45 h. ago Football Daily | One man’s odyssey and a Hollywood striker get Wales fired up for Kazakhstan

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Considering Cymru head coach Craig Bellamy is so patriotic that he lives in a house constructed entirely of Fragrant Spring daffodil bulbs, thinks the long-running BBC soap opera Pobol y Cwm is a documentary and has Dafydd Iwan’s stirring anthem Yma o Hyd as his ringtone, it was no surprise he was impressed by the journey undertaken by Wales fan John McAllister to get to his nation’s World Cup qualifier in Kazakhstan. Currently sitting second in Group J, a point behind North Macedonia but with Belgium three points further back with two games in hand, Wednesday afternoon’s match in Astana is a fairly must-win one for Wales. Anything less than three points would prove a crushing disappointment for McAllister, who set off for the Kazakh capital from Barry five weeks ago and has taken in 11 football matches, no end of foreign boozers, a heavy metal gig and some Irish stranger’s stag do as he travelled around 5,000 kilometres east across...

Events

53 h. ago Guéhi’s cancelled Liverpool move puts heat on Palace to keep Glasner happy | Ed Aarons

Defender should still end up at Anfield despite deadline drama, but the manager’s hardline stance may worry the club board“Marc and me, we have the same fate,” Oliver Glasner said with a smile. It was the eve of Crystal Palace’s meeting with Liverpool in the Community Shield and – not for the last time over the next few weeks – the unavoidable question of his captain’s future had just been broached.Marc Guéhi had entered the final year of his contract at Palace and everyone knew a swift resolution was needed. “Of course, everybody wants Marc to sign a new contract,” said Glasner, who had broken off negotiations about extending his own deal after leading Palace to their first major trophy by winning the FA Cup a few weeks earlier. “It will be his decision. We never know what will happen in this sometimes crazy transfer market.” Continue reading...

Society

68 h. ago Football Daily | Are Strasbourg a sister club to Chelsea or just their storage facility?

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Strasbourg, official seat of the European parliament, the jewel of the Alsace region on the west bank of the Rhine. Important historically, geographically and politically. One of the city’s most famous sons, Arsène Wenger, as a boy, was so embedded that his first language was Low Alemannic German, not French. To use a word Wenger brought to the English football vernacular – footballistically – Strasbourg was never too much of a hub. The club reformed after liquidation as recently as 2011, having won just one French title back in 1979 when Wenger was a fringe player already embedded in coaching. In defence was the future France coach Raymond Domenech, the keen astrologist in charge when a very Gallic bust-up ravaged Les Bleus at the 2010 World Cup.We’re all captivated by the journey of Wrexham. It’s been amazing for Welsh football and hopefully now in a number of years we’ll see young players coming through There isn’t similarities t...

Sport

5 d. ago Slot’s revamped Liverpool are vulnerable in a way that they weren’t last season | Jonathan Wilson

Injury-hit Arsenal face an ill-at-ease champions struggling to fit the new cogs in their hitherto well-oiled machineThe mechanisms of a football team are delicate. You win the league then add nearly £300m of talent and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win it again, doesn’t necessarily make you better, even if you’re not doing something as obviously likely to cause imbalance as adding Kylian Mbappé to a Real Madrid team already stacked with left-sided attackers.Liverpool go into Sunday’s home game against Arsenal having won two out of two in the Premier League and scored a healthy seven goals. But those aren’t the statistics that tell the whole story. If you include the Community Shield, Liverpool have conceded two goals in each of their three games so far. The defensive problems are obvious and the return of Ryan Gravenberch at Newcastle on Monday did not magically solve them. Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Manchester United v Burnley, Tottenham v Bournemouth: Premier League, EFL and more – live

Updates from this afternoon’s matchesScores | Tables | Read Football Daily | Mail EmilliaSunderland starting lineup: Roefs, Hume, Mukiele, Alderete, Mandava, Diarra, Xhaka, Sadiki, Talbi, Mayenda, Le Fee.Brentford starting lineup: Kelleher, Kayode, Collins, Van den Berg, Lewis-Potter, Yarmolyuk, Henderson, Ouattara, Damsgaard, Schade, Thiago. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago Solskjær, Mourinho and a warning for Amorim after Manchester United | Football Daily

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!The modern football manager might wear classic Reeboks, or knackered Converse, or trackie bottoms tucked in socks but, to continue paraphrasing the Arctic Monkeys song, there ain’t no romance in our game no more. Nothing endures. The average managerial tenure tends to last between 18 months and two years. For Ole Gunnar Solskjær at Besiktas, it was a little more than seven months; José Mourinho got 14 at Fenerbahce. And so the pair, intrinsically linked by their sequential spells at Manchester United, find themselves on similar paths again, their sackings from Turkish nearly-clubs coming within hours of each other this week. Both have been caught in the meat grinder of Uefa’s endless European qualifiers. Solskjær’s brave Besiktas boys were downed by Ineos-owned Lausanne in the Tin Pot playoffs on Thursday night. A day earlier, Mourinho’s men were ousted by Benfica in the Bigger Cup equivalent.I used this word unintentionally, just t...

