Celtic are reportedly keen to lure Everton manager David Moyes back to Glasgow, according to journalist Alan Nixon.

The Scottish champions are said to have placed the 63-year-old on their radar as they prepare for a potential leadership transition at Parkhead.

While Martin O’Neill’s return to the Celtic dugout provided an experienced, steadying hand, the 74-year-old was never viewed as a long-term managerial fix. O’Neill’s second stint in Glasgow has always lacked long-term viability, and with the veteran coach acknowledging that a more permanent appointment is required, the Hoops board are actively assessing their succession plan.

David Moyes' final season at Everton?

Moyes has reportedly emerged as a candidate largely due to the sudden change of circumstances on Merseyside.

Toffees owners The Friedkin Group have put Everton up for sale, seeking a full withdrawal less than two years after completing their takeover.

Speaking last week, Moyes was candid about his frustration with the American consortium's retreat.

"Yeah, I was surprised, they only came in a year and a half ago," Moyes said. "Most owners come in for a lot longer than that.

"We were all expecting them to be here for 20 to 30 years, however long it may be. But maybe the way things worked out over the transfer window, I probably had seen through it a little bit before that."

Having already endured a punishing summer transfer period in which the Toffees finished the window with the Premier League's leanest squad, selling off key players late in the day, the prospect of navigating a protracted takeover battle holds little appeal at this stage of Moyes' career.

Boardroom churn theoretically makes a return to Glasgow more enticing. Moyes has deep roots at Celtic Park, having come through the club's ranks as a young defender between 1980 and 1983, earning a Scottish Premier Division winner's medal under Billy McNeill. Despite over two decades managing at the top level in England, Moyes has never managed a club in his native Scotland.

Celtic could provide Moyes with a realistic chance of winning consistent silverware during his twilight managerial days.

While a successful season on Merseyside currently amounts to mid-table stability, Celtic guarantee title challenges, cup runs and European football.

At 63, stepping away from Premier League firefighting to lift trophies at his boyhood club might prove an offer impossible to refuse.

European nights under the floodlights have a habit of hitting harder than your usual run-of-the-mill domestic encounter.

For former Tottenham defender Toby Alderweireld, the 2019 Champions League semi-final against his old side Ajax certainly falls under that category.

Spurs arrived in Amsterdam on the back of a 1-0 defeat in the first leg and soon found themselves with a mountain to climb after shipping in another two goals before half-time.

Alderweireld on Spurs’ Ajax comeback

Goals from Donny van Beek and Matthijs de Ligt meant that Spurs were staring down the barrel going into the final quarter of the tie, and even Alderweireld doubted that this would be Tottenham’s night.

“We lost the first leg of the semi-final 1-0 at home, then were 2-0 down at half-time in Amsterdam,” he recalls to FourFourTwo.

“We needed to score three, and we weren’t playing well – I thought ‘I want to go home, this is not going to happen’.”

Tottenham came out of the half-time period needing an immediate response, with boss Mauricio Pochettino turning to striker Fernando Llorente as Spurs changed their approach, swapping intricate football for a more bruising style of play.

“Then Fernando Llorente came on and we played some power football with long balls, because we were a physically strong team,” says Alderweireld. This tactical shift put Spurs on the front foot and gave them a puncher’s chance of forcing a remarkable comeback.

“Lucas Moura scored the first, and the second,” Alderweireld adds. That left Spurs with 30 minutes to find a third, which would give them the advantage on away goals.

Time was almost up when Moura completed his hat-trick to vault Spurs into their first-ever Champions League final and complete one of the greatest comebacks in the competition’s history.

“When he got the third in the last minute, it was unbelievable,” the Belgian adds before admitting that the victory was somewhat bittersweet, given the nature of the opponents.

“To kill the dream of my former club was a strange feeling,” he admits. “They gave me my education and made me a pro, so I’ll always be grateful.

“But football is like that, and I was happy – I was going to a Champions League final.”

Alderweireld was speaking in association with BOYLE Sports 2 Goals Ahead

During his quarter-of-a-century career as a footballer, Tony Adams won a string of trophies, capained his country and has even seen himself immortalised with a statue outside of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.

After hanging up his boots in 2002, the former centre-back saw his future as a manager, but he quickly discovered that success on the pitch does not necessarily translate to success off it.

One man who was quick to point this out to Adams was Jose Mourinho, whose managerial success came after he spent years studying the profession, with the Portuguese handing the former Gunners skipper a blunt assessment that has remained with him to this day.

Adams on Mourinho’s managerial lessons

Mourinho’s message to Adams was a simple one: being a world-class footballer does not automatically make you a world-class coach.

“He always called me Simon,” Adams somewhat bizarrely recalls to FourFourTwo. “He said ‘Simon, you’ve been a footballer for 25 years, I’ve been studying for 25 years, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do’.

“I thought ‘Yeah, he’s right’. I had to learn coaching, I had to learn management.”

Adams would soon take this advice on board when it came to his managerial career. While most would look at a manager’s CV and remember the clubs, Adams would rather remember the lessons.

“Holland, Spain, China, Azerbaijan – they all taught me something,” he continues before recalling what went down during his spell in charge of Azerbaijan Premier League side Gabala.

“In Azerbaijan, the owner said to me, ‘I want the best academy in Azerbaijan, I want the best facilities in the former Soviet Union, if we qualify for Europe that’ll be unbelievable’. I said ‘Well, you need an international airport’.”

While the owner laughed at this suggestion, Adams’ wider vision would soon be realised.

“He laughed too, but he built one. We laid seven top-grade grass pitches, the very best facilities.

“We brought Dutch coaches over because, for me, they were the best youth developers in Europe. We wanted to build something that would still be there years later – 85 per cent of the Azerbaijan national team now come through that academy.”

For Adams, that early lesson from Mourinho hit home, as he would quickly realise that being a great footballer was only the beginning of the journey to becoming a coach.

Adams’ book 1996: Reflections On The Year That Changed My Life is available now

During his 17 year playing career, Michael Owen broke a litany of records, lifted a host of major trophies and was crowned as the Ballon d’Or winner in 2001.

But now, more than a decade after hanging up his boots, the former Liverpool and England striker gets his kicks out of another sporting pursuit.

Owen’s Manor House Stables is a sprawling 170-acre racing operation, south of Chester, where he houses almost 150 racehorses. Among the famous owners are former England team-mates and Premier League stars, but for Owen, the real fascination lies in the horses themselves.

Owen on his Manor House Stables

“I could name them all – every owner, every mother and father, every racing record,” he tells FourFourTwo during a guided tour of the site. “I’m a geek.”

The horse in the swimming pool, he informs us, is called Box To Box – so named because it’s owned by Owen’s former BT Sport colleagues Steve McManaman, Paul Scholes, Owen Hargreaves and Andy Townsend. Not only did they work as pundits on the box, but they were also largely box-to-box midfielders. “He’s seven years old and he’s won six races,” Owen says of the animal.

The former Real Madrid man also shows us horses owned by Sir Alex Ferguson, Anthony Gordon and James Milner. “He’s the luckiest owner,” Owen jokes of the latter. “Every horse he buys turns into a superstar, and sells for a lot of money. He’s had six horses here – I think the most he’s paid for one is about £80,000, and the least he’s sold one for is £360,000.”

In a nod to his highest individual honour, another of Owen’s horses is called Balon d’Or, with Owen reserving that name for a thoroughbred with particular potential, although self-deprecatingly admits that, yes, he’s since realised he spelt the name wrong.

Owen believes he has put around £13million into the facility since he purchased the land at the age of 23 when he was still terrorising defences in a Liverpool shirt. Even then, he knew his love for horse racing was so strong that he knew what he wanted to do once his playing days were over.

What was originally a farm was converted into stables, which have grown and grown ever since, and are now among the best in the country. Owen employs around 50 staff, many of whom work here every day and train the horses – we see some of them being taken for a gallop by riders on an all-weather track.

He doesn’t actually own most of the animals, though – the business model sees him purchase them at auctions (he estimates he’ll spend £2m to £3m to buy around 40 in the next few weeks), then sell to people who come in as owners and pay a monthly training fee. Darts duo Luke Littler and Stephen Bunting also have a horse here called Bunting Mental, but not every owner is from the sporting world.

The costs of operating the facility are not small – Owen has made huge progress over the past two decades, but needs additional outside investment to achieve his ambitions of kicking on even further and becoming one of the most successful stables in the country.

With that in mind, as well as welcoming FourFourTwo, he recently allowed the cameras in for a six-part Amazon Prime Video documentary called Meet The Owens, made by the Whisper production company that was co-founded by ex-Formula 1 racer David Coulthard.

For Owen, his post-football life is every bit as ambitious as his playing career.

All six episodes of Meet the Owens are available now to stream on Amazon Prime Video

Dimitar Berbatov seemed to be running harmlessly towards the Old Trafford corner flag, when he unleashed the skill he’d been working on in his living room at home.

Sprinting to stop Anderson’s pass going out for a goal kick, Berbatov stopped the ball with his right foot, spun 180 degrees, then flicked it past James Collins, all in a split second. The West Ham defender didn’t know what had just happened, but Berbatov was suddenly sauntering into the penalty area unattended, expertly squaring for Cristiano Ronaldo to tap home.

The Bulgarian had been a Manchester United player for just a month – already he’d delivered a moment that fans would remember, performing his spin on near enough the same blade of grass where Fernando Redondo had backheeled his way past Henning Berg for a famous Real Madrid goal eight years earlier.

Berbatov’s piece of skill became the subject for a song, Berbatov Spin by Broke Boy Fly – one of at least three tracks that have been written about him, including another by Thessaloniki rapper Richi, after the striker spent time in the city playing for PAOK towards the end of his career.

His spin assist was typical of the style and swagger he displayed throughout a career that took him from Blagoevgrad, his home town at the foot of the Rila mountains, and onwards to CSKA Sofia, Bayer Leverkusen and Spurs, before his 2008 move to Manchester, where he also scored a hat-trick against Liverpool and five in one game against Blackburn. In total, he found the net 329 times during his career.

Previously, the two-time Premier League winner has spoken of how his languid style of play was based on kung fu. “You have someone who’s going crazy, and someone doing slow movements – the one with the correct movements destroys the other guy,” he once explained.

Like a true rock’n’roll footballer, Berbatov might have sometimes given off the vibe that he didn’t really care, but that was always an act – today, chatting to FFT, he reveals it was an act that was actually inspired by a character in a little-known Italian spaghetti western movie.

Now 45, having retired in 2019, he’s European brand ambassador for LiveScore and LiveScore Bet, and speaking to us after taking his two daughters on the slightly less rock’n’roll school run in his homeland. In this interview, in keeping with the theme of this issue of the magazine, Berbatov is ready to intelligently articulate what it was like to be a much-loved maverick, and what was really going on underneath that nonchalant facade.

Looking back at your career, how would you describe your style of play?

Well honestly, without any modesty right now, I’d say that long before there was a striker dropping deep, it was me and Robbie Keane at Spurs, dropping deep from the central attacking position to receive the ball and play people in behind – playing almost like a number nine and a number 10, all in one. I always enjoyed doing that because I was technically gifted and I had my touch, so it was easier for me to read the game. I felt great satisfaction dropping deep, trying to feed my team-mates so they could score – sometimes when I assisted, I felt more joy than when I scored. Now there are false nines, but let’s not forget that back in the day, even before my time, there were strikers who’d come and get the ball, then feed others. Football is like a cycle.

Your style inspired people – three songs have even been written about you, including one called Berbatov Spin.

[Laughs] I didn’t know about this! That’s actually what I was talking about, because the Berba Spin was an assist – it was so good and the moment was so right, everything happened so perfectly, that I can agree that a song is a good thing to have to describe it! Those types of movement and improvisations, they brought me so much joy. When I did the Berba Spin, I could hear the crowd go ‘Whoaaa!’ That made my day even more, and when I passed to Ronaldo to score, it was complete.

Do you still watch that clip a lot, and did that goal sum you up more than any other, even though you didn’t score it yourself?

I had good assists that aren’t mentioned regularly, that one pops up all the time, and I scored beautiful goals as well, but that was me, how I saw football and how I thought it should be played. Improvisation, of course with an end result, because if you have improvisation without the end result, you need to go to the circus. In my case, I wanted to have improvisation with great assists and great goals – sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but that’s how football is. You need to enjoy and entertain the fans, but with an end result. That was me, and for me it worked.

You’ve spoken previously about how you tried to look cool and unbothered after that assist for Ronaldo?

[Laughs] From time to time I do go back and watch it, because we miss the old days, we miss when we used to play football, and you just want to see what you did back in the day. If you watch it, after that goal, you’re right, I was walking and just pretending that ‘Nothing happened guys, I do this all the time, what is all the fuss?!’ But inside of me, I knew I’d done something special, because of the noise of the crowd. I knew straight away that they loved it.

That unbothered look was a trademark of yours during your career, even after you did exceptional things. Where did that come from?

Well, it’s going to sound funny now, what I’m going to tell you. It’s connected in a way to how I see football, as kung fu. That’s how I used to move, like floating. And to answer your question about why I was like that, it’s because growing up, there was one movie called They Call Me Trinity with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, I don’t know if you know those types of actors? There were two movies actually, They Call Me Trinity and Trinity Is Still My Name – the guy in the movie, he was always a bit laidback, a bit like he didn’t care, but he was the fastest draw in the west and everybody knew that, so everybody respected him. Even if you underestimate him, then you’ll be surprised by all the things that he can do.

When I was a boy growing up watching that movie, I thought ‘I like that guy, he’s so laidback and cool – he knows he’s good, but he doesn’t need to show it because he’s confident he’s good, he doesn’t care what everybody thinks’. In a way, probably in my conscience without even realising it, I was putting that into my game and maybe even my life. I’m a big movie buff, I love watching a lot of movies, so that was probably inserted into my life and my way of playing football.

Do you think individuality is being lost a bit now, that players are coached to be more robotic, within a tactical system?

I’ve never been one to compare myself to someone else or compare different periods, but now football has changed – it’s more athletic, more tactical. I understand that, because at the end of the day, results are the most important. If you’re first place, you’re champions, you get more money, you play Champions League football, you get even more money, so let’s not forget that football is also business. But football is also art – football was the love of my life. During the time when I played, it was the right moment for me because it was more artistic, more poetry – taking the ball, thinking, outsmarting the opponents, entertaining. I’m not saying we don’t have players like that now – Lionel Messi is still playing, Ronaldo and Kevin De Bruyne, even though he’s left Manchester City. We still have artists on the pitch, but maybe it’s a bit more physical right now, with more athleticism.

You had quite a journey to reach the top, growing up in the final years of communism in Blagoevgrad. You sometimes had to play football with a pig’s bladder?

Yeah, we did. That’s why it’s good to look back sometimes and reminisce, to remember how it was and how it is now. I also try to teach my kids what I went through, my story. Everyone has their own story. In my family, we grew up with a bit of difficulty, we didn’t have much for football, so we needed to improvise, right? Back then, you didn’t understand that those were challenges, you took it as a game. There were no phones, no social media, so what do you do? You try to find something, you go on to the streets. You run into some problem with someone maybe, or you just try to excite yourself in some way.

With us, it was kicking the ball. We didn’t have a ball? OK. We had a custom back in the day to slaughter a pig on a special holiday – the women would cook it, and out of that you’d get the bladder of the pig. You blow it up, it’s a bit disgusting, but it looks like a ball, you wrap a towel around it and now you have a football. You try to kick it as much as you can, then when you grow up, things start to change and you get a football. Later in life, if you’re lucky, patient and work hard, you become a professional.

Was playing with a pig’s bladder part of why you were so brilliant at controlling a football, which was presumably easier?

I think it was just because I started very early – I knew at a very early age what I wanted to do. I found my purpose really early in my life and that prevented me from making a lot of mistakes that a lot of young people were making. Of course I made my share of mistakes, but they were small mistakes, not big ones that you couldn’t reverse. I knew I wanted to be a football player, I was really concentrated and dedicated in my mind to try to achieve something. That saved me, and paved my way to reach my personal top.

Interestingly, you’ve said that when fans sang about you during matches, even positively, you sometimes felt uncomfortable?

Yeah, because the first time I think I experienced that was with Spurs, when I came to England. When I used to play in Germany, there were a couple of things like that, but not so big as in England, where you have a song and they chant your name. The first time I heard it, I was like ‘What is happening?’ It put me in the spotlight and I wasn’t ready for that, I just wanted to play football, even though we’re in the spotlight on the pitch anyway. In that moment, I was like ‘Guys, what is going on? I want it to stop’. I felt embarrassed and to be honest, yes, it’s nice, it’s a great gesture of course and I appreciate it, but at times it made me uncomfortable.

That’s surprising for a star player – someone like Ronaldo probably would have loved it?

It depends who you are of course, how you see life and how you see gestures like that. Sometimes when I’d scored four or five goals, when I was feeling confident and in the mood and they sang my song, then I sang myself as well in my mind and I felt good! It’s different depending on the moment.

When you weren’t as confident, could your unbothered look be a mask for how you were feeling?

Of course. Everybody has their difficulties in their career and in my situation when I played as a striker, when you don’t score goals, that’s the moment where you’re in the spotlight in a negative way. The position of a striker automatically says that you need to score goals, and if you don’t, you’re not doing your job. There’s so much to the position of a striker – how he plays, how he moves, how he frees the space, holds the ball and brings everybody into the play. But of course number one is goals.

So when I didn’t score goals, it was tough for me – I’d be sitting in my apartment or house, or wherever I was, replaying the game in my mind. What did I do that wasn’t good enough, what do I need to do next time so that I can correct myself? Sometimes that can be a dangerous place to be, because if you don’t know how to get out of that vicious circle of negative thinking, you’re going to stay there for a long period of time. That’s why sometimes football is not so much about what you can do with your legs, but in your head. If you’re not good there, your legs are going to be suffering and the whole thing is not going to be good for you.

That’s something I speak about with young players, especially here in Bulgaria. Yes, everybody has problems if you’re a striker and you don’t score, I’ve been there. But the only thing to do is to be strong in your head. It’s difficult, and if you have the right people around you, the right environment – your wife, your kids, your girlfriend, your agent, your team-mates, your coach – they will help you. If you can help yourself, even better – it’s going to make you even stronger. But don’t stay too much in that zone of negative thinking.

What have you been doing since retirement? Have you ever been tempted to become a manager?

Every ex-player thinks he’s going to be great as a manager. If you ask anyone, he’ll say ‘Of course, I will be the best!’ Even if he doesn’t admit it, he’ll be thinking it, because that’s how we are – especially strikers, big egos, we know everything! Of course that’s far away from the truth. I have been tempted, I’ve been thinking about it, I have my A Licence, but I have my foundation back home here, we’re supporting talented kids in arts, sports and science, we try to encourage them as much as we can, and help them to go into their teens in a better position with the choices they make, how they see life, what they want to do. I try to inspire them with my own story. I also work with Manchester United as an ambassador, I have other business ventures as well. When someone here in Bulgaria asks me how I am, I don’t have the right to complain because I’ve done my part, I achieved my personal top. So compared to other people and how they live here, I don’t need to complain at all.

How proud are you of your career?

Very proud because I came from a small country in Bulgaria, so to reach England and reach Manchester United, it was a great honour for me. I know the way I needed to work to get there, and my personal top was Manchester United. Some of my colleagues that I played with reached higher than me, some reached lower, but I was happy that I was part of the history of that big club – and all of my clubs of course, that helped me to get there. I also had some missed opportunities to win trophies, but that’s how football is sometimes – it can be cruel, but you take it on the chin and continue.

How do you hope people remember Dimitar Berbatov the footballer?

I hope I entertained them – I know I entertained them, to be honest. I did my best to do that every time, even if I didn’t show it, and even if sometimes it didn’t work. But if it didn’t work, I was ready to try the next time, of course with an end result. When someone watches my clips, my goals and assists, I want them to see poetry in motion, how you improvise, how you dance with the ball, how you touch the ball, how you read the game. If I can inspire some young boys or girls to try to copy what I did, great.

Berbatov was speaking on behalf of LiveScore and LiveScore Bet. LiveScore’s mission is to fuel fans’ passion for sport – download the LiveScore app for real-time updates, and visit livescore.com for more info

During his 19 years owning beloved Leyton Orient, Barry Hearn experienced highs, lows, characters and his fair share of general chaos that comes when you try to run a football club.

But for Hearn, few characters were as memorable as John Sitton.

When Hearn bought the O's in 1995 for a nominal fee, he was taking a club drowning in debt at the bottom of the third tier, with Channel 4's cameras documenting the period in their 'Club For A Fiver documentary.

Hearn on working with Sitton

At the heart of his documentary was Sitton, whose combustible personality produced one of the most infamous dressing-room rants ever caught on camera. It's a moment that Hearn still laughs about today, even if Sitton's methods ultimately proved to be too much for him.

“I actually got it even cheaper than that,” Hearn tells FourFourTwo, when asked about the documentary, which was named after the price he had reportedly paid to former chairman Tony Wood, who had seen his coffee business decimated after the Rwandan Civil War.

“I only paid £2.43. But of course, there was £2m worth of debt which I had to take on as well. People said I was mad, but I used to go there when I was a kid. You cherish these things.”

Hearn had already amassed a fortune from snooker and immediately set about trying to transform a side floundering near the bottom of the third tier. “I went in and said ‘Right, a million pounds a year, that’s your losses, I’ll cover that million’,” he recalls. “I told the press I wanted Premier League football within five years. I knew absolutely nothing about the game, but I’m a promoter. I needed headlines. I needed people to be talking about us.”

They soon would be, mainly thanks to the antics of the club’s gaffer John Sitton. The Londoner’s passionate language and full-on management style would make for engaging viewing when Club For A Fiver was later released.

Shortly before Hearn’s arrival at the relegation battlers, an increasingly beleaguered Sitton delivered a half-time speech that would go down in football folklore. With his side 1-0 down at half-time against Blackpool, Sitton sacked defender Terry Howard on camera in the dressing room, before offering to fight two other players.

