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• Bailout needed because of delay to return of fans
• Matchday revenue crucial to survival of clubs

Sport has been warned the pause in the return of crowds, which was announced by the government on Tuesday, could last throughout winter – and even until the start of April.

The government is drawing up plans for an urgent rescue package for as many as eight sports, after being warned numerous clubs face financial ruin because of the lack of gate receipts.

• Manager, Issa Diop and Josh Cullen return home
• Carabao Cup tie against Hull goes ahead

West Ham’s Carabao Cup tie against Hull was allowed to go ahead on Tuesday night despite the Premier League club’s manager, David Moyes, and two of their players being sent home after returning positive tests for Covid‑19 70 minutes before kick-off at the London Stadium.

Medical officials from both clubs agreed to let the tie take place in line with health protocols and in consultation with the English Football League after Moyes, Issa Diop and Josh Cullen received their results.

Ole Gunnar Solskjær started the evening demanding a vastly improved performance but ended it extremely thankful for Dean Henderson’s match-winning save on his debut as Manchester United eventually overcame Luton Town.

The goalkeeper spent last season on loan at Sheffield United but nine years after joining from Carlisle as a teenager he was finally handed a first appearance for United as he bids to put pressure on David de Gea and England’s Jordan Pickford this season.

Without spectators for the new season, which may yet be postponed, the National League club will go out of business

For Dover Athletic, the outlook could not be starker. The National League club are, according to their chairman, Jim Parmenter, as close as a week away from going out of business unless they receive reassurances the fifth-tier season will soon begin with supporters in attendance.

It is a sickening thought for Parmenter, who has invested more than £4m in the club over 15 years, but confirmation the government has shelved the phased reintroduction of fans has left clubs throughout the pyramid fretting over their immediate futures.

• Morgan may make Tottenham debut in FA Cup quarter-final
• Montemurro says players want to test themselves against best

Joe Montemurro is confident his Arsenal players are capable of asking Alex Morgan some searching questions in the Women’s FA Cup quarter-final at home against Tottenham on Saturday.

The USA striker, possibly the most high-profile import in the Women’s Super League, is short of match fitness after giving birth to her first child, a daughter, four months ago and may not start but her presence has invested the tie with added gloss.

• Championship side rejected loan offer from Catalans
• Norwich could accept loan with obligation to buy

Barcelona are in talks with Norwich over the possible transfer of Max Aarons. The Championship club last weekend rejected an offer from Barcelona to take the England Under-21 full-back on loan and, although it is understood a further bid is yet to be forthcoming, negotiations are ongoing.

Related: Italian police investigate claims Luis Suárez's citizenship exam was rigged

• Chelsea pay for Covid tests for Carabao opponents Barnsley
• ‘It’s important lower leagues and grassroots are supported’

Frank Lampard says he believes the Premier League will come to the aid of stricken EFL clubs, with the English game under ever greater strain from the coronavirus.

Insisting the big clubs “have a heart”, the Chelsea manager called for a “conversation” on financial support for the football pyramid and the grassroots game as the prospect of fans returning to matches became more distant because of rising infections.

• Men’s national futsal teams scrapped and no women’s side
• Grassroots game facing £22m-a-season funding cut

The Football Association’s Covid-19 cost-cutting strategy dismantles key strands of its celebrated England DNA coach education programme and abandons its commitment to the small-sided format of futsal, hailed by Gareth Southgate as a “great game and development tool” to help create the next generation of players, according to leaked documents seen by the Guardian.

Grassroots football, long underfunded and hobbled by an alarming dearth of facilities, also faces a reduction in funding of £22m a season over four years.

Our cartoonist on what the Welsh forward can expect after returning to a revamped version of the club he left in 2013

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• Frank Lampard: ‘There are decisions for me to take’
  
• Hudson-Odoi will start against Barnsley in Caraboa Cup
  

Frank Lampard has opened the door to Antonio Rüdiger and Callum Hudson-Odoi leaving Chelsea after saying he will look to trim his squad before the transfer window shuts.

Chelsea have strong competition for places after spending more than £200m on signings and Lampard said some players may find it hard to break into the side. Rüdiger’s future is in doubt after the defender failed to make the bench for the defeat by Liverpool on Sunday, and Hudson-Odoi could seek assurances over his role after making one start since football’s return in June.

All the summer’s Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A deals and club-by-club guides

• Women’s summer transfer interactive: all the latest moves

• Restrictions on fans in grounds leads to change of plan
  
• Games in September shared between four broadcasters
  

Live TV coverage of every Premier League match is expected to continue into October after the government announced the suspension of plans to return fans to stadiums. Since the restart in June, longstanding broadcasting traditions have been turned upside down to allow fans to keep up with top-flight football. The Saturday 3pm blackout has gone, games kick off at tea-time midweek and the BBC has live Premier League football for the first time.

