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• Crewe bring in lawyers used by Catholic church in abuse case
• Club say victims’ long silence means case should be thrown out

Crewe Alexandra are taking on Barry Bennell’s victims in the high court by claiming it was the parents, not the club, who let boys stay overnight with the man who has been described as “an industrial-scale child molester” and is serving a 31-year prison sentence.

Crewe, the Guardian can reveal, have also begun preparing for a number of civil claims by bringing in specialist lawyers – appointed on behalf of the club by the Football League’s insurers – who have defended a child sex abuse claim relating to the Roman Catholic church.

• Spurs striker expects harmony despite fraught domestic run-in
• Declan Rice and Callum Hudson-Odoi train for first time

Harry Kane has insisted the intensity of club rivalries will not disrupt the harmony established by Gareth Southgate within the senior England squad and ruled out a return to the days when cliques undermined the team’s progress.

Members of the national squad will find themselves in direct confrontation over the next few weeks as Manchester City and Liverpool go head to head in the Premier League title race and City meet Tottenham in the Champions League quarter-finals. Club rivalries have spilled over into England get-togethers in the past, most notably between the contingents from Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United, with players reluctant to mix together.

Paris Saint-Germain have condemned an apparent homophobic rant by the former France and Manchester United captain Patrice Evra.

In the video posted on social networks Evra and another man are seen in the back seat of a taxi when they respond to an online user’s views on PSG. United knocked the French champions out of Europe this month after winning 3-1 in Paris, a game which Evra attended.

Ryan Giggs has responded to Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s criticism of the Class of 92 by insisting players with “over 2,000 games between us” are entitled to have an opinion about Manchester United.

Ibrahimovic claimed in a newspaper interview that the loyalty of Giggs and other pundits like Gary Neville and Paul Scholes to Sir Alex Ferguson has fuelled criticism of Paul Pogba.

“It’s not that I’m hiding away,” insisted Adrien Rabiot on French television last week. “I am available to the club. If I could play, I would. I’ve always been a club man …”

Some in the French capital may beg to differ. Last week, three months after his most recent appearance for Paris Saint-Germain, the elegant midfielder with the trademark frizzy hair was handed a two-week suspension for what PSG described as “major faults” in his conduct – namely being pictured at a nightclub hours after the defeat by Manchester United and ‘liking’ a tweet from Patrice Evra which celebrated the club’s surprise exit. In this era of social media obsession, what greater crime could there be?

A globetrotting playing career took Brent Sancho from Portland to Priestfield, Ross County to Rochester Rhinos but, speaking to the former Trinidad and Tobago defender, there really is only one place to start: that unforgettable night in Nuremberg at the 2006 World Cup.

For 82 minutes Sancho and Dennis Lawrence, now the manager of the Caribbean nation, had held firm against Sven-Göran Eriksson’s England, until Peter Crouch pulled on Sancho’s dreadlocks for leverage and headed beyond Shaka Hislop. Steven Gerrard sealed victory in stoppage time, by which point Crouch had established himself as public enemy No 1.

• Talks with potential buyer of Championship club fall through
• Bolton face HMRC winding-up petition on Wednesday

Troubled Bolton Wanderers have suffered more frustration after talks over the sale of the club ended unsuccessfully.

The owner, Ken Anderson, the 94.5 per cent shareholder, is looking to offload the club to someone who can offer more financial stability and a deal with a four-person consortium fell through last week.

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The Fiver didn’t get where it is today sifting through the flotsam and jetsom of the early stages of an international week in which nothing has actually happened yet looking for something – anything – from which to fashion comedy gold. And on a day when the only news of note concerns one of the most famous clubs in English football facing the very real possibility of going into administration within 24 hours, you can’t help but feel yuks and giggles are going to be rather thin on the ground. It was revealed on Tuesday that a proposed takeover of the grand old club that is Bolton Wanderers by a consortium from Cheshire will no longer go ahead and the club is facing a winding-up petition in the high court on Wednesday. This desperate news for Trotters fans comes just a few days after the club got demolished by their nearest rivals Wigan in what locals refer to as t’classico, leaving them eight from safety at the bottom of the Championship with a team that barely looks capable or bothered enough to compete in the tier below.

