“Pep Guardiola described it as ‘the best lesson you can take’. Abdukodir Khusanov’s language teacher might beg to differ. The Manchester City manager was talking after Khusanov endured a difficult debut against Chelsea recently, when the 20-year-old gave away a goal and picked up a yellow card inside the first five minutes. Asked whether he considered substituting Khusanov at that point, Guardiola replied: ‘Well, I have to learn Russian or Uzbek to communicate with him. He doesn’t speak English.’ On the same day, at the other end of the country, another player who arrived in the Premier League without a word of English was enjoying the best moment of his career so far. Dango Ouattara, who joined Bournemouth from the French club Lorient two years ago, scored a hat-trick against Nottingham Forest. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Footballers and learning new languages: Adele, The Da Vinci Code and the delivery room
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“In football the concept of a ‘trio’ is generally reserved for a group of three who play in the same department of a team. We talk about an attacking trio, a midfield trio or a defensive trio. But Arsenal’s tactical approach in their comprehensive 5-1 victory over Manchester City was all about a trio down one flank. Left-winger Leandro Trossard, left-centre midfield Declan Rice and left-back Myles Lewis-Skelly combined excellently throughout the game. Arsenal’s passing network from the game tells the story neatly. There’s almost no connection between the equivalent players on the other flank. But Trossard, Rice and Lewis-Skelly played close together, operated in each other’s zones, and spun their way into good positions in behind. …”
“Arsenal fans — or indeed, supporters of [insert team you support here] — may feel aggrieved at recent refereeing decisions, but at least you haven’t had to play against 12 men. That’s unless you’re a supporter of Dutch side Heerenveen, who were on the wrong end of one of football’s most basic rules being flagrantly breached during their top-flight match against Fortuna Sittard at the weekend. Visitors Fortuna made a late double substitution with Heerenveen — now managed by legendary former Dutch striker Robin van Persie — 2-1 up. But only one of the players getting replaced actually left the field. The match resumed, the 12 men of Fortuna won a throw-in and from that, albeit after the error was spotted and rectified, a corner which brought their equaliser, and the match ended as a draw. …”
“Liverpool this season have been very good at being good enough. There have been very few games in which they’ve dismantled the opposition. They have won fewer league games by more than three goals than Tottenham have, but ended the day nine points clear at the top with their closest rivals to play the defending champions on Sunday. If 
“Arsenal dominated the Premier League champions at the Emirates Stadium, beating Manchester City 5-1 to keep pressure on Liverpool at the top of the table. Mikel Arteta’s side took the lead within two minutes through Martin Odegaard before Erling Haaland equalised with a thumping header early in the second half. City were only level for a minute or so, though, before Thomas Partey restored Arsenal’s advantage. From then, the home side were in total control. Impressive 18-year-old full-back Myles Lewis-Skelly and forward Kai Havertz added more goals, before an outstanding curling strike from 17-year-old Ethan Nwaneri, on as a substitute, added further gloss in stoppage time. …”
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“Few people expected 
“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 
“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. 
“Before Omar Marmoush was racking up goals and assists in the 
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“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. …”
“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. …”
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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 
“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 
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“… 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 
“Was it a winning goal that never seemed on the cards or a winning goal that felt inevitable. Either way, 
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“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 
“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’. 
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“Amad scored a brilliant late winner in the Manchester derby shortly after earning the penalty that had put Ruben Amorim’s team level as 
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“The setting was 
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“Ruben Amorim has faced a range of clubs during his first six games as 
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“Even now, 20 years on, it is a moment which takes the breath away. Steven Gerrard had no right to score the goal that he himself described as the most important of the 186 he plundered for 
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“David de Gea said on day one that he wanted to ‘make history’ with 
Scissors Kick 