Related: Covid spike leads government to pause return of fans to sports stadiums

• Majority of Orient squad tested positive for coronavirus
• Competition rules suggest Spurs should be awarded win

Tottenham’s Carabao Cup tie at Leyton Orient has been called off but a decision delayed on whether to award the Premier League club a walkover after the majority of Orient’s first-team squad tested positive for Covid-19.

Orient announced on Monday that they had closed their stadium and training ground until further notice and it has been confirmed the tie will not go ahead as planned on Tuesday evening.

In this European special, Max Rushden discusses the latest from Europe’s major leagues, with Sid Lowe, Archie Rhind-Tutt and Nicky Bandini

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

How likely is it that Europe’s top leagues will be won by the same team as last season? Sid, Nicky and Archie join Max for a European special, including the latest on Luis Suárez’s move to Atlético Madrid, Antonio Conte’s attempt to build an Inter side to challenge Juventus, and Borussia Dortmund’s ridiculously young attack.

• University in Perugia denies fixing Barcelona striker’s test result
• Suárez wanted EU passport amid reports of move to Juventus

A university in the Italian city of Perugia has said it followed “correct procedures” after authorities announced an investigation into whether it helped the Barcelona striker Luis Suárez cheat in an Italian language exam.

The Uruguayan sat the exam last week at the University for Foreigners. It is a requirement for his Italian citizenship application, which would give him a European passport that could help him to transfer to a new club.

Last time it was a glitch in goalline technology that vexed Sheffield United at Villa Park, this time Chris Wilder’s men were frustrated by an early red card for John Egan and a moment of class from the home team’s new goalkeeper. Emiliano Martínez marked his first appearance for Aston Villa since a £20m move from Arsenal by saving John Lundstram’s first-half penalty. Ezri Konsa crowned an ideal start to the season for the home side by heading the winning goal in the second half.

“It feels great, it was like scoring a hat-trick for me,” said Martínez. “Saving a penalty and keeping a clean sheet for me is the best game.”

• ‘It is now not dissimilar to a fancy hashtag,’ says Les Ferdinand
• Micah Richards: ‘People say I’m only on air because of BLM’

Les Ferdinand has defended Queens Park Rangers’ decision not to take the knee before their Championship fixture against Coventry on Friday, saying the gesture has become “little more than good PR”.

Ferdinand, the only Black director of football in the senior English game, spoke out against a slew of media coverage that had criticised QPR for not taking the knee. He said media organisations should “be looking more inwardly” at the inequalities in their own industries, than criticising the club for an action approved within EFL guidelines.

Belloumi, a great denied a move to Europe by age and violence, stunned an overconfident West Germany at the World Cup

This year the Premier League posted a video compilation of the fastest goals from kick-off. They were all scored within seconds of the game starting, ignoring the mid-match instant post-kick-off goal, but they give a taste of the genre as a whole, populated as it almost entirely is by defensive blunders and hopeful hoofs, goals that almost all rely on a convenient ricochet or two at some point in the buildup.

In 1982, against West Germany, Algeria scored a goal similar in its speed following a restart, but here there are no hoofs or ricochets, just 23 seconds of teamwork and precision. They produced this in the most exacting circumstances: immediately after conceding an equaliser against massively favoured European giants, in their country’s first World Cup finals fixture. “We were,” the goalscorer, Lakhdar Belloumi, later said, “the Brazilians of Africa.” And for at least half a minute in Gijón, the world saw it.

It’s hard being a goalkeeper in England and after his latest calamity it looks all over for Arrizabalaga at Chelsea

So there you were, laid out on the grass, a long way from home. And as Liverpool celebrated their second goal, their whoops and cheers burned your ears, and as your teammates solemnly turned their backs, their silence did the same. And the grass felt cold beneath you, but you were grateful for it all the same. Because without it, you felt like you would never stop falling.

And you thought about the hills around Ondarroa, the little Basque fishing village where you grew up, and those hot summer days when you would climb the tall beech trees trying to catch goldfinches. Occasionally you would lose your grip, feel the awful scrape of your foot down the bark and just fall, and as you fell you would remember the words of your father: if the fall doesn’t hurt, then you didn’t climb high enough.

The Dutch club’s chief understands their place in the football hierarchy but wants to keep their unique place on the global stage

Edwin van der Sar can still picture the bemusement on the faces of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, his Manchester United teammates at the time and resolute one-club men. The Dutch goalkeeper, who arrived at Old Trafford in 2005 via Ajax, Juventus and Fulham, had wanted to know whether either fancied playing abroad. They could learn a new language, Van der Sar suggested, experience different cultures and climates, maybe even earn more money.

The short answer was no. Why would they do that? They were at a big club – their club in their city – with family and friends close by, winning big trophies and being paid big money. They had it all. “OK, the weather in Manchester,” Van der Sar says, with a smile. “But Paul said: ‘I don’t like the sun.’ I think David [Beckham] is one of the few [English players] that left United but he came from London.”