The Southampton midfielder is in the form of his life and has been called up by Gareth Southgate for the Euro 2020 qualifiers two years after winning his only previous cap

James Ward-Prowse could have been forgiven for thinking his chance had passed him by when Gareth Southgate announced his latest England squad last week. After six goals in his previous nine games in the Premier League the Southampton midfielder admits he was almost surprised not to see his name among the 23 players called up for the Euro 2020 qualifiers against the Czech Republic and Montenegro.

“I didn’t have anything,” says the 24-year-old with a shrug when asked whether Southgate had been in touch to explain his omission. “I saw his press conference and his interviews and read up on that but football is a game of opinions …”

The 60,739 gate for Atlético Madrid’s match with Barcelona showed that, if you build it, fans of women’s football will come

When 60,739 fans filed into the Wanda Metropolitano on Sunday to watch Atlético Madrid take on their title rivals Barcelona, a 99-year record was broken. On 26 December 1920, and just under a year before the Football Association banned women’s football – a ban that lasted 50 years – 53,000 people filled Goodison Park, with a further 14,000 reportedly turned away, to watch the famous Dick, Kerr Ladies beat St Helens 4-0.

Related: Ji So-yun breaks Durham hearts and fires Chelsea into FA Cup last four

Our cartoonist on Swindon’s League Cup final win over Arsenal. Yes, more Wiltshire-centric media bias

• Take a look through David’s archive of cartoons

• Chelsea winger makes step up to senior level
• 18-year-old has yet to start in the Premier League

Callum Hudson-Odoi has been promoted to Gareth Southgate’s England squad for the forthcoming Euro 2020 qualifiers against the Czech Republic and Montenegro despite the Chelsea winger having yet to start a Premier League game.

The 18-year-old, who has played only 119 minutes of top-flight football, becomes the second member of England’s successful Under-17 World Cup side to make the step up to senior level. He had been due to make his debut for Aidy Boothroyd’s under-21s in the games against Poland and Germany. Instead, shortly after arriving at the juniors’ camp in Bristol, he was drafted into a senior set-up denied a quartet of players through injury and duly travelled to St George’s Park afternoon.

• Arsenal loanee given all clear after sustaining a head injury
• Keeper will not be joining Colombia in international break

The Arsenal loanee David Ospina has been discharged from hospital and given the all clear after collapsing midway through Napoli’s Serie A match against Udinese on Sunday.

The 30-year-old goalkeeper, on loan at the Italian club from Arsenal, fell to the turf two minutes before half-time, having suffered an earlier head injury in a clash with Udinese’s Ignacio Pussetto.

• Former FA technical director proud of St George’s Park success
• Dual-nationality players must feel welcome, Ashworth says

Dan Ashworth has pointed to the establishment of St George’s Park as an elite hub for English football as his greatest legacy from his time as the Football Association’s technical director, with representatives of the German national setup having visited to learn from its success.

St George’s Park opened in 2012 and the £105m facility is home to England’s 28 national teams, who train on the 13 outdoor pitches or indoor 3G surface. Ashworth joined the following year and played a significant role in establishing the site outside Burton-on-Trent as the home of the FA’s national coach education programme, as well as a Fifa-recognised centre of medical excellence.

• Juventus player made similar gesture to Diego Simeone
• Atlético coach was fined for incident but escaped a ban

The Juventus forward Cristiano Ronaldo is facing disciplinary action for his celebration after one of the three goals he scored in last week’s 3-0 win over Atlético Madrid in the Champions League.

Uefa said the Portuguese would face a hearing on Thursday for “improper conduct” during the last-16 second leg match, where Juventus completed a 3-2 aggregate win.

• Durham 0-1 Chelsea
• South Korean’s first-half strike sends champions through

Lee Sanders said his Durham side are “ready for that next step” up into the Women’s Super League, after a battling 1-0 defeat against last season’s double winners Chelsea in their FA Cup quarter-final.

