Andy Robertson makes up for his mistake by putting Liverpool ahead.
34 min Liverpool have had 76 per cent possession and nine shots to Arsenal’s one.
Continue reading...Lionel Messi is staying at Barcelona. Ten days after he served official notice of his determination to walk out of the Camp Nou, he finally announced that he would not be going after all – not because he had changed his mind,but because he had been left with no choice.
Unwilling to go to court against the club who insisted he had missed the deadline allowing him to rescind his contract and threatened him with legal action if he departed unilaterally, he has been forced to continue.
Continue reading...Ioannis Paradissis says messages from supporters of Manchester United footballer have shocked him
The fallout from Harry’s Maguire’s calamitous holiday in Mykonos has been swift, brutal and revelatory, not least for the Manchester United captain.
Yet for Ioannis Paradissis, the Greek prosecution lawyer at the centre of the case following the footballer’s arrest after a late-night brawl on the isle, the drama is far from over.
Continue reading...Lionel Messi has told Barcelona that he wants to leave the club immediately – and on a free transfer. The Argentinian, who according to RAC1 radio had told the new manager, Ronald Koeman, that he felt “more out than in”, has sent a fax to Barcelona informing them of his desire to go.
Messi’s camp believes that a clause in his contract means he can walk away for no fee. Barcelona, by contrast, insist that he is still bound by a €700m (£629m) buy-out clause. The bombshell dropped on Tuesday evening with the news that Messi had told the club on Tuesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Harry Maguire has been found guilty of aggravated assault, resisting arrest and attempted bribery by a three-member misdemeanours court convening on the Greek island of Syros.
The £190,000-a-week Manchester United and England defender had denied all charges and said he would appeal. Maguire was given a prison sentence of 21 months and 10 days that was suspended on account of the charges being misdemeanours and and the court’s acknowledgement of his clear criminal record. His two co-defendants, who included his footballer brother Joe, were handed suspended 13-month sentences.
Continue reading...Aleksandar Antonov made remarks about footballer believed to be Raheem Sterling in private group chat
With millions of players around the world, the Fantasy Premier League is meant to recreate the competitive excitement and experience of managing a football team in England’s top division.
Instead, it has triggered an off-pitch row after this year’s champion was disqualified for allegedly offensive comments made “in a moment of frustration” about a Premier League player, understood to be the Manchester City striker Raheem Sterling.
Continue reading...The absence of fans did not cause footballers to doubt themselves but did make referees think twice, a study of behind-closed-doors football has found.
According to researchers from Reading University, playing matches without supporters had a minimal effect on the phenomenon of home advantage but it did correspond with officials showing fewer yellow cards to away teams.
Continue reading...By providing access to basic equipment, a not-for-profit is helping normalise women’s involvement in sports at every level
Five years ago, Sarah Dwyer-Shick – a youth football coach from the United States – spent time visiting friends and colleagues scattered across Africa. Along with mosquito repellent and sunscreen, she carried with her a small bundle of sports bras as gifts for young players in rural Namibia.
When she arrived, Dwyer-Shick found that her gifts were coveted by older players, too – including those on the Namibian women’s national team. Many of them, she realised, had never owned a sports bra before.
Continue reading...The footballer is recognised for his activism in the magazine among 40 ‘faces of hope’
Marcus Rashford’s inspirational, policy-changing campaign against child poverty has garnered him accolades aplenty. Now it has also propelled the footballer on to the front cover of British Vogue’s September issue.
The Manchester United striker, who forced a government U-turn on the granting of free food vouchers for the poorest families over the summer, headlines a special edition dedicated to activism.
Continue reading...World Cup host heavily criticised over discrimination and ‘coercive conditions’ experienced by labourers from south Asia and Africa
The United Nations has raised “serious concerns of structural racial discrimination against non-nationals” in World Cup host nation Qatar, in a highly critical report to be presented to the UN human rights council this week.
The report, by the UN’s special rapporteur for racism, Tendayi Achiume, is notable for its uncompromising language, saying a “de facto caste system based on national origin” exists in Qatar, “according to which European, North American, Australian and Arab nationalities systematically enjoy greater human rights protections than South Asian and sub-Saharan African nationalities”.
Continue reading...Jack Charlton, a World Cup winner with England and a former Republic of Ireland manager, has died aged 85. Charlton, the elder brother of Bobby, played 35 times for England as a central defender, including all six matches at the 1966 World Cup.
Related: 'He was larger than life': football world pays tribute to Jack Charlton
Continue reading...Adoption of football jersey by Jair Bolsonaro’s radical right has inspired a campaign for new colours
It is the most recognisable symbol of Brazilian identity: the iconic canary yellow jersey in which footballing giants such as Pelé and Rivaldo have helped the nation win a record five World Cups.
But the world-famous shirt has also become the emblem of President Jair Bolsonaro’s radical right, and a group of sport lovers are now demanding it be abolished and replaced with a less partisan kit.
