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The Arsenal way. The Manchester United way. The Tottenham way. The West Ham way. Every supporter wants their team to be successful but also play with a certain style that is supposedly unique to their club. Yet in the multimillion-pound industry that football in the 21st century has become, are we all expecting a little too much?

Petr Cech’s acknowledgement this week that the former manager Arsenal Arsène Wenger cared more about the aesthetic beauty of his teams than their effectiveness was the kind of candid admission professional footballers only make once a former regime has been consigned to history. However, it was still revealing to hear the true thoughts of a player who has won four Premier League titles, five FA Cups, the Champions League and Europa League since he arrived in England more than 14 years ago.

Our cartoonist on the latest chapter of a season that seems to so far have been exclusively of interest to Liverpool fans

• View all of David’s cartoons here

Manchester United earned record revenues of £590m though the Glazers’ debt from buying the club 13 years ago stands at nearly half a billion, according to the latest financial results.

Related: What’s that odd feeling? It’s sympathy for Mourinho amid Pogba’s malaise | Barney Ronay

The Wolfsburg captain and Sweden international is an outspoken advocate of women’s football and LGBT rights who sees her profession in perspective

“We take one step in the right direction and two back if we don’t keep up the fight.” Wolfsburg’s Nilla Fischer has seen women’s football change a lot in her 20-year career and she is adamant that progress has been won only by fighting for it. “You can never let it be or let it rest. To get better surroundings, money, everything, it’s always a fight.”

Fischer is known for being outspoken in defence of women playing football but also, as a gay woman, in being an advocate of LGBT rights. She is one of three top European footballers to front a “Strong is ... ” mini-documentary series for Uefa’s #WePlayStrong campaign about their lives off the pitch, discussing issues ranging from mental health and self-confidence to sexuality and injury trauma. Fischer’s has had more than half a million views.

The former England captain shares memories of Bobby Moore and George Best, his regrets about managing Newcastle and England and why if he was a player today he’d like to turn out for Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool

You can feel the energy as soon as Kevin Keegan walks into the room – barrel chest, big biceps, warm smile, small man, tough handshake. His hair is white these days, the perm long gone, and his belly more rounded, but otherwise he is little changed. Keegan is as passionate and outspoken as he ever was.

We meet in a hotel in Manchester. It’s funny that he’s written another memoir, he says, because he hates looking back. “I don’t like player reunions because all you get is the lads talking about whatever year you won something. A lot of them are just lost in that. Sir John Hall had a saying: ‘If you live in the past, you die in the past.’ You’ve got to reinvent yourself – try to move on.”

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“It is beyond me that we feel the need to set aside a night to give out these jag-off bowling trophies six times a year so all these people can pat each other on the back about how much money they’re making, boring the [pee] out of half the world,” said Jerry Seinfeld of awards ceremonies. The stand-up was picking up an award at the time and was sure to add the caveat that “if I hadn’t already won all these awards I would not be talking like this”. Like the business they call “show”, football is similarly obsessed with org1es of self-congratulatory backslapping, but few do it with quite the same amount of bells, whistles and bloated self-regard as the sport’s world governing body, whose third annual I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Ballon d’Or awards were staged in Big London on Monday night.

• Defender and goalkeeper will likely to play in Carabao Cup tie
• Jürgen Klopp expected to rest Virgil van Dijk

Dejan Lovren could make his first appearance since the World Cup final when Liverpool host Chelsea in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday.

Related: Kevin Keegan: 'No, I'm not going to take a compliment from Mike Ashley'

The Football Association is braced to lose its technical director, Dan Ashworth, to Brighton & Hove Albion as the man credited with playing a key part in reviving the England set-up at junior and senior levels closes in on a return to a role at club level.

Related: David Squires on … no country for proper football men

Five months ago the right-back was at King’s Lynn. Now a Carabao Cup test against the Premier League champions awaits

Of all the ways to react to “a massive blow”, Cameron Norman chose the best. That is why he can expect to play for Oxford United against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday, a reality that makes for a pleasing alternative to where he was only a few months ago, serving as right-back for King’s Lynn Town in the Evo-Stik League South, the seventh tier of English football.

