“Gonzalo Garcia kept up his sensational Club World Cup scoring form to send Real Madrid through to the quarter-finals with a 1-0 win against Juventus. Gonzalo’s 54th-minute header was his third in four games in the United States and was enough to give Xabi Alonso’s team the edge at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium. The striker was later replaced by Kylian Mbappe for the Frenchman’s first appearance at the tournament after suffering from viral gastroenteritis. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
Real Madrid 1 Juventus 0: Gonzalo keeps shining, Mbappe’s return and a fine Alexander-Arnold cross
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“Al Hilal eliminated Manchester City from the Club World Cup in a landmark victory for the Saudi Arabian team, winning a remarkable last-16 game 4-3 in extra time to cap a day of upsets. The Saudi side have shopped significantly for European stars since the state’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) took control of four teams in the Saudi Pro League in 2023 as 
“Fluminense are through to the Club World Cup quarter-finals after beating Inter 2-0 in Charlotte on Monday. Renato Gaucho’s side started quickly and took the lead after only three minutes via an opportunistic header from German Cano. Inter fans might have hoped that an early setback would spur their side into a concerted response but there was little evidence of that in the rest of the first half. Cristian Chivu’s team eventually managed to build some momentum in the second half but some obstinate Fluminense defending — and the woodwork — kept the Italian side at bay. And, as Inter pressed ever more desperately for an equaliser, Fluminense broke and sealed the game in injury time via a tidy finish from Hercules. …”
“The knockout rounds of the Club World Cup begin this weekend, starting with Palmeiras and Botafogo returning to Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field just two days after 64,811 fans withstood the pouring rain to watch Vinicius Junior come alive with Real Madrid. Everyone’s hoping for some magic in the round of 16 and, if the group stage matches were any indication, we can expect plenty more drama too. With the final whistle of group play now behind us, one of the major talking points from this competition so far has been the volume of disciplinary action handed down by referees. Across 48 games so far, 10 red cards have been issued. …”
“The word ‘soccer’ remains at the heart of one of the most enduring, if comparatively low-key and petty fronts of the culture war. At its most basic level, it’s a transatlantic disagreement over language, but there seems to be more to it than that. The most basic and probably most sensible point of view is that it’s simply one country — America, though there are others — using a word to differentiate one extremely popular sport from a slightly less popular sport. But use the word in the wrong context — which is to say, ‘in England’ — and you can expect paroxysms of disgust from people who seem to think it represents something much deeper. These people are, admittedly, those who are far too easily outraged (check their sent email files and there’s a reasonable chance they have also complained to a TV station about a newsreader not wearing a tie), but it seems like these people think of this as somehow chipping away at the identity of the game, and even themselves. It’s an Americanism, as everyone knows, and this is apparently something to be suspicious of. …”
“After beating Esperance de Tunis with 
“Off-target shots are football’s missed opportunity, in more ways than one. As the analytics revolution began to sweep through the sport in the early 2010s, shots on goal quickly became a key area of interest, with the aim of identifying the game’s most ruthless finishers firmly in mind. Some years after expected goals (xG) came expected goals on target (xGOT) — a metric that estimates the quality of on-target shots, taking into account factors such as the angle from which the shot was taken from, and its placement within the goal frame, to give an indication of how likely the subsequent effort was likely to find its way in. …”
“There was a theme in Xabi Alonso’s first post-match press conference as Real Madrid head coach: improvement will take time. After Madrid’s 1-1 draw with Al Hilal in their opening game in the Club World Cup, Alonso portrayed a calm figure who knew his side were still early in the process. … After a season when Madrid looked porous out of possession regardless of their defensive shape, one thing Alonso needs to improve is the team’s structure without the ball. Madrid’s 4-3-3 against Al Hilal morphed into a 4-4-2 when Alonso’s side were defending in a mid-block, with Jude Bellingham or Vinicius Junior slightly behind Gonzalo Garcia. …”
