premier league – The News Desk

Beer, Euro 2024, and all those cups – what’s going on?

29Jun

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Beer, Euro 2024, and all those cups – what’s going on?

Follow live coverage of Switzerland vs Italy and Germany vs Denmark at Euro 2024 todayThe European Championship has been drenched in beer. In the fan zones and outside the stadiums. On the concourses and in the stands.Everyone has been drenched. Fans, players and, much to the amusement of everyone not wearing a lanyard, journalists, who have been sheltering laptops and walking into press conferences dripping with booze.Get the tiny violins. Possibly a towel.We do need to talk about the plastic cups, which have been cascading down from the stands towards anyone taking a corner or goal kick.The beer first, though.The official sponsor of the tournament is Bitburger, the German brewer, and the concourse bars are exclusively stocked with their products. For matches at the Allianz Arena, for in...

Hope for Arsenal and Liverpool: 10 reasons why Manchester City might still drop points

16Apr

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Hope for Arsenal and Liverpool: 10 reasons why Manchester City might still drop points

It seems unlikely that north London denizen TS Eliot was an Arsenal fan, but his poetry suggests otherwise.“April is the cruellest month,” begins The Waste Land. “I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,” laments The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. “This is the way the challenge ends; not with a bang but a whimper,” was probably the first draft of The Hollow Men.Sunday was a disappointing day not just for Arsenal and Liverpool fans, but neutrals who wanted to see the three-way title battle continue. Liverpool’s 1-0 loss against Crystal Palace and Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat to Villa leaves Manchester City two points clear at the top of the league and, as frontrunners, Pep Guardiola’s side are near infallible.“I have known it all already, known it all,” moans Eliot. But cheer up, Tommy. There is...

Liverpool 0 Crystal Palace 1: Is the Premier League title bid over?

14Apr

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Liverpool 0 Crystal Palace 1: Is the Premier League title bid over?

Liverpool’s terrible week just got a whole lot worse.A shock 1-0 defeat to struggling Crystal Palace has dealt a blow to Jurgen Klopp’s hopes of a second Premier League title. Following on from the 3-0 Europa League defeat to Atalanta on Thursday, the season is in danger of fizzling out.We analyse the major talking points from Anfield…Is that the end of the title hopes?Even the most pessimistic minds on Merseyside would have struggled to envisage Liverpool’s week playing out as badly as it has.After the 3-0 humbling at home to Atalanta, a result that leaves progress to the Europa League semi-finals hanging by a thread, another ruinous setback has made a Premier League title all the more unlikely.Liverpool’s unconvincing form has been masked by late fightback, but Crystal Palace’s resolute...

Ryan Giggs and football: A very complicated relationship

13Apr

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Ryan Giggs and football: A very complicated relationship

The celebration was almost as glorious as the goal itself. The fuzz of chest hair, the twirling shirt, the body swerve to evade the Manchester United fans who had run on the pitch in their euphoria.On Sunday, it is 25 years since Patrick Vieira, a genuine great of Arsenal’s midfield, played a wayward pass amid the high drama of an FA Cup semi-final between the leading two English sides of the time.Ryan Giggs took the ball and then he was off and running, picking up speed from inside his own half, slaloming past opponents, one by one.Vieira tried to get back but Giggs, crossing the halfway line, dipped his shoulder to get away. Lee Dixon was next to come across. He, too, could not get near him.Arsenal had the most famously parsimonious defence in English football — yet Giggs had magic in h...

Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City: Every Premier League title-race fixture analysed

9Apr

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Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City: Every Premier League title-race fixture analysed

The Premier League remains a European outlier this season.Everywhere you look around the continent, title races have become virtual processions. Paris Saint-Germain are 10 points clear in France’s Ligue 1, Bayer Leverkusen are 16 ahead and one win away from winning the German Bundesliga title, while PSV Eindhoven have a nine-point cushion at the top of the Dutch Eredivisie.Elsewhere, Real Madrid lead by eight points in Spain’s La Liga and Inter Milan are 11 ahead of city rivals AC Milan with a game in hand in Italy’s Serie A.In England’s top division, however, things are a whole lot tighter. With seven games remaining, just a point separates table-topping Arsenal from third-placed Manchester City, with Liverpool sandwiched between on goal difference. Since the Premier League was launched ...

