Find a Football Team

⚽ All the latest football news going into the weekend
⚽ Results and reports | Today’s matches | Mail Luke

Thomas Tuchel has acknowledged that Ben White needs to clear the air with his teammates after returning to the England squad, but the head coach is confident the defender will not be booed by the Wembley crowd during tonight’s friendly against Uruguay.

White has not been part of the setup since exiting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar early for personal reasons and the decision to end his international exile has not gone down well with some people. The Arsenal player has never explained the reasons for his departure and subsequently making himself unavailable for selection for the rest of Gareth Southgate’s time in charge.

Head coach constantly looks to the future but defeat by Bosnia and Herzegovina is not without consequences

Craig Bellamy predicted a sleepless night and he will not have been the only one. Most of Wales, population a little more than three million, will have pulled the curtains, struggling to shift the pervading sense of an opportunity missed. “My heart hurts,” he said approaching midnight in Cardiff and the gravity of it all may only fully sink in when Bosnia and Herzegovina, after prevailing in a World Cup playoff in the capital, host Italy on Tuesday for a place at this summer’s showpiece.

Wales fell at the penultimate hurdle, chalking up another near-miss after the anguish of another penalty shootout defeat, two years on from their last against Poland. Bellamy has breathed life into the team, renewing optimism and arming his players with naked belief, but this is unmistakably a blow. The easy thing to do at this juncture is preach about the green shoots but at this point nobody wants to think too hard about the merits of being promoted to the top tier of the Nations League or the home nations Euro 2028.

• Moyes has turned Everton into European contenders

• Talks over extending second spell due in summer

Everton are planning to offer David Moyes a new contract this summer in recognition of his achievement in transforming the club from relegation candidates to challengers for European qualification.

Moyes signed a two-and-a-half-year deal when succeeding Sean Dyche last January, with Everton one point above the relegation zone. They are currently eighth, only three points outside the Champions League qualification places.

• Hodgson replaces Gerhard Struber for rest of season

• He last managed second-tier club back in 1982

Roy Hodgson has made a sensational return to management at the age of 78 with Bristol City after Gerhard Struber was sacked by the Championship club.

Hodgson, who has been out of work since leaving Crystal Palace in February 2024, will take charge of City for the remaining seven games of the season. They are currently 16th in the Championship.

Norwich winger on ‘perfect setup’ of Toronto and Vancouver games as co-hosts look to punch above their weight this summer

Ali Ahmed watched the last World Cup at home with friends and family. “It was goose bumps seeing Canada walking out,” the winger says. “I haven’t seen that in my lifetime. It was surreal.” This time around he will again be at home but also very much at the heart of the action in two cities that are dear to him.

Jesse Marsch’s side face Qatar and Switzerland in Vancouver after an opener against a European playoff winner (possibly Italy) in Toronto. Italy in Toronto, Ahmed’s home town, would be special, not only because of the city’s vast Italian population – “the stadium might be more blue than red,” Ahmed jokes – but also because his parents, who are from Ethiopia but lived for two years in Italy, are big calcio fans. “Football was ingrained in all of us in our family,” he says.

• 26-year-old is set to join NWSL side immediately

• Forward has 16 goals in 29 appearances for USWNT

US international forward Catarina Macario has joined the San Diego Wave on a deal worth $8m that runs through the 2030 season. The contract is reportedly the largest by total value in women’s soccer history.

The Wave announced the move Friday. Sportico first reported that the Wave were nearing the acquisition last week. ESPN reported that Macario would join the NWSL side immediately rather than in the summer, on a transfer fee of about $300,000.

• Defender called up for first time since exiting 2022 World Cup

• ‘There are strong opinions but he deserves a second chance’

Thomas Tuchel has acknowledged that Ben White needs to clear the air with his teammates after returning to the England squad, but the head coach is confident the defender will not be booed by the Wembley crowd during tonight’s friendly against Uruguay.

White has not been part of the setup since exiting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar early for personal reasons and the decision to end his international exile has not gone down well with some people. The Arsenal player has never explained the reasons for his departure and subsequently making himself unavailable for selection for the rest of Gareth Southgate’s time in charge.

The minnows just need to win a playoff against Turkey at home to complete a qualification campaign that has become a rallying cry for national pride

They are a World Cup fairytale, a footballing nation barely a decade old with fewer people than the state of South Australia. A Balkan West Virginia, but with a fraction of the area, and a chequered past.

