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• Head coach was due to receive two awards in London

• ‘A decision I have not taken lightly but is absolutely right’

Arne Slot pulled out of the League Managers Association’s annual awards dinner in London on Tuesday after the appalling incident at the end of Liverpool’s Premier League victory parade.

The Liverpool head coach was due to receive the LMA’s and the Premier League’s manager of the year awards at the event for winning the title in his first season in English football. However, in light of the incident in Liverpool city centre on Monday, when 65 people were injured when a car drove into a crowd on Water Street, Slot and a senior delegation of Liverpool officials decided they should not attend.

After 380 games featuring more than 1,000 goals, we look back at some of the finest images from across the campaign

Liverpool started the season with a comfortable 2-0 win over Ipswich, while Erling Haaland scored back-to-back hat-tricks against the Tractor Boys and West Ham to leave City top of the pile at the end of August. Elsewhere, Everton remarkably coughed up a two-goal lead at home to Bournemouth – conceding three times from the 87th minute – becoming the first team in Premier league history to taste defeat from such a commanding position.

• Chelsea head coach said: ‘He is here? I don’t know’

• Banned forward spotted in city on eve of Betis match

Enzo Maresca said that he had no knowledge of Mykhailo Mudryk, who was provisionally suspended by the Football Association after failing a doping test last December, turning up in Wroclaw before Chelsea’s Uefa Conference League final against Real Betis on Wednesday night.

Mudryk, who has not featured since November, caused a stir when he was spotted in a steak restaurant in the city on Tuesday afternoon. The £88.5m Ukraine international was wearing Chelsea merchandise and posed for photographs with ­supporters.

The Real Betis midfielder feels re-energised and ready to ‘make history’ as his club prepare for a first European final

These are the days you’re here for, the moments that give it all meaning, Giovani Lo Celso says. At Real Betis’s Luis del Sol training ground in the south of a city that smells of orange blossom, swallows swoop through the sunshine to mud nests wedged into the wall of the white storehouse where the lawnmowers go. Rainbows appear in the sprinkler spray on the pitch where the session has just finished, last preparations before flying to Poland for the Conference League final against Chelsea. There’s a line they are proud of here, a design for life: Viva el Betis, manque pierda. Long live Betis, even if they lose. And if they win? If they win, this may just be the biggest thing that has ever happened to them.

On Lo Celso’s right calf is a football tattoo – old school and cartoonish with black and white hexagons – and the date of his debut, for Rosario Central in 2015. On his left is the Copa América, wrapped in an Argentina flag. He has won it twice, in 2021 and 2024. He also won a treble in France. Oh, and played a League Cup final with Tottenham – and, yes, he did watch them in Bilbao. “But I put this right up there, on the same level as those finals,” he says, settling on to a bench in the shade.

• Manchester United open to selling Alejandro Garnacho

• Ruben Amorim also keen on Ipswich’s Liam Delap

Manchester United are poised to sign Matheus Cunha after triggering the £62.5m release clause in the Wolves forward’s contract. United have agreed to split the fee in three payments across the next two years.

Wolves rejected United’s attempt to stagger the payment across five years but now the Brazilian is set to become Ruben Amorim’s first summer signing after a hugely disappointing season.

• Players in WSL 2 have been unable to use PFA’s services

• Talks accelerated after Blackburn left second tier

The Women’s Super League is in advanced discussions with the Professional Footballers’ Association over providing a funding deal that would enable all players in the top two divisions to join the union for the first time.

Under the existing arrangements the PFA does not receive any financial backing for the women’s game, with players in the WSL 2 – previously the Championship – unable to use its services, leaving many without access to healthcare and medical insurance despite being paid pro-rata salaries far below the national minimum wage.

Goalkeeper’s international retirement has people questioning the timing but not what she has given to Lionesses

The news of Mary Earps’s retirement from international football has been met with a cacophony of views, ranging from shock and disappointment to sadness and anger.

That the decision to step away has prompted such emotional responses, coming less than six weeks before the first game of England’s European Championship defence, is a testament to her popularity and the standing she has in the game.