Events

7 d. ago Manchester United in a funk after coastal sojourn to Grimsby turns Super Bad | Football Daily

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Fifty-five years have passed since James Brown, singer, songwriter and minister of new super-heavy funk, released a song about people who “like a dull knife [that] just ain’t cutting”, were “talking loud and saying nothing”. Manchester United would probably have preferred to prompt thoughts of Brown’s I Feel Good but they are where they are – and if they ever do shake their money-makers they could probably then benefit from dropping a few of them. Sometimes we don’t get to choose which 70s deep funk classic we unwittingly call to mind, and Ruben Amorim left no doubt when after Wednesday night’s ineffably miserable defeat by Grimsby he opined about feeling “my players spoke really loud today At half-time I told them that they were speaking really loud to me. I understand what you are doing, what I am seeing.” Like a dull knife, they just weren’t cutting.Physically, because they’re small, they look like wee boys. They’re clearly not w...

Sport

8 d. ago Football Daily | Pafos FC and Kairat Almaty? The Champions League gets a hipster makeover

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!The joy of a Bigger Cup European tour is what makes a season for the fans – the trinket on offer in Budapest is merely a bonus. Six Premier League sides will get to test themselves against the best over the coming months and there are a few new faces in the competition and some intriguing passport stamps to collect. Who wouldn’t want to travel to the Cypriot city of Paphos in September to watch their beloved club play David Luiz’s Pafos FC? The temperature reaches 29C and there is no chance of rain. There are miles and miles of beaches to enjoy with a Keo in hand. If anything, the prospect of a 90-minute match is a bit of a distraction. The even better news is there are flights from London, Manchester and Newcastle.I’m someone who is passionate and will fight ever[y] time I step on the pitch. But I need to set a better example and you fans know how much I love you and this club” – West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen takes to InstaChat to expain...

Sport

1 week ago Football Daily | Cole Palmer v French vineyard is football’s latest random copyright battle

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Victoria Beckham taking on and losing against Peterborough United in a battle over the nickname “Posh”. Cristiano Ronaldo trademarking the combination of his initials and shirt number, “CR7”, to boost his brand. Kylian Mbappé nabbing the rights to his iconic crossed-arms goal celebration when it almost certainly would have been far more lucrative to seize ownership of that ubiquitously annoying “cry more” gif so beloved of dullards on several Social Media Disgraces. In a football business already swamped with cash and opportunists eager to get their mitts on as much of it as they can, it ought to come as no surprise that the very top players, clubs and Peterborough try to maximise their income by making their personal “brands” off limits to potential counterfeiters, bootleggers and other ne’er-do-wells.I don’t want any players who don’t want to come to the club. If they don’t want to come here and wear this fantastic badge, we don’t...

Events

2 w. ago Eze has possible farewell goal ruled out as Crystal Palace hold Chelsea to draw

If there was a sense of the new world champions being dragged back down to earth on a sweltering afternoon at Stamford Bridge, it should not be forgotten that any side as short of match sharpness as Chelsea would not have relished trying to find a way past opponents who seem to like nothing more than to bloody the noses of the elite.Perhaps this will be read as two dropped points for Enzo Maresca’s side as they look to build on a triumphant summer in the US by mounting a title challenge. Anyone paying attention, though, will know there is nothing easy about trying to find a way through a team coached by Oliver Glasner. Crystal Palace, after all, are riding high after building on winning the FA Cup by beating Liverpool in the Community Shield and the pleasing thing for Maresca will be that his players grew into the contest as it wore on, even if the overall impression was that all the riches earned from Fifa’s expanded Club World Cup has left Chelsea with a physical price to pay. Con...