Minnows Kosovo are one game away from their first appearance at a World Cup, and a place beckons in Group D alongside Australia, Paraguay and co-hosts the United States.

A familiar tale of World Cup playoff agony awaited the Republic of Ireland in Prague, but this was no hard luck story. Heimir Hallgrímsson’s team twice had the Czech Republic where they wanted them, in normal time and in a penalty shootout, and twice they let them off the hook. Dreams of a first World Cup in 24 years evaporated as a consequence.

Ireland led 2-0 after 23 minutes of a scrappy semi-final and 3-2 after the first six penalties of the shootout, but the momentum built on the back of outstanding qualifying wins over Portugal and Hungary could not be sustained. The misery of this latest playoff defeat – Ireland’s fifth loss in six World Cup playoff fixtures – will be heightened by the realisation it was so unnecessary.

Thomas Tuchel’s desire for clarity has him pitching two players against one another for each position. The competitive tension is palpable

In the analysis of Thomas Tuchel’s split-squad approach for this international window, his naming of 35 players for the Wembley friendlies against Uruguay on Friday and Japan on Tuesday – including nine that he has not previously worked with – one detail has slipped under the radar.

It is because it is easy to forget that the England manager recently signed up to stay on for Euro 2028. There is a degree of longer-term planning about him wanting to get a first look, for example, at Ben White and Lewis Hall, Kobbie Mainoo and James Garner. Fikayo Tomori as well. The centre-half left Chelsea for Milan, initially on loan, in January 2021 – four days before Tuchel arrived at the London club for his brief but storied spell.

Netherlands striker opens up on the condition that temporarily derailed her career and left her in so much pain she was in bed for three days

When the sharp, stabbing pain in her abdomen became so severe she had to be substituted at half-time during a match last season Katja Snoeijs knew what she was experiencing was not “normal period pains”. And she was right.

The 29-year-old Everton and Netherlands striker has since been diagnosed with endometriosis, which affects one in 10 women. She says she counts herself lucky because she received her diagnosis within a year and was shocked to learn the average wait in the UK is nine years.

Get our roundup of women’s football for free twice a week, featuring the insights of experts such as Ada Hegerberg and Magdalena Eriksson

Join us as we delve deeper into the wonderful world of women’s football in our weekly newsletter. It is informative, entertaining, global, critical – when needed – and, above all, passionate. Written mainly by Júlia Belas Trindade and Sophie Downey, expect guest appearances from stars such as Anita Asante, Ada Hegerberg and many more.

Try our other sports emails: as well as the occasionally funny football email The Fiver from Monday to Friday, there are weekly catch-ups for cricket in The Spin and rugby union in The Breakdown, and our seven-day roundup of the best of our sports journalism in The Recap.

Living in Australia? Try the Guardian Australia’s daily sports newsletter

Kick off your afternoon with the Guardian’s take on the world of football

Every weekday, we’ll deliver a roundup the football news and gossip in our own belligerent, sometimes intelligent and – very occasionally – funny way. Still not convinced? Find out what you’re missing here.

Try our other sports emails: there’s weekly catch-ups for cricket in The Spin and rugby union in The Breakdown, and our seven-day round-up of the best of our sports journalism in The Recap.

Living in Australia? Try the Guardian Australia’s daily sports newsletter

Our editors’ favourite sporting images from the past week, from the spectacular to the powerful, and with a little bit of fun thrown in

The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s action

Subscribe to get our editors’ pick of the Guardian’s award-winning sport coverage. We’ll email you the stand-out features and interviews, insightful analysis and highlights from the archive, plus films, podcasts, galleries and more – all arriving in your inbox at every Friday lunchtime. And we’ll set you up for the weekend and let you know our live coverage plans so you’ll be ahead of the game. Here’s what you can expect from us.

Try our other sports emails: there’s daily football news and gossip in The Fiver, and weekly catch-ups for cricket in The Spin and rugby union in The Breakdown.

Living in Australia? Try the Guardian Australia’s daily sports newsletter

Game seven of Gennaro Gattuso’s Italy tenure eventually delivered comfort. In number eight, he will look to end the painful wait of a nation by returning his country to the World Cup for the first time since 2014. Northern Ireland’s future, a bright one with this young squad, means looking towards Euro 2028. This was a campaign too soon.