Our cartoonist reflects on the season that was, with a little bit of help from Rodgers and Hammerstein

• Buy a copy of David’s cartoon in our Print Shop

• David’s latest book, Chaos in the Box: buy it now

New Seleção springs surprise with Casemiro recall and sets sights on reviving Vinícius Júnior’s international career

One of the best coaches in history working with the best national team in the world. This is how Carlo Ancelotti was introduced as the new head coach of the Brazil national team. Despite having worked for the biggest clubs in the world, the Italian did not hide his joy at the new challenge of leading the Seleção in their hunt for a sixth World Cup title.

“It is an honour to lead the best national team in the world. I have a great mission, so that Brazil can be champions again. I have always had a very special connection with Brazil. The reception yesterday was incredible,” Ancelotti said.

Best players, best managers, best matches, best goals, biggest flops and biggest gripes: our writers have their say

Mohamed Salah. The numbers don’t lie – 47 goal contributions in the Premier League was an outstanding return from the Egyptian, who seems to be getting better with age. Ed Aarons

Liverpool won the title and the promoted teams went straight back down, but do you remember the details?

Arne Slot’s first season could not have gone any better while Wolves fans drank to Vítor Pereira’s arrival

By winning the league, the Dutchman surprised pretty much everyone. He faced the daunting task of succeeding Jürgen Klopp and inherited the German’s squad, adding only Federico Chiesa, who barely kicked a ball in anger. Not much changed from the previous year, except Ryan Gravenberch became the designated defensive midfielder as Slot’s Liverpool looked to get on the ball as much as possible. Slot was never going to be a personality who generated headlines like Klopp did, keeping his cards close to his chest, but he always comes across as someone who is very personable and has brought the players closer together. Slot made Liverpool an efficient winning machine – rarely thrashing teams, often winning by the odd goal or two – and that allowed them to race to a second Premier League title. No one could compete with the Reds, which was partly down to rivals dropping their standards but most of it can be attributed to the fact Slot made his team superior.

Managers, teams and players who have disappointed over the campaign – including the reigning footballer of the year

Ruben Amorim’s average points tally of a point per league game since arriving at Manchester United in early November puts him just above Malky Mackay’s record at Cardiff and Paul Jewell’s Premier League record with Bradford, Wigan and Derby. While Sporting won the Primeira Liga title without Amorim, United have fallen down the table to 15th since the Portuguese took the reins from the interim coach, Ruud van Nistelrooy. Much of the ire towards United has been directed at the owners but on the pitch Amorim has failed to adapt his squad of expensive, experienced internationals into anything approaching a cohesive unit. The Europa League final defeat by Tottenham showed how much work is left to do.

Inaugural tournament signals a new era for the game and offers cross-confederation competition for victors

Continental club competitions present opportunities like no other. A precious yet highly elusive chance to test one’s mettle against unknown opposition amid unfamiliar surroundings. For players, coaches and their respective clubs alike, this is where many believe true growth occurs.

And it wasn’t just Lisbon that played host to these virtues this past weekend as a new dawn for women’s football arose in Asia. The final of the inaugural AFC Women’s Champions League took place in China with host club, Wuhan Jiangda, edging out Melbourne City after a nerve-racking penalty shootout following a tight, and often physical, 120 minutes of playing time with the score tied at 1-1.

With a home World Cup on the horizon, we look at how potential players for Mauricio Pochettino’s squad affected their standing this past season

There is, understandably, a lot of angst going around the US men’s national team fanbase. Recent performances have not been up to standard, and disappointing results are creating a distinctly doom-y feeling just over a year out from the start of a home World Cup.

What might be lost in all of this is what was, by and large, a very solid season for Americans abroad. Here’s how the major figures affected their international standing this past season (Major figures meaning: players who have been involved with the senior team within the last year or so).

Captain talks about living the dream but also the injury that made it difficult to walk up stairs and get out of the bath

Rachel Corsie has revealed she has battled through chronic pain to ensure she could end her career with the dream scenario of playing for her country. The 35-year-old Scotland captain will retire after the Women’s Nations League matches at home to Austria on Friday and the away game against the Netherlands in Tilburg on 3 June.

Corsie, who recovered from a knee injury to play her final club game for Aston Villa this month, said: “My body has really wanted this to be my last year but my heart and my head have been stubborn and said ‘I’m not quite ready’.”

