“On the latest Athletic FC podcast, former Premier League referee Graham Scott joined Emma Paton, Dan Kilpatrick and Tim Spiers to answer your questions about the life of an elite match official. Which Premier League manager was the most difficult to handle on the touchline (clue in the photo above)? Which stadiums are most intimidating to a referee? What was the biggest mistake he ever made? What happened to his whistle when he retired? Below is a selection of some of his answers. To hear the full podcast, listen below or find it wherever you get your podcasts. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
Nations League roundup: Portugal mauled by Denmark as Norway sink Wales
“Portugal were hammered 4-1 by Denmark on Saturday, an embarrassing Nations League defeat in their first match without Cristiano Ronaldofollowing his retirement from international football. Rasmus Højlund starred with a superb double as Denmark moved into second place in Group A4 and closed in on a spot in the quarter-finals with an exceptional display in Braga. … Wales suffered a 3-1 defeat to Norway in Oslo to dent their hopes of staying in the top tier of the Nations League. Antonio Nusa and Andreas Schjelderup struck in the space of nine second-half minutes as Norway turned the screw. Substitute David Brooks halved the deficit 11 minutes from time as Wales finished strongly. …”
Guardian
Nations League: Germany set up Netherlands clash after beating Serbia
“Germany cruised to a 3-1 win against Serbia in Belgrade on Friday, setting up a crucial encounter with the Netherlands in Berlin on Monday to decide who tops Group A2. In teeming rain in an almost empty stadium, Germany forced Serbia’s Srdan Babic into an early own goal with Florian Wirtz and debutant Brajan Gruda also scoring. …”
Guardian
YouTube: Portugal vs Denmark Highlights | UEFA Nations League, Norway vs Wales Highlights, Italy vs. France: 3-1, goals and highlights
Germany cruised to a 3-1 win against Serbia
“I never believed it would actually happen. Not really. Not until this week, when, for the first time, there was a sense, as The Godfather makes so abundantly clear, that you really can get to anyone. 
“FIFA’s 2026 World Cup is already surrounded by controversy before kickoff. From sky-high ticket prices and visa concerns to security fears, extreme heat, and fan backlash, critics say the tournament is becoming harder and more expensive for supporters around the world. With the biggest World Cup in history set across the USA, Canada, and Mexico, pressure on FIFA is growing fast.”
Bournemouth’s matchday revenue is limited by the size of their ground
“
“Domestic leagues would be limited to staging one game a season in foreign countries under 
“IT SEEMS bizarre that, despite the multitude of missiles falling on Tehran, the counter-strikes across the Middle East and the punchy rhetoric of the United States, FIFA are even considering to run the World Cup this summer. Let’s remember that the US is a host nation in this World Cup and host means ‘welcoming’ your visitors. And yet, Haiti, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Iran have either had partial or full travel bans slapped on them by the Trump administration. Furthermore, Mexico (co-hosts) and Colombia have been ‘warned’ by the US. Yes, Mexico, who helped the US win hosting rights for this tournament, have been warned. If you add it all up, among the 48 nations taking part, there are quite a few who have either been insulted, bullied, penalised (by tariff bingo) or threatened in some way by the US in the past 18 months. Why, oh why, would anyone want to travel to the States to take part in the competition in 2026? …”
“After years of planning, the World Cup is now just 100 days away. This summer’s tournament in North America will almost certainly be the most-viewed sports event ever, watched by millions (or more likely billions) of fans across the world. But it also offers a huge opportunity to attract a whole new audience, particularly across the United States, where soccer has long been on the rise but still does not dominate the sporting landscape as it does in so many other countries. This will be a World Cup watched by diehards and those who have never engaged with the sport before. With that in mind, we have compiled this article as a guide to everything you could possibly want to know about the tournament, from the most basic questions for those who have never watched the sport to far more intricate details about how teams play, the politics of this tournament, the ticketing situation and much more. With 100 days until the tournament, our reporters have answered 100 questions. …”
“When UEFA changed the format of the Champions League, it was for nights like this. The Swiss model, now more famous than Swiss Cottage station on the London Tube network but not yet as famous as Swiss cheese, replaced the old eight groups of four model (less catchy) in 2024. The final day was pretty good last year, with 64 goals in the 18 games, but no big teams dropped out and the big will-they-won’t-they? of the night saw Paris Saint-Germain stroll past Stuttgart 4-1 to avoid an early elimination (wonder what happened to them). …”
“World Cup 2026, previously just a dot on the horizon, starts to come into full view this week. With qualification now wrapped up (well, mostly — more on that shortly), the draw for the tournament takes place in Washington, D.C. on Friday. In the lead-up to that event, we answer some of the big questions you may have about that draw and the World Cup more generally. Let’s start with the basics, and then we’ll delve a bit deeper. …”
“The next men’s FIFA World Cup is now 200 days away and 42 nations — including its co-hosts the United States, Canada and Mexico — have secured their places in the expanded 48-team competition. Seventy-five per cent of matches will be played in the U.S. across 11 cities. Mexico will host the opening matchday in Mexico City and Guadalajara, but the involvement of both it and Canada, in terms of venues anyway, will cease after the round of 16, with all games from the quarter-finals onwards to be played in the States, including the final at MetLife Stadium in the state of New Jersey, a few miles west of New York City. …”