“You, you little c**t, when I tell you to do something, and you, you f**king big c**t, when I tell you to do something, do it,” he snarled. “And if you come back at me, we’ll have a f**king right sort-out in here. All right? And you can pair up if you like, and you can f**king pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your f**king dinner. ’Cos by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll f**king need it.”

Even in the blood and guts days of the 1990s, viewers were shocked at the tirade. Hearn saw the funny side. “I loved that rant,” he says. “I quote it all the time – ‘And bring your f**king dinner’. Just fantastic. In all honesty, I think Sitton allowed the cameras into an area he shouldn’t have. They should never have been in the dressing room on a matchday.”

Hearn was aware of the infamous rant when he set up office, but decided to judge Sitton and his staff on their own merits. “I actually loved him and his assistant Chris Turner – good men, and John was very eloquent,” says Hearn. “He spoke a good game and I thought he was on to something.”

Yet there were further signs of Sitton’s ferocity that didn’t sit well with Hearn. “I watched him in training one day – he cleaned out a 16-year-old and I thought ‘Nah, that’s not my sort of man’,” he says. “Not a man with integrity.”

Sitton would eventually be let go, with his depiction in the documentary meaning other clubs were reluctant to take him on, meaning he would leave the game to become a black cab driver. “He failed in the end and I had to ask him to leave,” recalls Hearn. “You have to make tough decisions in sport.”

Lee Trundle has never been your usual by-the-numbers footballer.

For a time, the former Swansea City favourite was one of the most recognisable players in English football, despite never making it to the Premier League, thanks largely to his regular appearances on Soccer AM's 'Showboat' segment throughout the mid-2000s.

The forward could never resist delving into his bag of tricks every week, but behind the grin and playmaking ability was a player who took an unconventional route to the professional game.

Trundle on the height of his fame

Trundle admits that his dazzling array of tricks, feints and dummies during his peak years made him box-office viewing.

“It was a mad time because there were many Premier League players, let alone Football League players, that didn’t have the level of fame I did,” Trundle recalls to FourFourTwo. “I was only playing for Swansea in League One but I was recognised all the time.”

Trundle insists that this level of freedom he played with was due to his late introduction to the professional game, given he didn't sign any professional papers until he joined Rhyl at the age of 24.

“I hadn’t had any of the coaching that might have knocked that part of my game out of me,” he says. “I was still essentially a street footballer. My coaches saw that as a good thing, thankfully, and just told me to go out and express myself. That’s what earned me my move to Wrexham and then to Swansea.”

Trundle scored 91 goals across two spells with the Swans, cementing himself as a club legend and still serving as an ambassador. “I still live in Wales, which is why I am still playing here now,” he says. “A lot of people just assume I’m Welsh. They’re shocked when they hear the scouse accent.”

As Trundle mentions, he is still playing now, turning out for Cwmbran Town in the Welsh League on a Saturday and for a veterans team on a Sunday, having just celebrated his 50th birthday.

“It’s amazing, I still love it,” says Trundle. “What’s mad is, I’m now playing with a lot of the kids of old team-mates of mine, so it’s kind of gone full circle. A lot of them know me already from old YouTube videos and things, which is nice.”

This begs the obvious question - will he still be playing when he turns 60?

“I’m not sure about that,” he laughs. “I kind of had 50 in my mind as a goal I wanted to reach, but who knows how much longer I can go on for? I look after myself very well. I have a cryo chamber at home. I eat well and keep myself in good shape.

"As long as I feel like I’m still able to make a difference and influence games, I’ll be up for staying on.”

For most footballers, the prospect of playing at the age of 50 is a dim one, with their boots hung up and collecting dust long before their sixth decade comes along.

But for former Swansea City forward Lee Trundle, turning 50 has done nothing to diminish his desire to get out on the grass.

Still turning out every weekend, Trundle is combining Welsh League football with veterans' matches, despite his professional career ending more than a decade ago.

Trundle on playing after 50

For Trundle, football has simply changed rather than stopped.

“I play for Cwmbran Town in the Welsh League on a Saturday, and then I also play vets football on a Sunday,” he tells FourFourTwo as he gets set to celebrate his 50th birthday.

“I’m still feeling fit as a fiddle.”

During his remarkable professional career, Trundle made more than 300 appearances for the likes of Wrexham, Swansea, Bristol City and Leeds United, among others.

But Trundle is keen to correct the assumption that he retired from football altogether after leaving non-league Marine in 2013.

“I did leave the professional game behind me but I wasn’t done with football,” he says. “I’d promised an old friend I’d play for his side back in my hometown of Liverpool when that day came.

"So I did that for a few seasons and then kept it going in the Welsh lower leagues. I’m still going strong today.”

Even with five decades under his belt, he assures he is still his same old self.

“I still do all my tricks and showboating, don’t worry about that,” he laughs. “I never had any pace to lose anyway.

"Even in my prime, I had to rely on technique rather than speed, so I’m the same type of player.”

When the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened in April 1986, I was nine years old. I’d just had a trial with Dynamo Kyiv, and it had gone well, but everything changed. In the first few days following the disaster, we carried on with our normal lives because they thought the situation was under control. Eventually, though, we were evacuated, because of the risk of being so close to ground zero. My father was in the military and had access to some of the information – they decided to take us to the coast, to the Sea of Azov. There, we stayed in camps for three months until we were able to return. During that time, I lost contact with the people at Dynamo. I honestly felt I’d never play for them again.

In the years before that, I have fond memories of playing in the Kyiv streets with my friends. All the images I keep in my memory are connected to football – I’d wake up and go to bed thinking about it, dreaming of making it as a player. The thought I could achieve it motivated me – I had curiosity and a desire to improve from a very young age.

I regularly competed in inter-school tournaments – they’d call me up to play, and we’d travel by bus to different neighbourhoods. That’s when I started to stand out among the kids of my age group. I didn’t always win, but that wasn’t the most important thing. Even back then, people could sense the leadership I had on the pitch – I already had a strong mentality.

A guy called Oleksandr Shpakov worked for Dynamo Kyiv and used to attend those kinds of matches because he was a scout for the club, looking for young talents who could make it to the top. I remember he came up to me, introduced himself and told me to get ready for a trial.

After that trial came Chernobyl and my evacuation. In late September or early October, though, after returning to Kyiv, one of Dynamo’s coaches came to visit me. He was surprised I hadn’t rejoined the club’s setup – fortunately, I resumed training.

Later, I travelled abroad with Dynamo. We played in two different tournaments: one in Aberdeen and another in Wales, at the Ian Rush Cup. I was 13, we won and I was named the best player. It was special because Rush himself gave me a pair of Nike boots. Even though the boots were too small for me, I treasured them for years because everyone knew him and he was a Liverpool legend – I tried playing with them once, until my big toes poked through the toe area! Soon, Valeriy Lobanovskyi came into my life. He was the most influential coach in Ukraine’s history – we all knew about him because he built winning teams at Dynamo Kyiv across several generations: in 1974, in 1986, and when he returned again in 1997. By the latter, I was already in the first team. If he came back, it was because he believed he could win again with that team. He believed in us.

The first time I spoke to Lobanovskyi face to face was in the office he had at the stadium. He motivated me even more than I already was, as I realised that someone with a competitive spirit had come to the club, someone who was going to push us all forward. He told me, “You’re very young, you have quality and talent, but you need to be disciplined, completely change your character and be more professional.” He drew the path for me to start my true professional career. He transformed us all from talented footballers into warriors with the desire to create a great team.

Some of the training sessions were a nightmare, though! Occasionally we even had three sessions in a day, when we were used to doing a maximum of two. The physical intensity was huge. I remember some team-mates ended certain drills by throwing up, due to extreme fatigue. Many of the veterans promised to be ready for the matches, but in exchange they asked for a truce. To train less hard. They just couldn’t take it any more.

But Lobanovskyi never gave in, and his way of expressing himself was funny. “Look, this is a clock, everything has to be perfect for it to give the correct time,” he’d say. “Imagine I take out a piece? It won’t work. This is the same. Either you respect the rules I set, or you leave.” Those were his principles.

In the space of four or five months we already felt different, capable of doing anything. Everything improved: the collective, the individual performances, the strategy, the management of the dressing room, the physical preparation. He always took care of me. He kept repeating to me that talent without the right mindset wouldn’t be enough. “If you want to go far, then you have to be professional,” he constantly warned me. I had to dedicate myself 100 per cent and sacrifice certain things in my life. That education was essential. He was like a father in every sense of the word. He also instilled in us the importance of understanding his ideas during matches, and knowing why we did each thing. I love his story, it’s exceptional. After winning everything, including two European Cup Winners’ Cups, he had come back to Dynamo Kyiv to do it all again.

That first season in 1997-98 was very special for the whole team, but also for me personally, because I had a magical night at the Camp Nou where I scored a hat-trick against Barcelona. We won 4-0 and that was when we began to believe in ourselves, and the possibilities of doing something big in the Champions League. It was unforgettable. Without a doubt, one of my best moments at Dynamo. How many teams score four goals against Barça in their own ground? Not many. We played a great match. It was during those years I formed a really good attacking partnership with Serhiy Rebrov. I’d known him since I was 15 – we’d already shared a dressing room in the youth teams of Ukraine. We had a good relationship. I liked how he thought, played and read the game. He became a good friend, and it was easy to play alongside him. We attacked, but we also had to defend a lot.

Lobanovskyi brought us all together. One season later, we came really close to winning the Champions League. We eliminated Real Madrid, the great giant of Europe, but we couldn’t get past Bayern Munich in the semi-finals. We drew 3-3 at home, but ended up losing 1-0 in Munich. We lacked experience. If we’d had that, we would have made it to the final. We also lacked a bit of luck.

We had the same spirit in the national team. Ukraine means everything to me.

It was both an enormous motivation and a great honour to wear my nation’s shirt. I started playing for the youth teams when I was 15 – my first match came shortly after Ukraine gained independence, in Lviv, against a Dutch junior team that had Clarence Seedorf in its line-up.

The stadium was packed with 30,000 people, who were proud and emotional to finally have their own national team. We drew 2-2. It was one of the happiest moments of my career.

I made my debut for the senior team in 1995 and played in many important matches, including against Russia in the last game of our qualifying group for Euro 2000. It was a controversial fixture because relations between Ukraine and Russia were tense – in fact, instead of sleeping at a hotel in Moscow, we had to stay at the embassy for security reasons.

A major security operation had been put in place due to the special circumstances surrounding the match.

On our way to the stadium, fans threw stones at our bus, but luckily it didn’t go any further. We were totally focused on getting a good result, because if we lost our Euros hopes were over. I scored an 88th-minute equaliser – it was a long-range effort, with no real threat at first glance, but it just had to be on target as then anything could happen. Someone could deflect it, or the goalkeeper could make a mistake, which is exactly what happened. It was a moment of immense national pride.

Earlier that year, 1999, I had joined Milan. The first contact came through Rezo Chokhonelidze, a Georgian scout that the club used in Eastern Europe. He came to watch me play some games, started following me with more interest alongside another of his colleagues, and spoke with Lobanovskyi, with whom he had a good relationship.

Milan’s CEO Ariedo Braida travelled to Kyiv to see me too, and we spoke after a match. He was a polite, well-dressed man, and Rezo acted as a translator. Ariedo gave me a Milan shirt with my name on it and said, “The only way to win the Ballon d’Or is by playing for us.”

He didn’t need to say much more to convince me – it was an honour for me, and I told him I dreamed of achieving both things.

I talked with Lobanovskyi – I told him I felt ready, and he said it was the right time for me to continue growing. He warned me that I’d have to keep working to earn my place at a club like Milan. Not long after that, he combined his role as coach of Dynamo with that of Ukraine’s national team boss, so we never lost contact. Every time I came back to play for the national team, I’d go straight to his office and we’d talk for three or four hours – he’d ask about the training methodology in Italy, about the players and the tactics there.

I arrived at the best club in the world at that time, also with the best people. From the beginning, I felt the warmth and affection of everyone at Milan.

I didn’t speak Italian, but I took lessons, and in the dressing room they always gave me a hand. They invited me out to eat, made jokes and made me feel like one of them.

Alessandro Costacurta was 10 years older than me – he was like a brother. I shared a room with Demetrio Albertini and Massimo Ambrosini on trips, and they helped me too. Alberto Zaccheroni was my first coach, he was wonderful. The whole club, and also the supporters, wanted me to succeed.

I scored on my Serie A debut at Lecce, after a beautiful combination between George Weah, Oliver Bierhoff and myself, as we drew 2-2. Milan were champions when I arrived, so I joined a club that had recently been really successful, but it was also a time of transition. Weah, Bierhoff, Zvonimir Boban and Leonardo had given everything but were reaching the end of their time at the club. Over the next two or three seasons, the team changed, with Seedorf, Filippo Inzaghi, Alessandro Nesta, Rivaldo and Andrea Pirlo coming in, while Gennaro Gattuso stepped up from relegated Salernitana. It was a necessary metamorphosis for Milan to become the main reference point in Italian football again, because there were six big Serie A teams going into the 1999-2000 campaign.

Inter had Javier Zanetti, Christian Vieri, Ivan Zamorano and Ronaldo. Lazio had Pavel Nedved, Alen Boksic, Sinisa Mihajlovic, Marcelo Salas and Roberto Mancini. Juventus had Alessandro Del Piero and Zinedine Zidane. Parma had Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro and Hernan Crespo. Fiorentina had Rui Costa and Gabriel Batistuta. Looking at all of those squads, any could win the title. It was the golden age of calcio. It was beautiful.

Then Carlo Ancelotti arrived in 2001 – he was an exemplary coach. We’re still friends – we often call each other, and not long ago I visited him in Madrid. As we grew, that Milan team wasn’t just a fantastic side – above all else, it was a fantastic group of people guided by a master like him.

In 2003, Milan won the Champions League. The toughest tie was the semifinal against Inter. The whole city fell into silence that week, as the nerves and anticipation increased day by day –

Ancelotti said he’d never seen so much tension in the air. We drew 0-0 in the first leg and 1-1 in the return leg, when I scored to send us through to the final thanks to the away goals rule.

Despite it finishing 0-0, there were so many chances in the final against Juve at Old Trafford. It was anything but dull.

Both goalkeepers, Dida and Buffon (by then of Juve), were decisive. When we reached the penalty shootout, Ancelotti asked me to take the first one. I told him no, as I wanted the responsibility of taking the last one. I was confident I’d score. As I ran up to the ball, images from my childhood flashed through my mind – all those moments dreaming of winning that competition. That night, we rewrote history. I scored the winning penalty, and it was perfect.

Afterwards, I spoke to the Milan vice president, Adriano Galliani, and he gave me permission to take the Champions League trophy to Kyiv, to pay tribute to Lobanovskyi who’d died a year earlier. It was the very first thing I did – I flew on a private jet and took the trophy to visit Lobanovskyi’s monument.

He meant a lot in my career, he helped me to take my first steps, and we’d come really close to winning the trophy at Dynamo. He deserved it. He would have loved to win it himself – that I did it with Milan was partly thanks to him.

A year later, I also won the Ballon d’Or. I’d been scoring many goals for several seasons, and I knew that playing for a big club like Milan put me in contention for it. Beating Turkey during qualification for the World Cup was also key. We won 3-0 away, I scored two, and I had the feeling that I moved closer to the Ballon d’Or that day. I was competing with top players such as Deco and Ronaldinho, but it was reward for three or four years performing at the highest level. A month after that victory in Turkey, my wife went with me to the Ballon d’Or gala in Paris, along with Galliani and Leonardo as Milan’s representatives. It was so special, because I’d dreamed of that moment since I was a kid. My idols, Oleh Blokhin and Ihor Belanov, had also won it, and I became the third Ukrainian footballer to receive the Ballon d’Or. The satisfaction was gigantic.

Soon after, I was also awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. It meant everything to me for my country to recognise my achievements. Playing for Milan, I knew there were millions of Ukrainians who took great pride in having a compatriot representing them.

In 2005, though, we reached another Champions League final, where we faced Liverpool in Istanbul. We were 3-0 up at half-time, then followed six minutes of nightmare. In that period, we gave up our three-goal advantage, but we must also give credit to Liverpool for the blind faith they had in their comeback. Their supporters never stopped cheering them on from the stands.

People may think that we relaxed at 3-0, but that’s not true at all. We were concentrated and didn’t underestimate Liverpool – at half-time, we’d talked about maintaining focus, because there was still a second half to play. The final was strange. If we could overlook those six minutes, we played a great match. We dominated, created chances and I had a double chance in extra time that Jerzy Dudek inexplicably saved. Football is beautiful for that reason. Never take anything for granted.

In the penalty shootout, I tried to do something similar to Old Trafford two years earlier. Yes, I was nervous, and I noticed Dudek making some strange movements in goal. My shot ended up being too close to the centre of the goal, and he saved it with his left hand. Understanding that you don’t always win is another valuable lesson in life. Every great athlete has missed at some point. Michael Jordan used to explain that before reaching the top, he missed thousands of free throws. You have to accept defeat as part of the journey.

The following season, we lost in the Champions League semi-finals against Barcelona. We lost the first leg 1-0 at San Siro, but really competed in the return at the Camp Nou. The referee unjustly ruled out a goal I scored that would have forced extra time – back then there was no VAR, but I never fouled Carles Puyol. That Barça team under Frank Rijkaard were amazing, so I’m not complaining. In life, you win and you lose.

That summer, Chelsea were interested in signing me, and I made the difficult decision to leave San Siro and try new things. My greatest football years were in Italy – I arrived at 22 and left at 29. But I also wanted a different experience, to live in a different country.

The transfer went through just before the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Helping Ukraine to qualify for the first time was an emotional achievement, but I went into it far from my very best, dealing with injuries. I only started training two days before our opening game against Spain, after being out for more than a month.

I took physiotherapists along with me to speed up my recovery, to try to be ready in time, and our coach Oleh Blokhin said he wanted to play me right away, so that I could gain match rhythm.

We lost 4-0 to Spain, but beat Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. I scored in both wins and we made it to the last 16, then beat Switzerland on penalties, before being knocked out by champions Italy in the quarter-finals. It was a great journey. I still remember how many Ukrainians came to support us in Germany, and how grateful they were for everything we achieved that summer.

Before I knew it – having accumulated fatigue, without time to recover – I was starting my new life at Chelsea. I didn’t have any time to adapt, and there were high expectations around me. We went to do pre-season in the USA, everything happened very quickly, and the first few weeks were tough.

We lost the Community Shield against Liverpool, but personally I had a good debut – after a pass from Frank Lampard, I’d equalised with a chest control and a nice finish with the inside of my foot. There was a strong hunger to win at Chelsea – guys like Lampard, Petr Cech, John Terry and Arjen Robben were at

the peak of their careers, combined with experienced players like Claude Makelele, Michael Ballack and myself. We were a strong team. We started the campaign a bit inconsistently, but I liked that the dressing room was very competitive, the atmosphere was good and we motivated each other to succeed.

Working for Jose Mourinho was a great experience – I have a lot of respect for him because he always made the best decisions for the team. He was a master at motivating each player in a different way and knew how to strike the right chord with every single one of us – he used his intelligence to convince us individually and as a group. We were his soldiers. I was fortunate throughout my career that every coach I had shared the same trait: their winning mentality. My most special moment at Chelsea was winning the 2007 FA Cup Final at the new Wembley, because of how much it means to the English. We came close to winning the Premier League title in both of my seasons, but Manchester United came out on top by a narrow margin. I was performing at a high level some of the time, especially during my first campaign from January to April, before I got injured. The problem was I had too many physical problems that gradually wore me down. I had hernia surgery, the recovery was slow, and I went through several ups and downs that stopped me from playing consistently for half a year. In my second season, I started off well, scoring goals, had a great match against Aston Villa on Boxing Day, then I got injured again. It was tough to end with the defeat by Manchester United in the Champions League final in Moscow.

I went back to Milan on loan, and it was fantastic to share a dressing room with Ronaldinho and David Beckham. We spent a lot of time together, and it was fun. Even though they were high-profile figures, they were great team-mates on a daily basis – amenable, professional. They were winners, it was in their DNA. Ronaldinho was one of the most gifted players in football history. He was magic personified, full of charisma.

It was a difficult time for me, though, because injuries again wore me down. I was more than aware that I was no longer the player I’d been a few years earlier. I couldn’t compete at the same level, because my body wouldn’t let me reach my usual standard.

I played through the pain barrier, and that’s when I decided it was best for me to return to Dynamo Kyiv – primarily so I could experience Euro 2012 at home, with Ukraine and Poland co-hosting the finals. I wanted to prepare properly, as I hadn’t played at the Euros before, and I wanted to enjoy it to the fullest ahead of retirement. I got myself back in shape, played for Dynamo and featured in the Champions League again.

When the tournament arrived, I was in the final weeks of my career, but I still felt I had something to offer. I wanted to sign off in the best possible way, and the Euros gave me the perfect stage: to say goodbye to football at home. I was carrying some pain in my back, but in our opening match against Sweden I played one of my finest matches in five years, scoring twice, as we came from behind after Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s goal. It was madness. My whole family and so many friends were in the stands. It was special. Later, I became assistant coach of the national team for Euro 2016. We lost to Germany, Poland and Northern Ireland without scoring a goal and the dressing room was completely down, bereft of confidence, but I agreed to take over as manager because I saw huge potential. I surrounded myself with some highly capable staff – Mauro Tassotti, Andrea Maldera and Raul Riancho – and over two years we evaluated more than 100 players, investing countless time and effort to rebuild the squad, as we knew there was talent in Ukraine.

We didn’t have much time to work with the players and we didn’t qualify for the 2018 World Cup, but we were shaping the idea we believed in. We convinced everyone of the importance of playing a certain way – controlling matches and dictating play – and we worked hard on the group’s mentality. Maybe we couldn’t dominate matches against the top-tier nations, but we knew we could control games against 75 per cent of opponents. At Euro 2020, we reached the quarter-finals, losing to England.