Passion for building helps improving defender take his mind off elite football before the Conference League final

Levi Colwill likes to get lost in the house from Home Alone. The Chelsea centre‑back smiles when he thinks about building it in Lego form. His teammates are unimpressed, but Colwill is happy to talk about the hobby he has taken up to take his mind off football when he has some rare downtime.

“I saw a girl on TikTok building Lego so I thought I wanted to get into it,” the 22-year-old says. “I’m a big kid. I think I’ve built five or six different things. They take time, but I enjoy it.”

• Brighton midfielder returned to pitch in win over Spurs

• The 39-year-old is in talks over a possible new contract

James Milner has opened up over the freak knee surgery complication that left him unable to move his foot for months and fearing he would not walk normally, let alone return to football.

The 39-year-old Brighton midfielder made an emotional comeback as a late substitute at Tottenham on Sunday after nine months out – it took him to 638 Premier League ­appearances; Gareth Barry holds the competition record with 653.

In terms of women’s club football, in England, no trophy party comes close to the scenes in north London

The large trophy with its sweeping ribbon-like arms goes up, waves and waves of confetti shower over the 10,000-plus fans, red and white smoke erupts from behind the stage and the crowd sings. Arsenal, the new champions of Europe, were given a heroes’ welcome in north London two days after their stunning victory over Barcelona in the Champions League final.

The scenes in Armoury Square, outside the Emirates Stadium, were reminiscent of those in Trafalgar Square the day after the Lionesses lifted their maiden European title in 2022, or those in the same N5 location when the Arsenal men’s team lifted the FA Cup in 2014 and 2015 (the 2017 occasion was cancelled by the Metropolitan police due to security risks in London, and Covid restrictions prevented a public celebration in 2020).

Thousands turned out on the wet streets of south London to catch a glimpse of the club’s first major trophy

Crystal Palace supporters had waited a lifetime for this moment. When the two buses carrying Oliver Glasner and his FA Cup winners rounded the corner of Holmesdale Road, red and blue smoke from flares filled the air as thousands of south Londoners showed their appreciation, with several shedding tears again.

In the days since Eberechi Eze’s winner against Manchester City clinched Palace’s first major trophy, a sense of disbelief has been the overwhelming feeling for fans who are excitedly contemplating a foray into Europe next season.

A Conference League place is a monumental achievement, made all the better by how out of place it all feels

Rayo Vallecano’s fans rolled out the banner at 10.46pm on the last Saturday of the season and rolled it away again a minute later. There had been a sneak glimpse of the message they hoped to stretch across the one end of a ground that is actually an end and not just a wall at risk of falling down, but it wasn’t quite time for the big reveal. For now all they wanted was to pull 40 metres of fabric into place, huge white letters proudly painted on a red background, ready for when, if, it actually was. They certainly didn’t intend to tempt fate; it wasn’t done yet, history still not made and, God knows, if there is a place where anything can go wrong, where football and life isn’t always kind but is always lived, it is here.

There was though a brief look before the banner was hidden again behind the back row – something about years, Europe and us – and they were close now. There were 10 minutes plus added time left and the side from the Independent People’s Republic of Vallekas, the last of the neighbourhood teams, not just in the barrio but of the barrio, were on the verge of qualifying for the Conference League. All they had to do was beat Real Mallorca and it turned out they wouldn’t even have to do that: they had taken 28 shots without scoring but it still didn’t matter because up in Vitoria, the team that could take the place from them hadn’t scored either, Osasuna losing 1-0 to Alavés.

There are interesting pieces to build on, but it appears unlikely Igor Tudor will be taking team forward

Serie A’s title race ended on Friday night, but the drama certainly didn’t. Still to be decided were the final qualifiers for all three European competitions and which teams would join Monza in dropping out of the top division. The six games that could affect those outcomes kicked off simultaneously on Sunday. Within 70 seconds, Daniel Fila had given 19th-placed Venezia the lead over fourth-placed Juventus. A tone-setter for an evening of twists and turns.

Juventus thought they had equalised almost immediately at the Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo, Alberto Costa driving a brilliant half-volley in from the edge of the area. But he handled in the buildup. Roma took the lead away to Torino. One point behind the Bianconeri at the start of play, they were on course for the last Champions League spot.