Gattuso has a stated aim of making World Cup impact, not simply qualifying. There were long spells in this playoff when the coach’s aspirations felt ludicrous. Perhaps Italy laboured, especially in the first half, under expectation. Yet it is an undoubted truism that they will require a huge uplift in performance level to feature prominently in the summer. Italy edged rather than swaggered towards their meeting with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Only the brave will call the outcome of that. “We have to win, we have no other choice,” said Gattuso. “We are playing a team full of experienced players. It will be another hugely challenging match.”

Graham Potter may be in it for the long haul but the immediate outlook looks pretty bright too. This was his third game in charge of Sweden and the biggest compliment to pay is that they looked like themselves. A strong, diligent defensive performance nullified a lightweight Ukraine and it helped that, at the other end, they could call upon a centre-forward head and shoulders above anyone else on view.

That was Viktor Gyökeres, a talisman for his country even if Arsenal fans are yet to be fully enamoured. An object lesson in No 9 play brought a deserved hat-trick and ensured Sweden will reach the World Cup if they beat Poland at home on Tuesday. It is some turnaround from the directionless, disconsolate side Potter inherited; virtually ignored by a meagre travelling support when they were routed by Switzerland on his debut in November, this time they were serenaded by a jubilant yellow mass of 3,000 in the north-east corner.

• Denmark ease past North Macedonia 4-0

• Arda Guler magic helps Turkey sink Romania 1-0

Robert Lewandowski helped Poland come from behind to scrape past Albania 2-1 after Arber Hoxha gave the visitors the lead in Warsaw. Poland will now face Sweden, who defeated Ukraine, in Stockholm for one of four remaining European places at the World Cup.

Lewandowski headed in from a second-half corner to bring Poland level with his 89th goal for his country before Piotr Zielinski grabbed the winner 10 minutes later.

• Australia ramp up World Cup preparations with 1-0 victory

• Ajdin Hrustic has penalty saved after dour first half in Sydney

Childhood fans of the venerable Fifa Series (making its debut in Sydney) will not remember the Socceroos 1-0 win over Cameroon as a classic of the genre. It will go down as a game decided when Jordan Bos’ quick wits in the 85th minute allowed him to seize upon a Paul Okon-Engstler pass that went through Ajdin Hrustić, and fire home, sparing the latter’s blushes for a penalty missed in the 70th minute.

Maybe with the benefit of hindsight it will be seen as the launching point for a successful World Cup campaign, with the win snapping a three-game losing run for Tony Popovic’s side that begun against the United States last October, as well as netting their first goal since that defeat in Colorado. Perhaps there will be something about how snazzy the new kits the Australians debuted looked in action, or that the fixture marked the starting debut of an 18-year-old Lucas Herrington – the youngest defender to do so since Brett Woods in 1981.

• Lens were opposed to moving the Ligue 1 game

• The top two sides will now play on 13 May

Paris Saint-Germain’s visit to Lens, potentially a crucial encounter in the Ligue 1 title race, has been postponed to give PSG more time to prepare for their Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool.

The match between the top two teams in France’s top division – PSG lead Lens by a point – was scheduled for 11 April but will now take place on 13 May, three days before the final round of fixtures.

Thirty-five players, late callups, including Ben White, but still no Trent Alexander-Arnold. Will James Garner win the World Cup for England? What chance do recalled Harry Maguire and Kobbie Mainoo have of getting into the final group? And realistically what starting positions are still up for grabs? Then on to the Football League. Are Coventry ready for the the Premier League? Who of Middlesborough, Ipswich, Millwall and Hull would be the most interesting to join them? It’s exhaustingly tight at the bottom of the Championship, with Oxford, Leicester, Portsmouth, West Brom and Blackburn all desperate to avoid joining Sheffield Wednesday. Lincoln City could be promoted from League One at Easter, with Cardiff sure to join them, leaving nine teams still vying for the playoffs. In League Two, it’s pick three from six for the automatics, with Bromley almost certainly there, plus a four-way scrap to stay in the Football League.

Countdown to tournament begins in earnest with friendly against Uruguay so it’s time to forget other countries are good at football

Is it too early to start plotting England’s inevitable route to World Cup glory? If nothing else it’ll stop me refreshing the internet to find out if Tim Sherwood is going to manage Spurs for the next three games before Dave from Chas & Dave comes in for the final Hail Mary.

Perhaps you’re focused on Arsenal coming second in everything, Everton finishing above Liverpool or the wild York/Rochdale title race in the National League. Take a weekend off and start dreaming of Gianni and Trump handing Harry Kane the trophy as the world burns.

