Newcastle United will not allow Alexander Isak to leave unless they secure two new strikers this summer.
For all the talk around the Sweden international, who is currently training on his own at former club Real Sociedad, in the end it is likely to be cold, hard transfer market dynamics that dictate the next steps on Tyneside.
A realistic prospect? No-one at Newcastle is quite sure what happens next but the silence from the club about Isak’s decision to train with his own private conditioning staff in San Sebastian tells its own story.
While some fans have taken Isak’s return to Spain as a huge sleight – with some justification, it must be added – the club are keeping a clear path open for Isak to be reintegrated and are not about to criticise their player.
Sources suggest they knew of Isak’s whereabouts but further details are scant.
Newcastle’s wantaway striker Alexander Isak is training alone at former club Real Sociedad (Photo: PA)
It is unlikely to have been encouraged by Newcastle, put it that way, but there has been no talk of him going AWOL and Eddie Howe will not castigate him for it ahead of the game against Tottenham Hotspur at the weekend.
A political tightrope is being walked that makes for difficult viewing for fans already disenchanted with Newcastle’s inability to capitalise on the momentum of last season but their approach makes a lot of sense.
Firstly because the club’s not-for-sale message is a genuine one, but also because if relations break down entirely, it could have a ruinous impact on their season.
As one Premier League recruitment source summed it up on Thursday: “This sort of thing happens all the time.
“It is more pronounced here because it is playing out in public but nothing is irreparable and no footballer will refuse to play for his club after 1 September.
“I think Newcastle have that in their mind here.”
The Magpies are pushing hard for a £30m deal for Brentford striker Yoane Wissa (Photo: AFP)
Newcastle remain interested in Brentford striker Yoane Wissa but, as revealed by The i Paper on Monday, the Bees are adamant that he won’t leave this summer unless a replacement can be secured.
Wissa is keen on Newcastle and wants to play Champions League football but the irony has not been lost on both clubs that they find themselves in an identical position in the final weeks of a difficult transfer window.
Isak is in such rarefied air that there is a vanishingly small pool of potential replacements.
Newcastle have already missed out on Hugo Ekitike, who signed for Liverpool for £69m from Eintracht Frankfurt, and while they want RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko, there is pessimism internally about that move, with Manchester United rivalling them for the forward.
There are also some reservations about the price tag, which is similar to Ekitike despite the belief that he needs more work, and whether he would need time to adjust to the demands of a Premier League season.
There are other options – Chelsea’s Nicolas Jackson and Paris Saint-Germain’s Randal Kolo Muani are two that have been floated, while they may reverse their position of being lukewarm on Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins – but all feel a bit too reactive for a club that had always intended to player trade from a position of strength.
Quite what the big plan is at Newcastle no-one is saying at the moment.
Former Real Madrid head of global partnerships David Hopkinson is expected to be appointed as chief executive before the season starts and he has a daunting in-tray that should begin with a thorough review of what has gone wrong this summer.
Does all of this mean Isak will stay at Newcastle? The situation remains on a knife edge.
If Liverpool make a bid close to the £150m the club want, that is a potential game-changer.
But those at Anfield are playing a waiting game of their own – keen to jump on the opportunity of signing another elite talent while aware that the situation is far from straightforward.
At least for the moment, the majority of the manoeuvering appears to be coming from Isak himself.
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The image of Donald Trump grinning while Chelsea celebrated their Club World Cup victory in New York was an enduring one. It certainly wasn’t what anyone, not least club captain Reece James, expected to see next to him as he lifted the trophy.
“I thought he was going to exit the stage but he wanted to stay,” James said afterwards. James wasn’t overly bothered. He had his medal. And Trump had his trophy.
But if Trump tries to pull the same stunt in a year’s time with the 2026 World Cup winning captain, he cannot be assured of such a jovial reception.
A global stage for Trump to sportswash
Before the next election, Trump’s America will host the two biggest sport events in the world, the World Cup in 2026 and the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 and those will not be the first time Trump has waded into sporting matters for political capital.
As well as owning a number of golf resorts around the world, opening another in Scotland this very week, and his appearance at the Club World Cup, Trump recently threatened to block a new stadium deal for NFL franchise Washington Commanders if they did not change their name back to the Redskins, dropped in 2020 after it was deemed racist and offensive to native Americans.
