5 articles found
From PSG’s Ibrahim Mbaye to Brazil’s next hope, we select some of the most talented players born in 2008. Check the progress of our classes of 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 … and go even further back. Here’s our Premier League class of 2025 Continue reading...
The margin may have got smaller but the brilliant Spanish midfielder makes it a hat-trick of No 1 finishes They say the best things come in threes, and Aitana Bonmatí has written herself into the Guardian’s top 100 history as the first player to finish at the top of the tree for a third consecutive year. Last year the majestic midfielder emulated her Barcelona and Spain teammate Alexia Putellas by winning for a second year running, but the 27-year-old has now gone one better, establishing herself once again at the top of the women’s game. Continue reading...
Head coach has been preparing for playoff against Turkey in hospital and sees job as ‘duty to Romanian football’ Mircea Lucescu is fighting for one last World Cup while at the same time battling his own body. He has lived through thousands of games as a player and manager but these could be the hardest of them all: two playoff games to take Romania to their first World Cup in 28 years. Lucescu is 80 years old now and has not been well – but he has lost none of his energy, nor love for the game. Since December he has been admitted to hospital on three occasions but here he is, with an espresso in front of him, discussing his long career, the playoff semi‑final against Turkey on Thursday and Ukraine, a place he used to call home. He does not, however, want to disclose the exact nature of his illness for fear that it will become the focus over the next few weeks. Continue reading...
Today’s newsletter looks at the women who grew up in the 1970s, 80s and 90s loving football but had little or no opportunity to play. I was one of them I screamed so loudly when Chloe Kelly scored the winning goal in the 2022 European Championship that our children ran from the room. They were too young to understand what it meant. Since then they’ve watched the Lionesses reach the final of the 2023 World Cup and seen them victorious at Euro 2025. They are growing up with women playing football on TV. I cried at that win four years ago. I watched the Lionesses in awe, but also with a sense of loss for what I never had the chance to become. According to Fifa’s 2023 Member Association survey report, the number of women and girls playing organised football has grown by 24% since 2019, to more than 16.6 million, with 3.9 million registered female players. Fifa’s Women’s Football Strategy 2024-27 aims to achieve 60 million registered players by next year. Continue reading...
The Gunners have a nine-point lead in the Premier League. But recent run-ins, and their loss to City on Sunday, will keep them wary Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here Some day, probably quite soon, Arsenal will win something again. Quite probably something much bigger than the Carabao Cup. But until then, there is only going to be anxiety, and it is going to get worse after Sunday’s second-half freeze against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final, which City won 2-0. Wembley could have seen the start of the Arsenal era, perhaps even the first leg of an unprecedented Quadruple; instead it was City celebrating, and with a gusto that suggested the past couple of years of dearth have served as a useful reminder that these occasions can never be taken for granted. Claims that victory in this final could be a huge psychological blow in the title race are perhaps a little fanciful. One game is one game. Professional athletes, robust self-belief integral to their existence, recover from defeats. But still, that flatness in the second half, the way Arsenal were pinned back and unable to break forward, has to be a concern. City were able to use the way Arsenal like to control the pace of the game against them, the short passes out from the goalkeeper used as a way of penning them in as they closed down passing lanes, allowing their defenders to have the ball and denying them options. What was that? A tactical triumph for Pep Guardiola? Exhaustion from Arsenal? Or the familiar mental fragility returning? Continue reading...
