Football (Soccer) News
Barcelona returned to the top of the La Liga table with a comfortable 4-0 home victory over 10-man Real Sociedad on Sunday.
Barça’s sixth straight league win moved them into first place with 57 points from 26 games, one ahead of Atlético Madrid. Real Madrid are third with 54 points after a 2-1 defeat at Real Betis on Saturday.
Continue reading...Ruben Amorim hit back at Wayne Rooney after Manchester United crashed out of the FA Cup, by claiming that being the club’s head coach aged 40 showed he was not naive.
Rooney, who is United’s record goalscorer, called Amorim naive for saying after the holders’ elimination from the Cup on penalties by Fulham that the club’s long-term goal is to win the Premier League.
Continue reading...Eddie Howe hinted that Newcastle might appeal against Anthony Gordon’s “harsh” straight red card in their home FA Cup defeat by Brighton but seemed virtually resigned to being without the England winger in the Carabao Cup final.
Gordon was sent off for raising two hands and shoving the Brighton defender Jan Paul van Hecke in the head in the 83rd minute of the 2-1 defeat and is set for an automatic three-game ban. It would rule out one of Newcastle’s leading players for the Wembley showpiece against Liverpool in two weeks’ time.
Continue reading...In the squeaky posterior time of this FA Cup fifth-round penalty shootout, Victor Lindelöf and Joshua Zirkzee were the unfortunate ones whose kicks were saved, ending Manchester United’s trophy defence.
Fulham won the shootout 4-3 with a kick to spare and the visitors marginally deserved their passage, though this was a slog through 120 minutes of meagre fare that was no advertisement for the world’s oldest knockout competition.
Continue reading...Calvin Bassey gave Fulham the lead and Bruno Fernandes equalised, before Bernd Leno made decisive shoot-out saves from Victor Lindelöf and Joshua Zirkzee
Fulham, meanwhile, will have restored players who were rested for this match. With their Premier League status secure, they’ve no reason not to go all-out for the Cup, and given the teams left, they’ve a decent chance of making something happen. Bassey is exactly the kind of centre-back Hojlund can spend an entire match fruitless fighting; Robinson is a one-man left-flank; and Iwobi has excellent ball-carrying capabilities.
Amorim has little in the way of options. He’ll be devo’d about Dorgu, banned for the first of three games – already, his new signing had made a difference, giving United width, balance and physicality, doing the right things and building a promising partnership with Bruno Fernandes. Mazraoui, though a lovely footballer, offers little attacking threat from wing-back, likewise Diogo Dalot on the other side, while there could scarcely be less pace behind the nominal centre-forward, Rasmus Hojlund, both Eriksen and Joshua Zirzkee looking like they run in a wind-tunnel.
Continue reading...When the dust finally settled on a tie featuring two red cards and an endless stream of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it drama crowned by Danny Welbeck’s extra-time winner, Brighton were in the quarter-finals.
Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon, meanwhile, was out of this month’s Carabao Cup final after being shown a straight red card deep in a second half that also featured Alexander Isak’s late withdrawal, accompanied by a physiotherapist, just to exacerbate Eddie Howe’s worries.
Continue reading...San Diego FC coach Mikey Varas and sporting director Tyler Heaps expressed disappointment and anger after their club’s inaugural home match was marred in the second half by three occurrences of the homophobic chant frequently heard at the Mexican national team’s soccer matches.
The club uniformly decried the notorious one-word Spanish chant both during and after San Diego finished a scoreless draw with St Louis City on Saturday night at Snapdragon Stadium, which was packed with 34,506 fans celebrating the arrival of Major League Soccer’s 30th team.
Continue reading...Academics and medics are working to understand why hamstring injuries are keeping players sidelined for longer
The sight of a player pulling up with a hamstring injury has become all too familiar in the Premier League. Weary muscles are being stretched to the limit by an expanding calendar, but dealing with more games is not the only challenge for medical departments.
It is not that there has been a sudden explosion. It can simply seem that way when high-profile players such as the Arsenal forwards Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz are long-term absentees. Using figures up to and including game week 26, that ended last Sunday, the Premier Injuries website says 100 of the 418 injuries this season related to hamstrings (24%), compared with 120 from 457 (26%) at the same stage last year.
Continue reading...MLS club Houston Dynamo have issued an apology to fans after Lionel Messi was revealed by various outlets to not be in the Inter Miami traveling party for Sunday night’s game between the sides. The Texas club also promised free tickets to a future match to all in attendance due to Messi’s absence.
In their statement, the Dynamo indicated that they believed Messi would be fit to play the match based on his name not being listed on Inter Miami’s player status report. The player status report, released before matches, is traditionally where teams will list players that are carrying injuries or who are otherwise out of action.
Continue reading...Ruben Amorim has said the challenges faced in his turbulent first three months in charge of Manchester United have made him a “more complete manager”. The Portuguese took over in November and has overseen five victories in 16 Premier League matches, leaving them 14th.
One of those wins was at Fulham, who visit Old Trafford on Sunday in the FA Cup fifth round. The holders face a crucial week with a last-16 first leg trip to Real Sociedad in the Europa League on Thursday with redundancies off the pitch and poor performances on it.
Continue reading...Real Madrid stumbled in the three-way race for the La Liga title as Isco guided Real Betis to a 2-1 comeback win over the defending champions on Saturday, enabling Atlético Madrid to overtake their neighbours by winning the late kick-off against Real Betis.
Atlético won thanks to a second-half strike from the substitute Julián Álvarez. Atletico came close to taking the lead in the first half through Alexander Sørloth, who missed a header from Antoine Griezmann’s pass. Álvarez, who came on for Sørloth just before the hour mark, gave Atlético the winner in the 66th minute with a precise left-foot shot after being played through by Marcos Llorente.
Continue reading...The Arsenal forward, once England’s key player, is only 30 but his confidence is shot and his career on a downward curve
In Rafa Benítez’s first season in English football, he rested Steven Gerrard for an FA Cup tie at Burnley, who were in the Championship. When Liverpool lost, there was a predictable backlash and, from certain quarters, derision as Benítez explained his rotation policy and the need to manage the number of minutes each player played.
Social media being in its infancy, it wasn’t quite the culture war that it would have become today, but certain old-school football men clearly felt that players should just get on with it: hard work never hurt anyone. But at the same time a piece of ancient wisdom kept surfacing, usually from elderly coaches who had spent a lifetime in the game: as a rule of thumb, however much they play, whatever age they start, a player has 500 games in them.
Continue reading...The hosts were forced to come from behind against a spirited Argyle side but a brace from Nico O’Reilly and Kevin De Bruyne’s late strike saw them into the quarter-final draw
“It’s Manchester City, it’s away, the team which has dominated the Premier League for the last seven or eight years so it truly feels like something very, very big,” said Plymouth’s manager in his pre-match press conference.
Continue reading...Leeds’ title charge was checked as they were held to a frustrating 1-1 draw by West Brom. Junior Firpo headed the home side into an early lead but Darnell Furlong equalised with a looping header before the break.
The point still extended Leeds’ unbeaten league run to 17 matches as they head towards a Premier League return. Though the West Brom’s manager, Tony Mowbray, later questioned their ability to stay there.
Continue reading...Oliver Glasner described the challenge by the Millwall goalkeeper, Liam Roberts, that sent Jean-Philippe Mateta to hospital as “a very, very serious foul play”, but said he did not believe Roberts had intended to cause any injury.
“It was tough to see it,” Glasner, the Crystal Palace manager, said. “I don’t want to see it any more. Just imagine if he hits his face straight, with all this power and the studs, it could have been the end of JP’s career.”
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