3 d. ago Club World Cup $1bn prize explained, how FIFA got cash and why it'll change game forever

EXCLUSIVE: The Daily Star has spoken with in-house bussiness of football expert DAVE POWELL to get to the bottom of how so much money is up for grabs for teams in the final, despite limited viewership

Economics

5 d. ago Football Daily | Manchester United are back but the revolution will not be televised

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Like a group of lads nervously assembling at an airport pub before jetting off on yet another bonfire of a stag do, Manchester United’s first-team players – well, at least some of them – this week shuffled back into whatever the training ground is called these days, with a few even attempting what was known in the 1990s and the 2000s at Carrington as a smile! New signings Matheus Cunha and teenage left-back Diego León were present and accounted for, while Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho were not, but there was plenty of performative back slapping and canteen handshakes in front of the club’s in-house Social Media Disgrace cameras, which rather fortunately, are going to be the only behind-closed-doors cameras present for United’s 2025-26 season.I didn’t feel respected or anything and I said to myself: ‘I need to put myself into places where I’ll be recognised for doing well.’ I think a lot of English players, they don’t realis...

Sport

6 d. ago Football Daily | Two seasons in a day: the Champions League and Club World Cup overlap

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Football Daily would prefer not to have to think about Copa Gianni at all but we have a certain professional obligation to do so and have never knowingly been found shirking in the face of our responsibilities. To keep things simple, we prefer to view the tournament as a stand-alone competition that’s taking place between the end of the last season and the beginning of the next one, but the fact that it’s being contested by clubs instead of countries leaves plenty of room for debate. Watching Kingsley Coman “sprint” on to a through-ball from Harry Kane during Bayern Munich’s defeat by PSG as if he was running in knee-deep wet cement, we were presented with the sight of a player in next season’s kit who was quite clearly exhausted by the exertions of the one that may or may not have ended before the tournament in which he was playing started. Does the goal he didn’t score go down in the official xG column of last season, next season,...

Sport

9 d. ago Football Daily | Infantino awaits his ‘big bang’ as Club World Cup refuses to slide away

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Like Dr John Hammond and his scientists in Jurassic Park, Gianni Infantino and his fawning Fifa lickspittles have spent recent years so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should. The upshot is that a preposterously lucrative tournament described by its creator as “a big bang” has been crowbarred into an already jam-packed calendar. And the largesse of its in-no-way unethically sourced prize-money for those participating now threatens to destroy several already under-threat footballing ecosystems around the world.I want to talk about my mate. My buddy. The bloke I loved and will miss like crazy. I could talk about him as a player for hours, but none of that feels like it matters right now. It’s the man. The person. He was such a good guy. The best. So genuine. Just normal and real. Full of love for the people he cared about. Full of fun. He was the most British foreign player I’ve ever ...

Sport

2 w. ago Football Daily | The weird, wonderful and woeful from a stormy Club World Cup

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Have you ever had that dream where you’re playing for your favourite team, thrown on in a desperate bid to find a goal? And the game is against a side you’ve never heard of, part of some arcane tournament that’s suddenly of vital importance? Oh, and it’s being played in your parents’ back garden? Just us? Well, that’s the closest parallel we could think up for Copa Gianni, where the group stages have served up the weird, wonderful and woeful in equal measure. If you haven’t been paying attention, here are some “highlights” so far.It helped playing with my brothers all the time I went to Arsenal and trained at the boys’ academy. It took a few sessions because at first they were like: ‘There’s a girl with us.’ But when they got to realise what I could do, they accepted me” – England’s Lauren James gets her chat on with Donald McRae in this in-depth interview. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Football Daily | Suárez defies age and dodgy knees to set up PSG clash dripping in narrative

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!In December 2023, shortly before signing for Grêmio, Luis Suárez warned that his footballing days were numbered. His right knee had become so painful, following a Covid-affected rehabilitation from surgery in 2020, that he could barely walk. “In my last stage of recovery, the pandemic came and I had to do exercises on my own and I couldn’t finish stretching my knee,” he told Uruguayan media. “On the inside I have cartilage wear and that hits the bone. The days before each game I take three pills and hours before playing I get an injection. If not, I can’t play. Hence the limp. I have to think that in maybe five years I won’t be able to play five-a-side football with my friends. The truth is that the first steps in the morning are very painful. Anyone who sees me thinks that it is impossible for me to play a game. My son asks me to play with him and I can’t.”It is almost impossible to train or to make a session because of the weather...