“When you have spent 17 years stuck behind the Electrical Contractors’ Association, the Edinburgh College of Art, and the European Cockpit Association in Google’s search results for the acronym ‘ECA’, it probably is time for a makeover. So, when the hundreds of delegates arrived at the European Club Association’s 32nd general assembly in Rome this month, they actually found themselves at the first general assembly of European Football Clubs, which is a good name for a lobby group that represents European football clubs. …”
“The league phase of the UEFA Champions League begins soon in what is the 70th year since the competition first took place. The first game took place on September 4, 1955 between Sporting Clube de Portugal and Partizan Belgrade, a 3-3 draw in Lisbon and the first British club to participate, Hibernian, made their bow on September 14 with a trip to Rot-Weiss Essen. … Meanwhile, Hibernian, who had finished fifth in the Scottish League in 1954-55, were confirmed as Scotland’s representative. Some sceptics wondered if Hibs were equipped to play in the competition, but Partizan had finished at the back end of their domestic top six. …”
Crystal Palace fans protested against Uefa after being demoted from the Europa League
“At Trump Tower, the new home of FIFA in Manhattan, Gianni Infantino hailed the Club World Cup a ‘huge, huge, huge success’ on Saturday. The president of soccer’s world governing body later posted on Instagram that the tournament had ‘taken over the United States and united people in joy’. FIFA has been on a victory lap since Chelsea’s 3-0 victory against Paris Saint-Germain in Sunday’s final in front of an 81,118 crowd at MetLife Stadium, a few miles to the west in New Jersey. … Dynamic pricing and empty seats. FIFA adopted a dynamic pricing approach to tickets, where prices fluctuate according to supply and demand. For high-interest sports and music events, this can lead to prices skyrocketing in value but during the Club World Cup, where not a single game was a complete sellout, these costs often tumbled instead due to a lack of demand. … Similar deals emerged with different universities during the tournament as FIFA scrambled to avoid tens of thousands of empty seats becoming a regular occurrence. The group-stage games recorded an average of 35,000 spectators, but the size of the venues chosen — largely NFL stadiums with capacities of more than 60,000 — left big gaps in the stands. The dynamic-pricing market made for some absurd fluctuations. Standard admission pricing for the semi-final between Chelsea and Brazil’s Fluminense at MetLife was 
Empty seats were an issue at Club World Cup games
“Arsene Wenger had a lot to get off his chest in the autumn of 2015. His Arsenal side were in danger of exiting the Champions League at the group stages and their 2-1 loss away to Dinamo Zagreb had become an acute source of irritation. Not because Arsenal had stumbled against their weakest opponents, but because the Croatian side had triumphed with a player — Arijan Ademi — who had returned a positive drugs test after playing the full 90 minutes. Ademi would eventually be given a four-year suspension (later reduced to two on appeal) after traces of the banned steroid stanozolol were found in a routine urine sample, but Wenger bristled at Zagreb facing no disciplinary sanctions from UEFA, European football’s governing body. ‘That means you basically accept doping,’ he said. …”
“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. …”
“European members of the FIFA council staged a dramatic walkout at the world governing body’s congress following the late arrival of President Gianni Infantino. The eight UEFA members of the FIFA council and several European delegates did not return to Thursday’s conference centre in Paraguay, including UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin and the English Football Association (FA) president Debbie Hewitt. The exit followed a three-hour delay to the congress, because FIFA president Infantino was late arriving for his own event on Thursday morning, having prioritised meetings with United States president Donald Trump in Doha and Qatar this week. This included rescheduling the FIFA council, which should have been in person in Paraguay on Tuesday, but was instead held virtually last Friday. …”
“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. …”
Israel football team supporter at the 2023 Euros.
“Last season, the
“One of the most successful and lucrative commercial rights partnerships in football is ending. On Tuesday, it was announced that 
“… Hello! 
“Gedling Town Football Club was a 
“Maybe we should have known right from the start that this was going to take a while. Panathinaikos’ Argentinian midfielder Daniel Mancini stepped up to take the first penalty of their shootout against Ajax, the Greek side having scored a late equaliser to force the 
“
“The showpiece final of this summer’s 
“A late winner from England substitute Ollie Watkins against Netherlands put Gareth Southgate’s team into the final of Euro 2024, where they will face Spain. The 
“The 
“
“Watching 
“By this point, it’s time to accept that 
“Sometimes it happens. High stakes, growing tension, a sheer desperation not to lose — the biggest games can light a fire within compulsive competitors that catches too quickly, spreads across the pitch, and burns any sense of spectacle to the ground. Uruguay’s Copa America quarterfinal clash with Brazil fell foul to that intensity: an ugly collision of arms, legs and bodies constantly interrupted by the referee’s whistle. By the time Dario Herrera signalled for the end, it felt as if the contest had barely been given the chance to begin. …”
“Under Luis de la Fuente, 
“Despite having an array of attacking talent at his disposal, not one of Deschamps’ players has scored a goal from open play during Euro 2024. And yet his team are through to a semi-final against 
“It was a surprise to hear 
“One of the wonders of the human brain is how it translates words into experiences, sounds and images. The notion, which is called semantic processing, is how our brain understands what we read by searching for associated words, sounds or images in our memory. Try reading the following words: Spain national football team. …”
“Didier Deschamps is a glass-half-full sort of fella. 
“This always promised to be one of the more frenetic nights at Euro 2024 — and 
“The 
“As the game moved into its 120th minute, it was so obvious 
“
“It turns out Murat Yakin wasn’t lying in 2022. He was just one tournament early. ‘I think we are the best Switzerland national team that has ever existed,’ said their coach prior to the World Cup. He promised their best-ever finish at an international tournament but did not deliver — 