Since the start of last year, I’ve had a different role, but one that’s equally important, as president of the Ukrainian Football Association. Everything starts with building a strong team around you. We’ve been living through the toughest moment in Ukraine’s history, and during these three years of full-scale war, we have shown the world that football still exists in our country.

I’ve felt a strong responsibility to help people and support my country in every way I can – that’s what I’ve been totally committed to, and what I’ve done on a daily basis. I’ve regularly attended charity events, as the most well-known Ukrainian footballer. Other sportspeople have helped, too, and we’re in constant contact – Oleksandr Usyk, Elina Svitolina, Wladimir Klitschko, Sergiy Stakhovsky. We’re all connected. Whenever there’s anything linked to sport or humanitarian causes, our president, Volodymyr Zelensky, knows he can always count on my advice.

We all want peace, but also justice for Ukraine. We must defend our integrity as a country. We’ve fought for our lives. Although I travel for conferences and often to London, where my entire family has been for 19 years, I spend most of my time in Kyiv, where I grew up.

Every day we’ve heard the sirens, the threat of missiles and drones. No one has been safe – only when we’ve been in the shelter.

Football, though, has still given people hope. That’s the most powerful message we want to share with the world. We’ve continued to take part and succeed in competitions, at youth level, in women’s football and in futsal, too. We’ve been present and we’ve competed. Everything has been more difficult for us and we’ve faced unexpected challenges every day. As Ukrainians, though, we’ve carried on moving forward.

Spanish football's governing body LaLiga has stepped in to block Dani Carvajal’s proposed move to Getafe over concerns regarding his declared salary, according to a report from Spanish radio show El Larguero.

The experienced full-back, who departed Real Madrid at the end of his contract over the summer, had reached an agreement in principle to join Getafe, who are situated in the southern Madrid suburbs.

However, the league's financial control committee has refused to validate the signing on the grounds that the agreed wage is artificially low.

Dani Carvajal's Getafe move on hold due to finance concerns

According to El Larguero, Getafe submitted documentation proposing an annual salary of approximately €400,000 for the 34-year-old defender.

LaLiga’s economic regulators have reportedly rejected the valuation, deeming it wildly unrealistic given that Carvajal was supposedly earning €10 million per year during his time at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Under LaLiga's Squad Cost Limit rules, the league assigns its own baseline valuation to high-profile players to prevent clubs from under-reporting playing costs, determining that a decorated international of Carvajal's standing cannot logically see his official remuneration fall by 96 per cent without bringing regulatory scrutiny.

The reasoning behind LaLiga’s veto is to prevent "under-the-table" payments across Spanish football. LaLiga's financial framework requires every contract to reflect realistic market values to preserve competitive balance.

Clubs could theoretically get around salary cap restrictions by supplementing a player's income through off-the-books commercial deals, undisclosed image-rights agreements, or third-party sponsorship arrangements that do not appear in club accounts.

The timing of this decision draws parallels with the financial charges currently surrounding Manchester City. Among the 114 alleged breaches of financial rules brought by the Premier League, a major element involves secret secondary payments.

Specifically, the Manchester club is accused of supplementing former manager Roberto Mancini’s official Etihad Stadium salary with a secondary contract for consultancy work with Abu Dhabi-based side Al Jazira, effectively offloading a substantial portion of his true earnings off the club’s official accounts.

LaLiga aims to ensure that Spanish clubs cannot utilise similar side-agreements to bypass domestic squad spending limits.

While Getafe manager Jose Bordalas had been eager to add a six-time Champions League winner to his squad, the transfer remains on hold unless Getafe can restructure the deal to satisfy LaLiga’s economic rules.

For now, Carvajal’s future remains in limbo as an example of Spanish football's uncompromising stance on toeing the financial line.

Cardiff City defender Krystian Bielik has been handed a two-match suspension and a £10,000 fine for misconduct after becoming embroiled in a physical altercation with a Portsmouth supporter last month.

The ugly scenes unfolded during Cardiff City’s Championship fixture against Portsmouth on Saturday, September 5.

The match had to be abruptly halted following an extraordinary touchline confrontation between the Polish international and a member of the crowd.

Bielik banned for TWO matches after throttling supporter

As the ball went out of play, at around the 71st minute mark Bielik rushed over to the advertising hoardings to retrieve it and quickly restart the game.

However, a Portsmouth supporter sitting in the front row deliberately threw the ball away to waste time. Bielik reacted by leaning over the advertising hoarding and appeared to grab the fan by the throat.

The supporter slapped the Cardiff defender in the face in retaliation before stewards, teammates, and match officials intervened.

Following a thorough review of the video evidence, the Football Association has taken decisive action against 28-year-old Bielik. The FA have confirmed the player's punishment in a statement released on Tuesday afternoon.

Bielik is formally charged with misconduct after it was alleged that he 'acted in an improper manner'. Bielik has subsequently admitted the charge.

The FA confirmed that an independent regulatory commission was responsible for imposing the sanctions following a hearing.

The player must now serve a two-match ban across all competitions and pay a fine totalling £10,000. Written reasons will be published in due course, as standard.

FIFA has been drawn into fresh controversy following revelations that the governing body allegedly permitted the Democratic Republic of Congo to compete in the 2026 World Cup, despite internal findings that goalkeeper Lionel Mpasi was ineligible during qualifying.

According to an investigation by the New York Times, internal FIFA reviews established that DR Congo breached eligibility rules regarding Mpasi, a former France youth international.

The dispute originated when the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) lodged a formal appeal after losing their continental play-off against DR Congo. Nigerian officials argued that the Congolese federation failed to complete the mandatory FIFA paperwork required to formally process Mpasi’s international switch of allegiance.

England's World Cup match versus DR Congo might never have taken place

Documents obtained during the investigation allege FIFA officials verified that Mpasi lacked the necessary administrative clearance when playing in the qualifiers. However, FIFA dismissed Nigeria's claim and chose not to issue sanctions or overturn the match results.

The decision enabled DR Congo, whose squad included Newcastle United striker Yoane Wissa, to advance to the intercontinental play-off. There, they beat Jamaica to secure their first World Cup appearance in 52 years.

During the tournament in North America, Mpasi remained DR Congo's starting goalkeeper while Wissa spearheaded the attack. The Leopards successfully navigated Group K alongside Portugal, Colombia, and Uzbekistan before being eliminated by England in the Round of 32.

The revelation that FIFA supposedly allowed DR Congo to participate despite acknowledging the eligibility breach will no doubt spark anger in Nigeria, where officials believe the national team was unfairly denied a place at the tournament.

Standard FIFA practice stipulates that fielding an ineligible player in an official match results in an automatic forfeit.

Previous precedents, such as Bolivia losing points during 2018 World Cup qualification for fielding an ineligible player, have added to the scrutiny surrounding FIFA's handling of the case. In an official statement responding to the New York Times, FIFA maintained that its judicial processes were followed correctly and denied any executive influence.

"FIFA's committees are autonomous and decide cases on the basis of the regulations in force and the specific facts under consideration," the statement read, adding that FIFA President Gianni Infantino was not involved in the proceedings.

Furthermore, a FIFA spokesperson commented: “FIFA can confirm that there were no eligibility issues for DR Congo’s matches against Jamaica and at the subsequent FIFA World Cup 2026.

"As outlined, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee dealt with a protest filed by the Nigeria Football Federation, which was ruled inadmissible."

Following one of the most bad-tempered and politically-charged international windows in recent memory, the Republic of Ireland and Israel have finally concluded their UEFA Nations League double-header.

But in the wake of bad blood, anthem protests, and media confrontations, football fans and administrators alike are left asking: when can the two nations next face each other on the pitch?

The recent back-to-back fixtures between Ireland and Israel were fraught with controversy long before a ball was kicked, especially as Ireland goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu withdrew from the squad citing ethical issues. Both matches also had to be relocated to neutral venues in Hungary and Serbia due to security concerns.

Ireland and Israel could meet again in Euro 2028 qualifying

Prior to kick-off in Hungary, Irish players bowed their heads during the playing of the Israeli national anthem, while Irish captains Dara O'Shea (in Hungary) and Caoimhin Kelleher (in Serbia) refused to shake hands with their opposite number.

Following Ireland's victory in the opening game, Israel skipper Manor Solomon publicly voiced frustration over the Irish squad's perceived hostility.

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) launched an investigation into allegations that Irish players, including striker Adam Idah, were subjected to racist abuse from Israeli supporters in the stands following their first match-up.

Tension reached a boiling point ahead of the return fixture when an Israeli journalist launched what manager Heimir Hallgrimsson termed a 'verbal attack', accusing Irish players of directing racist slurs toward Israel's squad.

FAI communications manager Kieran Crowley terminated the press conference, dismissing the accusations as 'completely untrue.'

The friction surrounding the fixture stems from the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Public sentiment in Ireland is uniquely supportive of the Palestinian cause - a stance deeply rooted in Ireland's own national history of foreign occupation, partition, and struggle for self-determination.

The matches sparked widespread domestic protests in Ireland, with political groups and fans demanding boycotts and questioning why Israel remains permitted to compete in UEFA tournaments.

Could Ireland and Israel meet in Euro 2028 qualifying?

The next potential competitive meeting between Ireland and Israel could arrive as early as next year. The group stage draw for UEFA Euro 2028 qualification takes place in December, with qualifying fixtures kicking off in March 2027.

Ireland and Israel could technically be drawn into the same qualifying group. However, following the turmoil of the Nations League window, Ireland manager Hallgrimsson has publicly requested that UEFA keep the two nations separate in future tournament draws to avoid further hostility.

UEFA already enforces strict rules preventing certain politically sensitive pairings from playing each other. The governing body currently prohibits several high-risk fixtures:

• Armenia vs Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh territorial conflict)
• Spain vs Gibraltar (disputed sovereignty over Gibraltar)
• Kosovo vs Serbia (diplomatic non-recognition of independence)
• Kosovo vs Bosnia & Herzegovina (diplomatic non-recognition)
• Russia vs Ukraine and Ukraine vs Belarus (ongoing war in Ukraine)

Whether UEFA will officially add Ireland vs Israel to its list of prohibited clashes ahead of December's Euro 2028 qualifying draw remains to be seen.

Should UEFA decline to intervene, the two sides could feasibly meet again as soon as spring 2027, though neither nation, nor European football's governing body, will be eager for a repeat of this past week's clashes.

AS Roma's starting goalkeeper, Mile Svilar, finds himself in an international footballing limbo of sorts, despite being one of Europe's best goalkeepers.

The issue at hand is he effectively has no national team to play for.

Having won back-to-back Serie A Best Goalkeeper awards over the last two campaigns, the 27-year-old is excluded from international football due to a FIFA eligibility statute.

The Goalkeeper Without a Country

Svilar's predicament stems from a decision he made five years ago. Born in the Belgian city of Antwerp to former Yugoslav international goalkeeper Ratko Svilar, the player represented Belgium at youth level, from U16 up through U21.

However, in September 2021, Svilar accepted a senior call-up from Serbia and played 45 minutes in a friendly win over Qatar. In order to make that appearance, Svilar officially changed his national allegiance with FIFA from Belgium to Serbia.

That 45-minute outing proved to be a point of no return, though. Since then, his club career has flourished with Roma, and Svilar has sought to return to the Belgian setup.

When he declined a Serbian call-up in March 2024 from manager Dragan Stojkovic, the Serbian national team closed its doors to him once and for all.

Under FIFA's eligibility regulations, a player who has already completed one formal switch of association and subsequently played a senior match after turning 21 cannot switch back - and Svilar was 22 at the time of his Serbia debut.

Despite efforts by Svilar’s legal representatives to navigate the regulations, football’s governing body has maintained its stance, denying any exception for his situation.

Consequently, Svilar remains in an unprecedented international limbo as a star performer in one of Europe’s biggest domestic leagues, but without a country to represent on the international stage.

As the old saying goes, history is written by the victors.

And while we all love to read about World Cup winners, Champions League icons and the planet’s best players, some of the game’s very best stories are about those players who never reached the top and instead enjoyed more varied - and frankly bonkers - careers.

So step forward Jamie Cuerton, the 51-year-old striker who has scored in all top 10 divisions of the pyramid and is still going strong in his 32nd season as a player.

Jamie Cureton on his 32-season playing career

From starting out at Norwich City in the early days of the Premier League to playing for 26 clubs across the pyramid, Cureton has been there and done it - and he has now put his remarkable story down on paper in Last of the Goalhangers, a collection of tales from his three decades on the pitch.

“It certainly feels that way,” laughs Cureton, when FourFourTwo ask him if he really has seen everything. Cureton is currently in his 32nd season in the game with Holland FC in the Eastern Counties League Division One North, having left his player-manager role at Kings Park Rangers behind.

“This is not an autobiography, just to be clear, as I’m worried people will have no idea who I am so who would want to read that? It’s more a collection of all the mad stuff I’ve experienced in more than three decades in football,” he continues.

Among the these mad tales include turning down the chance to join the fabled Class of 92 squad as a youngster, “bombing amphetamines” in the 1990s rave scene and smuggling £40,000 out of South Korea in his underpants. “It’s been an interesting ride,” laughs Cureton, who also turned out for clubs including Reading, Bristol Rovers and QPR across his long career. “It’s a look back at on- and off-field stuff. It’s not about making millions or playing for England. I’ve had a lot of bad times, big downers and regrets, across my life too. I’ve tried to be honest.”

The title of the book is a nod to Cureton’s playing style – a fox in the box of the classic mould. “That type of player seems to have largely died out these days,” laments Cureton, who has amassed more than 400 goals in his lifetime. “I suppose someone like Erling Haaland is a classic poacher but he’s so much more than that. I was always, even since I was a little kid, the bloke who could slot the ball into the back of the net.”

Cureton’s goalscoring career began in the top flight, for then-high-flying Norwich in the 1994-95 season. He’s clocked more than 20 league goals in six different seasons, right across the pyramid. Since leaving Dagenham & Redbridge in 2016, Cureton has spent a full decade playing in non-league football. How has he found it?

“It’s fantastic – football in its purest form,” smiles Cureton. “I love being close to the fans; that community aspect. It’s why I keep going. The standard at this level has changed a huge amount from when I first started out. Nowadays, non-league is full of top academy loanees, or released players looking to get back into the EFL. The drinking culture is largely a thing of the past, so it’s highly competitive with proper athletes.”

So how is a 51-year-old faring at this level? “I take great care of myself and wouldn’t bother anymore if I didn’t think I could offer something,” he says. “You’ll be surprised just how effective experience is at this level.

How long can Cureton keep playing? “That’s a tough one,” he says. “My aim this season was to surpass 1,100 games, which I should hopefully do before Christmas.”

Cureton’s biggest nerves aren’t about playing anyway. “I just hope people enjoy the book,” he says. “It’s been a good chance to set the record straight on a lot of things people have gotten wrong about me. Certain clubs and fan groups that maybe didn’t understand some decisions I’ve made.”

If Cureton does manage to play to 60, which he sees a possibility, we might just need another book.

Barry Hearn has never been short of ambition and his latest venture in football is no different.

Whether it was during his two-decade stint as chairman of Leyton Orient or during his work in snooker, boxing, darts or fishing, Hearn has enjoyed his fair share of spectacular success and expensive failures.

Hearn is now back in football with Brentwood Town and knows that success is a product of secure foundations. He also knows that sustainability is sacrificed for ambition; trouble can lie ahead, citing the case of one high-profile former Premier League chairman to back up his case.

Hearn on wanting Brentwood to grow the right way

“The most important thing is to make us sustainable,” he tells FourFourTwo. “Right now, we don’t lose money, but we’re ambitious on top of that.

“Most fans will now say ‘Well, come on then, sunshine, put your money in.’ You tell them to f**k off because it’s not their money. Only an idiot throws excessive amounts of money too early.”

This brings him to the case of the former Crystal Palace chairman and current talkSPORT pundit Simon Jordan, who he believes acts as a warning of what can happen when ambition and finances do not marry up.

“History is lined with Simon Jordans, who I’m sure loved Crystal Palace but basically built up a business that then went skint,” Hearn continues. “He’s an idiot. Others, like him, want instant success, but I don’t really do that.”

Hearn points to another of his investments that took a while to bloom.

“I bought the darts 25 years ago,” he remembers. “Everyone always says to me ‘Oh, you’re a genius seeing that coming’. I remind them that I bought it when nobody gave a toss.

“It wasn’t an overnight success – it was painstaking. It was on its knees when we came in, nobody watching. Now look.”

For Hearn, this philosophy extends to his latest project.

“That all shows that I’m a long-term player in general, and I’m a long-term player at Brentwood,” he affirms. “I own 20 per cent of it. I don’t give a s**t if I own one per cent or 100 per cent – it just made sense to have a voice.

“They know what I can bring to the table. As the best operator in sport in the world, I know more about this business than anyone alive – mainly because I’m so f**king old.”

For Jonjo Shelvey, his 2023 move to Turkey was supposed to mark a new chapter and fresh adventure in a career that began 15 years earlier when he made his senior debut as a 16-year-old for Charlton.

The midfielder swapped Nottingham Forest for Caykur Rizespor, a club where he was able to focus on his football, but a move to Eyupspor the following season did not work out as he hoped.

A myriad of financial, social and health issues would follow, as Shelvey found himself increasingly isolated and struggling to cope with being away from his family.

Shelvey on his Turkey experience

“I first went to Caykur Rizespor, who were brilliant for me because I could just concentrate on football,” Shelvey tells FourFourTwo. But while the club provided a straightforward routine, adapting to life in Turkey did not come without challenges.

“It was a very Muslim place, there wasn’t much more to do, you couldn’t go out, there was no alcohol, you lived at the training ground and played your games.

“It was difficult with the language, and not making friends and being away from my family, but I enjoyed my first year there and should have signed another deal, but I moved to Eyupspor and that didn’t work out. I tried something, I went out of my comfort zone.”

For Shelvey, this move exposed him to a tougher side of living and playing abroad, despite their being aspects of playing in Turkey that he enjoyed.

“One thing I’ll say is the fans in Turkey are so passionate and fun to play in front of.

“But one problem out there can be getting paid, because some clubs pay you on time, but some don’t pay the foreign players when they should and instead give you cash, which you can’t take out of the country.

“If a former team-mate asked for advice about going there, it would all depend on the club.”

Away from football, Shelvey had become increasingly isolated.

“I was really bored and lonely out there living without my family,” he continues. “At the second club, I felt like I had the choice of going to a bar and having five or six pints, or going home and taking sleeping tablets to fall asleep. I’d take one tablet and that would knock me out, but then the next day just one wouldn’t do it, as I’d built up my tolerance.

“At one point I was taking six or seven tablets at a time to knock myself out for the evening. I got addicted. Fortunately, when I left Turkey and went to Burnley, I was able to get the help I needed there and get myself off them.”

Two hours before I played for Nigeria at the Under-17 World Championship in Finland in 2003, our jerseys arrived. We had been waiting for our names to be printed on the back – when they came, we were all opening them up. I saw mine, and it said Mikel. I was like ‘What?! What’s this?’ It was supposed to say Michael, which was my name. They said it was a mistake. I asked if they could change it, but they said: “No, we don’t have time, we have a game to go and play – sorry, you’ll have to wear it.” I wore it and had a great tournament, so I thought, ‘OK, I’ll keep it!’ And that’s been my name ever since.

I was 16 years old, and that Under-17s tournament was my showcase, my time to announce myself to the world. Because I had an amazing tournament, the whispers started. Everybody started to know about this wonderkid called Mikel – all the agents and all the clubs started looking for me.

One agent showed up inside our team hotel and was asking everyone: “Where is this kid?” The Nigerian FA had already told the security at the hotel: “If anyone asks where he is, tell them that you don’t know, don’t tell them his room number.” This agent had a briefcase full of cash sitting right next to him, about £50,000, saying: “Listen, I think a big Dutch club want you to go there, so sign for them and sign for me.” I was only 16, and all of these crazy things had already started happening.

During that period, I was an attacking midfield player, a creative player, rather than the defensive midfielder I later became. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I knew I was really good and that I’d eventually sign for one of the big teams. Arsenal, Bayern Munich – a lot of teams were after me.

Very soon, I was invited to Manchester United. I met Sir Alex Ferguson, and stayed there and trained for a month or two. I’d always train with the first team, never with the academy, which is what I should have been doing, but I was too good! I trained with Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Diego Forlan, Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand. Sometimes, I just watched them and the way they trained – just unbelievable. Paul Scholes would ping the ball right, left and centre – he was absolute quality. I could have watched him all day. What a player. When I trained with them, Sir Alex would always put me in the same team as Roy Keane, so I had somebody to protect me! As you know, Paul Scholes was the worst tackler; he’d come in and ‘Boom!’. Then Keano would go in and give him one to protect me! It was fun. I enjoyed my time there.

What happened next is a long story. Back then, you had to be 18 to sign from Africa. I was 16, so Manchester United thought, ‘OK, we will send you home for two or three months, then you can come back and train with the team for another two months’. They would do that until they found a proper solution. They sent me back to Nigeria, but then when I was at home, Chelsea found out where I was. They sent an agent, who came with a contract and convinced me to go there instead. Roman Abramovich had bought the club – I thought about it and was like ‘OK, a new history is about to be made at Chelsea’, so I went for trials there. Straight away, Claudio Ranieri wanted me to sign, but again, I couldn’t because I wasn’t 18.

Instead of sending me back home, though, like Manchester United did, Chelsea arranged for me to go to Norway for a while and play for Lyn Oslo. I had an apartment there and Chelsea were looking after me, my family and my friends.

I had three Nigerian team-mates with me – Chelsea sent them to Lyn with me to keep me company, so that I wasn’t homesick. They stayed in the same apartment as me. I think they knew what the situation was, which wasn’t good. They were really good players, but they quickly understood that Chelsea weren’t going to sign all of them – maybe they’d sign a couple and send them on loan.