Despite some key absences Pep Guardiola’s side made an electric start at Molineux but could not sustain it

First half scintillating; second half a touch concerning. This was Manchester City in a season-opening trip to Wolves that could be cast as the start of what might be the greatest test yet for Pep Guardiola: the uncharted territory of a fifth season in charge of a team who had question marks against them before kick-off wherever you looked.

Sergio Agüero was out for two more months because of a knee injury. Aymeric Laporte was missing owing to recovery from Covid. Ilkay Gündogan had been placed in quarantine after testing positive for the virus. A 35-year-old Fernandinho was selected in defensive midfield, Nathan Aké made his debut alongside the uneven John Stones in central defence and though David Silva ended a glittering decade by departing in the summer, the bench lacked its usual blanket strength in depth.

The serial champions’ new manager brought instant improvement in their win over Sampdoria with a flush of youth

It did not take Andrea Pirlo long to get back in character as Il Maestro. On Monday he had been a student, successfully defending his thesis to complete his Uefa Pro Licence course at the Manager’s School in Coverciano. On Sunday, he was a teacher, helping the new kids at Juventus to integrate with their returning classmates whilst ensuring the highest standards were maintained.

Or perhaps that is selling him short. Pirlo did not just keep Juventus ticking along in his first game in charge, but guided them to a commanding victory of the sort that had been rare in recent times.

Spaniard’s display against Liverpool sums up his struggles but there is a pattern of keepers saving fewer goals under Lampard

Kepa Arrizabalaga’s time as the Chelsea goalkeeper, you suspect, will be remembered for two incidents. First there’s him on the Wembley turf, defying Maurizio Sarri and refusing to be substituted before the penalty shootout in the Carabao Cup final last year. And then there’s him on Sunday, playing the ball straight to Sadio Mané to concede a second against Liverpool.

Two moments 19 months apart in which the world’s most expensive goalkeeper went from self-belief that only he could get the job done to swigging awkwardly at his water bottle, apparently desperate to be anywhere but in his six-yard box having confirmed Chelsea’s defeat.

An Estonian Premier League match was halted after 13 seconds while the away side substituted an uninjured player. Lauri Suup, 16, was brought off the field by Nomme Kalju FC shortly after the referee started the match. The rules in Estonia state each side must start with at least two homegrown players, which may explain the early removal of Suup. Many of Kalju's players are currently unavailable because they are self-isolating having tested positive for Covid-19.

A Brazilian women's national team practice match was halted after a parrot landed on the head of one of the players. Defender Bruna Benties had a macaw standing on her head before an assistant coach was brought in to try and get the bird off her head with a football

• Watch more from the amazing world of sport series

An alpaca brought a non-league football match between Carlton Athletic and Ilkley Town to a standstill after it ran across the pitch causing a 20-minute delay

• Watch more from the amazing world of sport series

Liverpool's 100% start to the Premier League campaign continued with a statement of intent after a 2-0 victory over Chelsea. The Blues found themselves down to 10 men after Andreas Christensen's last-man challenge flattened Sadio Mané. Into the second half Liverpool began to take advantage before a lovely one-touch spell saw the Mané head home. Later in the half, a familiar story for goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga, after a poor pass out from the back was captialised by Liverpool's Senegalese talisman who tapped home from close range

• Liverpool sweep aside 10-man Chelsea thanks to Sadio Mané double

What a difference a week makes after José Mourinho blasted his side's poor performance after an opening day defeat to Everton. 

A rampant Tottenham Hotspur put five past Southampton, Heung-Min Son scoring four of the goals. The game ended 5-2 to Spurs who've had a busy week with the new additions of Gareth Bale and Sergio Reguilón. 

A superb performance by Harry Kane saw him assist four of the five goals before poking one home just before time

• Harry Kane tees up Son's four-goal show as Spurs hammer Southampton

Seven years after leaving for a world-record fee to Real Madrid, Gareth Bale is back at Tottenham Hotspur in a bid to reignite his career.

Tottenham confirmed the season-long loan signing of Bale on Saturday in one of the most high-profile moves of the transfer window, minutes after announcing left-back Sergio Reguilon is also joining from the Spanish champions.

'It's such a special club to me,' the 31-year-old Bale said of Spurs, 'it's where I made my name.'

• Gareth Bale returns to Tottenham and Liverpool land Diogo Jota

After 10 years away, a cameo in a goalless draw with Real Madrid saw one of Spain’s greats return in a Real Sociedad shirt

Dry your eyes, mate. “We cried over his departure,” Miguel-Ángel Moyá said, but the tears didn’t last long. On the final day of last season, Martin Odegaard told his Real Sociedad teammates he was staying for another season, only for Real Madrid to decide differently, changing everything. Twenty days later, recently knocked out of the Champions League, the La Liga winners announced they were bringing him home, four and a half years after he had joined, three since he had set off on loan at Heerenveen, Vitesse and Real Sociedad, and one ahead of schedule.

