“Every World Cup needs them, those ‘dark horse”’nations who perform well in qualifying, enjoy some success in their respective continental tournaments and then threaten to upset the heavyweights. The term itself comes from 1830s horse-racing gambling — for an unknown horse for whom it was hard to assign betting odds. In the two centuries since, it’s been slightly corrupted as a footballing term. We have surprise packages, who emerge during the tournament, and that’s what dark horse should mean based on its etymology. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
World Cup dark horses: Ecuador, Mexico, Japan, Norway and Senegal
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“The night before England manager 
“Incondicionales – Unconditional. Few countries have a knottier relationship with the World Cup than Mexico. The tournament will visit for an unprecedented third time this summer. Entire chapters of football history have been written on the turf of the Estadio Azteca, one of the sport’s holy sites. The Mexican national team, known to fans as El Tri, have missed only five World Cups. They have been ever-present since 1990, reliably contributing to the colour and fanfare of the greatest show on earth. That’s the good stuff. The consensus view, however, is that it is outweighed by the bad. …”
“Arne Slot has been sacked as Liverpool head coach. The decision has been taken by owner Fenway Sports Group after Liverpool finished fifth in the Premier League with just 60 points, their lowest total for a decade. Andoni Iraola is now considered the 
“
“It would be easy to look at Saturday’s Champions League final between 
“This has not been a happy year for Italian football. The men’s national team failed to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup, while 
Liverpool v Crystal Palace – Anfield, Liverpool, Britain – April 25, 2026
“The 2025-26 Premier League season is done and dusted — so what better time than right now to predict who will win it next time? Arsenal were crowned champions, overcoming Manchester City and improving on three consecutive seasons finishing as runners-up, and Mikel Arteta’s team look like they’ll enter 2026-27 with momentum and stability in their favour. City are coming to terms with the new era following the departure of the iconic Pep Guardiola, and they hope to replace him with Enzo Maresca, while Manchester United will continue under the stewardship of Michael Carrick, who succeeded Ruben Amorim at Old Trafford and oversaw their turnaround in the second half of the season. …”
“If last season was a euphoric high for Liverpool, this one has been a crushing low. Few could have predicted the 2024-25 Premier League champions title defence being so limp. Head coach Arne Slot has achieved the bare minimum objective of qualifying for the Champions League but it comes with relief rather than belief and there is huge uncertainty around him and his underperforming squad heading into the summer. Liverpool actually won their first seven games of the season in all competitions but things quickly went downhill and everybody is ready to forget a horrible campaign. Should we make this the last time we speak about it? …”
Crystal Palace: love a long throw
“The 2025-26 Premier League season was a strange one — the bottom-half clubs were good, the top-half clubs were inconsistent, and there was a major focus on intensity and set pieces at the expense of interplay and creativity. Three hundred and eighty games is a lot to digest. But what if the whole Premier League season could be boiled down into 10 matches, with each side featuring once? Well, it would look something like this. …”
“The Green Brigade of Glasgow Celtic Football Club were founded in 2006 as an explicitly anti-sectarian, anti-racist and anti-fascist group of ultras, who would celebrate Irish Republicanism, oppose the commercialisation of football, and act as an alternative to apolitical fans groups who were perceived as being too close to the management of the club. Football has long provided a space for dissident politics to be expressed, and the link between football and radical politics is well established (Kuhn, 2011). In Scotland, football is an important forum where issues of ethnic, religious and political identity are played out, with Celtic being an important conduit for expressions of Irish immigrant identities, particularly support for Irish Republicanism, anti-imperialist struggles, and broadly left-wing politics. As ultras, the Green Brigade support their team in a passionate, colourful, loud and coordinated way, making use of banners, pyrotechnics, songs and chants, and other expressions of die-hard support. The term ‘ultra’, for many, has become synonymous with right-wing football groups, particularly in Italy, where fascist ultras groups are extremely prevalent. While it is true that right-wing, fascist ultra groups are extremely prominent throughout Europe, ultra is a subcultural scene which has been adopted by both right and left-wing football fans and activists. …”
Celtic’s Ultras division, The Green Brigade,
“Mohamed Salah’s extraordinary Liverpool career is drawing to an end. Since arriving at the club in the summer of 2017, the Egyptian has amassed 257 goals in 441 games — a record only bettered by two players in the club’s history. His time at Liverpool has not been without controversy — 