Politics

2 w. ago Football Daily | Bellinghams do battle and subs stay indoors as Club World Cup warms up

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Following the second weekend of Copa Gianni, Fifa were eager to flag up a number of fraternal firsts. In scoring for Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid, Jude and Jobe Bellingham became the first brothers in history to score in the same tournament – “We’re 1-1 now,” honked Jude after his goal – while Francesco Pio Esposito became the first player to replace his brother when he came on for his Inter debut in place of elder sibling Sebastiano in the win over Urawa Red Diamonds. Meanwhile in Atlanta, the United Arab Emirates vice president and Manchester City chief suit, Sheikh Mansour, emerged with family bragging rights after his club’s reserve team trampled Al Ain, who are presided over by his older brother Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, into the dirt.Coleen is a princess and her parents are queen and king, and Wayne is a warrior. They get together, they split up, she’s broken-hearted and he goes on a quest to find the ring and r...

Events

3 w. ago I know judging other parents is wrong. But when it comes to giving kids smartphones, I'm a lost cause | Polly Hudson

From feeding to bedtimes, toys to piercings, from the day your child is born, you’re monitored by other parents. And I’m as complicit as anyone else Not all heroes wear capes; some have a box in their bedroom instead. Dragons’ Den’s Sara Davies says she confiscates her kids’ friends’ phones when they come round, so instead of sitting glued to their devices, they talk to each other and play together.“I have a box at the front door they put their phones and iPads in the box and it stays in my bedroom,” she told the Daily Mail. “No one complains. They’re outside playing football, they merge so much better – and they communicate.” Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Football Daily | Will Spain serve up a helping of pain for England’s misfiring youngsters?

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Venganza is on the cards in Trnava on Saturday night when England take on Spain at the European Under-21 Championship quarter-finals. There are constant reminders on the Channel 4 coverage in the UK that “we” are the holders, despite the fact there are only a couple of remaining members from the squad that defeated La Rojita in the final in Batumi two years ago. It’s a night that Oliver Skipp will never forget. There is another stark difference between then and now: England were properly decent at that point. This current crop have stumbled their way into the last eight like a weary boozer, six pints deep, picking his way through an All Bar One terrace on a hot day.The American dream. We guess the cowboy won ” – Botafogo remind PSG chief suit, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, of the insult he hurled at their owner John Textor, also chief suit at Lyon, after the Brazilian side’s shock 1-0 Copa Gianni victory over the Bigger Cup champions.Re: the ...

Sport

3 w. ago Liverpool agree £40m Kerkez deal, Wirtz has medical, WSL expansion approved: football – live

Men’s transfer interactive | Women’s transfer interactiveToday’s Rumour Mill | Football Daily | And mail WillThat’s my stint over. We now go live to Will Unwin’s garden where he’ll be taking this blog to even greater levels.Rumour Mill: Plenty of hot gossip today and Liverpool are at the centre of a fair chunk of it. Could Crystal Palace’s Marc Guéhi be the one to bolster the Reds’ centre-back options? And which Premier League player could be joining Kevin De Bruyne at Napoli? Continue reading...

Economics

3 w. ago Liverpool agree £40m Kerkez deal, Wirtz having medical, Club World Cup latest: football news – live

Men’s transfer interactive | Women’s transfer interactiveToday’s Rumour Mill | Football Daily | And mail WillThat’s my stint over. We now go live to Will Unwin’s garden where he’ll be taking this blog to even greater levels.Rumour Mill: Plenty of hot gossip today and Liverpool are at the centre of a fair chunk of it. Could Crystal Palace’s Marc Guéhi be the one to bolster the Reds’ centre-back options? And which Premier League player could be joining Kevin De Bruyne at Napoli? Continue reading...

Economics

3 w. ago Wirtz having Liverpool medical, Club World Cup latest and more: football news – live

Men’s transfer interactive | Women’s transfer interactiveToday’s Rumour Mill | Football Daily | And mail DavidClub World Cup: Back to the action in the United States and a couple of stories featuring two high-profile Englishmen: Cole Palmer and Harry Kane.Florian Wirtz latest: The German attacker flew into the UK last night (Manchester rather than Liverpool; just logistics rather then a dramatic change of heart) and has already undergone and successfully completed the first part of his medical in Liverpool. Continue reading...

Society

3 w. ago Football Daily | Trump, Juventus and thinly veiled contempt in the Oval Office

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!While Football Daily didn’t get where it is today by performatively flip-flopping over various issues depending on which way the prevailing political wind is blowing, it would be fair to say Football Daily did get where it is today by performatively flip-flopping over various issues depending on which way the prevailing political wind is blowing. Like Groucho Marx, the world’s most daily football email has its principles and if you don’t like them well, we have other ones. Those familiar with its work will be aware that Fifa is no different, but has still come as something of a surprise that having for so long publicly (if a little hollowly) purported to be against injustice of any kind, world football’s governing body abandoned its planned campaigns against racism and discrimination across the opening three days of the Copa Gianni being staged in the USA USA USA. Following a backlash, some pithy slogans were rolled out on Wednesday...

Politics

3 w. ago Football Daily | Premier League fixtures give Burnley the ultimate test in how to park a bus

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Continue reading...

Politics