They weren’t going to play for Chelsea, though – I was the guy they wanted. Chelsea wanted them to keep me company – they were guys I’d played with in Nigeria’s under 20s, we grew up together. I’m still friends with them, too. Chinedu Obasi played in Germany after that, but the other two, Emmanuel Sarki and Ezekiel Bala, didn’t really make it.

When I turned 18, I played a game for Lyn, Manchester United heard about it and sent their representative to Norway. They met me with a pre-contract, for about £1.5m or something. They came, bamboozled me into a room with the managers of Lyn, with none of my agents there, no representative, no phone call to any of my family, nothing. It was just me, a kid, sitting there and signing a contract. Looking back, that wasn’t right. There should be advice from somebody; it’s unusual for it to happen like that.

Everything was done on the same day, in about an hour, or an hour and a half. As soon as I signed the contract, a whole press conference had already been arranged to announce that I’d joined Manchester United.

When we’d finished training that day, I’d told my three Nigerian team-mates, the ones Chelsea had sent there to be with me: “You guys can go home without me.” I didn’t tell them what was happening. They were sitting at home, waiting for me to get home, then they turned on the TV and saw me in this press conference with a Manchester United shirt on! They tried to call me, but my phone wasn’t there; it had already been taken away from me. In some of the pictures, you can see from my face what I was thinking while I was wearing that Manchester United shirt in the press conference. I was sitting there thinking to myself, ‘What have you done?’

Straight away, I knew exactly what I’d done – I had made a massive mistake, although I didn’t know it was going to be as huge as it was and that it was going to take almost two years to get sorted. When Chelsea saw exactly what had happened, they were furious. They’d sent me to Norway, they were looking after me, they said: “No, we’re not letting you go.” They also sent their agent to Oslo, and it became a war.

I was taken to a hotel by Lyn and the people from Manchester United, so that nobody knew where I was, and so that Chelsea wouldn’t find out. But Chelsea and my agent found out where I was – in secret, my agent came and smuggled me on to the next flight in the morning. We went to London and Chelsea put me up in a nice apartment close to the stadium. I ended up staying there for about a year, as FIFA tried to get my situation resolved. They couldn’t. The English FA got involved, too.

It was very flattering that both clubs wanted me – knowing that two of the biggest clubs in the world were fighting over me only elevated my stature as a player. But by that point, I wanted to play football and it became frustrating. Every day I woke up and stared at the ceiling. I wasn’t able to go anywhere, I couldn’t even train, I couldn’t play for anybody, FIFA said I couldn’t go near any football club. Nobody was allowed to see me from any club; I was alone. It was a horrible situation – your parents calling you, and other family members, crying down the phone. They wanted to see me play, and I was crying every day because I wanted to play football; it’s what I loved doing. In a way, I missed one or two years of my career sitting there, but it was from my own stupid mistake by signing that contract with Manchester United in Norway. I knew I’d made a mistake.

Jose Mourinho was the Chelsea boss by then, and during that time, I met him, even though I wasn’t allowed to. There were a lot of clandestine moves that happened so I could meet him – I was taken in a car, which drove me about two or three kilometres and dropped me off, then another car picked me up, took me another two or three kilometres and so on, until I got to the secret location where I met Mourinho. We had a great conversation over lunch and he told me how much he really wanted me to join the club. I knew I had to play for Chelsea.

Roman Abramovich was like, ‘There’s no way I’m letting this kid go, I want him at the club’, and they fought tooth and nail to make sure I joined Chelsea, but Manchester United were still not letting go. Eventually, when things still weren’t resolved, Sir Alex Ferguson said: “OK, I’ll have a meeting with the kid – give me 20 or 30 minutes with him and I’ll get it sorted.” It was just him and me in a room. My agent was outside, and before I went in, he told me: “Look, he’s going to try, and this meeting determines what happens, so if you come out of there and you’ve said yes to him, that’s a yes – but whatever he says, just nod your head and say no.” That’s exactly what I did.

I was sitting at the end of this long table, like the tables they had during COVID for social distancing. Sir Alex was saying to me: “Listen, what is it that Chelsea are offering you? Is it the money? Tell me, I will give you more. Everyone at the club wants you, Roy Keane, Scholesy, they’re all asking after you, because they need you, we need you at the club, I’m going to make you the best player.”

I’d listened to what my agent had told me beforehand, and I didn’t say much. I just said: “No, boss. I’m sorry, I just want to go to Chelsea.” It was difficult to say no to the greatest manager of all time, to sit there and say no to his face. Only a few players have ever said no to Alex Ferguson. I think Luis Figo might have been another one. But I wanted to go to Chelsea. Manchester United had won everything already. I wanted to go somewhere that I could create history.

I could see Fergie getting redder and redder – I thought ‘I’m going to get a hairdryer from him’. But there was no hairdryer. After 30 or 40 minutes, he realised he couldn’t convince me and got up, took his briefcase and left. About a week later, Manchester United got in touch with Chelsea to say: “OK, we understand the kid has made his point clear, he doesn’t want to come to United any more, but you have to pay.” It was something like £12m to Manchester United and £4m to Lyn.

In 2006, I made my debut for Chelsea. It was amazing, it was huge for me, although things didn’t pan out the way I wanted at first. On my first Premier League start at Reading, I got sent off for two stupid yellow cards. Back then, I was young and naive. I made mistakes, I’d be late for meetings. I had to learn. Mourinho had to put me in my place very quickly, with lots of punishments, lots of fines. He sent me to the academy for a couple of weeks or a month, then brought me back when I was ready to know I was in the big boys’ league. This was Chelsea Football Club, I wasn’t in Nigeria or at Lyn Oslo any more. I had to learn the culture of the football club – the likes of John Terry, Didier Drogba and Mourinho would let you know exactly where you were.

At the end of that season, I played in the very first FA Cup final at the new Wembley. Against Manchester United.

I had an amazing game. I went up against people like Paul Scholes and absolutely bossed the game. That day was special, because I played a part in the winning goal – I flicked it to Didier Drogba, he flicked it to Frank Lampard, Lamps gave it back and then Didier did what he did best, which was to score in the big games and win us trophies.

I wouldn’t say I rubbed it in Fergie’s face that day, but it was nice to get one over him! I could see it in his face, looking at me, thinking, ‘How did I let him go?’

A year later, though, Manchester United defeated us in the Champions League final in Moscow. I was on the bench and I was so disappointed that I didn’t start or even come on. I was sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my god, that would have been my first Champions League trophy. If I’d gone to Manchester United, I would have been a Champions League winner right now’. I felt that if I’d played in that game, the outcome might have been a bit different.

But I used that disappointment to fuel me when we reached the final again in 2012, against Bayern Munich. During those years, I never gave up. As a team, we never gave up; we knew we could still win the Champions League. When we got to the final in 2012, that was the last chance for the likes of JT, Lamps, Petr Cech and Drogba. They were all going to leave the club soon, so it was our last chance to give them, and give Roman Abramovich, that trophy. It had become an obsession for us.

I remember the team meeting the night before that final. All of the players received a video from a family member with words of encouragement. Great credit to the club that they did that – to have gone around the world, looked for our family members and got them to record a video. It was just so special. Roberto Di Matteo did an amazing job. We came out of that meeting thinking, ‘There is no way we’re losing tomorrow’. That game was the biggest stage of my life – I thought ‘I don’t know when I’ll be playing in a Champions League final again’. It was my best game inChelsea colours – I had an amazing game. Up until Didier Drogba scored our equaliser, then later scored the winning penalty, I think I was going to win our man of the match. It was down to how much I wanted it, how much we all wanted it. We were the first London team to win the Champions League. In the end, I played 372 games for Chelsea, and my relationship with the fans is still special. I wasn’t the guy who set the world on fire in terms of creating chances and scoring goals because of the way my position was played back then. In those days, a holding midfielder didn’t go anywhere – he was always there, making sure he protected the back four. We couldn’t run past the halfway line – Mourinho would be on the touchline, saying: “Where are you going?!” Now you see Rodri and Ryan Gravenberch bombing forward – Rodri winning the Ballon d’Or showed how the position has evolved.

Last year, I bumped into Sir Alex at the Champions League final and we had a nice chat. I said hello to him and he said: “Oh, there he is, the one that got away!” He remembered everything, but said: “I’m not upset with you any more, it’s in the past.” I asked: “Have you forgiven me, boss?” He said yes, even though we know Fergie never forgives! I wanted to go to Chelsea to be part of history, and I was. We built our own dynasty, our own history. Back when I was a teenager, I had to make a decision between two huge clubs and it wasn’t an easy one. I chose Chelsea. I don’t have any regrets about it at all.

Mikel was speaking to FFT in association with streaming platform DAZN

Crystal Palace’s run to the 1990 FA Cup final remains one of the most memorable chapters in the club’s history.

Former Eagles midfielder Alan Pardew was right in the thick of it, with his extra-time winner against Liverpool in a classic semi-final encounter at Villa Park settling the tie and booking the club’s place at the Wembley showpiece.

Remarkably, the 4-3 victory came just months after the Reds had humbled Palace 9-0 at Anfield.

Pardew on Palace’s FA Cup run

For Pardew, the contrast between these two matches perfectly captured the character of this Palace side, who refused to dwell on that season’s heavy defeat.

“I played in that not-so-iconic 9-0 league defeat against Liverpool a few months earlier,” Pardew recalls to FourFourTwo. The scale and manner of this defeat and subsequent low point would eventually provide the narrative behind one of the greatest moments of his career.

“But I suppose that’s what made the cup win so remarkable,” he adds. “Humiliation one moment, sheer elation the next.”

Indeed it was the response of the group to such a thrashing that defined Palace as a team that season.

“It was testimony to the resilience we had within the group,” he continues, before turning to the part he played in the victory, specifically his 109th-minute winner.

“That goal shot me into the spotlight for probably the first time in my career,” he recalls. “Suddenly, every newspaper, radio station and TV channel wanted to talk to me.”

This exposure was something new for Pardew and his team-mates, not least because of the way that football culture was beginning to move into the mainstream of popular culture, following the dark days of the 1980s.

“I think the two semi-finals that season were the first live on television back-to-back,” he says, before recalling how close the Eagles were to meeting another unfacied side under the Twin Towers.

"I remember us watching the other one afterwards praying that Oldham could beat Manchester United.

“They almost did and it was so nearly a Palace v Oldham Cup final which would have been a bit weird.”

When Thomas Hitzlsperger grew up in Bavaria in the 1980s, football was everywhere and there was little discussion of sexuality.

It was only after he had left his hometown and embarked on his career that he began to understand how his own sexuality fit into the world around him.

Hitzlsperger moved to Aston Villa was an 18-year-old in 2000 and initially found that his experience of moving to England as a German was more about Second World War stereotypes, with his later reflections leading him to consider the tragic story of Justin Fashanu.

Hitzlesperger on moving from Bavaria to Villa

“Growing up in the small community of Forstinning in Bavaria, I wouldn’t say homosexuality was abnormal, but in the 1980s, there was no exposure to it,” he tells FourFourTwo. “It wasn’t something that was talked about and the topic was taboo, so it wasn’t something that was on my mind back then.

“I’m Thomas, the youngest child of Ludwig and Anneliese Hitzlsperger. I have five brothers and a sister. As you can imagine, ours was a very busy household, with nine family members and extended relations as well, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I experienced a sense of community from early on. It was about family, farm life and good values.

“My parents were very supportive and it was a wonderful childhood growing up on the farm. Without the support of my family, I wouldn’t have made it in football. My parents took me to training twice a week in the beginning, then more later on.”

The young Hitzlsperger soon got his big opportunity, with his determination to succeed fueled by the footballing culture within his own family.

“I started playing for Bayern Munich at the age of seven and the dream was immediately to become a professional footballer. When you work hard in life, the success will be there if you keep pushing. My father played football before he had to quit due to injury and my five older brothers all loved the game. They always had a ball at their feet and still remain passionate about football now.

“After coming home from training with the team, I’d usually have at least one brother to kick the ball around with. As I moved into my teenage years, it was all about football – there was nothing that stopped me or distracted my focus.”

The question of his sexuality would only emerge later. “Back then, Bavaria was not the only place on Earth that was conservative,” he adds. “Only later, when it became apparent to me that I was gay, I thought ‘OK, how do I deal with this, because people around me have just not been exposed to it?’”

“In 2000, as an 18-year-old, I left my family in Germany and moved to the UK. I’d been released by Bayern Munich and wanted a new situation. I spent five years in Birmingham with Aston Villa, and homophobia wasn’t something that crossed my mind there. It wasn’t a debate I had with people and I didn’t observe anything where I thought ‘This is so terrible’.

“Later, that started for me when I left Stuttgart in 2010 and was in Rome playing for Lazio. In my own life, it was so apparent I was gay that I started looking around and observing my environment. But at Aston Villa, it was more about the stereotype of being a German in England and the silly war rhetoric. Being confronted with stereotypes, that started the thinking process for me.

“A decade before I arrived in the UK, Justin Fashanu became the first professional footballer to come out. I was only eight years old at the time, so I didn’t have any awareness of it back then, but later on in my life, I picked up the story. His tale was very tragic and one can only imagine the pain he had to go through – it was awful that he felt he had to reveal he was gay, because he thought the media were about to out him. It all ended so tragically, with him taking his own life.”

Football v Homophobia is a year-round initiative tackling anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, building inclusive communities at all levels of the game around the world. For more info and support, visit footballvhomophobia.com

For Jonjo Shelvey, Steven Gerrard was more than just a Liverpool and England legend. He was the player he had grown up watching and dreamt of emulating.

By the time Shelvey made his senior debut for Charlton in 2008, Gerrard was a Champions League winners, a two-time FA Cup victor and had won 65 caps for his country.

Just two years later, Shelvey would not only be sharing a dressing room with the Reds icon, but living next door to him.

Shelvey on Gerrard

Gerrard’s approachability and down-to-earth nature meant the pair soon became close, with Shelvey also admitting that their proximity had one particularly close detail.

"I grew up watching a DVD about his career, so I knew everything about him,” Shevley tells FourFourTwo. “When I was a kid, I’d watch this DVD the night before my games to inspire me. I wanted to be him, so to play with him was amazing.”

The pair would play together 36 times for Liverpool before Shelvey left the club in 2013, at which time Gerrard was well-established as one of the club’s greatest modern players.

Even after their shared time at Anfield, Shelvey was able to appreciate playing against his former idol.

“Later in my career I enjoyed playing against him as well, as it was the ultimate test,” he continues.

For Shelvey, what really separated Gerrard from his peers was the midfielder’s completeness of his game.

“He was the best and had everything: defensively, shooting and passing,” Shelvey adds.

And while playing alongside Gerrard fulfilled a childhood dream for Shelvey, their relationship extended beyond the training ground.

“When I was at Liverpool, I lived next door to him as well, and from my bathroom you could actually see into his living room, so I spent a lot of time on the toilet! [Laughs]

“He’d give me a lift into training, he was such a normal person, easy to talk to, and anything you needed he’d help you with. I can’t speak highly enough about him."

This summer's World Cup produced its usual share of memorable moments, stunning goals and breakout players.

And as is usually the case, the end of the tournament brought about a transfer market frenzy as clubs across the globe fought to bring in the tournament's best performers.

From a teenage £86million sensation to a World Cup-winning midfielder, via a cult hero 40year-old goalkeeper, plenty of players are settling into a new start. FourFourTwo takes a look at those hoping to make a success out of their big moves...

Ayyoub Bouaddi - Manchester City, £86m

Bouaddi was Morocco's breakout star this summer, but he really didn't need to become a footballer. Had the 18-year-old been born with no athletic skills whatsoever, he'd have been a huge success in some other field.

Born in northern France to Moroccan migrants, Bouaddi showed enormous academic promise from an early age, becoming fluent in English and passing all his school exams a year early. By that stage, however, he was already training with Lille's academy – the club fought off interest from bigger clubs thanks to their track record of developing talents including Carlos Baleba and Leny Yoro.

Yet even after signing professional terms at 15, Bouaddi continued to show a thirst for knowledge. He won a public speaking competition for young players, delivering a speech on the subject ‘Are results more important than the manner they're delivered?' in front of first lady Brigitte Macron at the Elysee Palace.

“On the bus, while everyone was watching YouTube videos or listening to music, he'd play chess for one or two hours,” Lille's former head of academy recruitment Mathieu Frison has since said. “In the evening, when all the others played FIFA or were on their phones, he studied mathematics, physics, science. His parents didn't need to push him to do it – he wanted to learn.”

Just like at school, Bouaddi the footballer was fast-tracked, making his senior debut in a Conference League game against Faroese outfit KI, three days after his 16th birthday. In doing so, he became the youngest ever player in a UEFA men's club competition.

On his 17th birthday, Bouaddi played the full 90 minutes as Lille beat Real Madrid 1-0 in the Champions League. He completed 43 of 44 passes and was given a standing ovation at full-time. “I was almost pinching myself,” he smiled afterwards. “I couldn't believe it.”

Yet his arrival on the global stage came during this summer's World Cup. Bouaddi made only his fourth Morocco appearance in their tournament opener against Brazil – receiving FIFA permission to represent the country in May, after previous appearances for France's youth teams – but earned widespread praise for his composure, strength and close control at the base of midfield. Against the Selecao, the 18-year-old completed more than 90 per cent of his passes, and he was a mainstay in the Atlas Lions' run to the quarter-finals.

Bouaddi's performances at the World Cup played a major part in Manchester City's decision to sign him in an £86m deal this summer. The youngster now faces the biggest task of his career: helping his new club thrive without 2024 Ballon d'Or winner Rodri. Just to make life harder, he'll do that while remotely studying for a mathematics degree. You'd be foolish to bet against him succeeding in either endeavour.

Djed Spence - Inter, £26m

It has been a busy summer for England's World Cup stars, with Elliot Anderson, Morgan Rogers and Anthony Gordon among those moving clubs.

It might be argued, though, that no player put himself in the shop window better than Spence, who played an ever more impressive role in England's run to the semis.

That convinced Inter to pay Spurs around £26m for a player who had mixed fortunes in north London. He's also been joined by fellow Englishmen Curtis Jones and John Stones at his new club – the latter probably panicked the Nerazzurri by pretending he had a bad shoulder during his medical…

Jonathan Dave - Atletico Madrid, loan

A World Cup held partially in his homeland of Canada offered David a chance to let off some steam following a frustrating maiden season at Juventus.

The striker moved to Turin with high expectations, having notched 109 goals in 232 appearances for Lille, and even scored on his Serie A debut against Parma. Sixteen goalless league games followed.

A treble in Canada's 6-0 World Cup thrashing of Qatar reminded everyone of his talent – no player had scored a World Cup hat-trick on home soil since Geoff Hurst in 1966. Impressed, Atletico Madrid offered him a shot at redemption, albeit on a season-long loan.

Rodri - Barcelona, £65m

If there were any doubts whether Rodri should still be considered the greatest midfielder on Earth going into the World Cup, he'd silenced them by the end of the tournament.

Spain's captain, shirt always tucked in, led his team to a first World Cup since 2010, while also scooping the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player. The latter was fully deserved, and the numbers prove it.

He completed an average of 94 passes per 90 minutes, with a whopping 93 per cent finding a team-mate. The latter stat hit 95 per cent in the final victory against Argentina, after he'd run the show in the semi-final with France – Les Bleus had looked unbeatable up to that point, but suddenly had the rather sizeable issue that they couldn't get hold of the ball at all, let alone move it to Kylian Mbappe & Co up top.

Rodri remains capable of controlling any event he's involved in – even trophy presentations, having subtly ushered Donald Trump out of the way before lifting the World Cup, seemingly keen to avoid the US president being in the middle of all the photos, as he had been for Chelsea's celebrations at the Club World Cup final 12 months earlier.

Rodri led the World Cup for passes completed in the final third (204) and line-breaking passes (122), but it wasn't just his ability to dictate play that stood out – he topped the standings for tackles (26) and distance covered (96km), too.

He was as devastatingly effective without the ball as he was with it.

None of that came as any surprise to Premier League fans, who'd long witnessed the midfielder's elegance and destructive qualities. But they'll witness it no more after his seven seasons at Manchester City ended.

A return to La Liga had looked on the cards for some time – he'd been wanted by Real Madrid, before one last directive from Pep Guardiola reportedly saw him choose Barcelona instead, having been advised that their style of play would suit him much better.

Either way, Spain manager Luis de la Fuente is just thrilled to have the 30-year-old playing back home. “I'm delighted that these great footballers are in La Liga, because it makes the league even greater,” he beamed following Rodri's unveiling. “It truly means that the best players in the world, who are our footballers, are competing here in Spanish clubs.”

The World Cup winner walked into a champion team ready-made to make the most of his skillset, with a clutch of talented players – from Pedri and Gavi, to Marc Bernal and even Lamine Yamal – certain to benefit from his leadership. If ever there was a fitting successor to Sergio Busquets, it's Rodri.

Ferran Torres - PSG, £43m

There's no better way to force yourself into the shop window than scoring the winning goal in a World Cup final, so it's no wonder Torres was snapped up by PSG after his heroics.

After clinching the trophy, a switch to France followed, having hinted at being open to a move away from Barcelona in interviews after the tournament. His 21 goals bettered Robert Lewandowski last season – the Pole's summer exit seemed to leave the way clear for Torres, but he had just one year left on his deal and didn't get the new contract he'd hoped for, with Barça still trying to balance their various financial restrictions.

Yan Diomande - Real Madrid, £120m

Two years ago, Diomande was in Leganes' B team after a trial at Rangers didn't lead to a deal.

It didn't take long, though, for the winger to progress to the club's first team, earning a move to RB Leipzig that totally changed his trajectory. In Germany, he won plaudits for jaw-dropping dribbling and creative output, finishing last season with 23 goal involvements, and went on to start every game for Ivory Coast at the World Cup. Those displays persuaded Real Madrid he was worth a hefty fee.