President Trump hits the opening tee shot on his new golf course (Photo: Reuters)
The US will not win the World Cup. No one, not even Trump, believes that. But Trump will hope he can win the World Cup. And with his approval rating in the US reaching its lowest ever ebb, he needs a win.
“For me, it fits squarely within the definition of sportswashing,” says Dr Jules Boykoff, professor of political science and former Under-23 international footballer for the US. Boykoff was also the first to use the term in a peer-reviewed academic paper.
“If sportswashing is when leaders use sports and sports mega-events to try to deflect attention from domestic social problems while trying to burnish their reputation on the world stage and thereby legitimising themselves in the public eye, then yeah, sure. It looks like it to me.
“In fact, I would say that’s one of the blind spots of a lot of the discussions around sportswashing, is that it is easy to waggle a finger at them [other countries] and not point a finger back at ourselves.”
Qatar’s sportswashing operation produced some powerful images (Photo: Getty)
This is not just an ego trip or Trump hoping to launder his reputation. Increasingly experts are refusing to rule out the president using his “double-barrelled sportswashing opportunity” of the World Cup and the Olympics to overthrow the constitution and run for an unprecedented third term. As recently as March, Trump insisted “there are methods” that would allow him to do so and “was not joking” about the prospect.
And even if he does not choose to rewrite the 22nd Amendment, which expressly forbids a president serving more than eight years, he will have a Republican candidate he wishes to put on a pedestal, perhaps even one of his own family.
‘Trump has no shame’
Many believe it also presents a ripe opportunity for him to blunder his way through a complex sporting environment to which he is unsuited and unfamiliar.
However, Dr Andrei Markovits, political science professor at the University of Michigan, believes there’s “zero downside” for the US president to whom nothing seems to stick.
“Trump is a guy, and this is an immense advantage, who has no shame. Ignorance is not shameful. Incompetence is not shameful. Saying outrageous things is not shameful,” Markovits tells The i Paper.
“He’s not worried about missteps that are not costly to him. The World Cup, there’s zero downside to it. Shy of punching Lionel Messi or something, there is nothing that he can do that really would harm him.”
Trump should fear ‘the boomerang effect’
But the World Cup does also present a risk of alienating his core voter base.
“Trump identifies with Joe Six Pack, who hates soccer and sees it as a completely sissy sport,” adds Markovits, referring to the political shorthand for an average, working-class American.
“Soccer’s existence in the United States is bifurcated. Yes, it’s Latino which, of course, Trump hates, but it’s also upper middle-class white.”
It’s gender diverse too, with the US women’s team hitting heights of fame long before their counterparts.
But no one can deny the scale of the event which, barring the Olympics he will host two years later, is unrivalled.
“The Super Bowl [which Trump became the first sitting president to attend], or any of these things, is basically a forum for him to be centre stage,” says Markovits, who has also written multiple books on the intersection of sport and politics.
“This is different: the World Cup is literally a global forum, a global stage, which will enhance it even more.”
Trump’s regime is hardly the first to realise this. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China and Russia have all made good use of football’s reputation-bolstering qualities in the last decade. But those states also provide cautionary tales for Trump, should he wish to heed them.
“Not that many people were following the internal politics and labour strategies around Qatar ahead of that World Cup,” says Boykoff.
“When it comes to sportswashing, nothing is guaranteed whatsoever.”
Expect a lot of photo-bombing
And in Fifa president Gianni Infantino, he has a willing accomplice who has just opened an office at Trump Tower in New York and who had a VIP invite to Trump’s inauguration.
And the US president will need Infantino to guide him safely through the world of football, which is not his natural stamping ground. The 79-year-old has been roared into the Octagon at a UFC event and appeared as part of WWE shows, but “soccer” is distinctly off-patch.
“We’ll expect to see Trump photo-bombing, won’t we?” says Ed Warner, the former head of UK Athletics who wrote Sport Inc: Why money is the winner in the business of sport.
“He doesn’t need to give the World Cup winning captain a red MAGA cap. He just needs to be in the photo wearing a red tie.
“And no player in the winning team in the final is going to create a global incident by snubbing the president or saying something inappropriate. I don’t think we’re going to get the Black Power salutes or anything like that.
“Why divide your personal fan base, if you’re a global superstar footballer, by aligning yourself on either side of a political divide?”
As Michael Jordan once put it, Republicans buy sneakers too.
