“Few people expected Bournemouth’s game with Liverpool this weekend to be so important. The Premier League’s broadcast partners certainly didn’t as they made their five picks for live TV from the 10 matches in this latest round of fixtures. Sky Sports and their TNT counterparts choosing to leave the Vitality Stadium clash in the Saturday 3pm slot, behind English football’s longstanding television ‘blackout’, means only viewers outside the UK will be able to (legally) watch what could be one of the matches of the season as it happens. Because this might be the toughest fixture league leaders Liverpool have left as they chase a record-equalling 20th league title. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“When 
“Realistically, 
“.Over halfway through the 2024-25 season, for fans of certain teams outside the traditional ‘Big Six’, the first item is all they need. Specifically, that is, a table of the current 
“Inside the dressing room, there is a poster permanently positioned above the door. Three hearts, angel wings and the names of the girls — Alice, Bebe and Elsie — who, tragically, shockingly, have become known around the world. It was put up after the almost unspeakable horrors, on July 29 last year, that have traumatised this seaside town. … If you are not familiar with Southport, 20 miles outside Liverpool in the north west of England, you might not realise how close the club’s stadium is to the scene of the savage, indiscriminate attacks 
“Not for the first time this season, 
“Midway through the second half of 
“If football viewers are forced to pick a part of matches they could fast-forward through, the most popular choice is likely to be throw-ins. Usually, these are trivial to the audience; just a means to resume the action after the ball goes off one side of the pitch or the other. The fun ones are those launched into the penalty area towards a cluster of players from both teams battling to get on the end of it. The most iconic long throw-ins in 
“Diego Simeone’s super-charged Atletico Madrid were just too much for Xabi Alonso’s eventually overwhelmed 
A mural of Arsenal co-chair Josh Kroenke on the approach to the Emirates Stadium
“Since the recent rise to prominence of set-piece coaches in football, we have grown accustomed to scrutinising a dead-ball situation to within an inch of its life. Professional dance troupes would be proud to pull off some of the choreographed routines implemented by 
“There are different ways to score a hat-trick. Not the method itself, but how a player scores their three goals — a hat-trick can come from three tap-ins, or three long-range strikes alongside an incredible performance. 
“It is 76 days since 
“Jorge Jesus winced as he read what sounded a lot like the last rites. … The situation belongs to Neymar. The cloudy future, too. In that small Riyadh press room, Jesus confirmed he would not be registering the forward for the second half of the Saudi Pro League season, effectively drawing a line under this latest chapter of his career. It is not clear what will happen next. Neymar is 33 in February. As Jesus was at pains to emphasise on Thursday, his ability is not up for debate. His recent injury record makes for grim reading, however: the Brazil forward has not started a match since suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury playing for his country in October 2023. Zoom out a little further and it is just 733 competitive minutes in 23 months. …”
Custom-made Diadora shin pads made for Roma’s Francesco Totti in 2006, which now appear thoroughly retro by modern standards 
“Before Omar Marmoush was racking up goals and assists in the 
“
“Living on the doorstep of footballing monoliths can come in handy sometimes. With Greater Manchester in the grip of a cold snap last week, Salford City were left without anywhere to train. The pitches at their Littleton Road base were frozen solid. Salford rent the pitches from 
“
“The quality was not the same, but 
“… Twelve years may be a long time by its basic definition, but in international football? Try telling England fans that constitutes a long wait. For Spain, there would be no prolonged drought, no pining for an unrepeatable generation, and no arduous, decades-long reinvention of both style and type of footballers. Though the likes of Sergio Busquets, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta might never come along again, nobody was spending much time looking to the sky with their palms out. … Of the 715 minutes of football they played across the tournament, very few of which were against lower-ranked nations, they were behind for just over 33 of them. Spain were rarely hit, never mind knocked down. …”
“Today’s Spanish Supercopa final between 
“The FA Cup is the oldest football tournament in the world. The 2024-25 FA Cup is the 144th edition of the tournament. The FA Cup Third Round is when the teams from the top 2 divisions in England – the Premier League, and the EFL Championship – join the competition. The 20 Premier League teams and the 24 Championship teams join 20 other lower-leagues teams. …”
“
The name of the Metro station as displayed in 
“The football analytics boom has been firmly established, but its role within the game remains debated. Some argue that data has cleansed the game to such an extent that football has become too uniform for the average fan. For others, a data-led approach is romanticised as the tool that helps clubs find an edge in creating their underdog story. Whatever your opinion, data analysis, paired with video technology, is becoming increasingly complex in football — even if its impact on a team’s tactical approach continues to be discussed. The Athletic’s Michael Cox recently provided a compelling argument that the work being undertaken within football analytics might not have been applied as much on the pitch as we might have thought. While data-led recruitment — 
“… It may sound futuristic but football is already heading in that direction, the most well-publicised example being 