Related: Frank Lampard prepares Derby for meeting with mentor José Mourinho | Simon Burnton

Football in North America has been on a quest for authenticity for decades. It’s debatable whether hardcore fans are helping or hindering that goal

When Major League Soccer kicked off for the first time back in 1996, European football’s Ultras culture was just about winding down. Of course, Ultras still exist to this day, but the height of football’s sometimes violent, always notorious, counterculture came in the 1980s when English and Italian fans earned a toxic reputation. As in many things, though, MLS has spent the past few years catching up.

Related: Barcelona, Argentina … Atlanta: How Tata Martino came to thrive in MLS

Luka Modric has been named the Fifa men’s footballer of the year at a ceremony in London, with Brazil’s Marta crowned the world’s best female player.

The 33-year-old Modric won the Champions League for the third time in a row with his club, Real Madrid, in May before leading Croatia to the 2018 World Cup final, where they lost 4-2 to France. He is the first player other than Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi to win the Fifa award since Kaká in 2007.

Pablo Zabaleta has urged West Ham to prioritise securing Declan Rice to a new contract following the teenager’s hugely impressive start to the season.

Rice has operated in defensive midfield over recent weeks and contributed heavily to the win at Everton and encouraging draw at home against Chelsea on Sunday which have lifted West Ham from the foot of the league table. Manuel Pellegrini heaped praise on the youngster’s performance in that derby, yet Rice has entered the final 12 months of his deal having rejected a new offer over the summer.

Uefa has announced it has reopened its investigation into Paris Saint-Germain’s finances, having previously, in June, cleared the club of breaking financial fair play (FFP) rules.

European football’s governing body said in July that the decision taken a month earlier would be reviewed, and the case has now been handed back to the Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), a body “overseeing the application of financial fair play regulations”, according to Uefa’s website.

Sunderland have served Didier Ndong notice that they intend to terminate his contract, saying their record signing went awol in the wake of relegation to League One.

The club have also indicated their readiness to take legal action to recoup the Gabon midfielder’s value should he join another club.

Petr Cech believes that Arsenal have fallen short in recent years because their obsession with playing football in a certain way under Arsène Wenger was more important than victory itself.

The 36-year-old goalkeeper has seen a change of mentality under Unai Emery, whom he suggested was more demanding than Wenger, and he felt it was on display in the 2-0 home win against Everton on Sunday.

Ex-Barnsley assistant manager and two other men granted unconditional bail after brief hearing

Three men including former Barnsley assistant manager Tommy Wright have pleaded not guilty to bribery offences.

Wright, 52, of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, denied two counts of accepting a bribe between April and September 2016 in contravention of sections two and 11 of the Bribery Act 2010, when he appeared at Westminster magistrates court on Monday.

Paul Pogba delivered a damning verdict on Manchester United by admitting they lacked the desire required to beat Wolves and declaring they need to attack more to restore the fear factor at Old Trafford.

The World Cup winner echoed José Mourinho’s criticism of United’s lax mentality but also found fault with their forwards for not offering enough movement during Saturday’s 1-1 draw.

The Rams’ manager, still close to his former Chelsea boss, believes the Portuguese’s influence shines as brightly as ever

Frank Lampard remembers watching the press conference in 2004 at which José Mourinho, freshly arrived at Chelsea, announced that he was “a special one”. He says: “I saw it and I liked it. It was something different. British culture is not to walk in and call yourself the special one, I don’t think. That’s the way he was and I admired him for it and actually, if you make those statements, you had better back them up, and he certainly did.”

If many people believe Mourinho’s aura has started to fade, Lampard is not one of them. The Portuguese remains, in the eyes of his former midfielder, as special as ever. “When you’re the manager of Manchester United, when you have the CV and the background of José Mourinho – and this is not ancient history, this is fresh history, the Europa League, the FA Cup – then of course you have it,” he says. “In terms of the special one and that, those are just words. In terms of being a great manager, of course he is.”

I know it’s over. And it never really began. But in my heart it was so real. Paul, José. It’s been two years now. There are times in a relationship like this when you just have to take a step back and accept that things aren’t working out. Although, for the sake of the team, who really shouldn’t be asked to choose between you, we could at least try to be civilised about this.

Another Manchester United wobble, another public snipe between José Mourinho and Paul Pogba. United may be listing a little this season but there are some things that do seem certain. The dysfunctional dynamic between manager and star player is not doing anyone any good. And beyond this Pogba in particular might want to think twice about asking people to look any more closely at his own role and his own contribution to an evolving team – because it is not always a pretty sight.