His idols? “Cristiano Ronaldo and R9,” Diomande said ahead of the World Cup. “But also Mbappe and Vini Jr.” It's almost as if he knew.

Bradley Barcola - Liverpool, £123m

Barcola waved au revoir to PSG this summer with two Champions League winners' medals, three Ligue 1 titles and the slightly strange feeling that he's never quite gotten to be the main character in his own story.

He certainly seemed destined for superstardom from the very beginning. A product of Lyon's academy, Barcola made his senior debut as a 19-year-old in a November 2021 Europa League game. But his real breakthrough arrived during the following campaign, when his combination of scorching speed and direct running made him one of French football's most feared young attackers.

PSG were impressed enough to spend around £39m on him in August 2023 – while his first season was promising rather than spectacular, he became a serious attacking force in 2024-25, scoring 21 times and assisting 21 more. Among them, Barcola bagged a brace as PSG beat Reims to win the Coupe de France, then laid on Senny Mayulu's goal as the Parisians thrashed Inter 5-0 to clinch their first ever Champions League title seven days later.

Last season brought Barcola another European crown, but he didn't start a game in the Champions League after the last 16, and there was always a nagging sense that he was more of a supporting actor. For all his productivity, Barcola was often the victim of PSG's extraordinary attacking riches, with Ousmane Dembele, Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia favoured by manager Luis Enrique in the biggest matches. While Barcola brought raw athleticism, the other trio appeared to offer a higher technical skillset.

Despite that, Barcola did start four times for France at this summer's World Cup – after coming off the bench to score in the opener against Senegal, he played the full 90 minutes when he netted against Sweden in the last 32, also making the starting XI against Paraguay in the last 16, then Spain in the semis. Like Dembele, he scored after coming on as a half-time sub in the chaotic third-place play-off against England, when France were hopeless in the first half but nearly recovered from 4-0 down after the interval.

Yet there's still a feeling that he can achieve even more, particularly after Liverpool forked out £123m for him – just £2m short of the club-record fee they finally paid after Alexander Isak's transfer debacle a year ago.

Brought in to add dynamism to the left of Andoni Iraola's attack, the winger will aim to provide the speed, movement and goals that the departed Mo Salah was once famed for on the opposite flank. With the Egyptian having left for Trabzonspor, an opening has emerged for a new leading man in the Anfield frontline – if Bradley Barcola is ever going to become the main character, the time needs to be now.

Zion Suzuki - Aston Villa, £30m

Filling the gloves of World Cup winner Emi Martinez would be a tough task for any goalkeeper, let alone a 24-year-old who'd never played in England before. It helps, then, that Suzuki is scared of absolutely nothing.

The Japan international started all four of his nation's fixtures at his debut World Cup this summer and has been labelled a “tiger” by Dennis Rudel, his former keeping coach at Belgian side Sint-Truiden.

A move to PSG collapsed prior to his summer switch to Villa Park – he'd spent the past two years at Parma. “He was immediately one of the top keepers in Serie A,” Rudel said. “I don't see any weaknesses.”

Johan Manzambi - Aston Villa, £51m

Villa also signed two more young World Cup stars – the last came on deadline day when £47m got them Ibrahim Mbaye from PSG.

Two months earlier, the Senegal winger had become the youngest African World Cup goalscorer ever, at 18 years and 143 days old.

Villa spent even more to recruit Manzambi from Europa League final opponents Freiburg – aged 20, the Swiss registered three goals and two assists in four World Cup games, and may have done more had he not then got injured. The attack-minded midfielder's speed, strength and potential make the £51m fee a steal, especially with Newcastle chasing their own move.

Vozinha - Colo-Colo, Free

The transfer of a 40-year-old keeper to a South American club would barely raise an eyebrow, 99 times out of 100. But when Cape Verde shot-stopper Vozinha joined Colo-Colo, thousands of fans excitedly greeted him at the airport, then his shirt was delivered by a parachutist during an elaborate unveiling at the club's stadium.

It marked the latest chapter in the heart-warming but entirely unexpected story of the man officially named Josimar Jose Evora Dias. Born during the 1986 World Cup, Cape Verdean authorities wouldn't let his dad call him Valdano, after the Argentine striker who'd just scored twice against South Korea, so instead he was named after Brazilian full-back Josimar, who netted against Northern Ireland and Poland.

As a child, the youngster was jokingly nicknamed Vozinha (‘Little Granny') by other kids, because of the key role his grandparents played in raising him – his father was away in the military by that point, and his mother was often working to provide for the family.

After starting his club career in his native land, he had spells in Angola, Moldova, Cyprus and Slovakia, before eventually arriving at Chaves in 2024, for a second stint in Portugal. Already 38 and competing in the second tier, his career seemed to be winding down to an unremarkable end before Cape Verde qualified for the World Cup for the first time in their history.

The opening game against eventual winners Spain changed everything, with a string of saves that ensured a surprise 0-0 draw. “I worked hard all my life for this moment, for this dream,” he told reporters after the final whistle. “Now the dream has come true.”

The dream wasn't over, either. More saves bagged further draws against Uruguay and Saudi Arabia, as Cape Verde finished second in their group, then took Argentina to extra-time in the last 32 – they didn't lose a single game in 90 minutes. Having begun the tournament with fewer than 50,000 Instagram followers, that number has since grown to more than 29 million.

He did it all despite not knowing where he'd be playing this season, with his contract expiring at Chaves. By August, he'd joined the biggest club in Chile – Colo-Colo have previously won the Copa Libertadores and 34 domestic titles.

“Despite playing in smaller leagues for clubs that weren't exactly giants, deep down I always told myself I was a ‘big club' player,” the 94-cap keeper said after the move. “When Colo-Colo came calling, there was no doubt.”

The 20,000 people inside the stadium for his unveiling were equally delighted. Few things can transform a person's life quite like the World Cup.

Sidny Lopes Cabral - Trabzonspor, £8m

In 2022, Vozinha's Cape Verde team-mate was playing in the German fifth tier for Rot-Weiss Erfurt – earning around £850 a week, the full-back used bin bags as curtains and was regularly in tears due to homesickness.

This summer, he was curling home the best goal of the World Cup against Argentina. He'd joined Jose Mourinho's Benfica in January – but days before the World Cup, Trabzonspor agreed a fee to sign him. By the time he arrived for his debut, he'd been joined by Mo Salah, although things didn't start brilliantly – Lopes Cabral was sent off as they lost 4-0 at Ferencvaros in a Europa League qualifier.

Kerim Alajbegovic - Juventus, £28m

The Bosnian ran Lopes Cabral close in the competition for the World Cup's best goal – and has since bizarrely been purchased by not one, but two clubs.

At 18 years and 276 days old, he became the eighth-youngest scorer in the tournament's history when he smashed home from outside the box against Qatar, having just had a breakout season at Red Bull Salzburg, scoring nine goals in 28 league appearances.

The Bayer Leverkusen youth product returned to the German side in July via a £7m buyback clause. Just 32 days later, Juventus snapped him up for £28m, giving Leverkusen a handy profit.

Manchester City may have been handed an unexpected 'get out of jail free card' regarding potential expulsion from the top flight, according to reports citing senior Premier League executives.

Rival club chiefs have reportedly admitted they would be 'staggered' if a required 15-club majority voted to kick the club out of the Premier League on the back of Man City's guilty verdict.

Clubs apparently acknowledge that removing Man City would inflict significant damage on global television rights and central revenues, which almost all Premier League member clubs rely heavily on.

Manchester City's fate could lie in the hands of their rivals

The Premier League operates as a private company jointly owned by its 20 member clubs, with each team holding one equal vote as a shareholder.

For standard rule changes, passing a motion requires a two-thirds majority of 14 clubs. However, major sanctions, such as expelling a team, requires a higher three-quarters supermajority threshold of 15 clubs to all vote the same.

Despite the artificially inflated commercial revenues Man City posted between 2009 and 2018, the club are still believed to be one of the league leaders when it comes to global commercial appeal and international broadcast valuations. Therefore, rival boardrooms are likely to take a dim view of expelling the Etihad club from the top flight.

In essence, voting for City's expulsion would in many cases hit clubs in their own pocket.

Shareholder votes are triggered whenever the league introduces policy changes, alters financial sustainability frameworks, or addresses major operational decisions.

Clubs voted 14 - 6, meeting the minimum threshold required, to replace the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) with UEFA-aligned Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) spending caps based on revenue.

Previous shareholder meetings saw tightly contested votes over the decision to retain VAR and the phased transition from three to five substitutions.

Amendments governing sponsorship deals with owner-linked entities - known as Associated Party Transactions (APT) - meanwhile, required a number of voting rounds to establish fair market value guidelines.

As of 7pm on Thursday, October 1 Man City have submitted their appeal against the independent commission's findings. All parties must now await the binding verdict from an independent appeals panel, which will determine whether the original verdict will be upheld, amended, or overturned.

From there, if the ruling is upheld, it is expected Manchester City will be punished severely with the possibility of expulsion from the Premier League not off the table. Implementing it, however, is a different matter as club executives are likely to be reluctant to undermine the commercial advantages the division currently enjoys.

Following the historic guilty verdict delivered against Manchester City, the Chair of the IFR, David Kogan, has issued a strong statement.

An independent commission recently found Manchester City guilty of 114 charges of breaching Premier League financial regulations between 2009 and 2018, with the club accused of disguised owner funding, inaccurate financial reporting, and off-the-books managerial payments.

Speaking in the wake of the ruling, Kogan made it clear that the English football regulatory body is keeping a close eye on the outcome.

Independent Football Regulator comments on Manchester City guilt

“The independent commission’s decision raises serious issues,” Kogan said. “The IFR has powers to assess the suitability of owners, directors and executives and we will use these powers where appropriate, in the interests of protecting the sustainability, honesty and integrity of English football where there is clear evidence of wrongdoing by individuals.”

Kogan noted that while the IFR is paying close attention to the Premier League’s findings, it will wait for all legal channels and expected appeals to conclude before deciding on any regulatory action.

"As the proceedings remain ongoing between Manchester City and the Premier League we will await further developments. We hope it can be resolved quickly for the sake of fans. For now, we have no further comment," Kogan finished.

Established under the Football Governance Act, the Independent Football Regulator is a statutory body created to oversee the top five divisions of English men's professional football.

Operating independently of both the Premier League and the Football Association, its primary function is to ensure of the financial sustainability of clubs and prevent governance issues.

The IFR has the power to test the fitness of owners and directors, with the authority to disqualify individuals involved in the running of clubs, as well as issue financial penalties, or compel changes in ownership.

Manchester City maintain their innocence and are believed to be preparing an appeal, however, the IFR statement reflects the level of accountability in English football governance. Beyond whatever sporting penalties the Premier League may impose upon City, the IFR’s authority to assess and rule over individual executives means there is every possibility that City's key decision-makers could face regulatory consequences once the legal process officially concludes.

The Republic of Ireland’s 3-0 victory over Israel in the UEFA Nations League will be remembered not for the football on the pitch, but as one of the most politically charged and contentious international fixtures in recent memory.

Played at a neutral venue in Hungary following UEFA safety mandates surrounding the conflict in Gaza, the match took place amidst severe backlash across the Republic of Ireland.

Public outrage in Ireland was overwhelming, with politicians, civil society groups, and supporters calling on the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) to forfeit the game entirely in protest.

Ireland and Israel clash in neutral venue fixture

The political pressure also impacted the Irish camp as on the eve of the match, goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu chose to withdraw from the squad, issuing a statement based on his moral belief that "the killing of innocent people is wrong."

Bazunu’s stance triggered an emergency squad meeting, forcing the team to cancel scheduled media duties and training.

According to The Irish Times, the debate turned toxic, with Bazunu reportedly facing verbal abuse from one angry teammate before the squad eventually voted in favour of playing. Manager Heimir Hallgrimsson admitted it was "one of the most challenging weeks" of his managerial career.

When matchday arrived, the hostility between the two sides was evident well before kick-off. The Irish squad collectively refused to participate in the pre-match handshakes with the Israeli team. As the Israeli national anthem played, Hallgrimsson turned his back in a deliberate gesture of protest, while several Irish players stood with their heads bowed.

Both teams wore black armbands, but the Irish side used the gesture as a message of opposition. After Troy Parrott and Adam Idah handed Ireland an early two-goal cushion, Jack Moylan added a third before executing a pointed celebration, removing his black armband and kissing it. Many have perceived this gesture to have been made in solidarity with victims in Gaza.

The toxic atmosphere escalated further off the ball following allegations of racist abuse directed at Irish forward Adam Idah. Midfielder Jayson Molumby alerted match officials during the first half after hearing what he believed to be monkey chants originating from a section of Israeli supporters.

However, because Molumby asked officials to "listen" rather than explicitly using the word "racism," UEFA’s anti-racism protocol was not formally triggered on the pitch. UEFA subsequently confirmed it will not open an official investigation due to the procedural flaw, though the FAI is currently examining match footage with a view to submitting independent evidence to European football's governing body. Irish defender Jake O'Brien was also seen angrily confronting Israeli players over the supporters' behaviour.

The hostility continued after the final whistle, with Israel captain Manor Solomon criticising the Irish players, insinuating they had levelled unpleasant insults at the Israeli players during the 90 minutes.

"If I say what I really think of them, I'd likely be suspended," Solomon told reporters. "Obviously they hate us. We don't like them either. They can play all their tricks. We have a country ten times better than theirs, stronger, an amazing country with amazing people. We are proud of our state and our soldiers."

Israel head coach Ran Ben Shimon admitted his side crumbled under the emotional weight of the occasion. UEFA now faces a major governance challenge as the two nations prepare to meet again behind closed doors in Serbia.

Roberto Mancini claims the club 'are not guilty' and insists that allegations regarding a secondary contract during his tenure are 'not his problem.'

Mancini, currently in his second spell as manager of the Italian national team, addressed the media ahead of Italy’s Nations League fixture against Turkey. When asked about the reported findings and his personal involvement in the long-running case, the 61-year-old offered a defence of his former employers.

"I don't think they [Manchester City] were found guilty," Mancini said. "It's not an issue that concerns me. It's nothing new because this has been discussed for the last four or five years."

Roberto Mancini: 'It's not my concern, it's Manchester City's'

Mancini’s comments come directly after reporting last week revealing that an independent commission had reached a verdict in the landmark case.

The Premier League charged Manchester City in February 2023 following a five-year investigation. The 115 alleged breaches, spanning a nine-year period between 2009 and 2018, centred on accusations that the club failed to provide accurate financial information, disguised owner funding as commercial sponsorship income, breached Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) as well as UEFA Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, and failed to cooperate with the league's inquiry.

"Manchester City has not been found guilty, and on the double contract it isn't my concern. It's their issue, not mine," Mancini added.

The Italian is implicated in one of the primary allegations. Appointed in December 2009, the point at which the alleged financial discrepancies began, the Italian spent four years in the Etihad Stadium dugout, famously guiding the club to their first Premier League title in 2012.

However, investigation findings allege that City operated an off-the-books payment structure to supplement his managerial wage.

While officially earning £1.45 million per season from Manchester City, Mancini reportedly signed a secondary contract with Abu Dhabi-based club Al Jazira, which is also controlled by Man City owner Sheikh Mansour. The arrangement allegedly paid the Italian coach an additional £1.7m (€2.03m) annually for a minimum of four days of consultancy work per year. The Premier League argued that this structure was used to conceal full manager remuneration, artificially lower City's official operating costs, and circumvent financial regulations.

Despite the reporting surrounding the guilty verdict on 114 counts, Manchester City have maintained their innocence throughout the proceedings and are widely expected to launch an appeal once formal sanctions are determined.

In the wake of the news, Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak issued an open letter to supporters, adopting a defiant stance regarding the ongoing legal battle.

"The Premier League process still has a long way to run, and our confidence and intent in proving the Club's innocence is just as strong as when this began," Al Mubarak wrote. "While some people have been quick to reach their own conclusions, and there is so much noise swirling around us, nothing has changed. There remain many who want to undermine the momentum of our Club. We will not give them that opportunity."

With potential penalties ranging from substantial financial fines and points deductions to potential expulsion from the top flight, the eventual resolution of the case will send shockwaves through world football. For Mancini, whose managerial legacy remains tied to City's breakthrough era, the ongoing battle is one he prefers to view from afar.

The extended September-October international break has threatened to disrupt Michael Carrick’s Old Trafford squad, with news regarding club captain Bruno Fernandes initially setting off alarm bells on Sunday evening.

Manchester United playmaker Fernandes was a notable omission from Portugal’s lineup for their UEFA Nations League victory against Norway, sitting out the match entirely.

Given the midfielder’s durability and workload, any unexpected absence raised fears of a potential injury setback. However, reports from the Manchester Evening News have provided a sense of relief regarding the Man United skipper.

Manchester United suffer injury setback

According to the MEN, Fernandes has not been sent back to Carrington and remains embedded with the Portugal squad.

His decision to stay with his country suggests the issue which kept him sidelined in Oslo is minor, with the midfielder still in contention to feature in their remaining international fixtures before returning to Manchester.

Man United officials will continue to monitor his status closely, but the optimism surrounding his availability is a welcome sigh of relief for the club at this moment in time.

While the initial fears over Fernandes appears to have been allayed, Man United’s medical department has not escaped the international break entirely unscathed. While their talisman remains abroad, another important first-team figure has indeed seen his international campaign cut short and is heading back to Old Trafford prematurely.

Danish international Patrick Dorgu is reportedly returning to Manchester after picking up an injury during Denmark’s match against Wales on Sunday night. The versatile defender, who has established himself as an important component in Carrick's setup, suffered a setback during the contest which the Danes won 2-0.

Dorgu’s return poses a tactical headache for Carrick as his ability to cover multiple positions down the left flank has provided much-needed balance to the squad since his arrival. Losing him ahead of a demanding run of Premier League and European fixtures will be a stern test of Man United's squad depth.

United’s medical staff will now conduct thorough assessments at Carrington to determine the exact extent of Dorgu’s damage and whether he faces a spell on the sidelines. While Carrick will be relieved that Fernandes looks set to avoid a lengthy lay-off, he will be anxiously awaiting the results of Dorgu's scans as the domestic season prepares to resume.

For a generation of younger football fans, Chris Kamara is known as one of the country’s most beloved broadcasters from his time during Soccer Saturday’s Golden Age, when the show redefined the experience of consuming Saturday afternoon football.

But this, in effect, is the third phase in Kamara’s career, which began as a player for Portsmouth in the 1970s and after more than 600 appearances, continued in the dugout when he was given the job at Bradford City in November 1995.

By the end of that season, Kamara was able to guide the Bantams to promotion back to the second tier via the playoffs, the high point in his two-year stint in charge of the West Yorkshire side.

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Why Chris Kamara packed in coaching

“An amazing day and what a memory to give those fans,” Kamara recalls to FourFourTwo on Bradford’s play-off victory.

But just two years after this play-off success, Kamara would find himself at a career crossroads, having endured a difficult ten-week spell at Stoke City.

Ever since his promotion with the Bantams, the former Leeds United midfielder found himself increasingly in demand as a television pundit.

“It was during that season that I was on television a lot more, for interviews, punditry and all the rest of it,” he continues. “It was something I loved doing.”

This failed stint at Stoke would then act as a catalyst for his future media career.

“I later went to manage Stoke and I regret that,” he admits. “I’d been popular there as a player, but it didn’t work out as a manager.”

Kamara’s ease in front of the TV cameras and his infectious personality had seen him make a considerable impact on television, with next move coming after a conversation at home.

“Once I left in 1998, I had lots of offers to return to the game,” he continues.

“But my wife Anne said, ‘You’re loving the TV work and you’re good at it, why don’t you keep going?’”

This would prove to be sage advice, changing the course of Kamara’s career and handing the viewing public one of their most beloved characters.

Former Brentford and Brighton striker Neal Maupay has never been the type to shy away from a bit of football banter.

Among the Marseille forward’s greatest hits is his 2024 barb aimed at James Maddison, when the then-Brentford man mimicked the Tottenham playmaker’s darts celebration following his first-half goal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

The pair had no previous history, but the incident sparked a mini war of words between the pair following Spurs’ eventual 3-2 victory, and while Maupay insists there was no malice in it, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

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Maupay on his Maddison darts wind-up

Maupay insists that even his most memorable celebrations are not pre-meditated, with the player instead preferring to let the emotion of the game guide him.

“I don't usually plan celebrations because I like to react to my emotions,” he tells FourFourTwo. “I just go with the flow of the game and how I feel at the time.”

On this occasion in January 2024, it was Maddison who was caught in his crosshairs.

“That’s what happened during that game, because I have no problem with James Maddison,” he continues. The pair had faced off nine times before that fateful match, and there was no bad blood between them.

“When I faced him while he was at Leicester, we were always friendly with each other,” Maupay adds.

“But in this game, with the atmosphere and seeing the fans in the front row, I just wanted to do his celebration.”

Both players had their say immediately following the game, with Maddison telling TNT Sports that: “He probably hasn't scored enough goals in the last couple of years for his own celebration, so he probably had to copy mine!”, while Maupay used Instagram to remind the masses that he had ‘more goals and less relegations’ in his career.

But despite this, Maupay appears to carry no beef, even going as far as to say he would do it again.

“I actually haven't spoken to him about it since,” he says. “From what I heard, he wasn't too happy about it.

“From my point of view, I think it was a good celebration and if I had to do it again, I would.”

The interview with Neal was arranged by YRDS

Pep Guardiola’s arrival at Manchester City in the summer of 2016 heralded the beginning of the club’s most successful period in their history.

While the Catalan was instrumental in evolving City into the all-conquering behemoth they would become in the first half of the 2020s, he was able to inherit a star-packed squad, including one of the Premier League’s most prolific-ever strikers.

By 2016, Sergio Aguero had been in Manchester for five years and was instrumental in the club’s Premier League title victories in 2012 and 2014. And while this combination of an era-defining manager and world-class striker was a tantalising proposition, it did not come without challenges.