“Claudio Ranieri does not have all the answers. It can seem as if he does: the man who steered Leicester to a Premier League title and who long before that built a reputation in Italy as the first person to call when a top team was failing. In case of emergency, do not break the glass, just dial Claudio instead. He had retired after leading Cagliari to an improbable escape from relegation last season, but 
“Heartbreak, again, for Monaco. Despite another nip-and-tuck match against Paris Saint-Germain – much like their meeting in Ligue 1 three weeks ago – Monaco were cruelly felled at the death in the Trophée des Champions. Ousmane Dembélé scored the only goal of the game in the 92nd minute, finally beating Monaco’s second-choice goalkeeper Philipp Köhn, who put in a fantastic display. The real star of the show though – as has been the case all season – was Monaco manager Adi Hütter. …”
“The celebrations were not what they might have been. Bayern Munich had planned a Christmas display after the Friday night game with RB Leipzig, the full stop to their calendar year, which was swiftly cancelled after news filtered through of the 
“When the post-match discussion focuses on the player who has been dominating headlines in the previous days, it’s fair to question if that analysis is reasonable, or whether it’s simply a convenient narrative to keep everyone talking. On this occasion, the analysis was entirely fair: 
“Talk to 
“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 
“Earlier in the season, Frank Lampard spent some time with 
“English football in 2024 served up a bit of everything: stunning strikes, comical own goals, baffling errors, refereeing controversies, promotions, relegations, trophies lifted, CVs sifted and much more besides. So as 2024 draws to a close, we have decided ignore those opposed to calendar-year stats and unify all 94 teams (yes, Sutton United and Forest Green Rovers, you may no longer be in the 
“
“… The map. The map page shows a location-map for the 20 clubs in the 2024-25 La Liga, with recently-promoted and -relegated teams noted. (Promoted in 2024: Valladolid, Leganés, Espanyol. Relegated in 2024: Cádiz, Almería, Granada.) The map also shows the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain, and the 20 largest Spanish metropolitan areas. Those 20 largest Spanish metro-areas, with their 2018 population estimates, are listed at the top-centre of the map-page. …”
“It had been a wasteful night for 
“It has been hard to find fault with 
“This week brings up the midway point of the 2024-25 
“Welcome to The Transfer Radar. Each major tournament, The Athletic has built a scouting guide highlighting the players to watch. This winter, we are launching a new version of The Radar — one focused on transfers across 2025. We began with 25 players we expect to be of transfer interest to major clubs across Europe over the January and summer windows in 2025. As of December 19, we have added three more players we expect to be of interest. This is not to say that they will move, but based on the conversations our reporters have been having, they are players that are being talked about among recruitment departments. While most fans are focusing on the January window, clubs are already having conversations about next summer. …”
“Pep Guardiola’s list of symptoms is long and unsettling. He has trouble sleeping. He can only take light meals in the evening. On some days, he does not eat at all. He finds it difficult to read because his mind keeps wandering. He feels, at times, intensely lonely. Things can get so bad that they begin to take on a physical form: bouts of back pain, breakouts on his skin. They are not isolated to moments like the one in which the Manchester City manager finds himself trapped, when his team are locked in a tailspin he has spent the better part of two months trying and failing to halt. By his own admission, he is always like that. Guardiola cannot sleep, or eat, or relax even when things are going well at work. …”
“Was it a winning goal that never seemed on the cards or a winning goal that felt inevitable. Either way, 
“
“After the high of their dramatic derby victory last Sunday, 
“Barcelona have been prepared to play with fine margins under Hansi Flick this season, but the gap at the top of La Liga — just goal difference before the visit of in-form Atletico Madrid this weekend — is starting to feel uncomfortably slim. They took 33 points from a possible 36 to start the campaign but have since won just one of their last six games in the Spanish top flight. Their 
“The #MeToo movement swept through Hollywood and fundamentally shifted the paradigm of accountability for powerful individuals accused of sexual misconduct. It ignited a global reckoning that sought repercussions for actions long shielded by status, money, and influence. The movement dampened the careers of comedians, actors, film and television producers, and executives accused of inappropriate sexual behavior and led to the criminal convictions for some high-profile figures such as Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, Danny Masterson, and Bill Cosby—though Cosby’s conviction was later overturned. It has also extended beyond Hollywood and seen a similar reckoning in the music industry, academia, medicine, finance, and even religious and political institutions. In the arena of sports, one of the most shocking and biggest sexual abuse scandals centered around Larry Nassar, who served as the team doctor for the United States women’s national gymnastics from 1996 to 2014. During his tenure, he exploited his position to sexually abuse hundreds of young athletes, many of whom became Olympians. …”
“A sharp, anxious intake of breath, followed by a round of applause that carries a mixture of quiet admiration and, more than anything, relief. On other occasions, it ends with supporters shaking their heads and asking why. We are talking about the crowd reaction to — and I’m borrowing this description from a colleague who is a regular at Stamford Bridge — ‘the most dangerous pass in football’. 
“
Scissors Kick 