Temperatures are rising on and off the pitch, with opposition building to that US plan and kick-off times doing little to help

At the one end of the ground that is an end and not just a wall, a small gang of Rayo Vallecano fans in bright high-vis jackets and yellow hard hats started leaping up and down, testing the foundations. Around them, drums beat, flags waved and supporters laughed as they took out their tools to fix the place up, bashing away with inflatable yellow hammers. If it looked silly, it was supposed to – and it was no dafter than the real thing – but at least they were here now. Rayo, promoted in the summer after two years away from primera, hadn’t been home since the opening day of the season. On Saturday, they returned in the way that only they seem to know how – and a way that felt appropriate somehow, this weekend more than ever.

That night, against Sevilla, a small boy fell through a gap and on to some rubble, while above him the stand literally shook. Long denounced by supporters, Rayo’s ground, which had gone six years without a valid safety certificate, was shut down by the council. Athletic Club were next in town and some of them came too – they’d already arranged their travel by the time the decision had finally been made, four days before it was due to be played – but they didn’t see a game and didn’t get compensation either, of course. There had been discussions about Butarque or the Metropolitano, while Getafe said no to using the Coliseum; instead the match was postponed and work got under way.

Summer deals have left last season’s Champions League semi-finalists imbalanced and time is not on the manager’s side

Five games in, and the Serie A top scorers chart has a decidedly unfamiliar feel. Fans might have expected to see Cristiano Ronaldo in first place, perhaps pursued by the man he displaced at Juventus: Gonzalo Higuaín. Or how about reigning joint-capocannonieri, Ciro Immobile and Mauro Icardi, each returning with the same teams?

All but the last of that foursome scored this weekend, yet none of them leads the way. The most prolific player in Serie A is a 23-year-old signed by Genoa from Cracovia this summer for a paltry €4.5m. Krzysztof Piatek’s five goals only look more impressive when you consider his team has played one game fewer than the rest of the division.

Finishing the weekend in second, with only Bayern Munich ahead of them, will do nicely for Hertha

Pál Dárdai was being very careful with his words and rightly so, given his team travel to unbeaten Werder Bremen on Tuesday before hosting the frankly terrifying Bayern Munich. That is an Englische Woche and a half by anyone’s standards. “I know you’re trying to provoke,” the Hertha coach said with a wry smile to journalists prompting him to show some enthusiasm, “but the Hertha fans know me. We’ve had three years of stability – and now, we’ve a team you can really enjoy. Just stay realistic.”

Even if it’s a coach’s job to be balanced, those supporters who know Dárdai so well – he was a player at Olympiastadion for 14 years before taking his current post three-and-a-half years back – could be forgiven for ignoring him on this occasion. Saturday’s thrilling 4-2 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach is exactly the sort of moment you should get carried away with. It even took Die Alte Dame to the top of the table for a few short hours, before Bayern strolled past Schalke. Finishing the weekend in second, with only Bayern having scored more goals so far this season, will do nicely for Hertha.

Feyenoord's Steven Berghuis found himself in the limelight on Sunday, having collapsed to the ground after a gentle pat on the head from Utrecht's Willem Janssen. Feyenoord went on to win the match 1-0 in Rotterdam thanks to a late goal from Robin van Persie

Sir Alex Ferguson was back at Old Trafford for the first time since he underwent emergency brain surgery in May. He received a huge ovation from supporters before the 1-1 draw with Wolves

Wolves frustrate Manchester United on Sir Alex Ferguson’s return

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola could not hide his joy after the Argentina striker Sergio Agüero extended his contract at the club until 2021. The Premier League champions travel to Cardiff City on Saturday as they look to bounce back from their defeat to Lyon in the Champions League during the week

Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino has hit back at questions over his squad selection after they fell to a 2-1 defeat at Internazionale, despite leading until the 86th minute. Christian Eriksen put Spurs ahead in the second half before Mauro Icardi’s volley and a Matias Vecino header gave Inter the points.

Pochettino was particularly irked at being asked why Toby Alderweireld and Kieran Trippier were left out, interpreting it as disrespectful to those players who were chosen for the trip to Italy. The Argentinian added he was pleased with his team’s performance, but admitted they are suffering having lost three in a row

• Spurs fail to heed evidence Harry Kane needs a rest

Benfica's women's team enjoyed a 28-0 thrashing on their debut in the Portuguese second division. They opened the scoring two minutes into their match against Ponte de Frielas, were 16-0 up at half-time and went on to set a new record in the country for the largest margin of victory in senior football. Although Benfica's squad features a number of internationals, as a newly-formed team they have been required to compete in the second tier of the women's league.