Politics

2 w. ago Chelsea vs Crystal Palace Premier League prediction, odds and betting offer

Chelsea rode a turbulent season to fourth place as Crystal Palace, fresh from FA Cup and Community Shield wins, look to push on from 12th

Politics

2 w. ago Football Daily | A new Premier League season rolls off the assembly line with subplots galore

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Will Liverpool canter to another title? Have Manchester City rediscovered their mojo? Have Arsenal finally found the missing pieces of the jigsaw? Will Chelsea’s midsummer Copa Gianni endeavours catch up with them? Can any or all of the three promoted sides make a decent fist of not going straight back down this time? Will Fulham finish 11th or 12th? How adverse an effect will being the father of twins going through the terrible twos have on the form of Jarrod Bowen? Some early clues to the answers of these and many other questions will be provided this weekend as the latest beautifully packaged model of the Premier League rolls off the assembly line, kicking off with tonight’s ding-dong between Liverpool and what’s left of a Bournemouth carcass that has been feasted upon by a wake of vultures during the transfer window. A club so resilient and resourceful that at one point they exhibited the massed ranks of their lame and halt Davi...

Politics

2 w. ago Crystal Palace: Oliver Glasner issues Marc Guehi and Eberechi Eze update amid Liverpool and Tottenham links

FA Cup winners looking to kick season off with a win after Community Shield triumph

Politics

3 w. ago Premier League: 10 things to look out for on the opening weekend

Another new era at Tottenham, De Cuyper can shine for Brighton and Aston Villa remind us this is a businessA visit to an expectant Anfield, where Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitiké will be out to impress on their Premier League debuts, represents a daunting start for a Bournemouth team that have lost three-quarters of last season’s backline to the pulling power of Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool this summer. Defensive issues are not exclusive to Andoni Iraola before the Premier League opener, however. Arne Slot voiced concern over the champions’ pre-season vulnerability before and after the Community Shield against Crystal Palace, when the absence of Ryan Gravenberch for family reasons was keenly felt. “Three times we lost the ball very simple in our midfield and three times they could counterattack us,” reflected the Liverpool head coach. Gravenberch will be missing again on Friday due to suspension but Slot expects the team with the second-best defensive record in the P...

Politics

3 w. ago Inside Crystal Palace's new recruitment team as transfer spending stalls for Eagles

The FA Cup and Community Shield winners are into a new era of recruitment, but it has been slow going

Politics

3 w. ago Football Daily | Wayne Rooney, Tom Brady and a serving of ultra

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!Today’s Football Daily would like to start with the topical events of 15 February 1983. That was the day Manchester United outplayed and outviolenced Arsenal in the first leg of their Milk Cup semi-final at Highbury. United won 4-2; they were 4-0 up after 80 minutes before taking their foot off Arsenal’s throat, and shinbone, and head. “Perhaps we’ve been concentrating too much on passing and technique,” lamented Don Howe, Arsenal’s head coach and assistant to the manager, Terry Neill. “Against United we went out to strike the ball about instead of putting some meat into the game.” In 1980s English football, there was no place for veganism. Things have changed since the days when ABH was a bookable offence, and only then after the first 10 minutes, but English football still has a pretty noxious meat footprint. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Arne Slot claims Liverpool hurt by ‘honesty’ after ‘weird’ referee decision in Community Shield

The Reds were left upset at Wembley Stadium with Florian Wirtz not awarded a foul after staying on his feet following contact, with Slot adamant his side are too ‘honest’

Politics

3 w. ago Hugo Ekitike 'confronted manager behind the scenes' in incident that speaks volumes

Hugo Ekitike made an instant impact for Liverpool in the Community Shield, but those that have worked with the striker know that his performance came from the French striker's unwavering self-belief

Politics

3 w. ago Football Daily | Ref Cams: behold the era of football’s electronic all

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!When Football Daily were a lad and everything about football was much better, top-flight referees were able to go about their business unencumbered by nothing more hi-tech and new-fangled than a wrist-watch, a coin, a whistle, red and yellow cards, and a stubby little pencil they could’ve half-inched from the betting shop. Fast forward several decades and while the standard of officiating remains much the same, advances in the fields of both technology and vanishing foam dictate that Premier League refs are now forced to include spray cans, headsets and now body cameras on the list of items to be ticked off their pre-match checklists before they can lead teams out on to the pitch.As an Atlético member of 13 years standing, can I throw a few more comments into the mix of La Liga’s anti-fan policies (yesterday’s Football Daily)? Want to book flights and accommodation to Spain to catch a game? Oh wait, you won’t know the date or even t...

Politics

3 w. ago Six bombshells from explosive Rashford podcast – Man Utd failure, Klopp and 'frustration'

Marcus Rashford pulled no punches during his appearance on The Rest is Football podcast - and Daily Star Sport has a look at the six biggest bombshells

Events