Jurgen Klopp left North America joyous. Pep Guardiola threw a barbecue for his Manchester City players despite the defeat chucked in against Liverpool. The mood at the Etihad and Anfield is conditioned by flatout, unbridled positivity. Meanwhile Jose...
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has become the bookmakers’ favourite to be the first Premier League boss sacked this season. The 55-year-old has appeared in an almighty strop all pre-season; hitting out at his players, decrying a lack of tran...
On Saturday 5 May, the football world was rocked by the news that Sir Alex Ferguson had undergone surgery for a brain haemorrhage. Since then, the most successful manager in English football history has battled in a way only he knows how. Today, we ...
An English auction is underpinned by the idea of symmetry. All buyers operate under identical conditions. In an auction room, everyone has to play by the same rules; the option of beating the highest bid is always available. In theory the football tr...
Mesut Ozil announced that he was quitting the Germany national team in three lengthy and explosive social media posts on Sunday. The Arsenal midfielder, who is a third generation Turkish-German, says he feels “unwanted” by his country,...
“If England get beaten, so will she.” You might have seen the advert (above) in yesterday’s i. It shows the cross of St George on a woman’s face, made up by blood pouring out of her nose. And it contains the harrowing message: there are spikes in dom...
Four members of the Russian activist and punk rock group, Pussy Riot, have been jailed for 15 days for running onto a pitch during the World Cup final. They were accused of illegally donning police uniforms and violating the rules for spectators at a...
After a tournament that delivered almost everything we could have asked, there was always the danger of an anti-climactic final, the kind that persuades the millions of casual watchers that football is boring after all, and encourages summarisers to ...
In the end the final was a microcosm of Russia 2018, a barn burner of a contest in which both teams went at it like kids in the school yard, and with a dose of VAR thrown in. Not since 1974 had we seen three goals in the first half of a final. That o...
A World Cup final which had it all: from the sublime to the tragic, comedy to calamity, and amidst it all a teenage star with a winners’ medal and a new level of expectation which would paralyse other mere mortals. France came through a six-goal fina...
Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois will hold crunch talks with Chelsea this week, but could follow team-mate Eden Hazard and leave the club before the start of next season. Hazard admitted after Belgium beat England in the World Cup third-place play-off tha...
Rail passengers face further disruption after Northern announced more than 170 services will be cancelled on Sunday. It comes after Great Western Railway warned train passengers to expect “significant disruption” due to the World Cup final. Northern ...
On Wednesday, England were knocked out of the World Cup. A rare mix of pride and despair reverberated about the country in the days that followed. Now the dust has settled, the overarching sentiment in fans is one of thanks to manager Gareth Southgat...
The best England can hope for in the World Cup is third place, but the national team’s unofficial theme tune has made it to No 1 – and set a new record in the process. Comic duo David Baddiel and Frank Skinner‘s football song Three Lions has shot to ...
England manager Gareth Southgate will decide on Saturday morning on whether striker Harry Kane is fit enough to face Belgium in the World Cup third-place play-off, to potentially score the goals to secure him the Golden Boot. Kane has looke...
It has been a while since a defence locked down France‘s Kylian Mbappé. The teenage sensation, who has been tearing up Ligue 1 for a few seasons already, truly announced himself on the world stage with a mesmerising performance against Argentina in w...
Fifa has ordered broadcasters to stop zooming in on attractive women in the stands at World Cup matches, to help tackle sexism in football. Before the tournament kicked off there were concerns that Russia 2018 could be tarnished by homophobia and rac...
Chelsea have sacked manager Antonio Conte with fellow Italian Maurizio Sarri lined up as his successor at Stamford Bridge. Conte equalled the Premier League record for for consecutive wins (13), and the record number of wins in a season (30...
Not all that long ago, I wrote a column for i claiming that half the country cared more about their fantasy football teams than they did about the national one. It’s fair to say that opinion has weathered about as well as my 1988 opinion piece ‘The B...
For the majority of my life, I have lived in ignorant bliss over football. Despite my dad’s best efforts to entice me to be anything more than a passive Aston Villa supporter – he’s tried shirts, season tickets with fancy dinners and name-dropping th...