“We keep on putting in these performances against big teams and I think that’s where we deserve to be,” Sanders said. “We’ve been in this league [the Championship] long enough. You look at the team that Chelsea turned out, they didn’t take us lightly and that was the biggest mark of respect for the club and the players. The players want to be playing against, and testing themselves against, the best.”

Chelsea have lodged a complaint with Uefa after Callum Hudson-Odoi was allegedly subjected to racist abuse late on in their Europa League victory at Dynamo Kyiv last week.

The 18-year-old winger, who started at the Olympic Stadium and scored the visitors’ fifth goal, was apparently on the receiving end of monkey chants close to the final whistle. The incident is understood to have taken place at the end of the ground Chelsea were attacking in the second half, with Hudson-Odoi having made his captain, the substitute César Azpilicueta, aware of what he had heard.

Tottenham, Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea can all still win a European trophy but, if they don’t, have just eight games each to try to secure a Champions League place

It is hard to place the exact moment when “bottle” became such an overused part of football’s lingua franca but nowadays it is hard to get through a weekend without several cases. You do not have to delve deep to find someone suggesting Chelsea bottled it at Goodison Park or Liverpool had the bottle to push themselves to a handy three points at Fulham.

Related: As Solskjær soars, how many extra points does a manager really add? | Sean Ingle

The Tennessee club sold more than $500,000 in shares in a month. They believe they have tapped into a market for fans who want a stake in their team

Stefan Szymanski is a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan, the author of the much-lauded Soccernomics, and a supporter of Detroit City FC of the semi-pro National Premier Soccer League (NPSL). So why has Szymanski, who moved to the United States from Britain eight years ago, invested in an NPSL rival, Chattanooga FC?

The answer lies in shares. Szymanski bought two in the club, at $125 each, so he will be far from a majority owner; in fact, he already has has more than 2,000 partners from 44 US states and 10 countries around the world. Chattanooga FC said they sold more than $500,000 in shares in a month, after they became the first American sports team to sell limited public stock since securities reform laws were passed in 2016.

The Barça forward was applauded by both sets of fans at Betis – not for scoring three times, but because of how he scored

“Truth is, I don’t remember anything like this,” Lionel Messi said but nor do they and their reaction said more than words, long abandoned as inadequate. There were five minutes left of a perfect performance when he took the shot that transfixed them and then turned them. Not so much hit first time as coaxed, the ball rose softly and curved gently, granting them time to take it in, inviting them to halt everything and watch it orbiting alone, so they did. Only Betis goalkeeper Pau López moved, seeing it float by, just there but just out of reach, everything unfolding like a slow-motion replay from an arty TV director. Only this was live. The ball caressed the bar, landed in the net, and there was a collective intake of breath. And then, instead of a roar, an “oh”.

Oh. My. God.

Renaming White Hart Lane station as Tottenham Hotspur is a blow to loyal fans and the neighbourhood’s history

What’s in a name? Everything, if you’re a football fan. The sport has always been driven by finance, but the post-1992 fetish for name-changing has taken commercialisation to a whole new level. And it’s spilling into our public spaces.

History, tradition and community are all high on the list of the reasons why long-suffering supporters stay loyal to their teams. It is fashionable to caricature those who campaign against the corporate rebranding of their clubs as traditionalist dinosaurs. But in an era when local neighbourhoods have become fractured, clinging to the original name of your team, stadium and even local railway station has become one of the few remaining signifiers of community spirit.

Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s Manchester United return has prompted debate about the qualities of former players as managers – and German academics may have an answer

Just how exceptional a manager is Ole Gunnar Solskjær? For all the praise lavished on the likeable Norwegian, I remain glued to the fence. Don’t get me wrong. He’s clearly doing well. It’s just that it is fiendishly tricky to separate the upturn in Manchester United’s mood and form since he took over – as reflected by that spectacular feat of alchemy in Paris – with the obvious fact that any club with that much money and world-class players should be winning most of their matches.