In San Sebastián, where he had been the country’s outstanding midfielder until lockdown, initially signed for two seasons, it hurt. “When they announced he was leaving, it left us reeling,” admitted the winger Portu.

Der Zakarian has always produced solid if unspectacular teams, but he has something special brewing this season

By Adam White and Eric Devin for Get French Football News

After 37 years of marriage, Véronique Der Zakarian and her husband Michel do not always agree. “If you want it to last, concessions must be made on both sides,” said Montpellier coach Michel in a joint interview with his wife in L’Équipe last month. Having followed her husband’s managerial career from Nantes to Clermont, back to Nantes, to Reims and now to Montpellier, Véronique scoffed – much as fans of those clubs might. Der Zakarian’s effective but defensive sides have often made obvious sacrifices in the way they play. Now though, with Montpellier, Der Zakarian is finally following his own advice to glorious effect.

Der Zakarian was born in Armenia but spent his entire playing career in France with Montpellier and Nantes, where he won the league in 1983. After working as an assistant manager at Nantes, he was given the top job in 2007 and guided the club back to Ligue 1. He was soon replaced once the club reached the top flight, however, and had to continue his managerial career at Clermont. When Nantes fell back into Ligue 2, they asked Der Zakarian to take charge again.

Albania centre-back earned a move to the capital after a spell at Verona, who Roma face as Serie A resumes this weekend

Many fear defending is a dying art, a vocation few want to accept any more. Even in Italy, the home of catenaccio, only a small number of players have emerged in recent years willing to spend 90 minutes suffocating opposition attacks.

Marash Kumbulla, however, spent his first season in Serie A with Verona showing the art form isn’t dead. The 20-year-old became one of the most sought-after defenders in Europe this summer, with Internazionale, Lazio and Tottenham keen on acquiring him before Roma who won the race to sign a player who could be at the heart of their defence for more than a decade.

• More than 20,000 supporters sign a censorship motion
• No confidence vote will be held by early November

The Barcelona president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, may be obliged to resign after club members succeeded in a bid to force a referendum. More than 20,000 supporters signed up to support a censorship motion against the beleaguered president who has overseen an ongoing crisis during which the club captain, Lionel Messi, announced he wanted to leave.

A vote on Bartomeu’s future will now be held by the start of November. If he loses, he and his board would be forced to step down with immediate effect and call early elections.

• Just seven players fielded due to coronavirus concern
• SG Ripdorf/Molzen II players watch from safe distance

German amateur side SG Ripdorf/Molzen II sacrificed a tight defence for social distancing as they fielded only seven players as a coronavirus precaution in a 37-0 loss to local rivals SV Holdenstedt II.

The preparations for Sunday’s match in Lower Saxony’s 3 Kreisklasse – the 11th tier of German football – were complicated when it emerged that Holdenstedt players had been in contact with an opponent infected with Covid-19 in a previous match.

Will the rookie manager steer Juventus to a 10th straight title or could Inter, or Lazio or Atalanta, finally topple them?

Millions of Italian children went back to school on Monday. So did the manager of Juventus. Andrea Pirlo was completing the final stage of his Uefa Pro licence course, defending a thesis he had submitted two weeks earlier under the title “My Football”.

His writings will soon be made available, joining those of every other coach who has passed through Italy’s famous Scuola Allenatori (Managers’ School), in the library of the technical centre in Coverciano. Most of us, though, will get our first real insight into Pirlo’s vision for how the game should be played when Juventus host Sampdoria in their Serie A opener on Sunday.

Bayern and Dortmund loom large over the rest as Leipzig and Leverkusen adjust after high-profile departures

There are many knock-on effects of such a short pause between seasons and even though the Bundesliga enjoyed a more civilised rest period than many – two-and-a-half months without league action almost seems like a luxury in these frantic times – it hardly feels as if German football has been away. When Bayern Munich raise the curtain, as is tradition for the champions, on 2020-21 on Friday night against Schalke, it will have been 26 days after they celebrated being the champions of Europe for the sixth time late into the Lisbon night.

Bayern’s majesty is fresh in the memory and their shadow looms over the Bundesliga longer and larger than ever before. If the results were dizzying, with the treble secured with 29 wins and a draw in the last 30 matches of the season, then their style was even more so. Hansi Flick’s enormous impact produced Bayern’s best football post-Guardiola with a group of players largely of an age to grow together and create a dynasty.