“… It was a passage of play that featured no-look passes, a backheeled volley, and a game of keep-ball that turned a Champions League match into ‘a kind of rondo’. Peter Bosz was furious. Furious with his own PSV players. … Back in January, PSV were facing a callow Liverpool side who were down to 10 men and trailing 3-2 in the closing minutes. Against the better judgment of Bosz, the PSV players had decided to showboat. … A couple of months later, in South America, Corinthians were beating Palmeiras 1-0 on aggregate in the second leg of the Sao Paulo state championship final. As the clock ran down, Memphis Depay stood with both feet on top of the ball. …”
“There may be two months to go until the 2025-26 Premier League season gets underway, but the release of the fixture list has whetted the appetite of fans across the division. Consisting of 38 rounds of matches over nine months, with each team playing their 19 rivals once at home and once away, the opening few games are often decisive in building momentum to set the tone for the campaign, or derailing it through diminishing confidence. These early matches alone will not define a season but they play a significant role in shaping its course, and naturally attract the attention on fixture-release day. …”
“Boca Juniors storm beaches. They plant their flags and wade through water. ‘The biggest popular movement on the planet’ is how they define themselves — and when they move, they move. They occupied Copacabana before the 2023 Copa Libertadores final against Fluminense. A sunburnt kid leant out of the crowd, his hair wet and eyes clear. His father had sold his motorbike so they could be there. The boy had also given up his PlayStation to pay for the journey to Rio de Janeiro. They didn’t have match tickets but they didn’t care because, as he said, ‘Look around you! Look at this! This is Boca! Come on, Boca!’ A club for the people, made great by their people. …”
“On November 23, 2010, a lunch was hosted at the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the French president. Among President Nicolas Sarkozy’s guests that day were Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, now the Emir of Qatar, and Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, who was Qatar’s prime minister at the time. Also in attendance was the legendary French footballer Michel Platini, then-president of UEFA, European football’s governing body, and a member of the FIFA executive committee that was about to hold a vote to decide which countries would host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. …”
“Almost 11 years after his last game as a Real Madrid player, Xabi Alonso is 
“It’s that time of year again. Liverpool have finally lifted the Premier League trophy after securing the title last month, but the main prize is not the only thing being handed out. Mohamed Salah hoovered up the individual awards, with 29 goals securing the Golden Boot and 18 assists grabbing the Playmaker award for the second time in a Liverpool shirt. Golden glove? That goalkeeping accolade was shared between Nottingham Forest’s Matz Sels and David Raya of Arsenal, with 13 clean sheets apiece. …”
“Manchester City’s dominance finally came to an end, Liverpool were able to celebrate the title in front of their fans for the first time in 35 years, two of the ‘Big Six’ finished in the bottom six and the promoted clubs all went straight back down.Those might be the raw headlines from 2024-25 but this Premier League season offered so much more — this was the campaign, don’t forget, when a player got booked for imitating a seagull. Seb Stafford-Bloor, Tim Spiers, Nick Miller, Oliver Kay and Stuart James reflect on the highs and the lows as another year of English top-flight football reaches its conclusion. …”
“The defining moment of Stoke City’s 10 years in the Premier League came on November 29, 2008. They were playing Hull City at home, whose defender Kamil Zayatte had just played a backpass to goalkeeper Boaz Myhill. Myhill was immediately closed down by two Stoke attackers, so the standard clearance up the pitch was not an option. There wasn’t a short pass on. The next most logical choice was to go sideways and put it out for a throw — not ideal, but it would have dealt with the immediate issues. After all, how dangerous can a throw-in really be? But Myhill stopped, hesitated, stuttered, regretted every one of his life decisions that had led him to this point, weighed up his options… and kicked it out for a corner. …”
“There will be many memories of Tottenham Hotspur’s Europa League triumph, the club’s first trophy in 17 years. One of them will be the change in tactical approach during the knockout stages, which saw 
“Barcelona are La Liga champions for the 28th time after a 2-0 victory at city rivals Espanyol took the title away from defending champions Real Madrid. Lamine Yamal curled in a fine effort in the 53rd minute to set Barca on the way to the title before Fermin Lopez wrapped up the win following Yamal’s assist in the fifth minute of second-half stoppage time. It crowns a transformational season under new coach Hansi Flick, who arrived last summer to little fanfare but has given a young group of players a clear, exciting new direction. Flick’s team already lifted the Copa del Rey in a heated final against Madrid last month and thrashed their arch-rivals 5-2 to lift the Supercopa de Espana in January. They have four wins over their Clasico rivals 