Related: Nurture and nature the keynotes as Solskjær displays complete knowhow | Barney Ronay

Panathinaikos' match at home to Olympiakos was abandoned on Sunday after fans were seen attacking players on the visiting team's bench and clashing with police outside their Olympic Stadium.

The violence began four minutes after the Athens derby kicked off and the match was stopped for about eight minutes. The unrest erupted again after Olympiakos scored the only goal of the match in the 53rd minute.

Teargas was seen wafting onto the pitch - affecting players and fans. 

The referee abandoned the match in the 70th minute and Olympiakos were awarded the victory. Panathinaikos face a possible points deduction and a fine.

Jûrgen Klopp has said Liverpool’s 2-1 victory at Fulham was ‘an average game, sensational result.’ The Reds needed a James Milner penalty to beat the London club, who remain in 19th place in the table.

Klopp’s side lead the Premier League table heading into the international break after moving two points clear of Manchester City, who have a game in hand.

• Liverpool go back to the top after James Milner converts late penalty at Fulham
  

Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri has blamed 'a mental block' for his side's 2-0 loss at Everton following a fine first-half display. 

The defeat has dented the Blues hopes of finishing in the top four, but Sarri has insisted that 'it is not impossible' to achieve the feat in their remaining eight matches

• Richarlison and Gylfi Sigurdsson strike as Everton overcome Chelsea
  

Gareth Bale and Isco both scored against Celta Vigo to give Zinedine Zidane a 2-0 victory  on his return to Real Madrid. Following the match, an overall 'happy' Zidane said 'It’s an important result, even if the first part of the match we didn’t do well'

• Gareth Bale goal helps Real Madrid past Celta Vigo in Zidane’s first game back

It’s been 25 years since the creation of one of the most iconic boots in football. The Adidas Predator became instantly recognisable due to its unique design and fearless advertising. A design made by former Liverpool midfielder Craig Johnston, who decided to stick the outside of a table tennis bat to the top of the shoe. After countless rejections Adidas took a chance on the shoe. Since then, with many new designs and improvements along the way, it has become a figurehead in football boot design.

Argentinos Juniors have paid homage to their most famous son with an eye-catching tribute – an enormous inflatable tunnel in Diego Maradona's image. Players entered the field through it at El Diego Stadium in their league match against Vélez Sarsfield on Monday, which ended in a 0-0 draw. Maradona scored 116 goals in 167 appearances for the club from 1976-1981.

Defeat was hardly catastrophic for Milan, but they have failed to beat Inter now in any of their last six Serie A meetings

The choreography produced by Milan’s Ultras for Sunday’s derby had been months in the making. As kick-off approached, a colossal depiction of Hellboy was unveiled: stretching from the top of the second tier in San Siro’s Curva Sud all the way down to ground level. The demon crashed his fist on to a pile of skulls, interwoven with an Inter scarf. “Send them to Hell,” read the accompanying slogan.

The banner left on display in the same section at full-time cannot have taken quite so long to prepare: a single word spelled out in letters as tall as your average fan. All it said was: “Shits.”

A stylish victory over Bayer Leverkusen has confirmed that Florian Kohfeldt has given Werder’s fans reason to dream

It was the sort of result that, when it happened, appeared to be a curio but as time has gone past, it looks more and more like a season turning point. When Bayer Leverkusen visited Werder Bremen in late October they were on little more than a hiding-to-nothing. Mired in lower-mid-table and led by an unpopular coach, they were facing a side on the crest of a wave – and one who could, with a victory, have finished the weekend in second place in the Bundesliga.

It didn’t turn out like that. In a rarity amid an uninspired first half of the season under Heiko Herrlich, Leverkusen fired and then some. The 6-2 victory didn’t turn out to be the launchpad for Herrlich to draw the best from his talented team on a regular basis, as a quick glance at Peter Bosz on the Leverkusen bench now will tell you. It was the moment, however, where the air was let out of Werder’s tyres. They won just one more game – against then-struggling Fortuna Düsseldorf – before mid-January.