After 15 years away, ‘the game Michael Robinson dreamed of’ wasn’t. And nor did it turn out the way Cádiz hoped

“To return is to win” runs the slogan on the tape across the top of the stairs at the Ramón de Carranza stadium in Cádiz, another line that can’t be crossed. At the bottom, the gates are locked, but outside a stall still sells scarves and hats in bright yellow, and two Osasuna supporters sit at a table in front of Bar Gol where footballs hang from the ceiling and photos cover the walls – icons of the club they have come to visit. Juan José Jiménez with his beard and magnificent mane, named Sandokan after the pirate. David Vidal, the loveable character they would invent if he didn’t exist. Mágico González, who Vidal proclaimed “technically better than Maradona”: as much myth as man now, the most cult of heroes. And the fans: a riot of colour and noise.

Well, normally. A few metres away, some have gathered on a warm Saturday evening, the beginning of a night they waited so long for, or never saw. A dad and his little boy, a mum and her littler girl, a podgy kid wearing a faded Cádiz T-shirt with Ché Guevara on the front and waving a flag bigger than he is. Teenagers with tops listing fans’ names like tour dates. “Cádiz are a first division team,” they say, which they are now 15 years later. A man holds a cuddly toy in a curly blue wig and a face mask. He is in his promotion T-shirt from the last time Cádiz came back and the flag he unfolds is 40 years old.

After players rejected a new CBA offer talks are in deadlock and the impact on the game in Australia could be severe

To say A-League players did it tough to get the domestic season completed is akin to saying Harry Kewell had the merest hint of talent. The Wellington Phoenix squad have only this week emerged to see if their families still recognise them, after entering a hub in Australia over 80 days ago. The players from the three Victorian clubs meantime, probably still wake up in cold sweats over their abortive attempts to cross the New South Wales border.

The players also took a big hit financially. A short-term collective bargaining agreement was struck, after some intense negotiating, that saw some take salary cuts of up to 80%. Yet just a fortnight after Rhyan Grant thrust his chest out, sprinter-style, to get Sydney FC over the line for a fifth title, the A-League’s 300-odd professionals are again back at the starting blocks.

The man in the YouTube reels may be seven years older but this is the kind of modern football moment too good not to enjoy

As a long-term observer it is always tempting to look out for moments that capture the essence of modern football, those single images that really get its basic weirdness. A personal favourite is the terrifying cube of death built by Qatar 2022 on the banks of the Moskva river at the last World Cup, a beautiful glass and steel exhibition centre intended to generate a thrill of carefree excitement about the next global festival of football, but one that resembled simultaneously a giant haunted cancerous polyp overseen by alien lizard secret service personnel.

There are plenty more everyday candidates. Gianni Infantino stepping on to a Gazprom private jet. Neymar running away from his teammates celebrating a goal by Neymar in an empty stadium where, just for a moment, the only audible sound is Neymar celebrating a goal by Neymar.

After 146 years a winding-up order means oblivion beckons for club that defied odds but was often a misstep from the brink

The announcement was shocking but registered as no surprise. Like the £500,000-plus the club owed its creditors, Macclesfield Town had been on borrowed time. After a long series of court dates and adjournments, Judge Sebastian Prentis, via a virtual hearing, wound up the club on Wednesday in a specialist insolvency and companies court.

It will be the fans who suffer. A Macclesfield Town supporter does not dream of the Champions League or signing Gareth Bale on loan but it is the shared camaraderie of icy afternoons on the Star Lane End or a 500-mile round trip by coach to Torquay that will be lost. And in their own way, Silkmen fans followed a club with much to be proud of, as a powerhouse of the non-league scene in the late-1980s, a Football League club against the odds after that and somewhere that gave three Black managers in Sol Campbell, Paul Ince and Keith Alexander opportunities.

The arrival of a host of stars is great for women’s football but contracts which last only a few months can also be disruptive

Two games into the Women’s Super League season and we’re starting to see some patterns emerging, with high-quality teams across the division but a few that look a cut above. The standard of overseas players coming into the league this summer demonstrates the way it’s seen now around the world, and will increase the quality still further, though I do have reservations about some of the signings.

I know of at least five clubs who have brought in players on short-term deals. For example Alex Morgan, the USA player and World Cup winner who has joined Tottenham, is a fantastic addition to English football but has joined initially for only four months. The season lasts the best part of a year, and includes the FA Cup and Continental Cup, and personally I’m not a big fan of this kind of arrangement.

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It is just a week since Luis Suárez rocked up in Perugia to take the Italian test that could secure his European passport and, with it, a move to Juventus. Somehow Barcelona’s cunning linguist convinced his examiners that he deserved to pass, but now there are more questions being asked in the picturesque Umbrian hill town after it emerged that in fact the last genuine Italian to come out of Suárez’s mouth was Giorgio Chiellini in 2014.