“In football, we obsess over which team is going to win every competition, where every side will finish in the league and the future transfer destinations of top players. What we talk about far less is where managers will end up, other than in the unemployment queue — which, obviously, is only a metaphorical image because in reality they’re all multi-millionaires and set for life financially. Which club will Marco Silva call home after he leaves Fulham? Ever wondered where Crystal Palace’s Oliver Glasner will work next? Nope, us neither. But maybe it’s time we started. …”
“In a period when a small handful of superclubs regularly win the league, it can be difficult to differentiate between various title-winning campaigns. But Barcelona’s 2024-25 La Liga victory — albeit not yet mathematically certain — will live long in the memory. There are certain elements of this Barca season that are very specific to this particular title success. They’re playing in the city’s Olympic stadium rather than the Camp Nou. They’re using a new generation of world-class teenagers, led by Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsi. The thrilling victory over Real Madrid on Sunday completed a clean sweep of 
“It may seem a strange thing to say about a man who has won the World Cup, Copa America and Premier League over the past two-and-a-half years, but Alexis Mac Allister’s genius is underrated. Perhaps this is simply what happens when you play in the same national team as Lionel Messi, and have Mohamed Salah as a club team-mate. Maybe it is down to his unassuming nature. Or could it be his physical size? At Anfield, his fellow midfielders Dominik Szoboszlai and Ryan Gravenberch literally stand out more than the 5ft 9in (176cm) Argentinian. …”
“Football tactics have experienced a boom in recent years, but even the most progressive fan still loves to see their team ‘stick it in the mixer’. In many ways, the football we watch has become increasingly cultured in the Premier League, but ask yourself this: who doesn’t reminisce about Rory Delap’s iconic long throw-ins for Stoke City in the late 2000s? The drop in directness from these towards the end of the previous decade in the Premier League coincided with a decrease in the percentage of goalkeeper passes played long — defined as ones that travel at least 32m (35 yards) — as more teams were focusing on maintaining possession, building out from the back, and recycling the ball if they lost it. …”
“Mohamed Salah is five goals clear of Alexander Isak in the race for the Golden Boot and leads 
“Let’s start with a quick quiz question. Aside from Trent Alexander-Arnold, who is the Liverpool player to most recently score from a direct free kick in the Premier League? I’ll give you a clue. It happened in 2017, and was scored by a player who, as Real Madrid target Alexander-Arnold seems set to do this summer, left Anfield for Spain. We’ll give you the answer at the end of the article, but the fact that it has been over seven years since anyone in a Liverpool shirt apart from Alexander-Arnold had success from a dead-ball points not only to the right-back’s qualities but also the team’s over-reliance on him. …”
“The last time Inter visited Barcelona for a 
“Arsenal face a trip to the French capital next week with a one-goal deficit after losing at home to Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final. Just like the tie against Real Madrid in the quarter-final, the Emirates crowd created a raucous atmosphere before kick-off for their side’s first Champions League semi-final in 16 years. But Ousmane Dembele put PSG in front after four minutes to quieten the home support with his 25th goal in 2025. …”
“Last weekend, Pep Guardiola spent 15 minutes standing on the Goodison Park turf, long before his Manchester City players came out for their pre-game warm-up. ‘I remember when I was a little boy,’ he said later of Goodison, ahead of Everton’s move to their new home at Bramley-Moore Dock this summer. ‘Today, I watched the (stadium big) screen with goals from Gary Lineker and said, ‘Wow, this is English football’.’ In Spanish, Guardiola might be known as a ‘mitomano’ — somebody quick to idolise, generally, a person. In his case, it is footballers, but also stadiums and competitions. He would watch English football on television when he was a youngster in the Catalan town of Santpedor. Not that many games were available on television in the 1970s and 1980s, but he obviously saw enough for some core memories to form. …”