The Uruguay coach, who had such an impact at Leeds, needs a result at Wembley on Friday after a downturn for the South American side

The pattern is not unfamiliar. Marcelo Bielsa arrives. The force of his personality, the radicalism of his ideas, his charismatic eccentricity, elevates everyone. Results are good, performances intoxicating. The football is not merely successful but comes to be regarded almost as a moral good: playing the right way for a coach who projects a profound sense of integrity.

Gradually the picture changes. Fatigue sets in. Players weary of their manager’s obsessive nature. Pundits and fans begin to wonder if everything has to be quite so relentless all the time. Bielsa’s quirks come to be regarded less with affection than with aggravation. Levels drop, Bielsa leaves.

We spend a day with the surprise package of the Première Ligue to find out how they have taken the top flight by storm

There is one video that is on repeat on the Nantes players’ phones: Lucie Calba’s goal in last weekend’s 3-0 win against Strasbourg, an exceptional passage of play in which eight players touched the ball to move it up the entire pitch in only 18 seconds.

“It’s very satisfying because we’re able to reproduce everything we work on in training in matches,” says Camille Robillard, the team’s No 10 and a product of the club’s academy, clearly fascinated by the goal getting so much attention. A goal “in the Nantes style”, referring to the men’s team of the 1990s, known for their attacking, fluid play and constant movement.

Lewis Hall, Luke Shaw and Nico O’Reilly are the three leading contenders for a position that remains up for grabs

By WhoScored

A year ago, when England began their World Cup qualifying campaign with a 2-0 win over Albania, the prospect of Nico O’Reilly making the squad seemed very distant. He was yet to earn a cap and had played just 23 minutes of Premier League football. But he is now close to indispensable for Manchester City, having started 23 league games this season and earned two England caps in the process.

Reform’s use of the football club has shocked fans and left the ownership red faced but how did it happen?

When photographs of Nigel Farage’s visit to Portman Road went viral on Tuesday morning, a wave of shock quickly spread among Ipswich Town’s staff. Some were furious, others genuinely devastated by the carelessness that saw the club allow itself to be leveraged for Reform UK’s political gain. The anger was palpable and hardly assuaged by an email sent to employees by the chief executive, Mark Ashton, who sought to douse the fire by stating there had been no intention to endorse Farage nor his policies.

The problem for Ipswich is that the horse has bolted. At best, they were grievously naive in letting Farage and his social media team run amok after arriving for a pre-booked stadium tour; a less generous reading would be that they simply stood by and let it happen, fully aware of Reform’s propensity to create sensation from the smallest gulp of oxygen. A photo of Farage holding an Ipswich shirt aloft, seemingly in their press conference room, was swiftly emblazoned as the banner on his party’s X account. Before long Farage, ever the opportunist, was launching a video from the scene and cockily linking himself with the Ipswich manager’s job.

We now know 42 of the 48 of the teams that will play next year, but for a host of teams the race goes on via playoffs

All nine of the automatic places have been filled by the nine group winners, with the four best runners-up – DR Congo, Gabon, Cameroon and Nigeria – competing in November’s playoffs in Morocco. Nigeria beat Gabon 4-1 in the first semi-final, while Cameroon fell to a last-gasp 1-0 defeat by DR Congo in the second tie. DR Congo upset Nigeria after a gripping penalty shootout in the final, and go through to represent Africa in the intercontinental playoffs in March.

Egypt
Mohamed Salah scored twice as Hossam Hassan’s side beat Djibouti 3-0 in Casablanca in October and made up for missing out on Qatar 2022 by reaching the finals with a game in hand. This will be Egypt’s fourth finals, even though they have yet to win a game. Bizarrely, the Pharaohs did qualify for the first World Cup, in 1930, but missed their boat from Marseille to South America after a storm delayed them.

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.

The world of soccer throws up no shortage of questions. Today, Graham Ruthven endeavors to answer three of them.

Twenty-six minutes. That’s all the game time Gio Reyna has played in 2026. He hasn’t played at all for Borussia Mönchengladbach in the last two months. For any other player, this surely would’ve kept them off the US roster for the upcoming friendlies against Belgium and Portugal. US manager Pochettino has consistently repeated the point that club form matters when building these squads. Reyna, however, isn’t any other player.

The Parma Women's second team player Claudia Morelli deliberately missed a penalty that was wrongly awarded, while their match against Hic Sunt Leones was still level at 0-0.