“It all started behind a pine tree. The setting was Middlesbrough’s Rockliffe Park training ground, two days before the club were due to meet Southampton in the Championship play-off semi-finals. Will Salt, a first-team performance analyst intern working for Southampton, had travelled north to gather intelligence on the club’s opponents as they trained a few metres away beyond a metal fence. He stationed himself behind the tree and got out his mobile phone to record Middlesbrough’s players, hoping he would go unnoticed. …”
“World Cups are frequently remembered for magnificent goals, heroic performances and famous wins, but shock results play a huge role in our collective memory of the tournaments too. Here, then, is our attempt to quantify the five biggest upsets of all-time. USA 1-0 England, 1950 It’s difficult to fully explain the vast difference in expectations for England and the United States going into World Cup 1950. For England, this was their first World Cup appearance having boycotted the first three editions, but they remained convinced that English football was the strongest in the world. Their team included legendary players like Billy Wright, Tom Finney and Stan Mortensen, all amongst the greatest in their position in the world, as well as defender Alf Ramsey, who would manage England to World Cup success 16 years later. Soccer in the United States was yet to take off, and they sent a hastily assembled side managed by William Jeffrey, a Scot whose day job was coaching the Penn State University side. The players were amateurs — some regular first-teamers couldn’t travel because of the demands of their day jobs. …”
“This was supposed to be a week of celebration for Mohamed Salah and Liverpool. The announcement in March that this would be the Egyptian’s final season on Merseyside teed up this Sunday’s game against Brentford at Anfield to be a golden goodbye to one of the club’s — and the Premier League’s — greatest ever players. Instead, 
“This is not how it was supposed to be. This is not how the most gripping Scottish title race in two generations was meant to end, with Celtic fans on the pitch confronting Hearts’ beaten and dejected players and with sufficient chaos around the two dugouts for referee Don Robertson to effectively stop the match without blowing a final whistle. Hearts manager Derek McInnes had predicted ‘bedlam’, but not like this. McInnes’s captain, Lawrence Shankland, was one of the visiting players seen being goaded by triumphalist Celtic supporters. It happened during a spontaneous pitch invasion to mark Celtic’s third goal, which effectively curtailed a season that had hitherto brought the rare prospect of romance, a first Hearts title since 1960. …”
“Failure to wrench the title from the Glasgow giants is no cause for remorse given that Celtic and Rangers have been shaken from their lethargy. Another final-day showdown, another final-day heartbreak. The pain has been spread over 61 years, but that won’t make it any easier to bear for Hearts who, having been top for 250 days of the 
“… After looking at 
Mexico and South Africa playing the opening match of the 2010 World Cup.
“‘Minimum interference, maximum benefit’ was the promise when VAR was first introduced. Those were the words used by David Elleray, the technical director of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), in a presentation to journalists at Wembley Stadium in March 2017 to justify the profound change the game was about to undergo. … The logic was clear enough. Examples such as Diego Maradona’s handball against England or Thierry Henry’s against the Republic of Ireland were held up as proof. Under this new system, those headline mistakes could be surgically removed from the game, keeping everything else intact. The laser precision of technology was all that was required. …”
“All too often a football match doesn’t live up to the hype. As Southampton’s players danced on the pitch and their fans sang about a return to Wembley and a chance to gain promotion to the Premier League, opponents Middlesbrough were crestfallen and wondering how it had ended like this 
“The Butterfly Effect — which is, loosely, when minor changes to the initial conditions of a complex system can result in radically different outcomes — was most prominently researched in relation to weather models in the 1960s. But it can, perhaps, also be applied to football teams — and Victor Lindelof. Did you notice that the Swedish centre-back is a midfielder now, which is working out quite well? And while this is an interesting development in its own right (and much more on this later), it also tells us something about what it means for the systems used in the game. Let’s take Aston Villa, whose central midfielders play an important role in their build-up. Operating at the tip of the deep triangles that Unai Emery sets up on either side of the goalkeeper, their task is to help regulate the progression of the ball from Villa’s own third into their opponent’s half. …”
“If there was ever a dream scenario for Barcelona to win La Liga, it had to be with victory over Real Madrid. That Sunday’s game came at the end of such a tumultuous week for their Clasico rivals — including the 