Head coach stands out for her impressive lack of flourish and WCL triumph will make Gunners a destination club for the world’s best young players

The levels of content are, quite frankly, off the charts. Content-wise, Arsenal have come to Lisbon, eaten and left no crumbs. Katie McCabe sliding on her belly along the dressing room floor through a pool of champagne. Alex Scott and Jess Glynne in their retro tops. Managing to drop the F-bomb on live teatime television, not once but twice. McCabe recreating the moment she threw a ball at Chloe Kelly’s head during a Women’s Super League game, only this time with the Champions League trophy.

And then, in their more reflective moments, thoughts turn to the past. To where they came from. To the journey, those who came, and those who couldn’t make it all the way. Laia Codina wraps herself in the Catalan flag. Leah Williamson and her father share an embrace. Beth Mead thinks about her late mother. Kelly reminisces about her academy days, getting the train from Finsbury Park to Potters Bar with Lotte Wubben-Moy. Because nobody ever gets themselves to a Champions League final. You are delivered, like stones in a river, by the forces and influences that shaped you.

Sharing Champions League success with former academy teammates made it even sweeter for revitalised forward

Chloe Kelly can’t stop grinning. It almost looks painful to hold your mouth so wide, but this is a pain she will willingly bear and keep bearing. Four months ago the forward was on the ropes, her love of football gone and her chance of making England’s Euro 2025 squad slim. An impasse with Manchester City meant she had started one league game all season and, despite their staggering injury crisis, it seemed there was no way back. Now, she is a European champion at club and country level, after a deadline-day loan to Arsenal was forced, in part, by a bold decision to go public with the way she was feeling on social media.

“I was ready to take a break from football completely,” Kelly says. “I’m just grateful. As soon as I stepped foot in this club, I found happiness. Renée Slegers, as soon as she got on the phone to me, to give me the opportunity to represent this badge, I wanted to repay her. From being in such a dark place to now, it’s crazy.”

Head coach puts pragmatism over his principles in win at Nottingham Forest that will delight once-warring owners

So much for inverted full-backs and carefully crafted coordinated positional play. In an echo of Ange Postecoglou turning to direct football to lead Tottenham to glory in the Europa League, Enzo Maresca’s reward for putting pragmatism over his principles was a chance to bask in the schadenfreude of telling his critics to “eff off” after a performance so no-nonsense there were times when it felt as if we had been transported back to when nobody ever questioned Chelsea’s mentality or quality when the heat was on.

This is progress. There were plenty of raised eyebrows when Chelsea parted company with Mauricio Pochettino at the end of last season, just when it seemed the Argentinian had them on the right path, and brought in an inexperienced dogmatist from Leicester. Just when were these detached American owners going to get out of their own way? The accusations came thick and fast: the contracts being handed out were too long, vast quantities of money was being wasted on potential and now, with the appointment of a manager whose biggest achievement was winning the Championship with Leicester, it seemed Chelsea were in danger of joining Manchester United in the nether zone.

A big club in most of the ways that matter chose to dream of glory but now face a challenge to keep their young talent

Sunderland are Premier League again and they deserve it. They earned the right thanks to a season of hard toil and nerveless endeavour. They sealed the deal by staring down more experienced opponents in this playoff final, expressing an appetite for victory that would not be quenched. Two goals of top-flight quality got them over the line, and delirious communion with their supporters at the final whistle sealed a small moment in history.

They don’t talk much about the romance of the playoffs, they’re just too brutal for that. A year’s work can be overturned in an instant. A collective loss of form, an individual lack of concentration, and years of planning and ambition can be set on fire. The playoffs break hearts more than they make dreams come true and, often, celebrations at Wembley are followed by tears just a year later.

Few expected the team to challenge this season but the club held off Inter to spark Neapolitan fireworks that could put Mount Vesuvius to shame

Antonio Conte had asked a city not to get ahead of itself, not to celebrate this Serie A title before its team earned it. “I don’t want to see flags here and there with numbers on,” he said after the draw with Parma in the penultimate round. Everybody knew what he meant: Napoli were in touching distance of their fourth scudetto but, for a superstitious manager, now was not the moment to say it out loud.

Supporters held off for as long as they could. Not until the final moments of Napoli’s 2-0 win over Cagliari on Friday did the giant white sheet come cascading down the stands of the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona with an enormous black “4” in the middle. Green and red flares were set off either side to create the colours of the Italian flag. The same that appear on a scudetto badge.