The referee awarded the penalty after the Hic Sunt Leones goalkeeper made a save, mistakenly thinking a defender had handled the ball instead, and therefore Morelli sportingly decided to simply pass her spot-kick tamely towards the keeper.

Parma went on to win the match 9-1 and clinch their respective league title with an unbeaten season

There was talk of this being a last hurrah at home for a golden generation of Matildas. But their performance showed a glimmer of something else

Two steps to the left. That’s probably all the space Alanna Kennedy needed to poke the ball away from the edge of her own penalty area and back into the field of possibility.

But these are the gaps where football lives, in the inches that open and close like a hand, and by the time the veteran midfielder had spun in surprise, the ball was thwacking the back of the net as Maika Hamano wheeled off into the night.

As well as being one of the team’s best performers, midfielder has become a talisman who is aware of the club’s spirit and traditions

The video of Bruno Fernandes kicking in the door is very good, if you haven’t already seen it. In a way, it explains a lot. His Sporting team are drawing 1‑1 at Boavista in 2019 and Fernandes has just been sent off for a fully deserved second yellow. As he stalks down the tunnel he takes furious aim at the two doors, the sheer force of the kick knocking him off his feet.

The doors make a magnificent shotgun sound, but do not yield. “Fuck you!” Fernandes shouts as Boavista security guards try to intervene. “I’ll pay for the fucking doors! Go fuck yourselves!”

Sadness over the Egyptian King’s departure from Liverpool is matched by gratitude for the goals and glory he gave supporters

The first time I saw Mohamed Salah play was in August 2017. Arsenal were the visitors to Anfield. Liverpool were sensational on that sunny Sunday afternoon. Bobby Firmino and Sadio Mané had fashioned a 2-0 first-half lead, before the third member of Jürgen Klopp’s new attacking trio added his name to the scoresheet.

Arsenal’s corner was cleared to Héctor Bellerín, about 30 yards out. Salah was on him instantly, robbing the hapless Spaniard easily. His whirring legs blurred like the Road Runner’s as he raced into the Arsenal half and towards Petr Cech. I’d never seen a player bear down on the Kop goal so rapidly.

The Herons are out of the Champions Cup after defeat to Nashville. Now it’s back to the same old hits for the club

Concacaf may not have the world’s most hallowed Champions League. The confederation is so aware of that fact that it rebranded the competition as a Champions Cup two years ago.

Nonetheless, winning the continental competition is the ultimate aim for MLS’s most ambitious clubs, even though (or perhaps because) only one of its last 25 installments has seen an MLS team crowned as Concacaf’s best. Liga MX continues to dominate the competition, boasting 21 winners since 2001, even as MLS improves. Even Costa Rica’s Liga Promerica has more titles since the turn of the century thanks to back-to-back victories for Alajuelense and Saprissa in the mid-2000s.

The head coach is not responsible for many of the problems at Anfield but he is the most obvious target for those seeking reasons for the team’s decline

It was the coffee bar at the training ground, installed by the Fenway Sports Group’s chief executive, Michael Edwards, after he got the idea from visiting Roma. It was Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, added to the post-match playlist by Alisson and which could be heard booming out of the Liverpool dressing room after victories. It was the video analysis. It was the data. It was the pre-season fitness tests. It was the close collaboration between the football and sports science departments. It was everything that changed from the Jürgen Klopp era. It was everything that stayed the same from the Jürgen Klopp era.

Victory brings a dazzling clarity. Particularly a victory as resounding as Liverpool’s unexpected 10-point romp to the Premier League title last season. It turns the cogs, powers the houses, confers a sunlit aura of genius on everyone involved. So with a certain uncharitable hindsight, it is instructive to go back to late April 2025 and read about how everyone thought Liverpool had done it. And why everyone – wrongly – thought they were going to do it again.

Our cartoonist steps into the mind of Gianni Infantino as Australia prepare to host the tantalising new global event

Transformative 999-year deal is a massive moment in the history of the club and the violent cultural push-pull of London

I have in my hand several hundred pieces of paper. Dog-eared, scribbled with rewrites, and stained with sweat and ancient Bermondsey vinegar. But a wodge of paper that may just guarantee, finally, what passes for peace around here.

There was a moment at the Den on Saturday afternoon that carried its own strictly localised sense of history. An hour before kick-off in Millwall’s Premier League playoff-push game against Portsmouth, the key personnel gathered in a wedding-style lineup around the centre circle.

