The scores were locked at 2-2 when Marco Asensio hit a 25-yard rocket that dipped and whipped in front of Manuel Neuer’s face before landing in the bottom corner. Ecstasy and an eight-man pile-on ensue as the other player screams expletives at the German goalkeeper and claims his controller is faulty. With less than four hours to go until kick-off, the Cadete B players are supposed to be relaxing before a testing league encounter under the lights. Playing a Fifa tournament isn’t exactly…

Two months ago Memphis Depay crashed his last-minute shot past Alphonse Areola to give Lyon a 2-1 win against Paris Saint-Germain and cut the gap at the top of Ligue 1 to eight points. Lyon looked like genuine outsiders for the title and Bruno Génésio seemed to have finally figured out his team. But as Sunday night’s Olympico at the Stade Vélodrome approached, the mood around Lyon had severely darkened.…

For football people raised on the foundational European Cup feats of Manchester United’s home-schooled Busby Babes and Celtic’s 1967 triumph with a team of local lads, the modern Champions League is a mixed blessing. Over the last 23 years the tournament has constructed a glittering stage for Lionel Messi and the world’s greatest players but European football’s concentration of wealth is delivering the final rounds and trophy itself to the same few richest clubs.…

Antonio Conte may just have been being painfully realistic but his body language at Camp Nou came across as distinctly downbeat. The Chelsea manager’s message was laced with caution on the eve of their return match with La Liga’s champions elect.



He talked up Barcelona’s Andrés Iniesta as a “genius with a football”, reminding all that it would take “a perfect game” to knock out “one…

The evening began with a show of respect from the visiting Borussia Mönchengladbach fans. It ended with anything but. As their players emerged onto the BayArena pitch to face Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday, Gladbach’s 4,000 travelling fans held aloft black pieces of plastic, creating a tifo in memory of well-known fan Waltraud “Walli” Hamraths, who recently died at the age of 83.



In the…

To say this was a mixed occasion for Tottenham Hotspur would be an understatement. There was a battling victory for the visitors to enjoy, one that moved them up to third and allowed all concerned to clear their heads following their eviction from the Champions League by Jimmy Smith Womens Jersey Juventus last Wednesday. But a gloomy afternoon on the south coast was not without a gloomy moment, namely the injury to…

Liverpool, a lunchtime kick-off, a packed Old Trafford, the fight for second place. The scene is set on Saturday for Manchester United’s juices to flow and José Mourinho to issue a battle cry to his players that would draw on the club’s storied tradition of going for the jugular against their great rivals.



Except, that is just not the Portuguese’s style. It has certainly not…

The pain was etched on the face of Son Heung-min and when he stopped to speak, he poured it all out. “Disappointed, sad, everything,” the Tottenham Hotspur forward said. “After the game the dressing room was quieter than normal, but it’s football. It’s about winning and losing. It’s a bad feeling when you play better than them and you lose. This hurt me a lot. I can’t sleep tonight.”



Moments…

Sam Allardyce has said he is under no illusions he will lose his job as Everton manager should the team’s miserable Womens Ryan Fitzpatrick Jersey form continue.



Pressure is mounting on Allardyce, who has been unable to sustain initial improvement at Goodison Park and received fierce criticism from supporters…

Having seen José Mourinho slumped at a desk at Selhurst Park on Monday evening, looking as if he had been stuck on a coach for 72 hours at Dieppe, imagine my surprise when I got home and logged on to the RT YouTube channel. Yes, there he was, the Manchester United manager, clean shaven, in a fashionable fleece, and – could it really be – actually smiling. “Drop the cliché,” he joked as the voiceover announced The Special One was joining the channel as a World Cup pundit. The voiceover did as…

Evolution, not revolution, that’s the message from the first Socceroos squad announced by Bert van Marwijk. Twenty-two of the 23 Australians that engineered the crucial playoff victory over Honduras remain part of the 29-man national set-up despite the change of coach.



Ryan McGowan is the only man not to survive the regime change ahead of two friendly internationals in Europe later this month, first in…

On other weekends, it would have been a cause for glumness. Yet even in falling a place below bitter rivals Schalke, from second to third, it felt as if it had been a fairly successful day for Borussia Dortmund. They emerged from Saturday evening’s Topspiel at RB Leipzig not only with a point – and having maintained a three-point lead over their hosts in the race for Champions League qualification – but with the satisfying feeling of having put in a shift.…