• Napoli win league by point from Inter, who beat Como

• McTominay also named Serie A player of the season

A spectacular scissor kick from Scott McTominay set Napoli on their way to a 2-0 win over Cagliari that sealed the Serie A title for Antonio Conte’s side in their final league game of the season.

Napoli went into the match leading the Italian table by just one point from Inter, who kicked off at the same time on Friday night away to Como. When Stefan de Vrij put Inter ahead via a corner after 20 minutes, they leapfrogged Napoli in the live standings, but the goal from the former Manchester United midfielder McTominay in the 42nd minute, acrobatically converting Matteo Politano’s cross, eased nerves in Naples.

• Wuhan Jiangda win shootout 5-4 after Stott wastes chance

• Chinese side had equalised with 98th-minute penalty

Melbourne City suffered a heartbreaking and drama-filled defeat by Wuhan Jiangda on penalties to fall short in the Women’s Asian Champions League final, going down 5-4 having had a chance to win the shootout by that scoreline.

With scores locked at 1-1 after a chaotic 90 minutes and extra time, City’s captain, Rebekah Stott, had the chance at 4-4 in the penalty shootout to seal victory, in front of a hostile crowd in Wuhan. Instead, she shot tamely straight at Chen Chen. Zhao Yuxin put Wuhan in front and Chen saved Bryleeh Henry’s penalty to seal a remarkable shootout victory.

Winner of four Champions Leagues over two spells, club’s most successful manager will for ever be adored by fans

Sometimes things don’t go the way they were planned, they go better. The call that ended with Carlo Ancelotti back at Real Madrid started as something completely different. It was August 2021, he was manager at Everton and he had phoned to ask Madrid’s chief executive, José Ángel Sánchez, about borrowing players, but talk turned to their search for a coach. Zinedine Zidane had walked out again, dropping a letter bomb on the way, and Ancelotti wondered whether they had found anyone yet. Madrid were struggling and Sánchez said no, they were still looking. Which is when the Italian replied that they needed the best and luckily they were already talking to him. “Or have you forgotten about 2014?” he said.

It was classic Carlo. Gently done, an idea cleverly slipped in as if it were not an idea at all, just a throwaway line, another true word said in jest. And like so much of what he does, it worked wonderfully. In 2014, Madrid’s 12-year wait for the European Cup, an obsession that had come to feel eternal, finally ended. The coach who delivered the decima – their 10th and their everything – was him and frankly, yes, he had been a bit forgotten. Now, though, he is for ever.

In any sane version of Britain’s public discourse, the departing Match of the Day presenter’s views would have been drowned out by figures of genuine relevance

Welcome to the end, if you will, of a Linekera. As we head towards Sunday night and last things, last days, last matches, Last Matches of the Last Days, towards the inevitable husky, poignant, carefully scripted farewell, towards the sense, because this is the BBC sofa, of something that feels less like a broadcaster ending his term of employment, more like three men in shiny shirts burying their pet rabbit. As we head towards all of this, it is probably a good time to look back at Gary’s best bits.

This is easy enough. For the past 26 years, capped by this weekend’s accelerated farewell from the BBC , Gary Lineker has been an excellent sports broadcaster and an ideal avatar of the courtly, cosy, quietly A-list BBC identity. Not just very good saying things such as “And now to Goodison” in between some football highlights, but also perfect for the role of flagship anchor, a kind of televisual red pillar box, out there in iconic tight silky shirt, heartstrings-smile, the shared journey from lithe and boyish camera magnet through the extended silvery dad-fox years.

Emotion of Europa League final victory hits hard, particularly tangled in with homesickness watching from Australia at 5am

I didn’t really cry until Son Heung-min was handed the trophy – the camera hadn’t cut to him enough at full time. Of all the players who look sad when they’re sad, Sonny really looks sad. Building up to the Europa League final all I could imagine was a disconsolate South Korean walking around the pitch applauding mournfully. The Harry Kane walk. His smile when shiny-shoed Aleksander Ceferin hands him the trophy broke me. Apparently it weighs 15kg – the same as my three-year-old. That trophy certainly looked lighter than when young Ian demands to be carried home from the park.