For the first time since 2011, not a single French club will appear in either the Europa League or Champions League last eight

By Adam White and Eric Devin for Get French Football News

It was not supposed to happen like this for Ligue 1, not with the way things looked a fortnight ago. PSG’s Champions League exit was perhaps down more to controversial circumstances and individual errors than the eliminations of Lyon and Rennes. However, despite the latter two sides having been given little chance in their ties against Barcelona and Arsenal, both entered the return legs in enviable positions, especially given the gulf in resources and reputation between them and their opponents. What followed for the two sides, however, was a pair of abject displays that will do little to dispel the “farmers’ league” trope that has been a millstone around the neck of Ligue 1 in the recent past.

Lyon, after all, had been arguably the surprise package of the Champions League group stage, being one of only two sides to finish unbeaten, and recording two near-unbelievable results against Manchester City. In the first leg, they had ridden their luck (and a poor outing from Luis Suárez) but had their chances in a goalless draw, not only keeping themselves in the tie but also denying the La Liga leaders an away goal.

• Australia to gear up for France at plush resort
• Ten-day training camp in Turkey scheduled for May
  

The Matildas have been afforded the same level of investment as their male counterparts in preparation for this year’s Women’s World Cup with confirmation the squad will travel to Football Federation Australia’s preferred training base in Turkey ahead of their campaign in France.

The tried-and-tested Gloria Serenity Resort in Belek, just east of Antalya, was used by Bert van Marwijk’s Socceroos before last year’s men’s World Cup in Russia, and during Graham Arnold’s time in charge before that.

Four awesome goals - three from Lionel Messi and one from Luis Suarez - gave Barcelona an easy victory despite being outpassed by Betis

• European round-up: Juve lose to Genoa, Messi hits hat-trick

10.31pm GMT

Messi’s hat-trick, Inter’s win in the Milan derby and Juventus’ first league loss of the season is all covered in our European round-up

Related: European roundup: Genoa condemn Juventus to first Serie A defeat of season

9.43pm GMT

We’ll have a match report to follow, but that’s it for tonight’s blog. By hook or by crook, by fair means or foul, make sure you find a way to watch the goals from this game. All of them were utterly barbaric. Thanks for your company, goodnight.

It is an under-scrutinised aspect of the Australian game, especially in the salary-capped A-League where almost two-thirds of players every season jostle for new deals. Richard Parkin delves into the world of agents, brokers and intermediaries

Less than two months before the A-League regular season concludes, it’s a time of great anxiety for many within Australian football. Fans check their phones nervously to see results elsewhere as clubs compete for a finals berth, to host a home final, or to win the premiership itself. Players – as many as two-thirds of whom according to the PFA’s most recent annual report could be off-contract come 1 June – fight to be re-signed by their clubs or to put themselves in the shop window with a run of solid late-season performances.

Clubs, especially those out of finals reckoning, urgently look to refresh playing rosters for next season, competing among themselves from the limited pool of established Australian professional players. And liaising furiously between both players and clubs are the agents, or intermediaries, who know that this is the time of year when anxiety provides opportunities and good money is there to be made.

The Five Stripes won the title in just their second season. But after the departure of two key figures they have struggled to find a new identity

Gonzalo “Pity” Martínez was welcomed to the US with a song. As he stepped off the team bus, Atlanta United supporters chanted: “Él Pity Martínez, que loco que esta,” echoing fans in Madrid months earlier where Pity sealed the Copa Libertadores for River Plate.

It was a fitting welcome for the Argentinian who, until then, shared only a single quality with the club he signed for: a brief but bright history. The chants showed fans’ expectations were high. But at the start of this season, neither Atlanta nor their new star have lived up to expectations. Reality is setting in.

As he stages another comeback from retirement, one of US soccer’s finest ever players reflects on money, fame and why he chose America over Europe

As the lights swirled in the darkness of an aging San Diego arena three weekend ago, a figure stepped through the “O” of a giant inflatable “Sockers” sign. On the other side of the fog machines, the spotlight found him: it was Landon Donovan, now 37 years of age, and still American men soccer’s only true household name.