“PORTUGAL’s Primeira Liga is always a three-horse race between the country’s biggest football clubs – Benfica and Sporting and this season’s champions, Porto. The gap between this trio and the rest of the league shows no sign of shrinking; in 2025-26 fourth-placed Braga currently stand 19 points worse off than Sporting, who have finished bottom of what is a three-team super league within a league. José Mourinho’s Benfica are the only unbeaten still side in the Primeira. Porto’s last title win was in 2022 and since then, they have had some problems to deal with. …”
“Barcelona are celebrating winning La Liga for the second season in a row, after victory over Real Madrid confirmed their successful title defence. Hansi Flick’s side 
“No matter what happens in Arsenal’s final three Premier League matches, David Raya has earned at least a share of the division’s Golden Glove award for a third successive season. Arsenal’s goalkeeper has kept 17 clean sheets in the 35 games so far. The only player who could match him is Manchester City’s Gianluigi Donnarumma, who is on 13 and has four league fixtures left, making it increasingly likely that Raya will be the outright winner for 2025-26. He would be just the fourth goalkeeper to receive the award three seasons in a row after Liverpool’s Pepe Reina (2006, 2007, 2008), and City’s pair of Joe Hart (2011, 2012, 2013) and Ederson (2020, 2021, 2022). The numbers are startling. …”
“Your manager has fallen out with the sporting director and results have gone awry, so you replace him. Easily done, it happens. But then it turns out that the new manager could not be more ill-suited to the squad, results go awry and so you replace him. A bad leader would hesitate and hope things worked out, but you are ruthless and decisive and turn to a manager who was once a youth player at the club and has some anecdotes about the old days. But it turns out some people think his methods are old‑fashioned and results go awry, so you replace him. And this time you pull a masterstroke. You get in a bloke who saved a team in not dissimilar circumstances last season, who takes 15 points from his first nine league games in charge, lifting you six clear of the relegation zone. If you beat Newcastle at home on Sunday you’ll be safe. You are a genius, your recruitment skills unmatched. …”
“THE TWO second legs may not have been as captivating as the first, but nobody could complain at the overall quality of the penultimate stage of the 2005-06 UEFA Champions League. For Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain, their success underlined that they are probably the two best teams in Europe this season. Bayern Munich, arguably, are also in the continent’s top three, but they looked decidedly pedestrian against Luis Enrique’s livewires. PSG’s speed and energy, a feature of their approach these days, was too much for a tired-looking Bayern. They had Harry Kane sorted out, although the England captain finally got a sight of goal in added time, but it was too little, too late. As for Arsenal, they beat Atlético Madrid at their own game, playing them tight and matching them muscle-for-muscle. Arsenal have shown this season they have more savvy than in previous campaigns that have promised much and delivered little. …”
“Welcome to the latest edition of The Alternative Premier League Table, where each week, The Athletic analyses the entire division through a specific lens. Matchday 35 saw teams across the Premier League score 23 of their 46 big chances. That 50 per cent conversion rate is the third best of the season after Matchday 5 (59 per cent) and 20 (55 per cent). Opta defines a big chance as ‘a situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually a one-on-one scenario or a shot from close range with a clear path to goal and low-to-moderate pressure’. So, in this week’s table, we compare how teams fared when it comes to creating and converting big chances across the first 18 games to the last 17, roughly a first half versus second half of the season. …”
“Max Allegri sought refuge in the dug-out at the Mapei Stadium. He bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. Not Sassuolo. Not again. The team with whom he began his rise through the leagues, taking ‘Sasol’ up to Serie B for the first time in their history two decades ago, has a funny way of coming back to haunt him. A 4-3 defeat in 2014 brought an end to his first spell as coach of AC Milan. The scorer of all four of Sassuolo’s goals that day was Domenico Berardi. Now a little longer in the tooth, Berardi struck again at the weekend in a 2-0 win. Historically only Enrico Chiesa and Silvio Piola have been more prolific against Milan than Sassuolo’s No 10. …”
“Arsenal will play a first Champions League final in 20 years in what promises to be a grandstand finish to their season after Bukayo Saka’s goal helped the Premier League leaders eliminate Atletico Madrid. Denied a penalty when Leandro Trossard was knocked over by Antoine Griezmann on 34 minutes, Arsenal were ahead 10 minutes later when Saka pounced on a rebound after Trossard’s shot was saved by Jan Oblak. The two sides had drawn the first leg 1-1 in Madrid last week and the Spanish visitors were looking for a spot kick of their own when Giuliano Simeone, Atletico manager Diego’s son, rounded goalkeeper David Raya and tangled with Gabriel. They sought another soon after when Griezmann was caught by Riccardo Calafiori but referee Daniel Siebert had given an earlier foul by Atletico. …”
Ousmane Dembélé fires the ball past Manuel Neuer for the early breakthrough for PSG.