As a very sleep-deprived middle-aged dad of young kids, the emotion of football back home hits a lot harder than it used to. I found myself weeping at the videos of Crystal Palace fans after the FA Cup final. Someone focused from person to person, pausing for just enough time on each of them to give you the impression that you could see the etched lines of disappointment they’d experienced over the years just evaporating into the air.

There was a sense of disbelief at Wembley as the team I support ended a wait of almost 120 years to win a major trophy

When Marc Guéhi and Joel Ward went up to collect the FA Cup, we were there. Although it still seems like a dream. The sense of disbelief Crystal Palace supporters felt when the full-time whistle at Wembley ended their wait to win a major trophy will probably take a few more days to fade away given it’s taken almost 120 years to become a reality. But with most of the 30,000 wearing red and blue having travelled from south London in hope rather than expectation, finally, it was our moment.

After an agonising 10 minutes of stoppage time that seemed to take an eternity, the emotions of defeat in Palace’s two previous FA Cup finals came pouring out. Everywhere you looked there were grown men – including me and the former Guardian stalwart Dominic Fifield – moved to tears. The comedian Mark Steel just kept shaking his head, unable to comprehend what had just transpired. It even spread to the royal box, where the chair, Steve Parish, who had been pictured with his head in his hands moments earlier, was greeted with a bear hug from Palace’s largest shareholder, John Textor.

The departure of the men’s team from the ground marks the end of an era for many. Will new hosts Everton Women continue its legacy?

Jamie Yates was heavily medicated, in a secure mental health unit, and in the middle of a breakdown when he had a profound dream. He was back in Liverpool, walking with his daughter along the tightly packed terraced streets which surround Goodison Park, home of the football club he had supported all his life.

When he left the hospital he took out a map, drew a half-mile radius around Everton’s ground and started looking for somewhere to rent.

Twenty years on from being at that win over Milan, I still cherish the company I kept as much as the comeback I witnessed

We can tell ourselves something different but, the truth is, getting old is rubbish. There are various reasons for this but the main one is loss. The loss of vigour, the loss of mobility … the loss of hair. Most of all, though, it’s the loss of people.

There are loved ones – friends as well as family – who pass, and then there are those who you share a special moment with and never see again. And so it is that this piece is for David, his dad and his mate. The trio I knew for only a day but which happens to be one of the greatest days of my life.

Football coverage no longer stops after the final whistle. And in this new era, the former Liverpool defender reigns supreme

Jamie Carragher’s legs were aching. He had been speaking to a Sky Sports cameraman for 25 minutes. Usually for a news interview it’s just 10, but today called for something more. Reports were coming out that Trent Alexander-Arnold, who inherited Carragher’s mantle as the local mainstay of Liverpool’s defence, was about to announce his long-expected departure from his boyhood club, and so, as sure as day follows night, a camera crew had been hastily dispatched to Carragher’s whereabouts to find a quiet spot, hit record and get his opinions out to viewers before they’d had a chance to fully form their own.

How much was there to say about a subject that had already been talked about all season long? Quite a lot, it turned out. Like a hunter-gatherer extracting a week’s worth of food from a seemingly arid wilderness, Carragher – occasionally prompted by a Sky Sports anchor in the studio – launched into nearly half an hour of pure, free-flowing, agenda-setting football opinionating. From this monologue, Sky would carve out a TV report, YouTube interview, news article and three short-form videos. When Carragher says something – about Alexander-Arnold’s future, Arsenal’s attack, Chelsea’s owners or Fifa’s executives – we tend to hear about it very shortly after.

Former Hull striker on his push to raise awareness, thriving as a pantomime villain and his most famous goal

The framed photograph hangs just inside the front door. It shows Dean Windass, somehow larger than life even with his back turned to the camera, standing with arms aloft on the balcony of Hull City Hall and inhaling the adulation of thousands. Two days earlier he had, at the age of 39, scored a winner for the ages at Wembley and sent his boyhood club to the Premier League. He could not have caught the ball any more sweetly after Fraizer Campbell had chipped it across; it was no hardship that, even then, he knew it would follow him for ever.