• Women’s game flourishes despite ill will from football’s dinosaurs

Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored his 500th career goal on Saturday in LA Galaxy's 5-3 loss to Toronto. The 36-year-old Swedish striker has now joined Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as the only active players with 500 goals for club and country

Our panel of 169 experts from 63 nations compile a list of the greatest male players in 2017. Click on an individual to read more about their year.

• Messi edges Ronaldo to No1 | The data behind our 100 | Watch: our top 10
• Meet our panel of judges for 2017 | 2016 edition | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

Mariners to allow safe smoke after flare experiment at Usain Bolt game, ground announcers and bands being considered

The prospect of music during corners, goal kicks and substitutions at A-League matches appears dead in the water after clubs distanced themselves from the radical measures.

All but two Australian clubs have categorically ruled out the controversial in-game entertainment.

Marseille did not win against PSG, Lyon or Monaco in the league last season. That run of results needs to change soon

By Adam White and Eric Devin for Get French Football News

It was more of the same for Marseille on Sunday evening at the Parc OL, as their frustrating evening ended in yet more dropped points against a rival for a Champions League place. Marseille picked up just two points from 18 against Lyon, Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain last season. Even with the champions operating in another financial stratosphere, it still made for grim reading, especially with the margins for those top three places having been so fine in recent seasons. With a place in the Champions League their aim of the season, last thing Marseille needed was a chastening 4-2 defeat at Lyon in the Choc des Olympiques.

Marseille had no problem running roughshod over the bulk of Ligue 1 last season but they did struggle against high-quality opposition. Things seemed to be changing this season, though. They were at their opportunistic best when they thumped Monaco 3-2 at the Stade Louis II at the beginning of the month. Even with their southern rivals enduring an uneven start to the campaign, the same fixture last year had yielded a 6-1 defeat.

• Ronaldo on target as Juve extend their 100% start
• Di Maria, Meunier and Chuopo-Moting score for PSG

Cristiano Ronaldo and Federico Bernardeschi scored late goals as Juventus continued their 100 per cent start to the Serie A season with an unconvincing 2-0 win at Frosinone.

Ronaldo, who was sent off in Wednesday’s Champions League win at Valencia, looked set to endure another frustrating evening until he scuffed home a left-footed effort with nine minutes remaining.

Gerard Piqué got 10-man Barcelona out of jail as their 100 per cent start to the season was ended by battling Girona.

Barça looked to be cruising when Lionel Messi’s eighth goal of the campaign gave them an early lead but the defender Clement Lenglet’s 35th-minute dismissal was compounded by Cristhian Stuani’s equaliser before the break.

A net €750m spent in eight years and that’s all you get? Success without money is all but impossible in the modern game, but wealth brings no guarantees. Football still has the capacity to make the richest of men seem very foolish if they pursue glamour at the expense of substance – a heartening moral, so long as you don’t think too closely about the source of the wealth that is paying for Neymar to squander his immense talents in an entitled fug of self-indulgence.

For Paris Saint-Germain, there has been no development. The lessons of last season have not been learned. All the flaws that undid PSG against Real Madrid in last season’s last 16 were there again at Anfield on Tuesday. Leaving three forwards high up the pitch to float about and occasionally pull off a trick may be enough in Ligue 1 – given PSG have begun the season with five successive wins and have scored at least three goals in every game, it demonstrably is – but it is no way to play against proper opposition. The Air Jordan branding may be intended to add an extra shot of glamour, but in context it appears to say little more than: “Please nutmeg me while I appeal half-heartedly for offside.”

• Ross McCormack and Socceroo Tommy Oar return to A-League
  
• Sydney FC 4-2 Avondale FC (extra time)

Sydney FC coach Steve Corica has shown his relief and delight at the club’s passage through a tight FFA Cup squeeze.

The Sky Blues led 2-0 but were forced into extra-time by ambitious Victorian National Premier League grand finalists Avondale FC on Wednesday night.

The day after Nabil Fekir joined his France teammates and an estimated million supporters on the Champs-Élysées to show off the World Cup trophy, he was invited to attend another celebration. This time, there were only a few hundred people present at the Stade Francisque-Jomard de Vaulx en Velin – where his father, Mohamed, is president – to catch a glimpse of the town’s most famous son as he was made an honorary citizen. “Thank you all,” whispered a nervous-looking Fekir into the microphone as he addressed the crowd. “We did something beautiful.”