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The Women’s FA Cup prize pool has been frozen this year, remaining less than half of what the men are awarded for the equivalent competition.
Days after the victorious Lionesses returned home with the Euro 2025 trophy to jubilant celebrations, the Football Association confirmed the prize pool for the upcoming season.
The women’s winners will receive £430,000, the runners-up £108,000, while the victorious men’s FA Cup side will take home 365 per cent more, £2m, with £1m for second place.
In the women’s earlier rounds, the winners of a First Round Qualifying match will earn £1,800. In the men’s game, the same-round winners will earn £2,250.
The total prize pool for the men’s FA Cup is around £22m, compared to only £6m for the women. Both prize funds have been kept at the same level this year.
The men’s FA Cup winners will earn £2m (Photo: Getty)
It is a blow to campaigners who have for several years called for parity in FA Cup prize money.
The Women’s FA Cup prize fund has slowly started to catch up with the men’s competition in recent years, but progress has frustrated campaigners and stalled.
In November 2023, the prize money for the Women’s FA Cup was doubled to £6m. But that was still little compared to the men’s competition.
The i Paperrevealed in December that Liberal Democrat MP James MacCleary had introduced the Football (Gender Inequality) Bill in the House of Commons, calling for the Secretary of State to launch a review of gender inequality in football.
Lewes FC have campaigned since 2019 for parity in prize money, claiming in campaign material that “the FA Cup still undervalues the women’s game”.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino has claimed it is Fifa’s ambition to level prize money for the men’s and women’s World Cups from 2027.
MacCleary, MP for Lewes, has met with officials at the Premier League and the Football Association to discuss the issue.
A second reading of the Bill is scheduled to take place on 17 October.
“For me equal FA Cup prize money will be a game-changer for women’s football in this country,” MacCleary told The i Paper in December.
“This is a chance for the FA, Premier League and Premier League clubs to make a huge statement that we’re all behind the women’s game and national team, and a great way of getting money into it.
“I am proud that one of my local clubs, Lewes FC, has led the campaign.”
What more do women’s players have to do?
How many more major trophies do the Lionesses have to win before female footballers can win as much prize money from the FA Cup as men?
Is back-to-back European Championships – plus a World Cup final – not enough?
Do they need to win the World Cup in 2027, too? Will they ever get there?
The FA Cup is the Football Association’s marquee competition – a chance for the governing body of English football to lead by example and set the tone for the rest of the country to follow: that women deserve parity with men.
When the FA announced it was doubling the women’s prize pool in 2023, the FA’s director of women’s football at the time, Baroness Sue Campbell, said it was the “long-term” ambition to level the prize money.
Why does it have to be long-term? How long-term are we talking? Why can’t it be now? Does anyone really think there will be a major backlash to making them equal?
The FA receives millions of pounds in public money, this is a chance to shift the dynamic with it and send a positive message.
Support for the move would far outweigh any complaints. And any backlash would, like all backlashes, do little and dissipate within hours or days.
And why was there a delay in announcing the figures? Clubs were under the impression they would be told the figures on Monday 28 July. Instead, it was pushed back two days.
The FA may argue they did not want to face accusations of attempting to bury bad news while everyone celebrated the history-making Lionesses returning home after winning back-to-back European Championships.
A cynic may posit that they didn’t want the news to break while the Lionesses, known for their strong leadership and fierce equality campaigning, were frequently in front of the cameras.
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I arrive at Lincoln City’s Elite Performance Centre before 9.30am, slightly sheepishly hiding my seven-year-old Toyota Yaris in a corner of a car park containing slightly more shiny vehicles.
The three full-sized pitches in front of me look immaculate. I have a pair of Nike Tiempos in the boot. It seems unlikely that I will be needed to show anyone how anything is done.
League One Lincoln are, at the time of my visit, starting week four of a pre-season schedule that began with condition testing on 26 June. The players had guides for staying fit in pre-season that, these days, are hardly needed. The age of a summer splurge has passed.
Most players either do individual training or work with personal fitness coaches in June. Competition has never been higher. Summer is a good time to get ahead.
In the canteen area, players are finishing their breakfast. The training ground employs a chef who has served beans on toast, yoghurt with muesli and American pancakes with honey. On a table to one side are clear bottles and whey protein powder to make milkshakes.