Even before he stepped out of retirement here for the third time (following a brief reunion in 2016 with the LA Galaxy and a half-season at Mexico’s Club Leon in 2018), the fact that Donovan would join the Sockers – for a reported $250,000 for the remaining half of the Major Arena Soccer League season – seemed odd. The San Diego Sockers? The indoor soccer team? For a player with 157 international caps, this quirky subgenre of the sport, with its $2 Bud Light nights, its frenetic play and its games in places like Turlock, California and Hidalgo, Texas, seems like unfamiliar territory. But in the context of Donovan’s eclectic career it is of a piece with all his other moves that American soccer fans have debated for the past 20 years.

Stung by Joachim Löw’s retiring of three of their Germany players, Bayern responded with a 6-0 win over Wolfsburg

“Anger is an energy,” John Lydon famously sang on Public Image Limited’s ‘Rise’. The line has had a fair airing in the past week, used in attempts to sum up the on-stage essence of Keith Flint after The Prodigy frontman’s untimely passing. Flint himself frequently laughed off the perception that he was an angry man but this weekend, Bayern Munich took the phrase and showed themselves to be more than happy to embody it.

By the time the clock ticked 17.21 in the Allianz Arena on Saturday afternoon, as an overwhelmed Wolfsburg team stood dazed on the turf having taken a thrashing that could easily have been worse, it was tricky to work out which scenario should have been the most obvious to us two hours beforehand. That Wolfsburg, who had never won in 21 previous visits to Bayern, were never going to change that? That Bayern’s relentless pace of late, seemingly reaching a familiar crescendo as they entered this match with 11 wins from their last 12 in the Bundesliga, showed no sign of faltering? Or that having been piqued by the treatment of Mats Hummels, Jérôme Boateng and Thomas Müller from Germany national team coach Joachim Löw during the week, that Bayern would react with extreme prejudice.

The Juventus motto is “fino alla fine” – in other words, until the end. On Tuesday evening the men’s team proved these words are not empty but alive. Juve aspire to be a team who never give up, a team who burn with an indefatigable spirit, and this week it was there for all to see.

They showed it against Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League last season, when they came back from a 3-0 first-leg deficit to level the tie at the Bernabéu, an incredible comeback that ended in disappointment when a late Cristiano Ronaldo penalty decided it in Real’s favour. This year it was a different Madrid club, Atlético, a 2-0 deficit and Ronaldo – now wearing Juve’s famous black and white – decided matters from the spot again.

Arsenal’s striker on a sporting childhood, Netherlands’ World Cup hopes and why her club deserve to win the WSL

Arsenal, decimated by injuries that have left a stellar seven-a-side team in the stands lately, are struggling to maintain their early-season swagger. League wins have become less convincing and defeats by Chelsea and Manchester City in the FA Cup and Continental Cup respectively have seen their momentum stalled.

With the side now two points behind the leaders, Manchester City, though with a crucial two games in hand, the pressure is on the league’s top scorer, Vivianne Miedema, to shoulder the burden and help force her team over the finish line.

It was a great week for the puckish charms of football and its ability to confound hubris

Football still, it turns out, has the power to fight back. Money is a lot of things but it isn’t quite everything, not yet.

Although before we get carried away, it should be acknowledged that it really is a lot of things, most things even, almost everything. The leagues of Italy and France are a walkover yet again. Spain and Germany will probably have very familiar champions. So distorted has the modern view become that not only are Ajax, grandees of the Dutch game, transformed into plucky giant-killers, but somehow Manchester United can be cast as improbable outsiders. It was a great week for the puckish charms of football and its ability to confound hubris but nobody should kid themselves: it’s losing the war against greed.

Your weekend roundup of the best photography from the FA Cup and Premier League

• View the Dozen archive

Today’s rumours spent way too long there

In a development in no way intended to cram as many big names as possible into a headline, news outlets are reporting that David Beckham would quite like to sign Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo for his new MLS franchise.