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Aguero on adapting to Guardiola

While Aguero would ultimately flourish under Guardiola, he initially faced a transitional period owing to what Guardiola demanded from his front-man when City were without the ball.

“Pep Guardiola arrived as manager in 2016, and at first that was a little complicated for me,” Aguero admits to FourFourTwo.

Guardiola’s interpretation of the forward’s role differed from what Aguero was used to at City under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini, with the former Barcelona boss introducing his trademark pressing game to the club.

“I wasn’t used to having to maintain the press he was looking for from a striker. But actually, it worked out very well,” he adds.

City would finish third in the table at the end of Guardiola’s first season in charge, but the title was duly delivered 12 months later, with Aguero as prolific as ever.

“Over time, we adapted and ended up helping each other,” he continues. “He demanded so much of me that, well, I scored a lot of goals with him, and won titles.

Aguero would spend five years at City under Guardiola, during which time the forward added three Premier League title, an FA Cup and four League Cups to his medal collection, scoring 124 goals in the process.

It’s a period of his career which Aguero, who left the club in 2021, looks back at fondly.

“The truth is, we ended up having a very nice history at the club together, so I only have words to thank him for everything he did to help me continue scoring goals and making history.

“For me, Pep is the best coach I ever had – he’s the best coach in the world.”

The Champions League has produced some extraordinary club sides since the competition was rebranded in 1992.

From all-conquering dynasties to one-season wonders, a real mix of teams have lifted the famous trophy over the past three-and-a-half decades.

But which team stands alone as the greatest? FourFourTwo have taken on the task of ranking the best sides of the modern era...

20. Porto 2004

During the past 30 seasons, no club from outside the current top five leagues has won the Champions League… except Porto in 2004.

The Portuguese side’s journey to glory remains the Champions League era’s greatest underdog story, bar none. Led by a suave, impudent former translator named Jose Mourinho (you may well have heard of him), the Primeira Liga minnows stunned the European elite by winning the Champions League, merely a year after defeating Celtic in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final in Seville.

The soon-to-be Special One arrived at the club halfway through the 2001-02 season, at the age of just 38, signing a two-and-a-half-year deal. By the time that contract expired, he had claimed every trophy available to him.

He did it by demanding complete and utter conformity to his vision and his values. Off the ball, his team would sit deep and soak pressure; in possession, they would counter-attack in ruthless fashion. But it was about so much more than just the tactics. Mourinho gave his players an unshakeable belief that they could triumph if they stuck together, as well as a complete lack of respect for the traditional big guns.

His side was perfectly balanced. In the centre of defence, Ricardo Carvalho formed a rock-solid partnership with captain Jorge Costa, who passed away tragically this August, at the age of just 53. The pair were shielded in midfield by the tireless Costinha, while Deco was the creative heartbeat, linking with the likes of Maniche and Pedro Mendes. In front of goal, South African ace Benni McCarthy provided the cutting edge.

Surprisingly, Porto’s pathway to glory actually appeared to get increasingly less taxing as the tournament went on. In the group stage, they took only one point from their first two games, losing at home to Real Madrid, but responded with wins over a handy Marseille side starring Didier Drogba to finish second.

Moving from their old Estadio das Antas home to the newly built Estadio do Dragao amid-season, they won 2-1 at home to Manchester United in their first European game at the venue, before a late Costinha goal decided the tie in the second leg at Old Trafford – cue the rain-soaked Mourinho’s iconic run down the touchline to celebrate. Lyon and Deportivo La Coruna were defeated to book a place in the final against Monaco in Gelsenkirchen, which they dominated 3-0 thanks to goals from Carlos Alberto, Deco and Dmitri Alenichev.

It launched Mourinho into the stratosphere and ensured Porto’s status as one of the finest cult teams in European history.

19. Inter 2010

Six years after triumphing with Porto, Jose Mourinho was at it again. Using Samuel Eto’o as an auxiliary right-back at times, Inter let opponents have the ball: Bayern Munich had 68 per cent possession in the final, but were still soundly beaten 2-0 thanks to a Diego Milito brace. Inter didn’t have a single Italian in their starting XI that night.

HIGHLIGHT The remarkable rearguard action in the semi-final second leg at Barcelona, having lost Thiago Motta to a red card during the first half.

18. Manchester United 2008

The Red Devils were less exciting than their 1999 vintage, scoring seven goals in as many knockout matches, although they did have Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez going forward, while Edwin van der Sar, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic helped to keep eight clean sheets. Then came John Terry’s slip in the shootout in Moscow…

HIGHLIGHT Paul Scholes’ stunning goal against Barcelona at Old Trafford – the only goal across two legs of that tense semi-final.

17. Juventus 1996

During the mid-90s, Marcello Lippi’s Juventus overtook Fabio Capello’s Milan as Italy’s most dominant team, and the ultimate proof was their Champions League triumph – even if victory in the final was on penalties over Ajax. It was a typically well-oiled Serie A machine with Didier Deschamps, Paulo Sousa and Antonio Conte in midfield.

STAR MAN Alessandro Del Piero was the key to a quarter-final win over Real Madrid, overturning a first-leg deficit.

16. Milan 2007

Some feared that Carlo Ancelotti’s side could run out of steam after Andriy Shevchenko was sold to Chelsea, but they became more efficient. After a 2-0 victory at Bayern Munich, they thrashed Manchester United 3-0 at San Siro in the semi-final, before Pippo Inzaghi (left) bagged a brace that secured revenge over Liverpool in the final in Athens.

STAR MAN Kaka took Manchester United apart in the semis, then bagged the Ballon d’Or that year.

15. Liverpool 2019

Were it not for some last-gasp heroics from Alisson Becker in the final minute of Liverpool’s last group game against Napoli, the kings of 2019 would not have made it through, but they grew stronger from there. Bayern Munich, Porto and Spurs were dispatched on the way to the trophy, after one distinctly more dramatic evening at Anfield…

HIGHLIGHT Defeated 3-0 in the first leg of the semi at Barcelona, Jurgen Klopp’s side won the second leg 4-0 – one of the most remarkable matches ever.

14. Barcelona 2006

Frank Rijkaard built his side around the genius of Ronaldinho, and the Brazilian led Barça to their first European success since 1992. Ronnie scored seven goals in the Champions League that term, while Lionel Messi started to emerge, too – Chelsea’s Asier del Horno was sent off for fouling him in the last 16.

HIGHLIGHT Arsenal led the final 1-0 despite Jens Lehmann’s red card, then sub Henrik Larsson provided late assists for Samuel Eto’o and unlikely scorer Juliano Belletti.

13. Bayern Munich 2001

Bayern were traumatised by defeat to Manchester United in 1999, but boss Ottmar Hitzfeld made his team even stronger. Bayern beat both previous winners home and away, overcoming the Red Devils in the last eight, then Real Madrid in the semis, aided by goals from Giovane Elber, before the most German thing possible – a victory on penalties in the final against Valencia.

STAR MAN World’s angriest man Oliver Kahn saved three times in the shootout.

12. Real Madrid 2022

Karim Benzema turned 34, Luka Modric was 36, but the old guard were able to navigate maybe the toughest ever run to the final – coming from two goals down to defeat PSG in the last 16, narrowly edging a quarter-final with Chelsea, rescuing the semi against Manchester City with two late goals, then beating Liverpool in Paris thanks to Thibaut Courtois.

STAR MAN Benzema won the Ballon d’Or after two hat-tricks, against PSG and Chelsea.

11. Milan 1994

The 1994 final at Athens’ Olympic Stadium was billed by some as a clash between an irresistible force and an immovable object.

Fabio Capello’s Milan were known for their defensive prowess, conceding just twice in 11 games leading up to the final, in the only season that featured Champions League semi-finals played over just one leg. After winning their group, they earned home advantage to beat Arsene Wenger’s Monaco 3-0.

Milan’s opponents – Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona, dubbed the ‘Dream Team’ thanks to their free-scoring flair – had been the best attacking team in the competition, hitting 26 goals.

The Catalan giants boasted Romario, Hristo Stoichkov, Ronald Koeman and Pep Guardiola among their ranks, thus were considered favourites, having also been kings of Europe in 1992, in the last campaign before the Champions League rebrand. “Milan are nothing out of this world,” declared a rather confident Cruyff prior to the final. “They base their game on defence, we base ours on attack.”

Milan had lost the previous year’s final to Marseille, increasing the pressure on them, while several key players would be missing this time. Marco van Basten was injured, with both Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta suspended.

Their best chance of triumphing, it had seemed, would be to shut up shop and try to take a tight showpiece all the way to a decisive penalty shootout.

Capello reshuffled his pack, moving Paolo Maldini to centre-back – with Marcel Desailly and Demetrio Albertini both sat in front of the defence, he felt his side could frustrate Barcelona.

What he may not have expected was an attacking masterclass, as his side hunted in packs, forcing Barcelona into errors before pouncing. Daniele Massaro found the net twice before the interval, with a Dejan Savicevic wonder goal and a fourth from Desailly leaving Cruyff’s previously confident side winded.

The victory would go down as one of the all-time great European displays – until this year, it was the biggest margin of victory in a Champions League final.

Maldini’s individual performance was particularly lauded, and even Cruyff had to admit that his entertainers had been well and truly beaten. “It was not that we played badly,” he sighed. “It was that we did not play at all.”

10. Ajax 1995

Like a television show that launched the careers of a number of A-list actors, Ajax’s all-conquering 1995 team almost doesn’t feel plausible, when you look at it with hindsight.

Featuring the homegrown talents of Edwin van der Sar, De Boer twins Frank and Ronald, Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids and 18-year-old Patrick Kluivert – plus Marc Overmars, Nwankwo Kanu, Jari Litmanen and Frank Rijkaard, back at the club after five years with Milan – Louis van Gaal’s side blew away the competition to secure the Champions League with an average age of just 23.

What’s more, they did it without losing a single game throughout the entire campaign. This was the first season in which the top clubs started in the group stage, rather than needing to play any knockout fixtures beforehand. In their opening group game, Ajax set their stall out by beating reigning champs Milan 2-0 in front of a crowd of 35,000 at their old Olympisch Stadium in Amsterdam.

A couple of months later, they beat the Rossoneri 2-0 once more, this time in Trieste, in a game that was moved following crowd trouble in Milan’s prior home game against Casino Salzburg.

Further home and away wins over AEK Athens ensured that Ajax topped the group, giving them a somewhat gentler last-eight tie against Croatians Hajduk Split, which they cruised through 3-0.

Bayern Munich looked a tougher test in the semis – drawing 0-0 in Germany though, Ajax triumphed 5-2 at home to reach their first final since 1973.

Again facing Milan in the final, many fancied the Rossoneri to hit back and defend their crown, but again they were flummoxed by Ajax’s fluid movement, high press and patient possession, with the Dutch outfit’s players weaned on Johan Cruyff’s Total Football philosophy.

Van Gaal set up with a 3-4-3, asking his midfield to recycle possession to tease openings in Fabio Capello’s rigid 4-4-2. Seedorf and Litmanen looked to receive in the half spaces, while Rijkaard – the wise old general at the base of midfield – pulled the strings.

They had to be patient – a 1-0 victory in Vienna came courtesy of a late swivel and finish from Kluivert, who remains the youngest scorer in a Champions League final at 18 years, 327 days.

Ajax reached the final again a year later, but many of the team soon got big transfers elsewhere. A stunning run to the semi-finals in 2019 aside, they’ve never come close to winning it since.

9. Bayern Munich 2013

Jupp Heynckes wasn’t the luckiest of coaches throughout his career – fired after winning the Champions League with Real Madrid in 1998, he departed after Bayern’s 2013 triumph too, with Pep Guardiola lined up to replace him. Heynckes’ Bayern side were terrific, with Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery causing mayhem on both wings – the former scored the winner in the final against compatriots Borussia Dortmund.

HIGHLIGHT Dismantling Barcelona 7-0 on aggregate in the semi-final.

8. Real Madrid 2002

At the start of the 2001-02 campaign, Zinedine Zidane arrived to join Raul, Roberto Carlos and Luis Figo – it was little wonder that Los Blancos then scored 27 goals in two group stages. Vicente del Bosque’s side possessed character too: coming from behind to beat Bayern Munich in the last eight, then winning at Barcelona in the semis.

HIGHLIGHT That Zizou volley against Bayer Leverkusen at Hampden Park – the greatest goal ever scored in a Champions League final.

7. Barcelona 2015

When Luis Suarez left Liverpool for Barça in 2014, MSN was born, and good luck to any defences attempting to stop them. Lionel Messi, Suarez and Neymar formed one of the best strike trios ever, netting 27 Champions League goals between them that season – Barcelona beat Juventus 3-1 in the final in Berlin, as boss Luis Enrique claimed the Treble.

HIGHLIGHT Messi scoring after putting Jerome Boateng on his backside, when Barcelona beat Bayern 3-0 in the semis.

6. Manchester United 1999

Football, bloody hell. Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United were thrilling, not only for the way that they played, but for the dramatic way they secured the trophy. The Red Devils were two goals down in the semi against Juventus, before a superb comeback in Turin – the final wasn’t boring, either...

HIGHLIGHT The injury-time goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, both from David Beckham corners, which defeated Bayern in the final. Legendary.

5. Manchester City 2023

The second team from Manchester to complete a Treble, the club’s very first Champions League triumph came in a season when they demolished the opposition. Erling Haaland scored 12 goals – a joint record for a player at an English club, tying Ruud van Nistelrooy’s tally 20 years earlier – with John Stones inverting into midfield in Pep Guardiola’s latest innovation. Manchester City obliterated sides at home in the knockout stage – beating RB Leipzig 7-0, Bayern Munich 3-0 and Real Madrid 4-0.

STAR MAN Scorer of the winner against Inter in the final, Rodri quietly made his side completely unbeatable.

4. Bayern Munich 2020

COVID ensured that there was no crowd present to see their triumph over PSG in the final in Lisbon, but Hansi Flick’s side were formidable – Manuel Neuer was as good as he had ever been, David Alaba and Jerome Boateng were rock solid in central defence, while Alphonso Davies was electric at full-back. Add in Kingsley Coman, Serge Gnabry, Thomas Muller, Thiago Alcantara, Leon Goretzka and Joshua Kimmich – oh, as well as 15-goal Robert Lewandowski – and you can see why they won the trophy. A 7-2 win at Spurs in the group stage preceded an even better victory in the quarters…

HIGHLIGHT The 8-2 thumping of Barça had real Germany vs Brazil 2014 ‘stop, they’re already dead’ vibes. Just brutal.

3. Paris Saint-Germain 2025

In the end, it needed the Parisians to drop their policy of signing ready-made superstars for massive fees for them to become the best side in world football. Boss Luis Enrique (right) eschewed the previous largesses with a hard-pressing and tactically disciplined line-up that stormed to a historic Treble, ending their long wait for European supremacy. Ousmane Dembele’s sniper instincts were key, but plenty more played their part too, from the invention of Vitinha to the princely panache of a teenage Desire Doue.

HIGHLIGHT The 5-0 demolition of Inter in Munich, breaking the record for the biggest victory in a Champions League final, which had stood for 31 years.

2. Real Madrid 2014-18

During the first 24 editions of the Champions League, no club were ever able to defend their crown. Then Real Madrid won three in succession between 2016 and 2018 – their earlier 2014 triumph making it four victories across an astonishing five-year spell.

Italian Carlo Ancelotti oversaw the first of those glory days, before Zinedine Zidane masterminded the latter run – becoming the first and only gaffer to date to win three consecutive titles, even including the 37 years when the competition was the European Cup.

It would be all too easy to point to Cristiano Ronaldo’s gun-slinging genius as the reason for those successes – the Portuguese icon scored a ludicrous 70 Champions League goals across that five-year span, including 17 in 2013-14 (a single-season record) – but, in truth, it was a team effort by superstars more than willing to roll up their sleeves and play dirty.

Key to that was defender and leader Sergio Ramos, who scored in two finals, both against city rivals Atletico Madrid, including the 93rd-minute equaliser in 2014 that kept their 10th European crown, La Decima, alive. The Spaniard left his mark in other ways as well, such as the unpunished wrestling move that ended Mo Salah’s participation in the 2018 triumph over Liverpool in Kyiv.

There was some evolution within the squad between Ancelotti and Zidane’s reigns, but many players remained the same – Ramos, Pepe and Marcelo at the back, with Luka Modric making the UEFA squad of the season for each of the four years during that run when Real Madrid were European champions.

Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo combined up top – or ‘BBC’, as the trio were dubbed by fans. OK, technically it should have been BBR, which works less well, but we’ll allow it.

Ronaldo was always the big dog – he netted in the 2014 and 2017 finals, and also struck the winning penalty in the 2016 shootout – but each forward had his moment in the limelight. Benzema netted key goals in semi-finals, including a brace against Bayern Munich in 2018, while Bale’s bicycle kick in Kyiv is maybe only second to Zidane’s volley in 2002 for Champions League final goals. Some might argue it was even better.

During that era, Real Madrid weren’t always easy on the eye, but they were a team who never knew when they were beaten. Indeed, they rarely were.

1. Barcelona 2009-11

Unplayable. That was the word Alex Ferguson used to describe the Barcelona team that defeated his Manchester United side 3-1 in the 2011 Champions League Final.

It was impossible to disagree with the usually bullish Scot, given how utterly his team were dominated at Wembley by a brilliant Barça side busy securing their second Champions League in three years under boss Pep Guardiola.

Guardiola’s tiki-taka disciples enjoyed 69 per cent possession and racked up 777 passes in that 2011 final – more than twice the number the Red Devils managed – as Pedro, Lionel Messi and David Villa took their combined goal tally for the season to 98 across all competitions (Messi alone scored 53). Rio Ferdinand said that he “felt like a Conference player” as Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets & Co toyed with them in a mesmeric display of passing. Manchester United had been Barça’s victims in the 2009 final, too, when the Catalans started with six of the same players – Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Victor Valdes and Gerard Pique. Only 21 years old for the first final, Messi scored a rare header en route to the first of his seven Ballon d’Or awards.

Not only did Barcelona win a Treble in 2009, they then added the Supercopa, UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup to make it an incredible six trophies in the same calendar year. Eight more trinkets were won during the reign of Guardiola, who built what’s widely regarded as the greatest club side in history.

His now-familiar tactical blueprint – creating space in possession, while also suffocating the field when the ball is lost – was key in making Barcelona such a force. Early on, so too were the likes of Samuel Eto’o and Thierry Henry, who were part of the 2009 side.

Yet Messi’s genius was crucial to it all. The playmaker started from the right at first, but was often used as a false nine as time went on, allowing him to scurry deep into midfield to orchestrate play. Highlights included a brilliant solo effort against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu in the 2011 semi-final, as part of a brace that defeated Jose Mourinho’s men and sent Barça to Wembley. In between the club’s two Champions League triumphs, Messi also scored four in one match in a 2010 quarter-final against Arsenal. With Messi on the field, opposition teams knew their painstaking tactical gameplan could be thrown out of the window at any moment; any mistake pounced upon and punished in ice-cold fashion. Without Messi, Barça would have been a fantastic team anyway. With him, they became the best ever. Ferguson always took great pride in the fact that his own 1999 Champions League Final-winning team included four players who came from the youth team – David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville and Nicky Butt, with Paul Scholes absent through suspension. Guardiola’s 2009 and 2011 winners each had seven: the six players who started both finals, plus Carles Puyol in Rome and Pedro at Wembley.

Inter’s dramatic rearguard at the Camp Nou prevented Barcelona from triumphing in 2010, and Guardiola’s last season would culminate in a shock semi loss to Chelsea in 2012, but the ruthless beauty seen in both 2009 and 2011 will forever remain in football history. Forget unplayable. It was perfect.

When Jonjo Shelvey was coming up through the ranks at Charlton Athletic, he was touted as a potential England regular.

A move to Liverpool as an 18-year-old would follow in 2010, with a full England debut arriving two years later, but he would fail to establish himself as a regular in the Three Lions midfield at that time.

Shelvey was knocking on the door again during his time at Newcastle United, going on to play some of the best football of his career during the 2017/18 season, but a call-up for that summer’s World Cup never came.

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Shelvey on his England career

Shelvey would end up winning just six Three Lions caps, with his 2018 World Cup omission particularly galling for him as he looks back at his international career.

“Yes, 100 per cent I should have won more caps,” he told FourFourTwo. “Sometimes I didn’t deserve them, but other times I did and was overlooked.”

After helping guide Newcastle to promotion from the Championship in 2016/17, he enjoyed a fruitful first season back in the top flight, but believes his absence from the Three Lions squad that went to Russia that summer stemmed from an incident during his time in the under-21s.

“I should have been taken to the 2018 World Cup, because that season I had the most assists of any English midfielder when I was at Newcastle,” he continues.

“I was playing the best football of my career but didn’t get a call-up. I think it all stemmed from something that happened with Gareth Southgate a few years earlier. When he got the under 21 job, I’d already played for the seniors, but I was still eligible for them.

“I’d just joined Swansea when Southgate gave me a call and said: 'I’m not going to bring you because you’ve just moved clubs and you’ve got the Europa League qualifiers, so I’m going to look at some other players, and I also expect you to be with the senior team.'

“I was fine with that, but told him if anything changed I’d be there for him, because I loved playing for England.”

Shelvey believes the mixed messages that followed impacted his international future.

“Then I think he said I’d refused to play,” he continues. “When Roy Hodgson called me up to the senior squad, I remember Stuart Pearce saying on Sky Sports News that I shouldn’t have been selected as I’d refused to play for the under 21s.

“When I was at St George’s Park, I went to find Southgate and asked him why he’d said that, because I’d said I would come. He just said: 'No, no, I didn’t say that.' I knew from that moment I wasn’t going to play for him.”

England face 2026 World Cup winners Spain in their next Nations League match this evening, kicking off at 7:45pm BST.