Former Norwich defender lived for years in an LA motel, cut ties with his family for more than three decades and is now the subject of a documentary

“I hated it,” Tony Powell says on a spring afternoon in Los Angeles of his past as a secretly gay professional footballer for Bournemouth and Norwich in the 1970s. Powell is 78 and now lives in a very different world compared with when he was a husband, the father of two young daughters and Norwich’s player of the season in 1979.

Powell is not a demonstrative man and, having been forced to bury his true self for decades, does not make a fuss about the pain he endured. But there is an ache in his English accent, which remains intact after 45 years in America. “I just wanted to be who I am, but at that time it was not a good idea to come out.”

Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning went to the SXSW festival in Austin Texas last week. With only a few months to go before the World Cup, the pair are joined live on stage by The Guardian’s senior US soccer editor, Alexander Abnos, and star of the hit TV show Ted Lasso, Brendan Hunt.

Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning went to the SXSW festival in Austin Texas last week. With only a few months to go before the World Cup, the pair are joined live on stage by The Guardian’s senior US soccer editor, Alexander Abnos, and star of the hit TV show Ted Lasso, Brendan Hunt.

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts and join the conversation on email.

Only two of the Premier League’s last-16 teams made it to the quarter-finals while European giants are coming into form when it matters

Another traumatic week for the self-worth of the Premier League, one in which Europe’s big beasts got into their stride. The defending champions, Paris Saint-Germain, put on a devastating display at Chelsea. Bradley Barcola’s goal, their second, was the highlight of a 3-0 win. Barcelona ran out 7-2 winners over Newcastle, having been level at half-time at 2-2, 3-3 on aggregate. Real Madrid continue to be Pep Guardiola’s great tormentors, with Vinícius Júnior getting both goals at Manchester City. His crybaby celebration was aimed at those City supporters who mocked him after Rodri pipped the Brazilian to the Ballon d’Or in 2024. Bayern Munich continue to look irresistible. Harry Kane scored twice, and Lennart Karl’s strike continued his trajectory as German football’s next big thing in a 4-1 win over Atalanta, a mighty 10-2 on aggregate.

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

It’s Geopolitics World Cup playoff day, dear reader, and Gibraltar are playing Latvia in a winner-takes-all clash. Sadly, for football romantics, that game is the first leg of a Nations League promotion/relegation playoff. Uefa’s scheduling feels a bit cruel, like making some poor flunky do the graveyard shift while Bacchanalia Revisited takes place on the floor above. And what a party it’s going to be. Sure, the process of qualifying has become so convoluted that even Bobby Seagull doesn’t fully understand it, but now we’ve reached the stage where everything is terrifyingly simple. There are no second chances any more, and the only guarantee is of thrills, spills and bellyaches. Sixteen European teams are involved in Thursday’s semi-finals; by Tuesday night, four will be on their way to the GWC and 12 will be wondering whether they can still legitimately cherish the memories they made en route to the playoffs.

I’m so saddened by the news of John Toshack’s dementia diagnosis, the fate of too many from his era. He was my first footballing idol, a big handsome hero of the team I knew and loved as long as I’d lived. I would save a sweet for home-game Saturdays and ask my dad to pass it to him at half-time (of course a Kop season ticket didn’t preclude that!), and Dad always said Tosh had thanked me. It’s good to know he has detailed memories of his many days of glory, and I hope life is kind to him in those remaining” – Kathryn Nolan.

Riccardo Calafiori complains that Italy gaffer Gennaro Gattuso calls him more often than his mum does (Wednesday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). What’s the problem? I’d be ecstatic if Gattuso called me more than my mother. It’d be terrific to talk about football with a World Cup, Big Cup and Serie A winner. My mother tends to focus more on weekend plans, the noise level in restaurants, and how often my kids do or don’t call her. No offence Mum, but I’d rather talk tactics than family stuff” – Mike Wilner.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Only existing since 2024, the team, who came fourth at the world championship, has changed its players’ lives

“We are the first, but we will not be the last.” The rallying cry came from Eliane Gonçalves, a 39-year-old midfielder of the Brazilian women’s blind football national team during one of their training camps. The team’s psychologist had suggested the team come up with something to shout before matches. Gonçalves offered that line – and it stuck.

