Category: Football (Soccer)

Football (Soccer) News

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Son Heung-min waves to roaring Los Angeles fans after agreeing deal with club

  • Forward watched LAFC’s home game against Tigres

  • Korean’s fee reported to be more than $20m

Son Heung-min has agreed to a contract with Los Angeles FC after a decade at Tottenham. The 33-year-old attended LAFC’s home Leagues Cup win against Tigres on Tuesday, watching from a luxury suite, and will be introduced on Wednesday.

The club showed the forward on the stadium video board late in the first half. LAFC, a wealthy club with significant success in their first eight seasons of existence, reportedly paid more than $20m (£15m).

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Martin’s changes pay off as Gassama double eases Rangers past Viktoria Plzen

  • Rangers win 3-0 in first leg of third qualifying round

  • Team respond to Martin’s anger after Motherwell draw

Russell Martin’s bold team selection paid off as Rangers defeated Viktoria Plzen 3-0 in the first leg of their Champions League third qualifying round tie at Ibrox.

Martin hit out at some of his squad following their deflating 1-1 draw at Motherwell on Saturday, questioning mentality, egos and application and the captain, James Tavernier, and the midfielder Nicolas Raskin were the biggest names among the expected changes.

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Glasner believes Crystal Palace will win appeal and play in Europa League

  • Case against Uefa demotion to be heard by Cas on Friday

  • Club’s first Conference League fixture set for 21 August

Oliver Glasner has said he is confident Crystal Palace will win their appeal at the court of arbitration for sport this week and be reinstated to play in the Europa League.

Palace are seeking to overturn Uefa’s decision to demote them to the Conference League for breaking multiclub ownership rules, with the appeal to take place in Lausanne on Friday. The decision is expected to be revealed by Cas on Monday, the day after Glasner’s FA Cup holders face the Premier League champions Liverpool in the Community Shield at Wembley.

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Ademola Lookman goes on strike at Atalanta over ‘broken promises’ for transfer

  • Club refusing to sell to Serie A rivals Inter

  • Centre-forward complains of ‘poor treatment’

Ademola Lookman has gone on strike as he attempts to force through a move to Inter, but Atalanta have insisted he will not be sold to another Italian club.

The Nigeria forward did not attend pre-season training for the second day in a row after handing in a transfer request last weekend, when Lookman also published a statement in which he accused Atalanta of “broken promises”. An improved Inter bid worth up to €45m (£32.1m) including add-ons was rejected last week after a €40m offer for the 27-year-old was turned down.

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How Palestine’s Wessam Abou Ali earned a head-turning move to MLS’s Columbus Crew

After a winding career path, Abou Ali now faces the pressure of being a designated player for one of the league’s best teams

As soon as I stepped on the field on the King Abdullah II Stadium in southeast Amman in June, Wessam Abou Ali stepped off. Palestine had just had their dreams of the 2026 World Cup ended by a last-minute Oman penalty that was as soft as they come. While some players in white fell to their knees or collapsed crying into the arms of coaching staff, the 26-year-old, with scrunched-up shorts, exited stage left to head to the United States and the global stage of the Club World Cup with Egypt’s Al-Ahly, after impressing so much on the African and Asian one.

Now, after this busiest of summers, the Danish-born star has signed for Columbus Crew – a No 9 for one of MLS’s best teams in need of one, and one who takes up one of the team’s allotment of designated player spots, to boot.

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Analyzing preseason friendlies is maddening, but right now it’s all we have | Jonathan Wilson

Every team enters preseason at a different stage of readiness and with different goals, making results hard to decipher

Glory for Manchester United, who lifted the Premier League summer series on Sunday despite twice being pegged back by Everton to draw 2-2 in Atlanta. A degree of relief for West Ham, who beat Bournemouth to finish second in the competition despite all the gloomy prognostications about their campaign to come. In Seoul, meanwhile, there was a very Tottenham moment as they followed the glee of last week’s 1-0 win over Arsenal with a 1-1 draw against Newcastle in which James Maddison was stretchered off with a knee injury described by his manager Thomas Frank as “bad”.

It all looks real, it sounds real and yet everybody knows it isn’t real. That even now, in this age of data and minute analysis, there remains an element of randomness, is one of soccer’s great joys as a sport. But that tendency is magnified in pre-season.

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Lionel Messi exits Inter Miami match v Necaxa with injury: ‘He did feel a pull’

  • Messi exited in the opening minutes of Leagues Cup match

  • Status is uncertain for future games

Lionel Messi exited Inter Miami’s Leagues Cup match against Necaxa on Saturday night after suffering an apparent hamstring injury in the opening minutes.

After the match that Inter Miami won in a penalty shootout, coach Javier Mascherano indicated that Messi would undergo testing on Sunday to determine the severity of the injury.

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Tom Brady’s Birmingham primed to touch down in the Championship

Driven by the ambitious ownership of Tom Wagner and an NFL icon, the Blues intend to take the second tier by storm

Unsurprisingly, Tom Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl champion and global sporting icon, is braced for the challenges that await Birmingham City, where he is a minority owner. “Just because you were successful last year doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful this year,” he says, alluding to a season that culminated in promotion and a record-breaking tally of 111 points. “You have to put the same amount of work, commitment and discipline in – sometimes more – because the stakes only get higher. When the competition gets tougher, the margin of error gets smaller.”

It is his final answer in an interview that takes in everything from the “blue-collar nature of Birmingham”, which he compares with Cleveland and Cincinnati, to the Championship landscape and the bubbling rivalry with Aston Villa, which he was educated on during his first visit to England’s second-biggest city after acquiring his 3.3% stake.

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Thomas Müller the key to Vancouver’s title hopes? + Is it time MLS looks at rule changes?

Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros analyze Thomas Müller's move to the Vancouver Whitecaps and its potential impact on their title aspirations. Could this acquisition push them past Inter Miami as MLS Cup favorites? They also break down Jermaine Jones’ claim that his 2014 return to MLS wasn’t his choice, raising the question of whether the league should revisit some of its policies—especially the discovery rights rule. Finally, the hosts react to a heartwarming moment: the England women’s national team surprising head coach Sarina Wiegman with a performance by Burna Boy during their Euro celebration.