The gym facilities are state-of-the-art (Photo: Chris Vaughan)
In an office off the canteen is the gaffer’s office, where head coach Michael Skubala holds a meeting with assistant head coaches Tom Shaw and Chris Cohen. Shaw ended his playing career at Lincoln, while Cohen is best known for an 11-year spell as a midfielder at Nottingham Forest.
The last time I saw Cohen, I blurted out that he was my hero. He does an impression of a man who remembers me but not the incident. In front of 20-odd first-team players, I am grateful.
I spot a familiar face: David Preece is a former goalkeeper who did plenty of media work post-retirement alongside coaching. After working in Sweden, India and at Sunderland, Preece was unveiled as Lincoln’s new goalkeeping coach earlier in July. Having played here and living nearby, Preece considers himself to be back home.
At a table, Skubala talks me through the last few weeks. In week one, the players got back up to speed with their bodies and began to take on board tactical information. Week two comprised conditioning periodisation, i.e. lots of fitness work in the heat.
In week three, conditioning was combined with more in-depth tactical work using video analysis. The Imps also spent part of that week in Portugal for a warm-weather training camp.
Now Lincoln are entering the “match rhythm” phase: after a 2-1 friendly defeat to League Two side Grimsby Town following my visit, West Bromwich Albion await, preceding, effectively, the first week of the season before 2 August, when they face Reading. This season, Leagues One and Two are starting a week earlier than the Championship – that has its challenges.
“The camp [in Portugal] gave us a chance to fully integrate the new signings into the group and improve team bonding: play padel, play golf, go for meals out,” Skubala says.
“We’re also working them hard tactically in hot weather and that tires them out. It’s the environment that is important. Here, we might see them between 9am and 3pm and then they go home and, naturally, switch off.
“There we had them for 24 hours a day, so you’re boosting everything. You watch them and everything you see is magnified. It opens up discussion points that can shape the season.”
This is Skubala’s second pre-season at Lincoln. In what is his first permanent senior head-coach role, he has significantly outperformed the club’s budget twice in a division where spending seems to increase year on year.
As he says, 80 per cent of the game model remains the same, but each season you must evolve, keeping the good aspects and improving everything else. New arrivals require tweaks to tactics.
“This is the time of year for alignment,” he says.
“Coaches with players. Every member of staff with the club. You need to get alignment between everybody on use of data, sports science and tactics.
“I think increasingly, the job of the head coach is to ensure that alignment as a club grows in size.”
Recruitment in League One – where clubs may take loan players from divisions above – has been complicated by the unusually early season start date. Premier League academy graduates, who may often have made loan moves by now, are still on pre-season tours (often thousands of miles away).
Skubala says that Lincoln’s modus operandi puts them in a good position. They have a strong core group and do not have to be held to ransom through a need to be reactive. The transfer countdown, and external pressure, creates noise. He would prefer that to be another club’s chaos.
In a meeting room newly erected this summer, Skubala takes a team meeting which focuses on opposition analysis for the game the next evening against Grimsby. It focuses on high, medium and low presses out of possession, building play from the back and through midfield and some set-piece work, attacking and defending.
Previously, meetings would be held in the canteen with the tables all pushed to the side of the room. It is a small thing, but another improvement in the process.
Before on-pitch training, the players head into the gym for “activation” (what amateurs like me would call “warming up”). Players may do a light cycle, jump onto cushioned benches, do floor stretches, throw medicine balls to the floor or step over hurdles. The coaches don’t need to get involved here – players have their own routines.
Foot tennis is a popular hit with the players (Photo: Chris Vaughan)
At 10.45am, the goalkeeping group goes outside for their own warm-up: a game of foot tennis on the specially designed tables that you increasingly see at training grounds. I mention it for one aspect of footballer life that hits you in the face when watching them up close: they absolutely detest losing.
It stands to reason. To have even become a professional, you need to have sacrificed a great deal, physically and emotionally. The ones who thrive best are those who are uber-competitive and thus driven towards their own success.
It is still funny to witness. You could design the most vanilla task possible and professional footballers would still throw everything into beating their teammates at it.
At 11am, on-pitch training begins. It starts with a short jog and then running drills, again designed as team exercises with elements of competition: races around cones, paired sprints with obligatory throws of a football between teammates. The punishment for the losing team is only 10 press-ups – that is not the point.
