Have you been following the big and small stories in football, cricket, cycling, golf, F1 and beach soccer?
Continue reading...Premier League and FA Cup final: 10 things to look out for this weekend
Goodbyes to Goodison and Vardy, Palace and City brace for Wembley and the return of Kai Havertz
Aston Villa could not conceal their anger after their game at home to Tottenham was brought forward 48 hours. Villa’s director of football operations, Damian Vidagany, said shifting the game from Sunday to Friday was “clear prejudice” against the club and Villa objected to Spurs’s request for it to be moved to aid their preparations for Wednesday’s Europa League final. Villa were also privately perplexed at Bournemouth’s game with Manchester City being rearranged for Tuesday, after Saturday’s FA Cup final, which is guaranteed to have implications on whether eighth place qualifies for the Europa Conference League. The flipside to all of this is Villa can get on the front foot, kicking off 45 minutes before Chelsea entertain Manchester United and two days before Nottingham Forest head to West Ham and Arsenal host Newcastle. Victory for Villa could hoist them as high as fourth before a final-day trip to Old Trafford and, psychologically, that could prove a knockout blow. Ben Fisher
Aston Villa v Tottenham, Premier League, Friday 7.30pm (all times BST)
Chelsea v Manchester United, Premier League, Friday 8.15pm
Crystal Palace v Manchester City, FA Cup final, Saturday 4.30pm
Continue reading...Lionel Messi is wasting his time at Inter Miami — and MLS roster rules are to blame | The Cooligans
Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami conundrum is setting headlines — and not in the way fans hoped.
MLS rules continue to fail Lionel Messi + Michele Giannone previews the Hudson River Derby
Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros react to the midweek slate of MLS fixtures including another bad defensive performance from Inter Miami! Christian and Alexis then chat with MLS reporter & analyst Michele Giannone ahead of the Hudson River Derby between NYCFC and New York Red Bulls. Later, Christian and Alexis react to Ashlyn Harris’ latest podcast appearance on another edition of Run that Back.
Hull sack head coach Rubén Sellés despite avoiding drop
- Club escaped Championship relegation on final day
- Spaniard won nine of 27 league games in charge
Hull have sacked their head coach, Rubén Sellés, after less than six months in charge.
The club escaped Championship relegation on the final day of the season on goal difference, having been bottom when Sellés was appointed in December. The 41-year-old Spaniard is the third manager sacked by the Hull owner, Acun Ilicali, in the past 12 months and the club now begin their search for a fifth permanent coach since the Turkish media executive took control in early 2022.
Continue reading...Bologna’s unlikely Coppa Italia triumph ends long wait for silverware
Dan Ndoye’s goal secures a 1-0 win over Milan and sparks scenes of joy in the Piazza Maggiore once again
Vincenzo Italiano knew there was a little bit of poison in the chalice offered to him last summer but accepted it anyway. The opportunity to manage Bologna was a chance to lead a Champions League team for the first time in his career. It was also an invitation to become the public face of a project that had nowhere to go but backwards.
What could he possibly do to improve on the work of the previous manager, Thiago Motta, who led Bologna back into Europe’s top club competition for the first time in 60 years? Italiano would not even have the same group of players to work with. Top scorer Joshua Zirkzee was on his way to Manchester United and the newly capped Italy defender Riccardo Calafiori to Arsenal. Lewis Ferguson would be out for months with a cruciate ligament tear.
Continue reading...‘Boring … horrific’: Erling Haaland on Manchester City’s season of defeats
- Striker puts focus on FA Cup final against Crystal Palace
- ‘We need to finish well and get a trophy,’ he says
Erling Haaland has described Manchester City’s season as “horrific” and “boring” owing to the champions losing so many games, and said that makes winning Saturday’s FA Cup final against Crystal Palace even more vital.
City, the Premier League title winners in the past four seasons, are fourth, 18 points behind the champions, Liverpool, having lost nine times. They were eliminated by Real Madrid in the Champions League playoff stage and by Tottenham in the last 16 of the Carabao Cup.
Continue reading...LAFC again heating up as it extends unbeaten streak to six games with rout of Seattle
Cengiz Under, Jeremy Ebobisse, Denis Bouanga and Yaw Yeboah score for LAFC in a 4-0 victory over the Seattle Sounders.