Meanwhile, Real Madrid are also plotting a revamp that will tick all search engine optimisation boxes. Zinedine Zidane has decided to eschew Neymar and go for at least one of Eden Hazard, Christian Eriksen and Sadio Mané. With Chelsea facing a transfer ban and therefore reluctant to sell even if that means losing Hazard for nothing next year, and Madrid not keen on facing Daniel Levy, the Spanish club reckon Mané is the most gettable of the trio.

This week’s roundup also includes a cheeky Carlisle goal, horses racing all over the place and some heavily accented lip-reading

1) Will Warren Gatland end his Six Nations sojourn with Wales as he began it, with a grand slam? Ireland stand in their way on Saturday, as they did when they visited Cardiff in 2005, when Wales memorably clinched a first title for 12 years. The whole game is here, if you’ve got the time. Wales beat Ireland at the 2011 World Cup too, but Ireland came out on top in 2018, en route to their own slam – and what a classic it was. Should Ireland prevail again this year it would pave the way for England to take the title by beating Scotland, something they achieved when they won the concluding matches in 1980 and at Twickenham in 1995.

2) Best you go your way and I’ll go mine: racing goes seriously freeform with horses peeling off in all directions at this race in France.

Plus: people changing their name for football; real-life football on the big screen (2); and did they ever use a real hat for the FA Cup draw? Mail us or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU

“Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida played in goal for Real Sociedad, and former Chelsea keeper Petar Barota was an abstract artist. Have any other players had artistic tendencies?” tweets UrbanGriller.

“Surely one of the most unusually named players in Port Vale’s long history is ceramic designer Lucien Boullemier,” writes Rob Fielding. “The son of French ceramic artist Antonin Boullemir, he originally moved to the Potteries to, well, work in the Potteries! He was signed by Stoke City before joining Port Vale in 1897, but retired in 1903 to move to the US. He resumed playing in the States, turning out for Philadelphia Hibernian. He returned to the UK in 1905 and had spells with Northampton Town and a return to Port Vale. Back in the Potteries he produced a range called Boumier Ware, which is highly sought after.”

• Sheffield United keep pace as West Brom, Middlesbrough falter
• Sunderland snatch late leveller during chaos at Wycombe

The race for automatic promotion thinned out after both Middlesbrough and West Brom dropped points on the top three.

Who ‘felt flat’ after a big win? Who prepared in style? Who had a dig at Watford?

'I looked over at him a few times and that made me laugh a little' – who said this during the week, and who were they talking about?

Mike Phelan about Neymar

Hatem Ben Arfa about Unai Emery

Kepa Arrizabalaga about Maurizio Sarri

Daniele de Rossi about Eusebio di Francesco

Nick Kyrgios won his first ATP Tour trophy for over a year in Acapulco on Sunday, but how did he prepare for the final?

Getting advice from his friend Andy Murray over the phone

Sitting in a sauna to prepare for extreme heat on court

Spending the afternoon on a jetski

Watching opponent Alexander Zverev's train from under a sombrero

Who was accused of exaggerating the toughness of his upbringing this week?

Anthony Joshua

Ronnie O'Sullivan

Owen Farrell

Dan Evans

Swiss cyclist Nicole Hanselmann built up a big lead in a race on Sunday, but finished 74th. What went wrong?

She suffered multiple punctures and had to jog the last half-mile

She caught up the men's race ahead of her and was held up by officials

She had been going the wrong way and had to turn around

She had to stop for an extended comfort break

LeBron James overtook his idol, Michael Jordan, to become the NBA's fourth-highest points scorer of all time. Who is top of the list?

Kobe Bryant

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Shaquille O'Neal

Karl Malone

Who joined an exclusive club by earning 10/10 from L'Equipe in midweek?

Romelu Lukaku

Hakim Ziyech

Dusan Tadic

Iker Casillas

France head to Dublin in the Six Nations on Sunday, and have a poor recent away record in the competition. Where did they last win a game in Britain or Ireland?

Murrayfield

Croke Park

Etihad Stadium

Stadium:mk

'I feel a bit flat to be honest with you' – who said this after a landmark win this week?