“Newcastle United’s long wait for a trophy ended under Wembley’s arch just as evening was descending, the sun disappearing and, with it, 70 years of domestic strife. Mid-March’s victory over Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final marked the end of seven trophyless decades on Tyneside (the 1969 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup excluded) and, with it, perhaps, the beginning of something else. As black-and-whites on the pitch and in the stands celebrated the end of an unwanted era, one emblem of their new era stood front and centre. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, club chairman, made his way onto the pitch and held up the trophy. He is also the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Newcastle’s majority shareholder. …”
“Liverpool’s Dutch connection has led the club to the brink of glory. Arne Slot is on course to become only the fifth manager to win the title in his debut Premier League season. Virgil van Dijk is close to making history, as the first player from the Netherlands to captain a team to England’s top-flight crown. Ryan Gravenberch has sparkled since being 
“There was a time, not all that long ago, when Tottenham Hotspur were routinely highlighted as the Premier League’s best-run club. And by not that long ago, we mean last August. Fair Game, a campaign group for improved football governance, placed Spurs as the highest-ranking English club in their 
“Just over a week ago, a new part-owner of fifth division team Dagenham & Redbridge appeared on 
“It feels like there’s a wave of negativity across English football at the moment, not merely concerning the soul of the game — an evergreen concern — but more about the quality and style of what we’re watching. This is despite the Premier League being almost unquestionably the world’s best league, certainly when judged on the average standard of team, if not necessarily on those at the top of the division. Besides, recent seasons have produced record-breaking goals-per-game figures in the Premier League era and while a higher number being scored in itself is not automatically entertaining, it’s surely preferable to the reverse. …”
“You see the bus at the stop. It’s just over there. You can obviously make it. You quicken your step. As you do, you hear the engine start. The doors fold closed. You could sprint for it — you’re fast enough — but the idea is unappealing. The sweat, sure, but also just the indignity of it. You don’t need this bus. There will be others. The doors reopen. Someone else is now getting on. It’s extremely makeable now, you could probably just jog. But something stops you. You have already committed to not going for it, your nonchalance now non-negotiable. It could linger there for 20 or 30 more seconds for all you care. You’re walking slowly, you’re missing that bus and that’s the end of the matter. …”
“At the end of the first half of extra time against Lyon, the TV cameras caught Ruben Amorim with his tactics board out. You might not be far wrong if you believed that the board merely had one straight line on it, bottom to top, indicating for Manchester United centre-back Harry Maguire to move to centre-forward, and little else. ‘We’re probably short on attackers,’ 
“When Virgil van Dijk is mentioned in the pantheon of great Premier League defenders, it occasionally comes with a caveat. Yes, he has the trophies, the class and the longevity that are the traditional hallmarks of all-time greats. But has he always been confronted by the very best? Football has changed and even before his emergence at Liverpool it was said that the classic No 9 was disappearing from the game. Van Dijk has not had to deal with an Alan Shearer-type, a human cyclone who would wear his opponent down, going one-to-one, testing them physically as much as technically. …”
“Historically, Bayern Munich have always had the upper hand over Inter at San Siro. In their previous four competitive matches in Milan, the German side were victorious in each one of them. That’s why Harry Kane’s opener in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie gave the impression that history might be repeating itself. …”
“Tonight’s trip to Chelsea, in all probability, will be the 16th and final European game of Legia Warsaw’s season. A 3-0 first-leg deficit in the Conference League quarter-finals has left a mountain to climb, and the adventures of Poland’s biggest club will likely end at Stamford Bridge. UEFA is too diplomatic to publicly celebrate any club’s exit, but parting with the perennial bad boys at least rids their disciplinary department of a long, nagging headache. …”
“The cyclical nature of tactical evolution in football means that when something is in vogue, it’s only a matter of time before everyone catches up. The increased focus on attacking corners in the Premier League in the last couple of seasons — accompanied by the rise of set-piece specialists — correlated with a hike in the number of goals scored from corners. However, the defensive aspect of corners is equally important. The recent threat of attacking corners in the Premier League has logically been followed by a focus on defending from corners. Has it worked? …”
“Aston Villa are out of the 
Scissors Kick 