Today’s fluff has knocked over its bulging in-tray

Lionel Messi may be gritting his teeth having agreed to endure another season of high politics, sound and fury at Barcelona, but his fellow forward Luis Suárez may finally be off to pastures new. At least according to the Spanish outlet RMC, which reports the Uruguayan is off to Atlético Madrid, having agreed to terminate his contract at the Camp Nou. It would be something of a coup for Atlético, with Juventus having widely been seen as the frontrunners for his signature. Suárez had even gone to Perugia last week (hadn’t everyone?) and passed an Italian exam that enabled him to acquire dual citizenship, but delays in getting his passport and Juve’s inability to bring in any more non-EU players appear to have scuppered the deal.

A move for Suárez would enable Atlético to send Álvaro Morata back Juve on loan, and Diego Simeone to pair the former Liverpool striker with Diego Costa up front. On his way out of the Wanda Metropolitano may be the right-back Santiago Arias, who is the subject of serious interest from free-spending, freewheeling Everton. The Liverpool Echo reports the club are in talks to sign the Colombian international, who found himself squeezed out of the first-team reckoning last term and made only 14 appearances.

Who kept losing? Who keeps winning? Who keeps moving?

Gareth Bale is set to sign for Tottenham at the age of 31. He did not have such a great start to his Spurs career as a 17-year-old. In his first spell at the club, how many games did Bale play for Spurs before he won one?

10

14

19

24

Lewis Hamilton won the Tuscan Grand Prix on Sunday and is now just one victory shy of Michael Schumacher’s all-time record in Formula One. How many races did Schumacher win in the sport?

59

74

91

108

Thiago Alcântara is joining Liverpool from Bayern Munich. He is moving to England from Germany, having been born in Italy and raised in Spain. For which country did his father win the World Cup?

France

Germany

Brazil

Argentina

Umut Uysal won a 100m race at the Balkan U20s Championship this week, beating six other sprinters and overcoming which other obstacle?

He had to run in a mask, gloves and a visor as he had a high temperature

He had to run over a stray cat at the finish line

He had to walk 10 miles to the venue as there was no public transport in the area

He is only 13 years old – seven years younger than the other athletes in the race

Bayern Munich begin their defence of the Bundesliga this weekend against Schalke. Who were the last club other than Bayern to win the league?

Schalke

Bayer Leverkusen

VfL Wolfsburg

Borussia Dortmund

Serie A also returns this weekend, with Andrea Pirlo hoping to lead Juventus to a 10th straight league title. Who were the last club other than Juve to win the league?

Roma

Inter

Milan

Lazio

The US Open is being played at Winged Foot Golf Club in New York this weekend. The course is seriously tough. When Hale Irwin won the US Open at the course in 1974, what did he shoot?

One over par

Three over par

Seven over par

Eleven over par

The German amateur football team SG Ripdorf were beaten 37-0 by their local rivals Holdenstedt this week. How did they explain the scoreline after the match?

They said they only played the game to bed in their new goalkeeper

They said they were socially distancing on the pitch

They said the defeat was a plea to their owners to spend some money on new players

They said they could not adjust to the tightness and colour of their new kit

Dominic Thiem won the US Open on Sunday. Which of these statements about his victory is true?

It was his first grand slam title

He became the first player to win a US Open title after being two sets down in the final

He became the first man born in the 1990s to win a grand slam singles title

All of the above

Mo Salah hit a hat-trick in Liverpool’s opening game of the season. Who was the last Liverpool player to do that?

Fernando Torres in 2008

Michael Owen in 1998

John Aldridge in 1988

Kenny Dalglish in 1978

1 and above.

Not ideal

2 and above.

Not ideal

3 and above.

Not bad

4 and above.

Not bad

5 and above.

Nice work

6 and above.

Great work

7 and above.

Superb

8 and above.

Superb

9 and above.

Superb

0 and above.

Not ideal

10 and above.

Perfection

Plus: multiple same-name scoring teammates, refs riding roughshod over rules, and an umbrella-holding goalscorer

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“Eddie Niedzwiecki took temporary charge of Reading following the departure of Mark Bowen. Eddie was previously Reading’s caretaker manager way back in 1991. This means he went 29 years between matches as our manager. Is this a record?” asks Tom Brailli.

If we bend the rules a bit, it’s not. Here’s Chris Page: “I can beat that … sort of. But we’d have to count a spell as assistant manager. Former manager of Real Madrid and Brazil’s national team, Vanderlei Luxemburgo, has taken charge of just about every major team in Brazil over the last 40 years. One of his earliest roles was assistant manager of Vasco da Gama until he departed in 1982 before returning as full-time manager last year. That’s a whole 37 years between spells.