Harry Kane

Virat Kohli

Phil Neville

Nick Kyrgios

Harry Kane will face Southampton on Saturday having scored seven goals in eight Premier League games against them. Who was Kane playing for when he first faced the Saints?

Norwich

Spurs

Millwall

Leyton Orient

Formula One returns next weekend, with the organisers set to introduce what prize for the fastest lap in each race?

A two-place boost up the grid in the next race

A gold helmet to wear in the next race

A bonus point that counts towards the overall standings

£250,000 in cash

8 and above.

Outstanding. Enjoy the rest of your weekend

0 and above.

Unlucky. Enjoy the rest of your weekend

3 and above.

A fair effort. Enjoy the rest of your weekend

The midfielder was the Merseyside club’s most consistent attacking threat for a decade and dazzled in Glasgow

If there is a phrase that sums up Steve McManaman’s time at Real Madrid, a four-year spell in which the Spanish club won La Liga and the Champions League twice apiece, it was perhaps the one delivered by an unlikely source. “El socio del todos” – “a partner to everyone on the pitch”– is how Johan Cruyff described the Merseyside-born Madridista, and he meant it neither sarcastically nor begrudgingly.

Cruyff’s assessment was instead genuine and warm-hearted, underlining the understated yet important role the midfielder played in Madrid’s success at the start of the millennium, linking defence to Galácticos attack. This was the era of Raúl, Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane and the original Ronaldo, and McManaman’s role was to give them the ball as often as possible.

A full-tilt Liverpool charge, Napoli’s epic collapse, missing boots, broken Hearts and Cantona’s economical brilliance feature

Hooliganism, Heysel and the Bradford fire had left English football on the brink of oblivion in 1985. On-field action desperately needed to take centre stage again and Ron Atkinson’s Manchester United came waltzing out from behind the curtain to hog the spotlight, winning 10 on the bounce and opening up a 13-point lead over runaway reigning champions, Everton. “It’s all yours, Ron!” screamed one headline in November. It was a leap to imagine that by April “Atkinson Out” banners would be on display at Old Trafford after a side light on physicality crumbled, losing 10 games.

A great opportunity for Juventus and Cristiano Ronaldo to take a step closer to the only title that really matters to the club now that they have won seven straight scudetti and are on their way to an eighth.

The way Son Heung-min tells it, he was 10 years old and squabbling with his older brother, Heung-yun. Then something happened that has stayed with him.

The Tottenham forward’s father, Son Woong-jung, was a former professional footballer who made it to a good level in South Korea, and he had begun to coach his boys, making it his mission to guide them to the top, avoiding the pitfalls he encountered. On this occasion, he saw red and, to borrow the word Son uses, decided to impose a forfeit.

In an exclusive interview, the Barcelona forward talks about the tournament and her responsibility for the next generation

‘When I look back to being a 10-year-old girl I never could have dreamt of having this pathway. I feel very fortunate and proud, but I know I have to be part of creating new opportunities for the youth coming through.”

Toni Duggan is not alone in feeling the need to not only ensure there is a ladder behind her but also to give younger players a leg-up on to it. It is a common theme when you talk to female footballers – an instinctive solidarity alongside respect and admiration for those who paved the way for them.

At St Andrew’s Hospice in Airdrie, about eight miles outside Glasgow, Fernando Ricksen is beginning to show the first signs of tiredness after answering questions with his eyes for more than an hour. As an emotional and deeply moving interview draws to a close, Ricksen is asked whether there is anything else he would like to mention in this article. After a short pause while his eyes scroll across the screen to select the words that his voice-computer reads aloud once the sentence is complete, Ricksen adds: “My wife, so that I get some points!”

There is the hint of a smile on Ricksen’s face and a sparkle in his eyes as the room is filled with laughter. The 42-year-old has clearly not lost his sense of humour, which seems remarkable in the circumstances, bearing in mind that he is in the final stages of a cruel, degenerative and terminal illness.

Star striker Samuel Eto’o represented the UNHCR Sport and Cooperation Network in Cameroon to coach child refugees from neighbouring Central African Republic, part-funded by the Fifa Foundation