How can you tell if a football manager is actually good at their job?

9Apr

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How can you tell if a football manager is actually good at their job?

An important thing to remember about Andre Villas-Boas is that he had ridiculously good hair.You don’t spend a record-shattering €15 million (£12.9; $16.3m) fee to sign a rookie manager away from Porto unless you’re pretty sure you know what you’re getting, and one thing Chelsea knew for certain, back in the heady days of 2011, was that the man with a swirling, fox-red side-parting looked impossibly cool getting tossed in the air during trophy celebrations. Villas-Boas at Porto in 2010 (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)Hair like that had sexy new ideas — a philosophy, perhaps. It had the sort of rakish sweep that could command a press conference, smouldering volcanically above the jagged peaks of an unbuttoned collar. But when the 33-year-old prodigy conducted his first i...

Do big sporting wins cause an increase in birth rates among fans?

4Apr

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Do big sporting wins cause an increase in birth rates among fans?

Football arguably doesn’t need anything extra to feed its collective sense of self-importance, but the idea that it can cause new life to be created will certainly do it.You might remember a rather dramatic game in the National League towards the end of last season when Wrexham and Notts County faced each other in what was effectively a ‘winner takes promotion’ clash. In the 97th minute, Wrexham goalkeeper Ben Foster saved a penalty to seal a 3-2 win, putting them three points clear with a game in hand on their rivals.According to Foster, the result of the collective ecstasy of that moment was made clear nine months later: he recently recorded a video in which he claimed the birth rate in the Wrexham Maelor Hospital went up by 24 per cent in January 2024 when compared to a year earlier.Th...

The Briefing: Will Haaland’s form cost Man City? Cole Palmer: MVP? Xabi Alonso’s power move

2Apr

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The Briefing: Will Haaland’s form cost Man City? Cole Palmer: MVP? Xabi Alonso’s power move

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.This was the round when Newcastle snatched victory from the clamped-shut jaws of defeat against West Ham, Liverpool went top of the league after an early scare against Brighton, Manchester United went 1-0 up in the 96th minute and still didn’t win and Sheffield United threw away another two-goal lead.Off the back of all that and more, we will ask if Erling Haaland is playing poorly at the worst moment for him and his club, if Cole Palmer is the Premier League’s most valuable player and whether Xabi Alonso turning down Liverpool and Bayern Munich to stay at Bayer Leverkusen is the real power move…Is Haaland’s bad form at the worst poss...

Kylian Mbappe’s transfer status: Free to talk to clubs, Real Madrid’s deadline, PSG’s stance

2Jan

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Kylian Mbappe’s transfer status: Free to talk to clubs, Real Madrid’s deadline, PSG’s stance

Today, as we begin 2024, Kylian Mbappe enters the final six months of his contract with Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), which means he will be able to negotiate with clubs who are interested in signing him on a free transfer at the end of that deal.Aged 25, Mbappe is already a World Cup winner, runner-up and Golden Boot winner, and widely recognised as one of the finest football players on the planet. His future has also been the subject of frenzied and protracted speculation with the Frenchman frequently flirting with Real Madrid and falling out with PSG.At some point in the near future, Mbappe will have to decide whether to extend his contract in Paris (something he declined to do last summer), sign for Madrid (something he came mightily close to doing in the summer of 2022) or move somewher...

Free agents in 2024 – the players who can now sign pre-contract transfer agreements

2Jan

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Free agents in 2024 – the players who can now sign pre-contract transfer agreements

This season’s winter transfer window is now open, meaning clubs can officially start the scramble to add reinforcements or offload players deemed surplus to requirements.Premier League sides can do business until 11pm GMT on Thursday, February 1 — and, following discussions with the major leagues around Europe, that will also be deadline day in La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), Ligue 1 (France) and the Bundesliga (Germany).But while clubs who want to sign players under contract must negotiate and, usually, pay a transfer fee during a FIFA-determined transfer window, wise forward planning allows ‘pre-contract agreements’ in some circumstances.The Athletic explains what these are and which players due to be out of contract in the summer could now step up transfer plans…What is a pre-contrac...