Ruben Amorim ‘far from quitting’ despite Manchester United’s poor form
- Coach clarified claim he could quit after West Ham loss
- ‘What I am saying is we must perform or they will change’
Ruben Amorim has insisted he is “very far from quitting” Manchester United, the head coach moving to clarify his suggestion after Sunday’s loss to West Ham that he could walk away.
After the 2-0 defeat at Old Trafford that left his team in 16th Amorim stated that if next season started with the same dismal form it may be time for “new persons to occupy this space”.
Continue reading...How Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami struggles mirror his time with PSG
The Argentine superstar has been top-class, but a lack of structure behind him has been his team’s undoing. Sound familiar?
Inter Miami are used to having a target on their back by now, but no opponent has hit them harder than Minnesota United did on Saturday in a 4-1 rout. As if inflicting Lionel Messi’s heaviest-ever defeat in Major League Soccer wasn’t enough, the Loons took the opportunity to rub it in on social media, labelling South Florida’s Galacticos a “Pink Phony Club” – a jibe that irked David Beckham.
Beckham’s frustration, along with everyone else’s at Inter Miami, has built over a number of weeks. The Herons are experiencing an early-season reckoning. Their Concacaf Champions Cup challenge was ended by a rampant Vancouver Whitecaps who ran up a 5-1 aggregate scoreline to make the final despite Inter Miami making the competition a big priority.
Continue reading...Watford appoint Paulo Pezzolano as 18th permanent manager since 2013
- Former Valladolid manager is ‘the leader we need’
- Hornets finished 14th in Championship this season
Watford have announced the appointment of Paulo Pezzolano as their new head coach. The 42-year-old Uruguayan succeeds Tom Cleverley, who was sacked on 6 May following the Hornets’ disappointing 14th-place finish in the Championship.
Pezzolano becomes Watford’s 18th permanent manager since Gianfranco Zola left in December 2013.
Continue reading...O’Hare lands last blow on Bristol City as Sheffield United barrel into playoff final
For a side with such a horrendous record in the EFL playoffs, the way Sheffield United coasted through their semi-final’s two legs into the Championship’s showpiece game at Wembley did little to suggest they are a team with a hoodoo hanging over their heads.
In many ways, history is stacked against the Blades: nine previous attempts at the playoffs, five semi-final defeats and four heartbreaking final losses. But if there was one crumb of comfort for manager Chris Wilder and his side in missing out on automatic promotion with a couple of games to spare, it was the fact that they had time to regather themselves and prepare for the playoffs.
Continue reading...Sheffield United 3-0 Bristol City (6-0 agg: Championship playoff semi-final, second leg – as it happened
Blades made no mistake in the second leg, completing the job and will head to Wembley after a record aggregate scoreline
3 min: Early snap shot from Twine, the ball falling loose after Ahmedhodzic’s touch. This time the forward can’t get enough purchase but a moment to get people wondering.
1 min: It’s a slow start. Tommy Cannon is the straight man to Kieffer Moore, rather than Bobby Ball.
Continue reading...Will Kuntz reveals ALL as LA Galaxy continue abysmal start to season. Can they turn this season around?
Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros chat with Los Angeles Galaxy General Manager Will Kuntz as the team continues their early season slump. Kuntz reveals why the Galaxy are going through their winless start and what they can do to turn things around. Can Kuntz and the Galaxy make a playoff push? Will there be a way to change rules so that we can see dynasties in MLS?
‘Desperate passion’ driving Son’s quest for Spurs win in Europa League final
- Forward has lost two previous finals with Spurs
- ‘This feels like an opportunity that may not come back’
Son Heung-min says the biggest reason he has stayed at Tottenham for so long is to succeed where others have failed and win a trophy with the club. The captain will have the chance to do so next Wednesday in the Europa League final against Manchester United, and he described himself as being driven by “desperate passion”.
Son, who is fighting to regain peak fitness after a foot injury, joined Spurs from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015. He has scored 173 goals for the club, putting him fifth on their all-time list behind Harry Kane, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Smith and Martin Chivers. But he has been on the losing team in each of the finals he has contested with them – against Liverpool in the 2019 Champions League and Manchester City in the 2021 League Cup. Tottenham’s last trophy was the 2008 League Cup. Son is under contract until 2026, the club having triggered a one-year option on him in January.
Continue reading...