The other thing that jumps out is just how “seen” footballers are in training. As the players complete the sprints, Skubala, Cohen and Shaw are looking on. The head of academy does the same – three academy players are training with the first team.
All are watching for behavioural signals. The fitness coaches and head of sports science will be looking for anything physical that may interest or concern them. Being a footballer is an exercise in being constantly judged and assessed – not just on matchday – and that comes with its own pressure.
Cohen then sets up two groups of rondos – two-touch and then one-touch – with an aim to get to 15 or 10 passes respectively without interception. Again, the competitive element takes over: nobody wants to be called to the middle or responsible for the ball leaving the circle.
Next, Cohen organises a seven-a-side match on a smaller pitch but with full-sized goals. Extra players are positioned on the sideline where they can receive and recycle the ball with one touch.
The intensity is relentless and the aim is to work on the pressing and ball-retention aspects of the team meeting in an enclosed, and thus hyper-pressured, space.
Then those same principles extend to a larger pitch marked out with discs. The principle is that each player can only enter designated areas of the playing surface, which governs team shape – they must stretch their available space to its maximum. Gradually, the restrictions are removed until the shape has become natural.
Cohen acts as instructor from the middle while Skubala watches from the side and occasionally has a chat with individual players. Throughout, a drone is sent up to offer a bird’s-eye view of the general shape and any passing lanes that players may have missed or created through their own movement. On the same pitch, the attacking and defensive set-piece work is then put into practice.
The session ends with the non-goalkeeping group broken up into units. At the far end of the third pitch, shooting drills involve players dealing with a pass-and-shot and then a surprise ball bounced from Shaw into an unexpected area – everything must be one-touch.
A senior central defender and first-year scholar work on long passes to one another with both feet, the accuracy and control completely transfixing. Central midfielder Conor McGrandles repeatedly takes passes under pressure and must pass first time into a small net – through-ball training.
The youth players begin to gather in the Puma footballs and training ends. This is matchday minus one and, as such, is only a short day. It goes without saying: I am absolutely knackered just watching. There is something about watching professional footballers up close that makes you question your own lifestyle.
By 12.45pm, the chef has prepared lunch: chicken, oregano rice, charred sweetcorn, baked half-potatoes, mac and cheese, roasted carrots, green salad. The players go first (fair enough really), followed by coaching staff and then me. It is hungry work on the sideline and it wouldn’t be the full experience if I didn’t eat with them.
This level of detail is now commonplace at smart clubs below England’s top two tiers. The menu for the players is different on a usual Monday or Tuesday to a Thursday or Friday – this is a matchday-minus-one offering. Lincoln also took their nutritionist to Portugal to make sure that meals were regulated.
Lincoln finished 11th in League One last season (Photo: Chris Vaughan)
That marginal-gains principle makes complete sense at clubs such as these. Last season, Lincoln had the 17th-biggest budget in League One and their aim is to overperform it by four places every season, something they managed in 2024-25 by finishing 11th.
An anti-gravity treadmill may cost £10,000 while supporters clamour for a new signing, but if it allows the full-time sports therapist lead, head of medical and two sports scientists to improve injury prevention, it really can be like a new signing.
After lunch, the players head off for a safeguarding meeting but are then free to leave. Usually there would be managed gym work, but a Tuesday night friendly means that they will meet up at 3.25pm the next day for the coach to Grimsby. They know their instructions until then: do as little as possible.
But work for the staff goes on. Cohen goes to the gym before his own lunch – the chef has held some chicken breasts back for the late lunch eaters. The two full-time data analysts (plus intern) begin to download and review the footage from training and will have meetings with Skubala about their conclusions.
Skubala and his coaches will have their own review meetings and then continue to work on any extra match preparation. Director of football Jez George has been here all morning and chief executive Liam Scully is on a call in one of the meeting rooms – there may be recruitment discussions and updates that require input from multiple people.
Tuesday is matchday, Wednesday a day off (for players), Thursday a full training day and Friday another matchday minus one. Then Lincoln are into full season mode: Reading, AFC Wimbledon, Harrogate Town in the FA Cup and Plymouth Argyle.
League One looks stacked again. Lincoln will hope that the work done today and over the last month will allow them to punch above their weight again. As with every club in their position, you certainly can’t accuse them of shirking on the preparation.