“It changed my life,” Windass says, sitting in his living room on a quiet May morning. “I scored 234 goals and everyone only talks about that one.” To this day he swears a scorcher at Wycombe in 1992-93, “volleyed in with my left foot from 950 million yards”, was superior to his museum piece from 2008. But he is synonymous with the playoffs now; they are his thing, a sporting event he still anticipates like few others, and when we meet he correctly predicts Sheffield United will meet Sunderland in Saturday’s Championship final.

Opinionated football journalist, who has died aged 93, loved the sport but detested much about the modern game

Brian Glanville, who has died aged 93, was what Groucho Marx might have been had the old master of the one-liner shown any interest in football. I doubt if the greatest soccer scribbler of them all – the London-born son of a Dublin dentist and an Old Carthusian expensively educated in literature and song – met Groucho (Brian knew a host of famous people), but their exchanges would surely have blistered the paint off the walls.

Nobody swore so elegantly as Glanville, who hovered in the press box like Banquo’s ghost, the gathering’s invisible conscience, ready to deliver a scathing observation, relayed, sotto voce, to a nearby colleague like a chorus baritone in one of his favourite operas.

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Welcome to the inaugural Football Daily Premier League Awards, a celebration of a dramatic, eventful 2024-25 season and definitely not an attempt to get half the Football Daily Christmas Awards done early so that we can get lost in eggnog a few days earlier in December. Enjoy!

The Fauja Singh Award For Finding A New Interest In Your Dotage

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

Whether fans were celebrating, saying goodbye to an old home or remembering those no longer with us, the game’s power was on show this weekend

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

What was striking on Saturday, after Crystal Palace had beaten Manchester City to win the FA Cup, was how many people were in tears. The camera roamed the stands, capturing the images of Palace fans in disbelief after winning their first ever major trophy. Some were hugging those next to them, some waved their arms incoherently and others just stared, overcome. But a significant proportion were sobbing. Soccer can often seem an angry game, with crowds fuelled by rage; this was something very different, very hard to explain.

Palace’s pre-match tifo had shown an image of a father hugging his two sons in the stand at Old Trafford after Darren Ambrose had scored a 35-yard drive there for Palace in a League Cup quarter-final in 2011-12. It turned out the two lads were among the Palace fans at Wembley and that their father had passed away in the intervening 13 years. They were, needless to say, also in tears.

Emily Husband, one of only two female coaches in the league, can create history against Melbourne Victory on Sunday

The Central Coast Mariners weren’t supposed to crash the A-League Women grand final, but they face Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park on Sunday.

Two years ago they didn’t even exist. The Mariners’ women’s programme was in its 13th year of inactivity after being mothballed for financial reasons (serious concerns over the ever-impecunious club’s viability still linger). On the field, they made a celebrated return for the 2023–24 season, riding the wave of momentum born from Australia hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup to stun Victory in an elimination final, before running into the eventual champions Sydney FC in the semi-finals.

Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Tim Stillman and Sophie Downey to reflect on Arsenal’s historic Champions League victory

On the podcast today: Arsenal pull off a sensational 1-0 win over Barcelona to lift the Women’s Champions League for the first time since 2007. Stina Blackstenius was the hero in Lisbon, Kim Little became a European champion, and Renée Slegers cemented her remarkable start in charge. The panel relive the match, the atmosphere and the iconic celebrations that took place across Lisbon and north London.

Plus, the panel speaks with Adrian Jacob, head of football at World Sevens Football, about the inaugural tournament in Portugal, its reception from players and clubs, and what’s next for the format. All that, your questions, and a thoughtful discussion on the future growth of the women’s game.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, George Elek and Sanny Rudravajhala to round up a the EFL playoffs

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: after so much euphoria, unexpected winners and tears of joy, we are left pretty numb by what happened in Liverpool. All our thoughts are with the injured, and their families.

Plus: more strange player-of-the-match awards and shot-shy winners; and did Brian Clough deliberately go down to 10 men?

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“In terms of aggregate league position, will Tottenham v Manchester United be the worst European final ever?” asks Phil Taylor (and dozens of others).

Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, who meet in Bilbao tonight, put all their eggs in the Europa League basket sometime before the clocks went back. They are 17th and 16th in the Premier League respectively, giving them an aggregate position of 33. It is, to take a couple of unashamedly gratuitous examples, equivalent to Oldham Athletic playing Southampton in the Uefa Cup final of 1992, or Sabadell meeting Racing Santander in the same competition in 1987.