The team had existed for less than a year when they landed in Kochi, India, in October 2025. In their opening game of the world championship, Brazil beat the host nation 1-0 – and Gonçalves scored the goal. She had started playing only two years earlier after gradually losing her sight to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa. Sport had pulled her through the hardest period. “When I started losing my vision, I was very lost. Everything was completely different,” she says. “Sport took me out of depression. It gave me a better perspective on life, new dreams.”

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?

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Nedum Onuoha and Will Unwin, featuring very sad voice notes from Barry Glendenning and Elis James, looking back on disappointments for the Republic of Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland

On the podcast today: Wales and the Republic of Ireland took penalties at exactly the same time, both going ahead but missing at crucial moments … and with it having their World Cup dreams dashed.

Northern Ireland looked good against Italy, but there was just no cutting edge. In the end, two bits of real quality from Sandro Tonali and Moise Kean took the Azzurri one win away from their first World Cup in 12 years.

Plus: swift ascents up the pyramid, Steve Palmer’s maverick set of shirts and an infamous 2004 Olympic penalty

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“During a rather animated discussion at the pub recently, the topic of footballers ‘retiring from international football’ came up,” says Edd Crick. “We were reminiscing about the days when footballers simply stopped being picked for international games, so who was the first to come out and declare their retirement this way?”

We assumed this was a fairly modern development, but it goes back at least as far as the 1950s. Let’s look at the leading answers in reverse chronological order, starting with one of the stars of Italia 90. “Roger Milla is arguably responsible for popularising the concept of international retirement (not to mention elaborate goal celebrations) by famously unretiring at the request of the Cameroon president Paul Biya to play in the 1990 World Cup,” writes Tom Reed. “Milla had formally retired from playing for Cameroon at a jubilee event following victory in the 1988 Africa Cup of Nations.”

Max Rushden is joined by Seb Hutchinson, Dan Bardell and John Brewin to review Manchester City’s 2-0 win over Arsenal at Wembley, ending hopes of Arteta’s side winning the quadruple

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts and join the conversation on email

Manchester City won the Carabao Cup. Two goals for Nico O’Reilly as Pep Guardiola danced with anyone and everyone. He played a reserve keeper who was good. Mikel Arteta played a reserve keeper who wasn’t, but the rest of the team also didn’t really turn up. What does that mean for the rest of the season? Could Arsenal really come second in everything?

Kobbie Mainoo needs a power boost, Everton revel in home comforts but Brentford must rediscover their buzz

• Premier League top scorers: check the latest standings

One theory behind Manchester City’s subpar 18 months is that the end is sliding into view on Pep Guardiola’s glorious reign, and the fact that he may be considering life after City is transmitting itself to his players. Sunday’s Carabao Cup win goes some way to refuting that. Not only did he see off the challenge of his former apprentice Mikel Arteta, but it was vintage Guardiola on the touchline. He looked gobsmacked when decisions didn’t go his side’s way, produced a Chuck Norris tribute kick to an advertising hoarding when City took the lead then sprinted down the touchline, fists pumping, when Nico O’Reilly scored his second of a fairytale final for the club’s local lad. If Guardiola’s intense level of care has dropped, he’s disguising it well. Anybody writing off him – and City’s league title ambitions – would do well to remember just what level of manager we are dealing with here. Alex Reid

Match report: Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City

Player ratings: Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City

Match report: Tottenham 0-3 Nottingham Forest

Ousmane Dembélé becomes our seventh winner as he beats Lamine Yamal into second and Vitinha into third on our list of the best players on the planet

• Premier League dominates list | How every judge voted | Our methodology | The top 100 female players for 2025

• 2024 edition | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

The Frenchman, who has been named the best male footballer in the world by the Guardian, has benefitted from PSG’s focus on the team rather than individuals

What makes a good player great, and a great player the best? This question has been occupying me since 2014, when the Guardian first asked me to contribute to its inaugural Next Generation feature. My job was to look for a France-based talent born in 1997 who could go on to have a stellar career.

After a great deal of research, I narrowed it down from my shortlist of five by asking questions not about the players’ football ability, but about other attributes: resilience, adaptability, decision-making, creativity, work ethic, response to feedback and willingness to learn. Qualities we cannot see, and are harder to measure.

Aitana Bonmatí has been voted the best female player on the planet by our panel of 127 experts ahead of Mariona Caldentey and Alessia Russo

• 2024 list | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018

• Meet the judges | See how every judge voted

• Subscribe to Moving the Goalposts, our free newsletter

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.

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