The match will be broadcast by ITV, with a selection of pundits, commentators and presenters set to lead the Group C coverage.

The two sides last faced off in the 2024 European Championship final, which Spain won by a 2-1 scoreline in added time. Now, can Thomas Tuchel’s men get their revenge?

Who are the pundits, commentators and presenters for England vs Spain?

England will host the event, which is to be played at Wembley Stadium. The match-up’s return fixture will be played on November 15 in Madrid.

Presenting the ITV coverage is Mark Pougatch, who was a mainstay during the 2026 World Cup and boasts a multi-decade broadcasting career.

Joining him as pundits are Roy Keane and Ian Wright, who often featured alongside Pougatch during ITV’s broadcasts in North America.

Representing Spain is former Chelsea and Manchester United man Juan Mata, who will also offer his services as pundit on the ITV panel.

Collectively, the three have won 141 caps for England, Republic of Ireland and Spain, having all represented their nations on the World Cup stage.

Gabriel Clarke is ITV’s roving reporter, while Sam Matterface is to serve as main commentator for the England vs Spain broadcast.

Joining him is Lee Dixon, who won 21 caps for England and has enjoyed a prolonged post-playing career as both pundit and commentator.

Going into this summer’s World Cup, Thomas Tuchel’s management of Jude Bellingham was one of the biggest pre-tournament talking points.

With Tuchel having dropped the Real Madrid man from his October 2025 squad, many believed that the Three Lions boss was challenging one of his star players in an effort to get a reaction, while also sending across a message that he prioritised the collective over star names.

This is an opinion held by former England forward Stan Collymore, who believes that any tension between coach and player may ultimately end up benefiting the team, while also comparing their relationship to that of Sir Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane.

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Collymore on Tuchel and Bellingham

“Going to major tournaments before, I remember seeing Jude often being the first player out on to the pitch, with fans chanting his name – it felt a bit centered around his personal brand,” Collymore tells FourFourTwo.

“Tuchel preaches collective unit and brotherhood. Jordan Henderson, for example, was embraced as a senior figure to foster culture.”

For Collymore, Tuchel’s willingness to challenge the hierarchy was likely a deliberate piece of man management.

“Tuchel dropping or threatening to leave Bellingham out beforehand likely rattled him – it was effective psychology,” he continues. “Jude’s internal reaction was ‘How dare they leave me out? Watch what I do in Mexico City and across this World Cup’.”

Bellingham would go on to score seven goals in North America over the summer and was a key part of England’s passage to the semi-finals, but Collymore admits there is a fine balance when it comes to man management of this manner.

“That type of psychological edge works as long as the tension remains constructive,” he adds, as he looks ahead to the kind of role Bellingham should be playing in the future.

“With Harry Kane gradually stepping aside, Bellingham could be England’s most vital player for the next five years, so Tuchel needs Bellingham just as much as Bellingham needs Tuchel.

“Tuchel needs to reach a major final on home soil at the next Euros to secure his long-term tenure. As long as that healthy tension exists – similar to Sir Alex Ferguson with Roy Keane – it pushes high standards.”

“He [Tuchel] demands total buy-in from the squad. Tuchel inherited Gareth Southgate’s foundation and is pushing it further by provoking players to raise the bar.

“If everyone involved shares that level of ambition, England can win silverware.”

From making his professional debut as a 16-year-old to becoming a £100million Real Madrid signing while still a teenager, Jude Bellingham has never appeared to be short of confidence.

The former Birmingham City midfielder was at his irresistible best during this summer’s World Cup, scoring seven goals as England went on to finish third following the semi-final defeat to Argentina.

But going into the tournament, it had not been plain sailing, with Thomas Tuchel leaving Bellingham out of his October 2025 England squad, amid criticism from certain sections of the tabloid media.

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Crouch on how Bellingham answered his critics

According to former Liverpool and England striker Peter Crouch, this criticism - and the white-hot pressure of being central to the Three Lions’ hopes of ending a six-decade wait for a trophy – brought out the best in Bellingham.

And this was underlined by his match-winning turn in the epic last-16 win over Mexico, when Bellingham got on the scoresheet twice.

“I was there – just being in the Azteca was magical for me, and if we’d lost 5-0 I would still have been amazed by the whole thing,” Crouch tells FourFourTwo.

“But for him to score those two goals when he burst into the box – that people were even questioning him before the tournament looks ridiculous now.”

Crouch netted 22 goals in 42 appearances for England and knows exactly what confidence and momentum can bring to a player.

“There’s no better feeling,” he adds. “There was a period for England when I just felt like I was going to score in every game. You feel kind of superhuman and I think Jude was feeling that. You feel like you can walk on water, that whatever you do will turn to gold. Whatever Jude did, it seemed to go that way.”

These performances further strengthened Crouch’s belief that Bellingham has that ability to raise his level just when his teammates need it most.

“Certain players raise their game in pressure environments,” he continues. “Some shrink but some just thrive off it. He thrives in the limelight, in that white hot atmosphere, that cauldron of pressure. You’re either one of those people or you’re not. He’s one of those people.

“I played with Steven Gerrard, who kind of won games on his own, like the FA Cup final against West Ham where he put the team on his back. He’d done the same in Istanbul, and against Olympiacos.

“England have had a reliance on Harry Kane, but Jude stepped up and helped him, and won games we probably should have lost.”

Peter Crouch was speaking in association with Paddy Power

The evening of January 18, 1977, Rome carried the sort of winter bite that makes the Eternal City's cobblestones glisten under the street lamps. The Lazio midfielder Luciano Re Cecconi, known throughout Italian football as l'Angelo Biondo (the Blond Angel) was walking along Via Flaminia Vecchia with team-mate Pietro Ghedin and their friend, the perfumer Giorgio Fraticcioli. They were on familiar ground, a short stroll from the jewellery shop of an acquaintance, Bruno Tabocchini, a man they'd visited many times.

That's where everything went wrong. Fraticcioli slipped into the shop first, to deliver bottles of perfume to the owner. Waiting outside, Re Cecconi and Ghedin exchanged a mischievous glance before pulling their jackets up over their faces. Hands thrust into their pockets as if they were gripping pistols, the pair burst into the jewellers and shouted, “Mani in alto! Questa e una rapina!” (“Hands up! This is a robbery!”)

What they didn't know was that Tabocchini's store had been robbed previously. Traumatised, suspicious and determined not to be a victim again, he had started keeping a pistol under the counter and immediately reached for it. Ghedin's hands went skyward, but Re Cecconi kept up the prank. Tabocchini, trembling, did not hesitate. He pulled the trigger.

The shot slammed into Re Cecconi's chest at point-blank range. As he collapsed onto the tiled floor, he gasped: “Era uno scherzo… solo uno scherzo.” It was a joke… only a joke.

Luciano Re Cecconi died 30 minutes later at Rome's San Giacomo hospital. He was 28 years old.

The death of Re Cecconi stunned Italy. An energetic box-to-box midfielder, he'd been an integral part of a Lazio side that emerged from years in the doldrums and, under the tutelage of inspirational coach Tommaso Maestrelli, claimed the club's first ever Scudetto in 1973-74.

Amid the carnival of egos in that Lazio team, Re Cecconi stood apart. He was the calm in the madness, the humour in the gloom, the heartbeat of a fractured dressing room that somehow, through talent and turmoil, managed to conquer Italian football. But Re Cecconi was never the star. To Lazio he was something far rarer. He was the soul.

Re Cecconi was born in December 1948 in Nerviano, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it town 10 miles north west of Milan. Its only real brush with national history came when King Victor Emmanuel II stopped there in 1859 after the Battle of Magenta, during the Second Italian War of Independence. As a gesture of gratitude to the town, he permitted residents to incorporate ‘Re', or ‘King', into their surnames.

Nearly 90 years later, that's how little Luciano inherited his name, although nothing about his early life was remotely royal. He grew up in a working-class family and worked wherever he could: in a grocer's shop, a shoemaker's and a metal-beating workshop.

Football came only after work was done, but he was good. Very good. After starring in local leagues, he signed for Serie C side Pro Patria in 1967, making his debut the next spring. His tireless running, robust tackling and indomitable energy quickly caught the attention of his future Lazio boss Maestrelli, then the manager of Foggia. Within months, Re Cecconi was on his way to the club, playing Serie B football under the man who would transform his life.

He helped them ascend to Serie A, and although they went straight back down, Maestrelli's reputation soared. Within a season, he was head coach of Lazio. Before long, he summoned Re Cecconi to join him.

When Re Cecconi arrived at Lazio in 1972, he stepped into one of the most chaotic dressing rooms in football history – a team so wild Wimbledon's Crazy Gang looked like altar boys by comparison.

The squad was infamously split into two bitterly opposed factions. On one side were the flashy, combustible personalities led by forward Giorgio Chinaglia – a man who adored fast cars, loud suits, political provocation and being at the centre of every storm. He'd later play alongside Pele at New York Cosmos.

Chinaglia's group leaned hard into right-wing politics, and their love of firearms was legendary, with many carrying pistols like others carried wallets. When Lazio were away and bored at their hotels, they used to hang out of their windows and use birds as target practice. Former Roma full-back Sergio Petrelli used his gun to scare off angry fans of his old club, who had gathered outside the team's rural hotel before a derby game. Supposedly, he also once shot the light bulb out in his room because he couldn't be bothered to get up and use the switch. On another occasion, the pilot of the team plane flying them to an away fixture refused to take off unless those players with guns left them behind.

Chinaglia, a man you wouldn't want to meet in a well-lit, heavily policed alley, let alone a dark one, took to carrying a gun because, as a self-confessed fascist, he decided it was the best course of action, in case anyone actually decided to follow through on one of the many death threats he routinely received.

Ironically, Re Cecconi never carried a gun. Instead, ‘Cecco' was one of the quieter ‘northerners', alongside his closest friend Luigi Martini – they were known as ‘the twins' for their inseparable bond. Despite Re Cecconi's insistence that he “knew nothing about politics”, he was often painted as a fascist by association – more a reflection of Italy's toxic political climate at the time than anything he ever said or did.

The factions refused to speak. They changed in separate dressing rooms. Training games resembled cage fights. Some players wore shin pads only for training, not for league matches, due to the level of brutality.

And then there was the manager, Maestrelli – the peacemaker, a man of immense humanity trapped inside a pressure cooker. Somehow, impossibly, he forged them into Serie A champions. “Maestrelli put together players who were virtually unknown or had a limited football pedigree and gave them an idea of football that, at that time, nobody else had in Italy,” explains Simon Basten of the Lazio Stories blog. “Lazio played like the Dutch had been playing in the early 1970s. It was a joy to watch.”

Lazio's 1973-74 Scudetto remains one of the most extraordinary titles in the history of Italian football.

The squad was dysfunctional and the atmosphere often poisonous, but Maestrelli was the steady hand on the tiller. Having fought in the anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, he knew how to manage conflict. He treated players as sons, not soldiers. “He always said the right thing at the right time,” Basten says. “Those players would have gone to war for him.”

On the pitch, Chinaglia hit 24 league goals, including the penalty against Foggia that clinched the title. Goalkeeper Felice Pulici produced career-defining performances. Skipper Giuseppe Wilson, born in Darlington to an English father and Italian mother, marshalled the defence. In midfield, binding everything together, was the tireless Blond Angel.

Re Cecconi was the glue; equilibrium in a Lazio team built on imbalance. He covered absurd distances, won tackles, initiated attacks and stitched together a side that could easily have torn itself apart. He wasn't flamboyant and rarely scored, but he was indispensable.

The fans loved him all the more for it.

Save for a couple of players, none of the Lazio team hailed from Rome. Drawn from all corners of the country, they arrived in the Italian capital as supporters of provincial clubs, but everything changed when they played for Lazio, and when they played for Maestrelli. They became fans.

Like so many before and after him, Re Cecconi was soon entranced by Lazio, despite, or maybe because of, the chaos that surrounded him. During their title-winning season, Lazio were beaten 6-4 by Ipswich in the second round of the UEFA Cup, but only after giving the Tractor Boys an almighty scare, nearly levelling the tie despite losing the first leg 4-0 at Portman Road. Ipswich felt Lazio's tactics in the second leg were intimidatory, and home fans then rioted, causing the Biancocelesti to be banned from the next season's European Cup.

Tragically, the greatest despair was still to come. Maestrelli was diagnosed with cancer in 1975 – in December 1976, he died aged 54. Utterly devastated, Re Cecconi helped to carry his coffin, as did Chinaglia, who flew back from his new life in the US with the New York Cosmos.

Just 47 days later, though, Re Cecconi too would be dead. For a team always seemingly on the brink of collapse, it was a blow few could comprehend.

For all his importance to the Lazio side, Re Cecconi's international career amounted to just two caps – scant reward for his quality. He had made Italy's squad for the 1974 World Cup, but didn't play a single minute.

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That tournament was a catastrophe as Italy failed to escape the group stage. Chinaglia famously swore at manager Ferruccio Valcareggi on live television after being substituted against Haiti. When Valcareggi was replaced by Fulvio Bernardini, and later Enzo Bearzot, the competition for midfield places was overwhelming – Marco Tardelli, Giancarlo Antognoni and Romeo Benetti were all vying for spots – and Re Cecconi slipped out of the Azzurri picture.

Lazio fans didn't mind. For them, he was the embodiment of everything that they admired: humility, honesty, dedication and humanity.

In the weeks after the shooting, Italy was a nation consumed by shock. The newspapers were blunt. The following morning, Tuttosport screamed: “RE CECCONI UCCISO” (“Re Cecconi Killed”).

The case went to trial quickly. Presiding over it was judge Severino Santiapichi, who would later oversee the trial of Mehmet Ali Agca, the hitman who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in 1981.

Santiapichi ruled that the shooting was an “unfortunate accident”, absolving Tabocchini of any criminal responsibility. It remains one of the most debated sporting tragedies in Italian history. Many fans have never forgiven the jeweller; others argue he acted in fear, shaped by the violent times in which he lived, during Italy's tumultuous ‘years of lead'.

Certainly, Re Cecconi's son Stefano has long questioned the official version of the tragic events. He even published a book on the topic in 2008, called Lui Era Mia Papa (‘He Was My Dad') in which he tried to address some inconsistencies and, ultimately, reshape the public's perception of his father as a prankster, rather than a serious, passionate man dedicated to his family and profession. But the truth died with Cecco.

Re Cecconi left behind a wife and two young children. Stefano, only two years old at the time his father died, grew up embraced by Lazio's supporters, who treated him as family. He later played for his local team Nervianese, at a stadium named after his father.

Today, a street in a Rome park also carries Re Cecconi's name, and in the Stadio Olimpico's Curva Nord, a giant flag with his face appears at every Lazio home match. His grave in the Cimitero di Nerviano is modest but still moving. The inscription reads simply: “Luciano Re Cecconi: Footballer, 1948-1977.” To Lazio fans – indeed, to anyone who knows his story – he was so much more.

Liverpool are monitoring the availability of Atletico Madrid star Marcos Llorente, whose Anfield goalscoring exploits have terrorised the Reds on many Champions League occasions.

His latest strike arrived in the 17th minute during Liverpool’s league phase match-up with the La Liga side in early September, sending Atletico Madrid 1-0 ahead.

Last term, Llorente bagged two in a 3-2 defeat at Anfield; now, the Reds are exploring the possibility of bringing Atletico Madrid’s man to Merseyside, with two other Premier League clubs also interested.

Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea explore move for Anfield nightmare Marcos Llorente

According to TEAMtalk, the Spaniard is attracting interest from Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea, as he enters the final months of his Atletico Madrid contract.

Llorente has made over 300 appearances for Diego Simeone’s side, and his ability to operate in both midfield and at right-back has attracted potential Premier League suitors.

Liverpool and Chelsea are two such clubs assessing their options in both areas of the pitch, with Llorente’s versatility appealing to both English top-flight sides.

Elsewhere, Manchester City are looking to expand their veteran core under Enzo Maresca. In this case, the Spaniard’s age, 31, is attractive to the Cityzens.

Similarly, neither Andoni Iraola’s side or the Blues are put off by Llorente’s birthday, who turns 31 in January, with it being described as “not significant” to their Premier League transfer pursuits.

Beyond the Premier League, both La Liga and Bundesliga champions Barcelona and Bayern Munich are believed to be keeping close eyes on the Spaniard.

The now 31-year-old, who stepped away from World Cup winners Spain this summer, joined from Real Madrid in 2019 for a fee of €30 million.

A transfer for Llorente will likely be difficult to pull off, with Atletico Madrid being determined to secure his future in Spain.

There is belief internally that he will sign a new contract, however, the 31-year-old’s camp are aware of growing interest in Llorente across Europe.

Whether Simeone’s side can tie the 31-year-old down remains to be seen, however, the club has entered fresh talks with the Spaniard.

He has scored ten Champions League goals across his career, five of which have arrived against Liverpool, and four at Anfield.

Manchester City are expected to appeal the decision, after a verdict was reached deeming them guilty of all but one of the 115 Premier League charges they faced.

According to The Athletic, the Cityzens could potentially be stripped of multiple Premier League titles, with sanctions yet to be decided.

The news arrived through anonymous club sources, who have not yet been authorised to speak publicly about Manchester City’s verdict.

Manchester City found guilty of 114 charges, face stripping of Premier League titles

One City spokesperson said: “The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality.

“As such, Manchester City FC’s position remains consistent with the club’s statement of February 2023,” they continued, referring to the Cityzens’ surprise at the charges, and the club welcoming a review.

“The club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis the Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair minded regulator, free from partisan influence,” continued the City spokesperson.

The breaches in question, which Manchester City have almost unanimously been found guilty of, occurred between the years of 2009 and 2018.

In that period, the Cityzens won three Premier League titles: two with Manchester United finishing as runners-up, and once ahead of Liverpool.

The club was accused by the Premier League of failing to provide accurate information in regard to financials, including details of payments to players and coaches.

Manchester City have consistently denied the allegations, which include breaching financial fair play (FFP) and profitability and sustainability rules (PSR).

How the Premier League landscape changes if runner-up teams are awarded the crowns

🏆 2011/12: Sir Alex Ferguson gets his 14th Premier League title. The "AGÜEROOOOO" moment vanishes from the trophy archives, ending Fergie's legendary career with back-to-back league titles.

🏆 2013/14: Steven Gerrard FINALLY gets his Premier League winners' medal. Liverpool claim the title six years earlier than 2020, and Brendan Rodgers becomes a Premier League-winning manager.

🏆 2017/18: Jose Mourinho’s 81-point United side take the crown over Pep’s 100-point "Centurions." Jose gets his 4th Premier League trophy—and his crowning glory at Old Trafford.

The Domestic Cup Chaos

2011 FA Cup: Stoke City win their first-ever major trophy.

2014 League Cup: Sunderland end a 41-year major silverware drought.

2016 League Cup: Jürgen Klopp wins a trophy in his first 5 months at Anfield.

2018 League Cup: Arsène Wenger gets a final piece of silverware on his Arsenal farewell tour.

Since the charges were brought, City have won further English top-flight titles, including a Premier League four-peat from 2020 to 2024.

The club, which was acquired by Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008, currently possess the second-most Premier League titles of any club in the competition’s history.

According to The Athletic, Manchester City face multiple sanctions, including being stripped of English top-flight titles, and possibly expulsion from the Premier League.

The report said: “Sanctions range from a reprimand and fines to points deductions — and even expulsion from the Premier League,”

“Any points deduction could be applied when the decision is made or retrospectively, raising the prospect of City being stripped of titles.”

Should Manchester City receive the latter sanction, their title count would drop from eight to five. As a result, Chelsea would have as many Premier League titles as the Cityzens.

Virgil van Dijk has provided his perspective on claims that he sabotaged former Netherlands boss Ronald Koeman’s tactics at the 2026 World Cup.

Van Dijk’s side crashed out on penalties to eventual quarter-finalists Morocco in the round of 32, prompting the Dutchman to consider international retirement.

New boss Xavi Hernandez convinced the Liverpool captain to continue with the national team; now, van Dijk has slammed comments made by Dutch media during the North American tournament as “utter nonsense.”

Virgil van Dijk slams Dutch reporting in Nations League presser

Ahead of the Netherlands’ clash with Jurgen Klopp’s Germany, which ended on Thursday evening in a 1-1 stalemate, the Liverpool skipper’s interaction with Dutch media quickly turned sour.

"One of your colleagues also said, of course, that it was my idea to switch to playing with a back five,” claimed van Dijk.

“That is utter nonsense. The fact is we simply failed at the World Cup. Those are the hard facts,” he continued.

“We didn't play a good World Cup. It's not about me. You perform together. You're a team. Your claim that I destroyed Dutch football after the World Cup, that sort of thing is completely baseless.”

Van Dijk’s men collected seven points from three Group F games at the 2026 World Cup. They conceded an equaliser in the 91st-minute versus Morocco, after leading through Cody Gakpo in the 72nd.

"The plan is devised by the staff. Nonsense is being spread so that I look even worse. That happens far too often,” said the Liverpool skipper.

"I was told that it was my fault we played with five, that Ronald Koeman and I have destroyed Dutch football. The plan worked for 89 minutes, even though it was a bad match.

“We almost broke through. The idea that I destroyed Dutch football makes absolutely no sense. I didn't decide that,” continued van Dijk.

His Netherlands side fell short in all major statistics against Morocco, taking fewer shots, drawing more fouls, winning less set pieces, and recording just 371 passes to their opposition’s 879.

Koeman’s men created merely 0.24 xG to the Africa Cup of Nations champions’ 1.38, and missed three of their penalties against Morocco’s keeper Bono.

"Sometimes things need to be said, right? Otherwise you're just listening to all the whining. With most of the media, I have zero issues. Never have.

“When nonsense gets put out into the world, how else am I supposed to deal with that?" quizzed the 35-year-old, who confessed that he needed a holiday after the North American tournament.

“After 10 seconds [of meeting with Xavi] it was already clear that I would continue. What did he say? That I am Virgil van Dijk.