Continue reading...NFL players kneeling in the US and Premier League stars speaking out in the UK is nothing new: sportsmen and women have always been at the forefront of the fight for civil rights
We may never know why Jake Hepple, a now unemployed welder from Burnley, thought it was a good idea to hire a plane and have it trail a banner reading “White Lives Matter Burnley” across the skies over Manchester’s Etihad Stadium. What we are assured is that Hepple – who has been pictured with his arm wrapped round the shoulder of the English Defence League’s former leader Tommy Robinson, and whose girlfriend was sacked from her job last week, accused of posting racist material on social media (her mother has said her daughter did not write the posts) – was not motivated by any form of racism. After all, he told reporters: “I’ve got lots of black and Asian friends.”
The phrase “white lives matter” is, of course, an attack on the phrase “black lives matter” and the movement that coalesced around it. But while one is a plea for equality, the other, along with the phrase “all lives matter”, was created by those who engage in the pantomime of pretending that anyone is suggesting only black lives matter. These people belong to the same demographic as those who think structural racism doesn’t exist, or that black people should “get over” slavery. And to that demographic, top-flight football’s support of Black Lives Matter really rankles.
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NBA superstar LeBron James, the 35-year-old star of the Los Angeles Lakers who obtained a 2% stake in Fenway Sports Group back in 2011, was among the first to congratulate Liverpool on today’s long-awaited Premier League title.
PREMIER LEAGUE CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET’S GO @LFC #YNWA♥️
The sun is just going down in New York but Reds throughout the city are raging on into the night. Typically the center of the party would be the 11th Street Pub in the East Village, which is the headquarters of the Liverpool FC Supporter’s Club of NYC, in addition to the six other bars across the city LFCNY works with to accommodate overflow crowd. But the coronavirus pandemic mostly left the group’s 750-strong membership, which Wells estimates are half Americans and half expats, watching today’s match separately while keeping in touch via Zoom and WhatsApp.
“Due to Covid most people watched at home, but a few of our bars with outdoor space were able to host small crowds,” LFCNY president Justin Wells tells the Guardian. “We’re planning some sort of party at 11th Street when it’s safe.”
Champions. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
Continue reading...Australia and New Zealand were celebrating on Friday as the nations awoke to the news that their joint bid had won the race to host the 2023 Women’s World Cup, with the success being hailed as a historic moment for women’s sport in the region.
“We did it. We freakin’ did it,” said Sam Kerr, the Matildas captain whose image had been projected onto Sydney’s Opera House in the buildup to the announcement in the small hours of Friday morning.
Continue reading...Virgil van Dijk and Sari van Veenendaal hit out at pundit and say ‘enough is enough’
The captains of the Dutch men’s, women’s and youth national football teams are boycotting a leading sports TV programme over the racist comments of a longstanding pundit, warning: “Enough is enough.”
The Liverpool centre-back Virgil van Dijk, and the Atlético Madrid goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal have led the way after years of the behaviour of Johan Derksen on the Veronica Inside show being explained away as straight-talking humour.
Continue reading...Hundreds of people bade farewell to a 16-year-old Mexican-American boy who was shot dead by police in southern Mexico. Alexander Martínez was laid to rest in a funeral that reflected his passion for football – friends brought his coffin to a local football pitch so that he could 'score' a final goal.
Martínez was shot in the head by police on Tuesday night and another teenager was also wounded in the incident and later died in hospital. The case, which is still under investigation, has sparked outrage in Mexico with protests planned in Acatlán de Pérez Figueroa, Martínez's home town
Continue reading...Research appears to back up stories of people who believe they got coronavirus at events UK government allowed to go ahead
The last major football match played in England before all sport was suspended because of the coronavirus crisis was the European Champions League showpiece between Liverpool and Atletico Madrid. It was a thrilling contest that transfixed 54,000 people under the floodlights of Anfield.
But now that match, along with many other mass events that the government allowed to go ahead as the pandemic spread in March, is coming under renewed scrutiny as evidence grows of the lethal danger to which people were exposed. They include rugby matches, horse races, musical concerts and dog shows attended, in total, by hundreds of thousands of Britons.
Continue reading...“The British sporting recovery has begun,” declared the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, as he announced that professional sport in England can resume from Monday, paving the way for the first domestic live action in almost three months.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street press briefing, Dowden said the government had settled on a set of strict conditions that must be followed for sports to be allowed to return behind closed doors. The rules form stage three of the process of bringing sport back from the coronavirus lockdown. Stage two, which allowed for close-contact training for elite athletes, was published last Monday.
Continue reading...The controversial £300m Saudi Arabia-funded takeover of Newcastle United appears to be in serious doubt after the World Trade Organisation ruled that the country is behind a pirate satellite TV and streaming service that offers illegal access to sporting events, the Guardian can reveal.
While the WTO’s 130-page final report will not be published until mid-June, it is understood that the independent ruling firmly establishes that the Saudi government is behind beoutQ. It can also be revealed that the Premier League, which received the WTO report this month, made submissions against Saudi Arabia as part of the legal process.
Previously Fifa, Uefa, the Premier League, La Liga and others have tried to take legal action against beoutQ in Saudi Arabia for illegally streaming matches, but nine local legal firms declined to take on the copyright case. Subsequently a case against Saudi Arabia was taken to the WTO, the highest judicial body that could rule on the matter. It has now issued its ruling – finding that Saudi Arabia is in breach of international law as a result of beoutQ.
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