As summers go, 2018 will take some beating for the player who turned 25 two days after France’s 4-2 victory over Croatia. Despite seeing his proposed £53m move from Lyon to Liverpool collapse days before their opening World Cup match with concerns reported about his fitness following a knee injury, Fekir played a total of 68 minutes in six substitute appearances for Didier Deschamps’s side, including replacing Olivier Giroud in the final.

Two historic, special clubs battled Madrid and Barça at grounds that embrace traditions rather than turn their backs on it

It’s exactly 100km from Anoeta to San Mamés as the car drives, passing Ipurúa halfway, sitting pretty in the Ego valley. Visible from the road, there was no one at the stadium this time – Eibar were down to Madrid to play Atlético – but there were thousands at each end of the AP8, striped shirts everywhere, flags hanging from bars where old photos hang from walls and they were making a lot of noise, packing Pozas Street in Bilbao, and spilling into the sunshine on Zorroaga Way, San Sebastián. Maybe even more noise than ever before. There’s something special about the Basque Country – 1.4% of Spain’s territory, 4.9% of its population, 20% of its first-division teams – and this Saturday even more so, an expression of its footballing identity, enhanced and offered up for all to see.

Between them, Real Sociedad and Athletic Club have 35 players in their squad who played for them pre-first team level and for four years at the start of the eighties they kept the league title in Euskadi. Those days are long gone – although they were second and third in 1997-98 and La Real really could have won it in 2003 – but on Saturday morning Marca lead with the headline: “The league looks north.” The first day back after the international break, when it feels like the season is properly under way at last, saw Barcelona travel to play La Real, while Madrid went to Athletic that same evening, 100km apart.

• Erkut Sögüt defends player’s decision to meet Erdoğan
• ‘Thomas Müller did not understand the whole discussion’
  

Mesut Özil’s agent has hit out at Germany’s Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and Toni Kroos over comments they made in the wake of the Arsenal midfielder’s decision to quit international football.

Erkut Sögüt said the trio were either “naive or scheming” in their responses to the statement Özil issued in July to announce he would no longer be playing for Germany. The agent also strongly defended his client for being photographed with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Maurizio Sarri’s linchpin saw a prodigious amount of the ball at West Ham yet was most effective in blunting N’Golo Kanté

With three minutes to go here, Jorginho played a nudged sideways pass across the centre circle. Oddly there was no spontaneous ovation, Jorginho did not punch the air or collapse tearfully to his knees or do a dance from Fortnite. It was odd because in that moment Jorginho had broken the Premier League record for passes completed in a game, edging out Ilkay Gündogan’s mark of 165, set this year.

A few minutes earlier a lofted sideways pass to Willian meant Jorginho surged past Cesc Fàbregas’s 144-pass Chelsea record, set against West Brom in November 2014. By the end he was on a sensational 180 passes, not just beating the record but obliterating it, a GOAT-level performance of wiffling the ball about in midfield that may, for all we know, never be surpassed. At least not – it is to be hoped – while this reporter is present.

Arsenal’s predictability in possession against Everton meant they were reliant on bursts of inspiration from their strikers

How did Arsenal secure their fourth consecutive Premier League win and the first clean sheet of the Unai Emery era? Was it with solidity in defence, enterprise in midfield and breathtaking invention in attack? Were there signs of a team slowly getting to grips with their new manager’s demands after a summer of seismic change? Could it be time to declare Arsenal are back?

Not quite. Slow down, step back. Resist the urge to look at the result and declare that this was a routine stroll for a rampant side. Listen instead to Marco Silva, who pithily observed this is football. It is not always fair, it does not always make sense and Emery could afford to smile when asked if he had been preparing to remove Alexandre Lacazette shortly before the striker gave Arsenal an undeserved lead early in the second half.

At times it is hard to read Unspoken, the new book written with Gary Speed’s widow. But at least more of those in the game struggling with depression now feel able to come forward

It is the family stuff, the detail that would usually remain private, that provides some of the toughest passages from the newly released book Unspoken, in which the people who knew Gary Speed the best try to make sense out of a tragedy none of them will ever properly understand.