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If England could have changed anything about this summer, Sarina Wiegman joked that she would have liked for it to be a little less “chaotic”. Her side have nevertheless cheered and inspired millions, however they went about it.
As a squad, the Lionesses are always adamant that every single player has a role to play regardless of how many minutes they get – so here is a life lesson from each one.
Hannah Hampton
Answering the haters. Before the tournament, Hampton felt fans “didn’t want her in goal” after Mary Earps’ shock retirement. Then she won them the quarter-final with her penalty saves against Sweden before doing it all again in the final. Named in the Team of the Tournament.
Khiara Keating
Sharing the limelight. Nobody was a bigger advocate of Hampton than her back-up goalkeeper, Keating, who was at the heart of the celebrations even as she waits for her first international cap.
Anna Moorhouse
It is never too late. Moorhouse is 30 but didn’t receive her first international call-up until last summer. Now she is a European champion.
Lucy Bronze
Bronze played the entire tournament with a broken leg (Photo: Getty)
Resilience. Never mind persevering after plenty had written her off in the opening defeat to France – Bronze played the entire tournament with a broken tibia. As Beth Mead put it: “She’s just a nutter.”
Maya Le Tissier
Patience. Le Tissier is Manchester United captain and a centre-back by trade, but she is having to wait for her England breakthrough as Wiegman sees her as a right-back and potential long-term successor to Bronze.
Leah Williamson
Leadership. Quietly understated but inspirational, her team talks and organisation led England to a second successive trophy and their first overseas. And for an added bonus – taking time to rest. Williamson loves a matchday nap.
Alex Greenwood
Stepping up. Helped Jess Carter by switching with her to left-back, which instantly improved England defensively. Greenwood won her 100th cap.
Jess Carter
Speaking up. Carter led the way in calling for social media companies to be held accountable after revealing she had been the victim of online racism. Went on to make two incredible, last-ditch blocks in the final after admitting she was initially “scared” to play again.
Esme Morgan
Being ready. Morgan has had to wait in line to make an impact at centre-backs but coped brilliantly after coming on against Sweden, also featuring in the semi-final against Italy.
Lotte Wubben-Moy
Fighting for equality. Wubben-Moy has led England’s campaign to improve girls’ access to football in schools, meeting Prime Minister Keir Starmer before the tournament kicked off to help kickstart new initiatives.
Niamh Charles
Taking a chance. Charles has often been in and out of the England side despite being part of such a dominant Chelsea side domestically. Used at left-back and right-back when needed and scoring her penalty in the final shootout.
Keira Walsh
Walsh celebrates on the pitch after the final whistle (Photo: Getty)
Turning it around. Walsh struggled in the first half of the final up against the world’s best midfield – Alexia Putellas, Aitana Bonmati and Patri Guijarro – but came out swinging in the second.
Grace Clinton
Keep learning. Clinton’s midfield role is so versatile, tucking in defensively to help Walsh and Stanway but also making room for her creativity.
Georgia Stanway
Rest and recovery. Stanway did not start for seven months for England until this summer after knee surgery. She now says she is recording her best ever fitness times in training, which she puts down to her first proper break in 10 years.
Jess Park
Celebrating personal milestones. Won her first appearance at a major tournament against Wales. It was only 45 minutes but it was a huge moment for Park, for whom the best is yet to come.
Ella Toone
Finding the joy. Toone says this has been the toughest year of her life after losing her dad last September. She has danced, sung and scored her way through it – at the final, there was an empty seat next to her mum.
Aggie Beever-Jones
Taking it all in.Beever-Jones wrote down a wellness quote every day in camp, journaled and essentially became the team photographer to ensure none of the experience was lost.
Michelle Agyemang
Agyemang won Young Player of the Tournament (Photo: Getty)
Humility. Agyemang had to be forced to the front of the group of players on the pitch as fans serenaded her after her heroics in the semi-final against Italy.
Alessia Russo
Unselfishness. Plenty questioned Russo’s goal return before the final (she had just one from the 6-1 win over Wales before that equaliser against Spain) but not her teammates. Her runs were instrumental to wearing opponents down and she finished the Netherlands game with three assists.
Lauren Hemp
Working without clear rewards. Hemp deserved to finish with more than one goal and no assists at this Euros – she was constantly carving teams open.
Lauren James
Perseverance. So much of James’ season was ravaged by injury but she won her fitness race to be there and lit up the group stages.