“We were served up an all-timer of a game at the Parc des Princes last week, and the second leg promises more of the same. For Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich, the 2025-26 season will be measured by the Champions League. The contest resumes at the Allianz Arena on Wednesday, with PSG holding a one-goal lead. Twenty-four hours after the fireworks in Paris came a different sort of game. Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid and Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, two coaches who have built reputations on defensive identity, played out a tense, attritional first leg that finished 1-1. Two ties, two shades of intensity. A reminder that the same sport can grip you in entirely different ways. The second legs will decide who walks out at the Puskas Arena in Budapest on May 30. But who will be in the final? Here are the numbers and trends that may give us a clue. …”
“It was a celebration in the style of Jose Mourinho. Supposedly about the players and never about him. But undeniably genuine this time. Cristian Chivu hung back. The smoke of the fireworks making him crave a cigarette. Federico Dimarco pushed him forward, so hard he almost tripped over, entangled in the blue, black, and gold streamers that had fallen from the sky. Chivu faced the Curva Nord, accepted the ultras’ applause and then turned, pointing to his team as if to say: Inter’s 21st Scudetto was down to them. He then retired to the dressing room, his face suddenly aglow from the flick of a lighter and had a smoke. …”
“Nobody in football works the touchline quite like Atletico Madrid head coach Diego Simeone. The Argentinian’s actions are often as absorbing and compelling as what happens on the pitch. The latest installment came during the Champions League semi-final first leg against Arsenal last Wednesday, particularly after the away side were awarded a second penalty of the game in the 80th minute, when Eberechi Eze went down under a challenge by David Hancko. As Danny Makkelie waited for instructions from the video assistant referee (VAR) Dennis Higler, Simeone could be seen trying to grab the Dutch referee’s attention by waving his arms in the air and imitating the ‘TV screen’ VAR signal. …”
“There have been 2,548 goals scored at men’s World Cups since the first tournament in 1930. Trying to select five as the greatest in the history of the competition is perhaps a foolish task. But the nice thing about great goals in football is that there are so many different types. Some are individual dribbles, some are one-off strikes out of nowhere, some are flowing team moves, some are about outrageous close control, and some are largely about emotion. Here, then, is an attempt at working out the World Cup’s greatest goal in each of those categories. …”
“Who remembers the holding midfielder? The no-nonsense anchorman who sat in front of the defence, protected that space, and contributed little in attack? The current trend in the Premier League is for players in that mould to push up, to press, to make runs into attack, and 
“FC Thun are not used to making headlines, but the newly crowned champions of Switzerland are arguably this season’s greatest European football story. Home to fewer than 45,000 people and 16 miles (26 kilometres) south-east of Bern, Thun is not among the 10 biggest Swiss cities by population. Its football club, which marked its 128th anniversary on Friday, had never previously won a major trophy, were outside the top division for the previous five years, and had come close to bankruptcy. Yet Thun, operating with one of the Swiss Super League’s lower budgets, sealed a historic title on Sunday. They lost 3-1 to Basel on Saturday night, but second-placed St Gallen lost 3-0 at home to Sion today — putting Thun an unassailable 10 points clear at the top of the table with three matches to go. …”
“Barcelona will be crowned La Liga champions if they avoid defeat against Real Madrid in the upcoming El Clasico. Hansi Flick’s side require just one point to take an unassailable lead over second-place Madrid, who defeated Espanyol 2-0 on Sunday. Vinicius Junior scored twice in 11 minutes in the second half of the fixture to keep Barca from taking the title this weekend. Barca are 11 points clear of Alvaro Arbeloa’s side with four rounds of matches remaining, with the visitors needing to win at Camp Nou if they are to keep alive the mathematic possibility of catching their rivals. If Barca were to win, it would be the first time that a La Liga title was decided in a Clasico. …”
“A remarkable match at Old Trafford, and a precious win for Manchester United. This 3-2 triumph not only ensured United claimed a first league double over Liverpool for the first time since the 2015-16 season but sealed qualification for next season’s Champions League, after two campaigns away. First-half goals from Matheus Cunha and, more controversially, Benjamin Sesko put United in control against a depleted Liverpool side who looked timid and disjointed for long spells. …”
Bournemouth’s matchday revenue is limited by the size of their ground