The story, for example, his widow, Louise, tells of the long, unimaginable battle to start functioning again and the shattering effects of what she describes, more than once, as being put on the scene of a horror film. It was Louise who found her husband in the garage, who had to cut him down and will always have to live with that image. “As time goes on,” she says, “you hope it’s a film that fades.” But there was also a long period when she could not even eat, when she drank to numb the pain and lost so much weight she describes herself as a walking skeleton.

Today’s tish and fipsy is snotty

The Rumour Mill has a confession. We know little of the Eredivisie these days. Between the Premier League, the Football League, the Champions League, the Europa League, bits of Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga, plus of course keeping bang up to date with the latest red hot developments in the transfer market, and then the relentless and exhausting grind of simply getting through the day, little time remains to get caught up on Dutch football.

Related: West Ham need to secure Declan Rice’s signature, says Pablo Zabaleta

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Defeat at the hands of Kilmarnock coupled with the Pope’s Newc O’Rangers’ 5-1 win over St Johnstone means the Queen’s Celtic have now endured their worst start to a season for 20 years. Already out of Big Cup and pondering the accompanying financial vicissitudes, the Scottish champions have dropped eight points out of 18 available this season and the crisis klaxon is sounding loudly. Highly regarded, certainly by himself, for the statesmanlike qualities he has exuded while leading the club to a domestic double treble in the past two years, Rodgers was presented with an opportunity to allay fears of the faithful when asked, post-match, if fans should be concerned. And the Churchillian response from the man who once cited himself as his own biggest influence? An uncharacteristically meek and rabble-unrousing: “Yes, they should.”

Your weekend round-up of the best photography from England’s top flight

The Dozen archive

This week’s roundup also includes trick plays, some proper 1980s tennis and a billiards highlight reel

1) “The Beat”, “The Beast”… “Ipswich’s Best Ever”; Kevin Beattie died this week at the age of 64. A player Sir Bobby Robson once called: “The best defensive player who could play forward that this country has produced.” Exhibits A-M can be found here. Beattie was also Michael Caine’s body double in Escape to Victory, beating Sylvester Stallone in an arm wrestle during some downtime in filming (if only smartphones existed in 1981).

2) Boxing and British sport as a whole also mourned the loss of champion trainer Enzo Calzaghe, the guiding light behind his son Joe’s rise to the very apex of the sport. The modest but magnificent Newbridge boxing club was were it all began and this film offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse from 2011. The fight that helped launch Joe to stardom was his win over Chris Eubank in 1997 to claim the WBO super-middleweight strap. And as for the Welsh duo’s greatest win, take your pick between Jeff Lacy in 2006 and Mikkel Kessler a year later.

Plus: most international debutants, ugly strips (2) and the largest country never to compete at the European Championships. Mail us or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU

“In the recent Burnley v Olympiakos match, the away team replaced No 56 with No 66, meaning the substitution had a combined shirt number of 122,” notes Paul Hawkins. “Is this the highest shirt ‘value’ in a substitution ever or has it been beaten? And what is the lowest?”

For the highest, we start in the Mexican lower leagues. “The rule here is that every player registered by a team at any level has to have an unique number,” explains Jason Maxwell. “So the senior team has standard one/two-digit numbers, the reserve team has numbers starting with 100, the youth teams go 200, 300, etc. So in a youth game you’ll have 312 replacing 307 or something. Even at the senior team level, if a player has been called up from the reserves or youths they keep their number, so it’s possible to see something like 208 replacing number 19 (especially in a friendly). In July’s friendly between Tigres U-20s and the MLS Homegrown all-stars, every player subbed on for Tigres had a number of 281 or higher, and the highest number subbed off was 304. So at minimum that’s 585 combined.”

Max is joined by Barry Glendenning, Lars Sivertsen and Jonathan Wilson to discuss the Champions League, Ronaldo’s red, the timekeeping skills of cows and Mark Hughes’s elusive smile

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Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Lars Sivertsen and Jonathan Wilson to discuss the first round of Champions League group stage fixtures, starting with Manchester City’s shock 2-1 defeat to Lyon.

Some players are happy to live their lives and not let careers on the pitch dominate their existence. Here are a few of them

Of all the players who seemed to play football with a passion and joie de vivre, Batistuta seemed among the most passionate and joiest de vivrest. Those lusty shots, those screaming celebrations, those goals. But, it seems, he wasn’t especially keen on football. “I do not like football, it is just my profession,” he once said in an interview with Argentinian TV.