Beth Mead
Be a team player. Mead started the first game against France but was then used as an impact thereafter. Did not complain once and led the team’s “clicking” celebrations for the super-subs.
Chloe Kelly
Not giving up. Kelly wanted to quit football in January before leaving Manchester City for Arsenal. “Thank you to everyone that wrote me off,” she said after winning the Euros for England in the second final in a row. “I’m grateful.”
It was only when Jurgen Klopp arrived that Liverpool’s transfer committee finally started firing, three years after its formation.
When John W Henry bought the club, in October 2010, he started creating a new transfer system fit for the modern age, powered by brains, data and technology.
One of the key appointments was director of research Ian Graham, who had a PhD in physics from Cambridge University and had been working with Tottenham. Michael Edwards was appointed as head of performance and analysis. Scouts were poached from Manchester City.
By 2012 all the pieces were in place, only then they hit a snag. They appointed Brendan Rodgers as manager.
In his first media appearance Rodgers made clear it was his way, or he was off. “I am better when I have control,” he said.
Rodgers was frustrating to work with. He ignored or dismissed advice. There were arguments and heated disagreements about players.
Alexander Isak’s future remains uncertain at St James’ Park (Photo: Getty)
By 2014, Graham feared it was the end for the transfer committee. Publicly, they had become a laughing stock.
They had landed some hits in January 2013: Daniel Sturridge was a £12m signing from Chelsea, Philippe Coutinho arrived from Inter Milan for £8.5m (to be sold for a £121.5m profit five years later). But they signed a series of misses, too.
Graham hoped Rodgers would soften, but still he stuck with his own ideas.
“Season after season, first-choice targets like Alexis Sanchez and Diego Costa had slipped away while we argued about their merits,” Graham later wrote in his book, How To Win The Premier League.
Finally, Rodgers was sacked, and in came Klopp, in 2015, more accustomed to the collaborative culture in Germany where the head coach reported to a director of football.
Edwards, who became one of the finest recruiters in the game, was promoted to sporting director soon after. And the transfer committee hummed.
Sadio Mane, Joel Matip, Georginio Wijnaldum, Andy Robertson and Virgil van Dijk were signed and together, working in relative harmony, they assembled the teams that powered one of the most successful eras in Liverpool history.
You can see the fingerprints of that work – albeit with different puzzle pieces but a similar philosophy built on systems refined for over a decade – as they seize this transfer window, acting smartly and decisively and with conviction.
Compare that to Newcastle United, flailing and flapping, and the gulf between the Premier League champions and a club hoping one day to be up there is clear.
Two sporting directors leaving in less than 18 months – Dan Ashworth departing for Manchester United last year followed by Paul Mitchell recently – points to power struggles and uncomfortable dynamics.
The problem with Mitchell, who described Newcastle’s transfer policy as “not fit for purpose” last year, departing ahead of this summer is that it left a core transfer team of head coach Eddie Howe, long-standing Newcastle head of recruitment Steve Nickson and Andy Howe, Eddie’s nephew.
It is suggested now that Howe has significant control over transfers, as though the club are going back in time, to a bygone era, rather than evolving for the future.
Indeed, rival sporting directors have questioned whether the all-powerful manager is a suitable fit for a club in Newcastle’s position, with their ambitions.
Andy is making strides in the game – he is well thought of in football circles – but is he really ready to be in such a position of influence in a Champions League side?
This is not to knock Howe, who is proving his coaching credentials with two top five finishes in three years and a first major trophy in decades. But he needs to be left to coach.
This has been a summer of key targets slipping away from the club like grains of sand in an hourglass, while time runs out to salvage the window and maximise the opportunity Howe has delivered.
If losing out on James Trafford, one of the most highly rated young goalkeepers in the game and keen to sign for them, to City after moving too indecisively was a misplaced pass, the handling of Alexander Isak is a spectacular own goal.
How was it not ascertained before the transfer window opened two months ago that he wanted to leave so much he was prepared to shun the club’s pre-season tour of Singapore? Could things not have gone better had the situation been established well in advance?
Had the window gone differently, there is a scenario whereby Newcastle signed Hugo Ekitike, reluctantly sold Isak to Liverpool, and still had around £70m in the bank.