The WSL is now the strongest league in the world, Chelsea are targeting Champions League and putting scorelines in context

The WSL has welcomed a dizzying array of talent in recent weeks, with Spurs’ addition of Alex Morgan the icing on the cake. I want to emphasise just how much it means to women’s football in England for players like Morgan, Tobin Heath, Christen Press, Rose Lavelle and Sam Mewis to have come over from the US. These women are superstars there, inside and outside the sport. That is partly because their brilliant national team gets such huge coverage, but mainly because they are such outstanding talents. The list of names is one I could never have imagined playing here, and when you add Pernille Harder then things look even better. She chose Chelsea when she could have gone anywhere, and it shows how top footballers view the WSL. It is now the best league in the world

The latest in a Guardian Print Shop series featuring classic sports images. This week’s picture captures the joy of Leeds United beating Liverpool in a seven-goal Charity Shield thriller, on the eve of the first ever Premier League season

When Leeds United and Liverpool met in the Charity Shield in the curtain raiser for the inaugural Premier League season in 1992, Leeds were the reigning First Division champions and Liverpool, winners two years prior, were the FA Cup holders. Leeds arrived at Wembley boasting a formidable squad including the likes of Gary McAllister, John Lukic, Gordon Strachan, Gary Speed, Lee Chapman and Eric Cantona. The enigmatic Frenchman (pictured here) would guide Leeds to a 4-3 victory with a hat-trick, and weeks later would become the first player to score three in a single Premier League match. However, Leeds would ultimately lose Cantona to Manchester United in November that season – an irreconcilable loss – and limp to a 17th-place finish, only narrowly avoiding the drop; meanwhile, Liverpool would finish sixth and endure a further 27 years of domestic heartbreak before landing the big one last term. Now, these two rejuvenated titans will face one another in the league for the first time in 16 years, as the 2020/21 Premier League season gets underway.

Every year, Uefa ask a group of players and managers to pick a standout performer from the final. Who has won the award?

Who was the man of the match in the 2019 final?

Mo Salah

Jordan Henderson

Virgil van Dijk

Sadio Mané

Who was the man of the match in the 2018 final?

Gareth Bale

Luka Modric

Isco

Loris Karius

Who was the man of the match in the 2017 final?

Casemiro

Cristiano Ronaldo

Mario Mandzukic

Karim Benzema

Who was the man of the match in the 2016 final?

Sergio Ramos

Toni Kroos

Antoine Griezmann

Jan Oblak

Who was the man of the match in the 2015 final?

Andrés Iniesta

Neymar

Javier Mascherano

Luis Suárez

Who was the man of the match in the 2014 final?

Cristiano Ronaldo

Ángel Di María

Gareth Bale

Marcelo

Who was the man of the match in the 2013 final?

Thomas Müller

Mario Mandzukic

Arjen Robben

Ilkay Gündogan

Who was the man of the match in the 2012 final?

Didier Drogba

Frank Lampard

John Terry

Thomas Müller

Who was the man of the match in the 2011 final?

Lionel Messi

Xavi

David Villa

Pedro

Who was the man of the match in the 2010 final?

Diego Milito

Wesley Sneijder

Javier Zanetti

Samuel Eto’o

Who was the man of the match in the 2009 final?

Xavi

Thierry Henry

Samuel Eto'o

Sergio Busquets

Who was the man of the match in the 2008 final?

Cristiano Ronaldo

Edwin van der Sar

Didier Drogba

Rio Ferdinand

Who was the man of the match in the 2007 final?

Filippo Inzaghi

Paolo Maldini

Pepe Reina

Kaká

Who was the man of the match in the 2006 final?

Sol Campbell

Henrik Larsson

Samuel Eto’o

Ronaldinho

Who was the man of the match in the 2005 final?

Steven Gerrard

Hernán Crespo

Dietmar Hamann

Xabi Alonso

Who was the man of the match in the 2004 final?

Paulo Ferreira

Deco

Ricardo Carvalho

Patrice Evra

Who was the man of the match in the 2003 final?

Andriy Shevchenko

Edgar Davids

Paolo Maldini

Alessandro Del Piero

Who was the man of the match in the 2002 final?

Raúl

Luís Figo

Michael Ballack

Zinédine Zidane

5 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

6 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

7 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

8 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

4 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

3 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

2 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

1 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

9 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

10 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

11 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

12 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

13 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

14 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

15 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

16 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

17 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

0 and above.

Enjoy the final on Sunday

18 and above.

Well played. Enjoy the final on Sunday

Bulgaria exploded in pure identity, while the rest of the world enjoyed a moment of luscious joy in the misfortune of another

Not much makes the world simultaneously bigger and smaller, but the World Cup boasts that precise, precious capacity. While celebrating our differences – all those songs, all those chyrons, all those haircuts – it also highlights our similarities – all those souls, all those feelings, all that love – which together compel our species into a single endeavour of collective bliss.

But rarely has rapture been as rampant as when Yordan Letchkov’s header gave Bulgaria victory over Germany at USA 94. His team weren’t even meant to be there; needing to beat France in their final qualifier, the score was 1-1 with 90 minutes played. But then out of nowhere a fantastic pass from Lyuboslav Penev found Emil Kostadinov racing towards the box … and he absolutely mulleted a sensational finish in off the bar. “God is Bulgarian!” hollered Nikolay Kolev in commentary. “God is Bulgarian!”