“Manchester City are the only team to win the Premier League on goal difference, and this season they might need to repeat the trick. For those uninitiated in the competition’s most storied moment, Sergio Aguero’s last-minute goal for City in a 3-2 final-day victory at home against Queens Park Rangers in May 2012 meant they pipped Manchester United to the title by virtue of their superior goal difference, which was eight better than their crosstown rivals. The margins at the top could be even finer in the current campaign. …”
“Jeopardy has returned to Scottish football. It is an integral part of any sporting competition but, for 41 years, the title has been shared between only two clubs, Glasgow’s dominant duo of Celtic and Rangers. This season, the usual two-horse race finally has a third runner. Hearts, short for their full name Heart of Midlothian, hailing from the capital Edinburgh and without a league triumph in 65 years, are top of the Premiership with four games to go. They are three points clear of Celtic and four ahead of Rangers, on the verge of upending the duopoly known as the ‘Old Firm’. …”
“Across the sporting institutions with which he is most associated, there was a sense of John W. Henry being everywhere and nowhere last weekend. On Saturday afternoon at Anfield, before 
“After the final whistle of Rayo Vallecano’s 3-0 Conference League quarter-final first leg win over AEK Athens on April 9, almost the entire crowd of 14,000 stayed behind in the stands for over 15 minutes to sing and celebrate together. Rayo’s players and coaches remained on the pitch to share a joyful connection with fans whose support had helped the team overwhelm their Greek opponents. Most of those present eventually headed home, or to the many neighbourhood bars in the working-class Madrid suburb of Vallecas that gives the club its name. But others stayed behind to form queues outside the stadium, with some fans camping out overnight to secure a ticket for the second leg. …”
“Welcome to the latest edition of The Alternative Premier League Table, where each week, The Athletic analyses the entire division through a specific lens. The Premier League title race will likely see plenty more changes at the top before and potentially during the final matchday of the season on May 24. Arsenal are top — as they regularly have been since 2022-23 — but Manchester City hold a game in hand, with goal difference another factor. A couple of spots below them, Aston Villa are fifth, eight points ahead of sixth-placed Brighton & Hove Albion. It is unlikely another side will break into the top five with just four games left but multiple teams have jumped in and out of those Champions League spots since August. …”
“IT’s always entertaining to watch Diego Simeone on the touchline at an Atlético Madrid game; he’s a human jack-in-the-box, a black-clad octopus who resembles a rabid director of inner-city traffic. For 15 years, Simeone has been the driving force behind the club’s graduation from Real Madrid and Barcelona’s wing men to contenders for silverware. In his time, they have won two league titles, the Copa del Rey and two Europa Leagues, not to mention reaching two Champions League finals. In 14 seasons, Atlético have never finished below fifth and that was in Simeone’s first half-season in charge. …”
“Atletico Madrid and Arsenal are meeting in this season’s Champions League semi-finals. A place in the final in Budapest at the end of May is at stake, of course, but so too is making history for both sides. Atletico and Arsenal, who play their first leg in Madrid tonight (Wednesday), are arguably the two biggest clubs never to have won the Champions League or its forerunner, the European Cup. Atletico have been finalists three times, Arsenal once, and both will envy the likes of Crvena Zvezda, PSV and Steaua Bucharest, who have all claimed the continental title. Each of those three would be considered ‘smaller’ clubs than Atletico or Arsenal, as would two-time winners Porto. But Porto and, for example, Hamburg and Feyenoord, could retort that their size can be measured by their trophy cabinet. …”
Franz Beckenbauer (left) shakes hands with Abelardo of Atletico Madrid ahead of the European Cup final replay in Brussels
“… That statement was completely illogical yet also made perfect sense, and therefore proved a fitting appraisal of a truly logic-defying game in Paris on Tuesday. This first leg of a Champions League semi-final was unquestionably the best match of the European season, probably the best of the decade so far and presumably the best many people watching it around the world have ever seen. Football is not generally a sport where you need to check the scoreboard to understand the state of play. Here, with so much going on, sometimes you needed to double-check: yes, it really was 
“It wasn’t the nine goals we were treated to on Tuesday, but this week’s second Champions League semi-final was not short of drama, with two penalties given and one controversially overturned. Atletico Madrid’s spot kick was similar to the one Paris Saint-Germain received against Bayern Munich on Tuesday, with the ball striking Ben White’s hand. Arsenal’s came when David Hancko bundled over Viktor Gyokeres. But the most controversial was the third, originally awarded after Eberechi Eze was caught by Hancko, but then overturned when the referee went to the VAR screen. Just down the touchline, Atletico manager Diego Simeone was making his feelings known. …”
“The best Champions League match ever? The best football match ever? 
“Gianluca Rocchi is a member of Italian football’s 
Scissors Kick 