Instead, the process could barely have been handled worse. Liverpool nicked Ekitike from under their noses and then Isak started digging in, so that they may lose him anyway, or, at the very least, start the season with a grumpy star player with eyes elsewhere.
The importance of a recruitment team should not be underestimated. Pep Guardiola once credited City’s recruitment department with “80 per cent” of the club’s success.
At one stage, Newcastle had been building towards that. This time last year, the club wanted an executive team running things.
It may have taken Liverpool several years to establish a transfer system that is the envy of the world. Newcastle’s owners bought the club four years ago now. They have had plenty of time to get this right.
Meanwhile, opportunities and chances that could transform the club’s future may already be passing them by.
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None captures the soaring Lionesses vibe quite like Hannah Hampton, the nascent poster girl of this remarkable English summer. Yes, that’s English, not British. Hampton’s power is her essential goodness, a quality we can all believe in and one that is utterly repositioning patriotism.
Her simple attachment to the virtuous qualities of not giving in, of commitment and persistence has freed patriotism from the toxic grip of the nationalist tendency, of Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson and the “football lads” who export a repellent, exclusive vision of what it means to be English.
Hampton reached for the following explanation to account for the resilience shown by her and her teammates in rescuing losing positions in each of the knockout stages to defend their European Championship crown.
“We’ve got that grit, that English blood in us. We never say die. We just keep going,” she said, a position echoed by Chloe “I’m so proud to be English” Kelly.
In the context of a month during which the boorish machismo of the men’s game was cancelled, the adherence to England acquires a noble, innocent quality.
"Do not let people tell you what you can or can't do."
In the absence of dissent, simulation, abuse of the officials, profanity, overwrought aggression or animus towards opponents, the coupling of Englishness with indomitable, fighting spirit is less threatening.
The watching experience mirrors the action on the pitch, joy taken in likeable, relatable characters, a sporting cohort who have yet to cut the connective thread to supporters. It feels like we are all in this together, a shared, exhilarating experience that binds us.
Hampton embodies a wholesome desire to overcome without bitterness, to refuse to be defined or restrained by life’s knocks, to try her best. It is a central parable that we all try to pass on to our children but one that is relentlessly under attack by life.
Her back story is one of youthful struggle, coping with strabismus, a condition that leaves the eyes misaligned and affects depth perception. In her early goalkeeping career she struggled with consistency and there were question marks over her attitude before Euro 2022 when she was dropped by Aston Villa and England.
And then there was the problem of usurping Mary Earps, England’s much loved former No 1. The attachment to Earps deepened in the fight with Nike over the kit manufacturer’s crass refusal to stock replica Earps jerseys following the 2023 World Cup.
It was a huge call by Sarina Wiegman to make Hampton her first-choice keeper, a decision that turned disruptive with Earps’ subsequent withdrawal from the squad.
By increments Hampton proved her worth, making match-winning contributions in the knockout stages and developing a formidable profile, topping the table for prevented xGs.
The sense of overcoming adversity was enshrined in a social media post paying homage to her late grandfather, whose death she made public after the tournament.
Even this redaction should be read with a tissue to hand.
“Dear Grandpa, two days before the biggest tournament of my life, you left. It still doesn’t feel real. You were one of my biggest supporters.
“You believed in me before I even knew what this journey would look like. You taught me so much, not just about football, but about life. About staying grounded, working hard, being resilient and doing things the right way.
“It breaks my heart that you didn’t get to see me walk out for our country at my first major tournament, something you dreamed of for me, something we talked about so many times. I wanted to see your face or hear your voice after the game. I wanted to share that with you.
“But I felt you with me. In the tunnel. On the pitch.
“In the tough moments. I heard you in my head when I needed strength. I hope I made you proud, Grandpa. I did it. WE DID IT.”
Identity is a complicated business, a concept endlessly abused for political ends, but England’s feminine ballers have allowed us all to embrace it.
It is one of the peculiarities of our cultural life that in significant examples Englishness is denied us. When we pass through customs, we present a UK passport. When asked our nationality, we say we are British.
Our fellow members of the Union are defined by not being English, so they proclaim their Welshness and Scottishness in a way we do not.
But sport gives us the platform to go full English. “Proper England” has entered the lexicon, gloriously validated by Kelly’s boots, Hampton’s penalty saves, and a feminised, non-toxic sense of mission proclaiming inclusion and fellowship, something we can all get behind.
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