From Roger Milla’s hips to a human Slinky, half a dozen joyful celebrations from the festival of football

Want to feel old? Bebeto’s third son Mattheus Oliviera, the celebration’s subject, recently turned 23, and has signed for Sporting Lisbon. Back to 1994, an hour gone, and from a wayward header Bebeto embarrassed the entire Dutch back-four, caught waiting for an offside flag that never came. Running unimpeded through on goal, he rounded Ed de Goey with a touch both deft and impetuous, before slotting into the empty net. Like your dad at a family barbecue, Bebeto started to laugh at his own joke before the punchline, heading towards the corner flag with a giddy grin plastered on his face. Shaping his arms into a cradle, he began to rock the proverbial baby, before being joined by team-mates Mazinho and Romário in a tableau of parental bliss. Hopefully this will have assuaged the anger of his other half; the Brazilian sheepishly explained this was the only child whose birth he wasn’t present for. Perhaps a touch hubristically, he added: “When I made that celebration maybe it was like Mattheus was baptised by God.” At the least it christened a celebration copied in recent years by a succession of happy parents.

As a footballer who used to be assailed by anxiety before matches, Per Mertesacker felt the butterflies rising as he made his approach to a pitch with a difference. He spent much of the hour-long drive from Amman, the capital of Jordan, to Zaatari, one of the largest refugee camps on earth, wondering what to expect. Mertesacker is a deep thinker and his mind whirred. “It gives you the goose bumps,” he says. “You are a little bit depressed to go there. You have respect and know it is important for everything to sink in. When you arrive it’s tight, very hot and very dry. And then you go to a football pitch and see actual joy.” The collision of that joy with the hardship and trauma around it strikes him profoundly.

Related: Per Mertesacker: ‘As Arsenal academy manager I will challenge the players’ mindsets’

The Wolves pair discuss their love of cricket, the perfect pork, sausage and steak sandwich and why they were right to leave the Champions League for the Championship

It is Tuesday afternoon in Wolverhampton city centre and Monica Lopes, the owner of Aromas de Portugal, has just welcomed a couple of regular customers into her coffee shop on King Street. Well, regular in one sense but not in another given it is Rúben Neves and Diogo Jota who are sitting in front of a plate of delicious Portuguese custard tarts – pastéis de nata – talking about cricket.

That the pair managed to arrive unnoticed is an achievement in itself. “Last time [Monica] closed the door and we had to go upstairs,” Jota says, smiling. “There’s a pub right outside, so if someone sees us, takes a picture and goes there, he’ll show the picture and then the other people come to ask for an autograph or a photo. So they don’t come for a coffee but to take a picture and of course that’s not the point.”

It is one game, at the beginning of the group stage. There is plenty of time to recover. For Manchester City, a 2-1 home defeat by Lyon is likely to be no more than a blip. Even in an underwhelming display, they had more than twice as many shots as their opponents and, more often than not, would probably have won. There is no reason to panic but that is not to say there are no reasons for concern.

What will be most worrying are recurring problems. Pep Guardiola, we are told, has worked on new patterns of play for this season’s Champions League, different ways of breaking down obdurate teams. City had begun each of the five league games this season in a different shape. The aim appears to be even more flexibility, a greater range of options for matches against the elite. Perhaps it is natural that it will take time for those to be assimilated and given that Guardiola teams have had a tendency to peak early and blow themselves out by March, it is not necessarily the worst sign if they are not quite yet at their best.

When Ipswich Town were a footballing power in the late 1970s and early 80s, Kevin Beattie was at the core of their success. A central defender of unusual poise and class, he was the best player in a team that not only won the FA and Uefa cups but gave the great Liverpool side of that era a run for their money in the league.

Beattie, who has died aged 64 of a heart attack, was hailed by Ipswich fans as the club’s greatest ever player. But a greater measure of his standing was the universal respect he generated among his peers, who recognised not just his great technical prowess but the courage, strength and application that went with it. His ability to win the ball and then distribute it with calm precision drew comparisons with Bobby Moore, and of his generation there were few English footballers more highly rated within the game.

• Matildas striker finishes ninth in Fifa world’s best female player vote
• Veteran rewarded for captaining Brazil to Copa America win

Matildas striker Sam Kerr has been overlooked by Fifa for a second year running, with Brazilian legend Marta picking up the women’s player of the year award in London on Monday night.

An undisputed great of the game, Marta is a previous five-time winner, being voted the world’s best female footballer in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.