Spurs fans need the homecoming nostalgia of someone they saw turn from a boy into a joy of a footballer

Gareth Bale’s final – well hopefully not final – goal for Tottenham was in the last minute of the last game of the season. Sunderland at White Hart Lane, 19 May 2013. He picked the ball up on the right, cut inside like Arjen Robben and bent the ball into the top left corner from 25 yards past Simon Mignolet. It feels like Bale scored that goal a hundred times that season.

As soon as the ball hit the net, Emmanuel Adebayor ran to ask the crowd whether it was enough to get Spurs into the Champions League. It wasn’t. Beaten into fifth place by virtue of Arsenal’s win at Newcastle. André Villas-Boas insisted he could keep Bale at the club. He couldn’t.

The Brazilian has made rapid strides in recent seasons and should add a presence his new club’s backline has sorely missed

Shortly after Gabriel Magalhães played his first and, as it turned out, only game for Dinamo Zagreb’s senior team he was called into the manager’s office. Nikola Jurcevic had seen enough during a Croatian top-flight game against Rijeka in April 2018 to know that, perhaps ambitiously given the club’s managerial churn, he needed to nail down a long-term plan for the centre-back.

Related: Emiliano Martínez joins Aston Villa from Arsenal in £20m deal

The Welshman is set to join Tottenham on loan after seven years at Real Madrid, but instead of sadness there is only relief

The saddest thing about Gareth Bale’s departure from Real Madrid is that no one is really sad at all. Instead, there is anger and disappointment but mostly a kind of weary relief, a release. He’s gone? Good, we can all get on with our lives. And no one more so than him: maybe the Welshman can play a bit of football again, and maybe he’ll be brilliant too, just not at the Bernabéu where it has been effectively over for some time. Now at least, now at last, it is actually over – four European Cups, two league titles and more than a hundred goals later.

Which, when you put it like that ...

Former Everton keeper takes aim at Boris Johnson and JK Rowling and reveals how helping marginalised groups leaves little time to himself

“I want Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Donald Trump and the geezer from North Korea to be put on a boat that gets sent around the world for the next 25 years,” Neville Southall says as he sinks back into his chair. “That would do me,” he adds, with an endearingly sombre gaze after I’ve asked him how he would like to change the world for the better after a terrible year. It’s dark outside and Southall, the former Everton and Wales goalkeeper who is now one of the most outspoken supporters of people marginalised by mainstream society, briefly looks weary.

Southall has not stopped talking passionately for 70 minutes but he has had a long day. He left home at 5.45am so he could get to work early and, after a taxing day at his special‑needs school in Swansea, he still has to join an online LGBQT+ panel once we complete our interview. But Southall soon rolls on.

Eidur Gudjohnsen’s son, the new Paul Pogba and Barça’s Ansu Fati are among our 60 most talented players in the world born in 2002. Check the progress of our 2018 picks | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014

^{Photographs by DZfoot, BackpagePix, Club Atlético Belgrano, EFE, EPA, Getty Images, Uwe Gruen/Hoffenheim, AMA/Getty Images, Rex/Shutterstock, Zuma Press/PA, FIFA, Tigres, Damir Krajac/CROPIX, Alamy, Daniel Reyes/Ecuafutbol, Reuters, Atromitos, Imago/PA, fotoBERNAMA, New Straits Times, José Alonso Paredes Sánchez, Agencja Gazeta, David Price/Arsenal FC/Getty, AP, Asian Football Confederation, Danubio FC and Championat Asia}

The Guardian selects the best young players at each club born between 1 September 2002 and 31 August 2003, an age band known as first-year scholars. Check the progress of class of 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014

_{Photographs by David Price/Arsenal/Getty Images, Neville Williams/Aston Villa/Getty Images, AFC Bournemouth, Paul Hazlewood/BHAFC, Paul Dennis/TGS/Shutterstock, Clive Howes/Chelsea/Getty Images, Danny Loo/PPAUK, Emma Simpson/Everton/Getty Images, Nick Taylor/Liverpool/Getty Images, Manchester City/Getty Images, Ash Donelon/Manchester United/Getty Images, Jason Dawson/Jasonpix, James Wilson/Sportimage, Simon Bellis/Sportimage, Robin Jones/Digital South/Southampton FC, Tottenham Hotspur/Getty Images, Alan Cozzi/Watford, Arfa Griffiths/West Ham United and Sam Bagnall/AMA}

From Rashford to Tielemans, we check in on how our initial Next Generation players have got on before the 2019 ones are announced this week

• Harley Willard: what happened next to one 2014 selection?

In 2014 we decided that it would be interesting to pick the best young players from each Premier League club – as well as 40 from around the world – and follow them for five years to see how they progressed.

The idea was to try to get a sense of how difficult it is to become a professional footballer despite being one of the best in that country at the age of 16 or 17.