equaliser. 6
Continue reading...Champions League: Guirassy cuts down Sporting, Juventus edge ahead of PSV
- Dortmund win 3-0 in Portugal; Mbangula lifts Juve
- Dembélé takes Brest apart to show PSG are contenders
Serhou Guirassy scored one and set up another in Borussia Dortmund’s 3-0 victory at Sporting in their Champions League playoff first leg to put last year’s finalists in the driving seat for a spot in the last 16.
The top scorer in this season’s Champions League headed in his 10th goal of the competition on the hour mark before providing Pascal Gross with a perfect assist to double the lead in the 68th minute.
Continue reading...Manchester City 2-3 Real Madrid: Champions League playoff round, first leg – as it happened
Jude Bellingham’s injury-time winner shattered an ailing Manchester City, who led twice through Erling Haaland
2012-13 (group stage)
Madrid 3-2 City
City 1-1 Madrid
City 0-0 Madrid
Madrid 1-0 City (agg: 1-0)
Madrid 1-2 City
City 2-1 Madrid (agg: 4-2)
Madrid 1-1 City
City 4-0 Madrid (agg: 5-1)
Madrid 3-3 City
City 1-1 Madrid (agg: 4-4; pens: 3-4)
Continue reading...Rodgers keen for Celtic to use home atmosphere and ‘hurt’ Bayern Munich
- Scottish side welcome ‘football royalty’ on Wednesday
- Hosts boosted by Daizen Maeda return after ban appeal
Brendan Rodgers wants Bayern Munich to experience “hurt” at Celtic Park after taking pride in his team’s European improvement this season.
Bayern’s visit to Glasgow marks the first time since 2013 that Celtic will play knockout Champions League football, with Rodgers contemplating his most significant scalp yet. Celtic are the heavy underdogs to see off the German giants over two legs but Rodgers has challenged his players to keep the tie competitive before they head to the Allianz Arena next week. Slovan Bratislava, RB Leipzig and Young Boys have already been defeated at Celtic Park this season, with the hosts unbeaten in their last half-dozen home European games.
Continue reading...Galaxy captain Maya Yoshida gets a pay cut because of antiquated MLS rules
Maya Yoshida started more games and played more minutes than anyone on the Galaxy roster last season. And for that his reward was a pay cut. He's not happy about that.
Real Madrid prepare for Manchester City with ‘total emergency’ in defence
An injury crisis means Carlo Ancelotti must get creative in the Champions League playoff against Manchester City
Dani Carvajal, Antonio Rüdiger, David Alaba, Éder Militão and Marcelo were in the team photo before the Madrid derby at the Bernabéu on Saturday night. A seriously impressive defence, it was just a pity they weren’t playing. Instead, Marcelo was there so they could pay homage to the full-back, who won 25 trophies with the club, in the week he announced his retirement. The other four had come to join him and support their teammates. None were dressed in white; all are injured.
All of which would be bad enough, but it was about to get worse. The following afternoon, having been named in the squad to travel to Manchester, the captain pulled out too. In the past fortnight Lucas Vázquez had missed visits to Valladolid and Leganés as a precaution but eventually he too fell, calling from home after Sunday’s training session to say something wasn’t right in his thigh. He was the backup, a midfielder at full-back, albeit one who has played there for so long now that it has become his default role. There have been 36 injuries at Madrid this season, 26 of them muscular.
Continue reading...Doncaster Rovers 0-2 Crystal Palace: FA Cup fourth round – as it happened
Goals from Daniel Muñoz and Justin Devenny earned Crystal Palace a 2-0 win at Doncaster and a last-16 tie at home to Millwall
1 min: The Palace fans have travelled up the M1 and M18 in numbers. It looks freezing cold. Doncaster engage the old high press and forced Matt Turner to lose the ball.
Oliver Glasner’s turtle-neck jumper rather unfortunately reminds of the U-Boat captain in Dad’s Army. Don’t tell him, Pike.
Continue reading...Real Madrid v Manchester City ‘seems like a clásico’ now, says Carlo Ancelotti
- Two teams meet again in Champions League playoffs
- City have faced Madrid five times in past six years
On the eve of Real Madrid’s Champions League playoff first leg at Manchester City, Carlo Ancelotti billed the clash between the sides as a “clásico”.
Madrid’s trip to the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday night and the return at the Santiago Bernabéu on Wednesday next week will be the fifth time in six years the sides have played each other in the knockout phase. While the Spanish and English champions have each previously progressed twice, Ancelotti was clear about how he rates encounters between them.
Continue reading...Plymouth fan savours a second win over Liverpool, 69 years after the first
Lifelong Argyle fan Jed Griffiths was at Home Park for the victory over Liverpool in 1956 and Sunday’s FA Cup shock
As snapshots of a lifetime spent following Plymouth Argyle, two wins against Liverpool, almost 70 years apart, stand out for Jed Griffiths. Few among the Home Park faithful attended both but Griffiths, a proud member of the Green Army since 1953, was there for the 4-0 win on 11 February 1956 in the old Second Division, his beloved club’s previous defeat of Liverpool. As for the FA Cup fourth-round giantkilling on Sunday, when the Championship strugglers sank the Premier League leaders, it was “one of the highlights of my footballing life”.
In 1956, Griffiths was a schoolboy at Devonport High school, watching the game from the old “Pop Side” of the old Home Park. “No seats in those days,” he says. “We were opposite the grandstand, and we younger kids would get passed down the front, and we hung on the railings for a closeup view.”
Continue reading...Blackburn ‘reluctantly’ allow manager John Eustace to hold talks with Derby
- Rovers ‘extremely disappointed’ by Eustace’s request
- Eustace, 45, ended his playing career with Derby
Blackburn Rovers have “reluctantly granted” their manager, John Eustace, permission to speak to fellow Championship side Derby County.
Eustace confirmed after Sunday’s 2-0 FA Cup defeat to Wolves that Derby had made an official approach for his services. The relegation-threatened Rams are seeking a replacement for Paul Warne, who was sacked on Friday.
Continue reading...An FA Cup shock shouldn’t unhinge Liverpool, but football isn’t logical
Plymouth showed the world’s oldest football competition still has life but Arne Slot won’t be too worried despite his team winning just five of their last 11 games
It was, it has to be acknowledged, a much-changed Liverpool lineup. Of the 11 players who began Sunday’s FA Cup fourth-round match at Plymouth Argyle, only Luis Díaz had made more than 10 league starts this season and only three others had made more than five. Even allowing for that, Plymouth’s victory registers as one of the great shocks of recent times, only the fourth time the leader of the Premier League has ever gone out of the competition to lower-division opposition.
As their quietly charismatic 42-year-old Bosnian coach Miron Muslić pointed out afterward, it was a day that will go down in Plymouth’s history, that will be recalled for generations, as a one-off result more impressive than anything they achieved in reaching the semi-final in 1983-84. It was Liverpool’s ninth defeat to lower-league opposition this century but, in terms of the scale of the shock, it felt perhaps most akin to their exit against non-league Worcester City in 1959 when they were a second-flight club, a defeat that precipitated the decline that led to Phil Taylor making way for the great Bill Shankly.
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