“It is about trust, appreciation, [and] how important you are for the team. Physically there is, and was no doubt, but you also want to feel appreciation and pleasure."

The Netherlands will return to Nations League action against Serbia on Sunday, without Brian Brobbey and with a currently unknown Dutch call-up.

Humphrey Ker, the man who brought Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney to Wrexham AFC, is set to step down from the Championship club’s board.

His departure, now confirmed by Wrexham, will end a five-year association with the North Wales club. He is also set to step down as a trustee of the Wrexham AFC Foundation.

Ker, one of the main voices in Disney+ documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, has made efforts in recent years to re-focus on his comedy-writing career, stepping away from day-to-day involvement at Wrexham AFC shortly before the 2024-25 League One season.

Humphrey Ker departs from Wrexham: the man who brought them Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney

“Working for and representing Wrexham AFC and the wider town has been the greatest honour of my life,” said the 43-year-old, who brought his friends, and fellow actors, Reynolds and McElhenney to Wrexham.

“I am proud of the part I have played in the club’s remarkable journey, both on and off the field. [But] the way the club has evolved and is now structured has made it progressively harder for me to make a positive contribution.

“[As] sad as I am to be leaving, I now feel watching from a distance is the right thing for me. I will always be a fan and wish the club, the community and supporters, every success,” Ker concluded.

The 43-year-old initially described the appeal of British football to McElhenney while on set for Mythic Quest, an Apple TV+ comedy co-created by the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star, and Ker's wife.

Ker suggested that McElhenney watch the Netflix documentary Sunderland ‘Til I Die, which helped plant the early seed for him to purchase Wrexham AFC with Reynolds.

The 43-year-old, standing at 6ft 7in, became the North Wales club’s executive director after its 2021 Hollywood takeover, before stepping away from the role in 2024.

Since then, Ker has helped to relaunch Saturday Night Live UK, and co-wrote the stage production Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas with long-time friend David Reed.

In a joint statement with the club, Reynolds and McElhenney added: “Humphrey has been a key piece of the Wrexham story from day one.

“His kindness, humour and height will be missed, but never forgotten,” they concluded. Since their takeover, Wrexham AFC have risen from National League beginnings to the Championship.

In 2025-26, the club narrowly missed out on play-off football, behind Hull City in sixth position. The Tigers won promotion at Wembley, and are now placed eighth in the Premier League standings.

Former England midfield man Dele Alli has been a free agent for the last year but has been aiming to keep himself fit in an effort to revive his career.

Alli left Serie A upstarts Como last autumn after making a single appearance under Cesc Fabregas, the latest in a string of abortive moves since leaving Tottenham Hotspur in 2022.

The 30-year-old spent seven years at Spurs after joining from Milton Keynes Dons in 2018 as one of the most exciting young prospects in English football.

Dele Alli is training at Barnet

He recently shared a video of himself training alone at the facilities of League Two outfit Barnet, where manager Dean Brennan has unexpectedly raised the possibility of the unsigned star taking his programme a step further.

Speaking to Alan Brazil and Gabby Agbonlahor on talkSPORT, Brennan extended an offer to Alli that he might very well be interested in taking up.

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"Our facilities are available to rent," explained the Bees boss when asked about Alli training at The Hive.

"We don’t live in Disneyland down at our level so our lads have to pay their bills, pay their mortgage and we don’t get 10,000, 20,000 [on the gate] a game. So renting our facilities out was part of the business process at our place and it looks like Dele’s done just that.

"I’ll take him all day long. You would be mad not to take him. He’s a serious footballer and look, he’s going through a real tough time. There’s obviously some kind of issue why people haven’t taken him on. Everyone deserves a second chance in life.

"At our football club we have lots of lads that train with us that are out of contract and if Dele wants to come train with us the doors are open. He can use us to get fit and train with the group."

Barnet are the unbeaten leaders of the fourth tier after seven matches. Their games against Crawley Town and York City over the next two Saturdays have both been postponed due to international call-ups.

Alli hasn't played competitively since he was sent off on his single, brief appearance for Como against AC Milan in March 2025.

The former Everton midfielder, who has 37 senior caps for England, had signed for Fabregas' side two months earlier on what was originally an 18-month contract.

He was released and left the Italian team last September, and has yet to secure a new club.

England captain Harry Kane has provided further information on Declan Rice's injury status after the Arsenal midfielder pulled out of the England squad.

The Three Lions will begin their Nations League campaign against Spain at Wembley on Saturday before facing Czech Republic, Croatia and Czech Republic again to complete the extended international window.

Thomas Tuchel will have to find a new solution in midfield in the absence of Rice, who withdrew after Arsenal's Premier League loss at the hands of Brighton & Hove Albion last weekend.

'Struggling' Declan Rice discussed England squad withdrawal with Harry Kane

Rice now has the better part of three weeks to return to fitness for the Gunners, and his international skipper has revealed a conversation he had with the Premier League champion.

"Everyone has their own situation. I know how tough the summer was and I know especially in the Premier League how gruelling that schedule is," Harry Kane told the media at St George's Park in advance of the Nations League opener.

"I'm in a different situation now where I have the winter break [in Germany] and I have moments to recharge and refresh. Some of the players don't get that.

"I spoke to Dec, and I know Dec goes far and beyond for the club and country, so I know how much he gives and I know he's been struggling for a while with his issues.

"So someone like Dec has to get himself sorted and get himself fresh, and he has big games for club, big games for country, coming up."

Rice pulled out of the squad along with Tino Livramento, Kobbie Mainoo, Cole Palmer and Marcus Rashford. He has been managing a hamstring issue and a long-standing lower back problem, which he revealed during a World Cup campaign in which he featured heavily.

The 27-year-old played 55 times in all competitions for Arsenal last term and has started all six of their matches in the Premier League and Champions League this season.

Tuchel will oversee England in the Nations League for the first time. Interim boss Lee Carsley was in charge for their last campaign, which saw them promoted from League B back to League A at the first time of asking.

England will play four of their six matches before the players go back to their clubs next month. They include James Garner of Everton and Nottingham Forest's Morgan Gibbs-White, who have been called up as a result of the injury withdrawals.

Kane will chase international goal number 86 when England face the world champions this weekend. Spain and England met in the inaugural Nations League in 2018/19, each beating the other away from home.

Former England striker Andy Carroll has revealed in his autobiography that he was the victim of a sexual assault while playing for Newcastle United in 2021.

Carroll was in his second spell at Newcastle when he the assault took place in his home on the evening after a match. The unnamed perpetrator was charged and convicted, and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Disturbing details of the incident were revealed in Owning It, the 37-year-old's new book, which has been published this week.

Andy Carroll's assailant has since been jailed

Carroll's account reveals that he awoke in his bed to find the male 'celebrity mate' of his now ex-partner committing the assault, subsequently throwing him out of the house and later knocking him unconscious when he tried to return.

"The attacker denied Carroll’s allegations, but was subsequently charged with sexual offences by the police," reports The Athletic. "The striker testified in court, a process which he describes as 'humiliating and embarrassing and absolutely horrendous'.

"At the trial’s conclusion, the man was found guilty of sexual offences and sentenced to three years in prison, placed on the National Sex Offender Register and banned from entering the village where Carroll lived."

It wasn't the first time Carroll has been the victim of a serious crime. In 2017, a convicted burglar was jailed for his part in the attempted drive-by robbery of Carroll's luxury watch in Essex.

22-year-old Jack O'Brien was sentenced to six years behind bars after he was found guilty of the offence, which culminated in two motorbikes chasing Carroll's car back to the training ground of West Ham United, where he was playing at the time.

The former Newcastle and Liverpool striker, who now plays for and co-owns non-league Dagenham & Redbridge, has had his own run-ins with the law throughout his career.

Carroll will face trial in January over unrelated allegations that he breached a non-molestation order, to which he pleaded not guilty earlier this year.

He started out at boyhood club Newcastle, where he scored 31 times in 80 league matches in the Premier League and Championship before a big-money move to Liverpool in 2011.

After a spell with West Ham, the striker returned to St James' Park in 2019. He went on to play for Reading, West Bromwich Albion, Amiens and Bordeaux, before linking up with the Daggers last year.

Carroll played nine times for England between 2010 and 2012.

Nottingham Forest captain Morgan Gibbs-White is reportedly open to leaving the club next summer.

Gibbs-White secured a belated call-up to the current England squad after a number of players withdrew through injury. The 26-year-old was widely considered the most unjustified omission from the original 27-player selection.

He's been in impressive and productive form for Forest both in the calendar year overall and in the early part of the new season. As a player in demand, it was by no means certain he'd still be playing for Forest in 2026/27.

'Several leading clubs' are interested in Morgan Gibbs-White

Interest in the former Wolverhampton Wanderers youngster is plentiful, and Football Insider has claimed anew to have been told that Gibbs-White could push to leave Forest at the end of the season.

"The attacking midfielder is understood to be happy to stay at the City Ground if they can secure European football again, but is likely to look elsewhere if not," reports Pete O'Rourke.

"Sources say that several leading Premier League clubs are keen to offer him a move within the next 12 months, and an opportunity to play at the elite European level would be "hard to ignore" for the player.

"Gibbs-White is currently the highest-paid player in Forest's squad, but there is an element of uncertainty surrounding his contract situation.

"His current deal is due to expire in the summer of 2028, after Forest were only able to get him to commit to a three-year deal last summer."

Gibbs-White's 2025/26 performances were produced in the wake of a dramatic summer at the City Ground, where Forest were bumped up to the Europa League after Crystal Palace were demoted, but had to dig in to keep their captain.

Tottenham Hotspur triggered a £60 million release clause in his previous contract, sparking an angry reaction from Forest and owner Evangelos Marinakis, a threat of legal action and, ultimately, a shocking non-departure.

Gibbs-White helped Forest to reach the semi-finals of the Europa League despite working their way through four managers last season, and has hit the ground running this time around.

He started all five Premier League matches before the international break, scoring once and assisting two of Forest's four league goals.

After making his first two senior international appearances under interim boss Lee Carsley, Gibbs-White collected his next four caps on Tuchel's watch but hasn't played for the Three Lions since last October.

Germany manager Jurgen Klopp has come out in defence of his former Liverpool captain over criticism by the Dutch press.

Reds skipper Virgil van Dijk has been involved in a spat with reporters in the aftermath of the World Cup, where the Netherlands were beaten on penalties by Morocco in the round of 16.

There were suggestions that Van Dijk was involved in a tactical decision made by head coach Ronald Koeman, whose replacement, Xavi, will lead the Dutch for the first time against Klopp and Germany on Thursday.

Van Dijk 'singled out' over World Cup exit

Van Dijk denied the claim when he spoke to the Dutch media ahead of the start of their Nations League campaign, describing the accusation as 'nonsense' and reminding reporters that World Cup matches are won and lost as a team.

In his own pre-match media duties, Klopp leapt to the defence of his former captain, comparing the Dutch press to their German colleagues.

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"Our German journalists are pretty good [at being critical] too," said the new Germany manager, who replaced Julian Nagelsmann after the World Cup.

"I haven't really followed the Dutch press, but I assume you weren't happy with the elimination. Then the captain gets more criticism too.

"Virgil has had a lot of great moments in his career and also a few lesser ones. Because he is not only physically present, but normally also because of his performances, I can imagine that he gets singled out a bit."

Nobody in football knows Van Dijk better than Klopp. The defender played 270 times under Klopp for Liverpool, where they won the Premier League and Champions League together.

Xavi's first Dutch squad also includes Ryan Gravenberch and Gody Gakpo, who were managed at Anfield by Klopp, and newer Liverpool arrival Jeremie Frimpong. In all, 10 of the Dutch players have been drawn from the Premier League.

Thursday's match in Amsterdam is the first meeting between the Netherlands and Germany since the last Nations League competition. Germany won their home fixture after a 2-2 draw in the Dutch capital.

The Netherlands' last win against the Germans was a 4-2 victory in a European Championship qualifier in September 2019.

Van Dijk captained the team in Hamburg and they went on to lose to the Czech Republic in the round of 16 of EURO 2020.

Manchester United have been handed a boost in their long-standing pursuit of Barcelona midfielder Frenkie de Jong.

United have been linked with De Jong for years and could finally have their chance to take the 29-year-old to Old Trafford.

According to reports in Spain, Barcelona sporting director Deco plans to bolster Hansi Flick's defence in the January transfer window. Consequently, the Catalan giants will need to make a big concession.

Barcelona 'need to sell' in January

"The club finished the summer having invested €174 million in signings and generating €104 million in revenue from transfers and economic rights," reports Fichajes.

"Planning is not yet complete, and defence has become a key focus in the analysis for the second half of the season.

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"The economic situation will dictate any move. La Liga has set a squad cost limit of €582 million for FC Barcelona for the 2026/27 season, compared to the €432 million limit after the previous winter transfer window."

Barcelona's position, therefore, is that they need to sell to buy. If Deco is to be able to bring in a defender of the kind of quality required to improve a team still on a perfect start seven games into the season, they need to sell big.

De Jong is yet to play this season and will face a battle to win his place back in a winning side. He is nearing a return from a knee ligament injury he sustained during his World Cup campaign with the Netherlands, and will be assessed by Barcelona after the international break.

Man United and De Jong has seemed like a destined romance at times over the years. The Red Devils are understood to have tracked him throughout his time at Ajax and have repeatedly been credited with an interest in signing him from Barcelona.

The Dutch midfielder was in United's sights in 2024, with his contract set to expire in the summer of 2026. He has since signed an extension that ties him to the Catalan club until 2029.

De Jong joined Barcelona from Ajax in 2019 and has played for them almost 300 times, winning three league titles and establishing himself as a senior figure in the national team.

He played 38 club matches in all competitions in 2025/26 and started all six of the Netherlands' matches at the World Cup, where they were ultimately eliminated on penalties – after he'd been substituted in extra time – by Morocco.

De Jong has now played 70 times for his country but will miss the start of their Nations League campaign this month and next.

Liverpool midfielder Harvey Elliott joined Valencia on loan at the start of September and has reportedly already been given a deadline to improve his fitness.

Elliott spent last season on loan at Aston Villa, where it was quickly decided that the associated obligation to buy would not be triggered. He found himself sidelined and briefly returned to Liverpool before switching to Spain.

The former England Under-21 international left Villa amid an avalanche of praise for his attitude and professionalism, but Unai Emery is now on a list of managers who've deemed Elliott surplus to requirements along with Arne Slot and Andoni Iraola.

Harvey Elliott is 'paying the price' for Aston Villa loan debacle

After a disastrous stint at Villa, 23-year-old Elliott needs to make a success of his Valencia loan. The early indications from Spain aren't exactly positive.

According to reporting by Marca, via Sport Witness, Elliott's lack of physical conditioning has been exposed by a disrupted pre-season and the suboptimal Premier League campaign that preceded it.

"His physical condition needs to be optimal to fully develop his abilities, and so far that hasn't been the case because the British player arrived out of shape," writes Dario Puig.

"He had an atypical preseason. And now he's paying the price. He's far from the Elliott of the past who dazzled with the quality he possesses. And he's not shining because he's out of shape. He's well overweight for his physique. And now is the time to get fit."

The Liverpool loanee is a long way off any involvement in the England senior side, so he has the three weeks of the newly extended international break to get himself into peak condition.

"The footballer needs a radical change of scenery, and La Liga and Valencia seemed like a good way to unwind," adds Puig.

"But for now, he's paying the price for not being in shape, and now he must give it his all to reach peak form in these three weeks and contribute to the team."

Elliott has played 85 minutes in three La Liga appearances for Valencia, who are now managed by former Mexico boss Javier Aguirre after the departure of Carlos Corberan earlier this month.

He came off the bench in losses against Barcelona, Sevilla and Real Sociedad, and was an unused substitute in the team's only win against Alaves.

After his playing time was so severely limited at Villa, getting himself fit and firing now seems like a matter of urgency for Elliott. Valencia will return to La Liga action against Racing Santander on October 11.

Christian Eriksen has terminated his contract with German Bundesliga club Wolfsburg.

Eriksen was tied to Wolfsburg until the summer of 2027 but the club agreed to a mutual severing of his deal several months early.

The 34-year-old collapsed on the pitch for the second time while playing for Denmark in June after making 34 appearances in his first season with Wolfsburg, and has been recovering at home.

Christian Eriksen leaves Wolfsburg by mutual consent

Eriksen confirmed after his collapse that his implantable cardioverter-­defibrillator (ICD) device did its job by delivering a shock to revive him. The ICD was fitted after he suffered a cardiac arrest while playing for Denmark against Finland in Copenhagen five years ago.

Since leaving Inter Milan in the aftermath of that emergency, Eriksen has played for Brentford and Manchester United in the Premier League. He joined Wolfsburg in September 2025.

Eriksen collapsed again while playing against Ukraine in June and requested an early termination of his contract. Wolfsburg agreed to the request.

"For us, it was clear that the decision about his future had to be Christian’s," said Wolfsburg managing director of sport Dieter Hecking.

"We wanted to give him that freedom in this particular situation and have now agreed to his request to terminate the contract.

"He has already experienced and achieved a great deal during his extraordinary career. Despite his short time here, he has left a lasting impression on his teammates, our staff and the fans."

Eriksen made 31 appearances in the Bundesliga, the fourth major European league he's experienced in his career. He thanked the club for supporting him throughout his time in Germany, describing it as 'a great pleasure' to play for the Lower Saxony side.

"At the moment, it is important for me to be close to my family in Denmark. I’m pleased that we were able to find a solution together," said the midfielder.

Eriksen has been forced to follow an unexpected path in the latter part of his career. Serie A rules barred him from playing for Inter while fitted with an ICD.

His early departure leaves him as a free agent. Having not played since June, it's clear that a decision on what comes next will have to wait.

This past summer was in equal parts harrowing and exciting for Newcastle United fans, with the first phase of the Saudi Arabian-backed project coming to an abrupt end at St James’ Park.

Newcastle’s three most valuable assets - Anthony Gordon, Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali - all departed for huge profits as the club embarked on a new trading model to help combat financial restrictions.

On top of that, former captain Kieran Trippier also exited, before the bombshell news at the end of July that manager Eddie Howe would be stepping away too. There were genuine questions about the direction of travel on Tyneside and supporters were understandably concerned.

'I knew I'd play here one day'

It all brought a much-needed reset, though, with a newer, younger squad assembled under exciting German coach Matthias Jaissle.

Keeping fullback Lewis Hall, who signed a new contract until 2031 last week before being recalled to the England squad having missed out on the World Cup, was critical for restoring faith. Manchester United made no secret of their desire to poach him.

Jaissle had warned of teething issues at the start of a transitional campaign and the Magpies hosted Hull City on Saturday looking to bounce back from a 4-1 humbling at Leeds United. Hall scored in a 2-1 victory, marking his big week in the perfect way.

After the game, the 22-year-old reaffirmed his pride at extending his stay at the club he supported as a boy through his father’s roots, despite being born in Slough.

“When I was younger, I had a stadium tour,” he explained. “Then when I was in the academy at Chelsea I would always look out for their results. I used to watch the games on TV.

“I genuinely thought I would play here one day. I didn’t necessarily think it would be so soon in my career but I’m here now and I’m buzzing.

“I’m always proud of every game I play, I never take it for granted. I’m really proud to represent this team and this city. When you win, the feeling around the city is so good and I’m really happy.”

Hall’s Premier League debut came at St James’ Park for Chelsea in 2022, and he admits he knew then where he wanted his future to lie.

“I wasn’t thinking about it much around the game because I caught up in the moment. When I got home, I thought how good it would be to play here. The atmosphere was incredible that day; I’m buzzing to be here for a lot more games.”

It was quite a shock that Hall didn’t make the World Cup squad, and he admits that loss took a toll on him initially. But with so many of his friends and team-mates involved, he managed to enjoy the experience like all England fans.

“I was gutted. In football, you never take anything for granted, but I'd say I wasn't necessarily expecting it, if I'm being completely honest. Obviously everyone has their own opinions and you've got to respect that.

“But as soon as the first couple of weeks were done, when I realised I wasn't going to be there, I just had to think to myself that if I wasn't a footballer, what would I be doing, and that's supporting England.

“So I was just with my mates watching the games together and just being a fan.

“I was obviously supporting Dan [Burn], Elliot [Anderson], Anthony [Gordon], and big Tino [Livramento].

“I was buzzing for them and wanted all of them to do so well. So, when I was watching them and they were all playing really well, it obviously made me proud as well.”

Hall wants to prove a point to Thomas Tuchel as he prepares to go up against Manchester City’s Nico O’Reilly for the left back spot in England’s Nations League games against Spain, Croatia and Czech Republic home and away.

“You play enough games in a season anyways where they can see how you play, see what you're good at, can improve on and how you fit into the squad.

“It's always nice to go there and create a good impression. I'll be looking to do that. I'm just looking forward to meeting up with everyone again, because it's been a while.”

England will benefit from Hall’s quality over the next couple of weeks, but his new contract is symbolic for Newcastle. He may love the club deeper than most players, but crucially, he sees a bright future in turbulent times.

Chris Kamara has been responsible for some of the most memorable moments in recent British football broadcasting.

Whether it was his iconic ‘Unbelievable, Jeff!’ catchphrase or his limitless enthusiasm on the touchline during his Soccer Saturday days, the former Leeds United and Brentford midfielder remains one of every football fan’s favourite pundits.

But there was one gloriously awkward moment from his Sky Sports days that will go down as one of the broadcaster’s most fondly remembered bloopers.

Pick the ultimate 4-4-2 line-up from players in FourFourTwo's definitive Top 100 List

Kamara on his Vanden Borre mix-up

The moment came during Portsmouth’s Premier League clash against Blackburn in 2006, when Kamara was dispatched to the Fratton Park sideline to report on the match.

When Anthony Vanden Borre saw red, it sparked a hilarious scene in which Kamara attempted to put together the pieces of what had just happened while reporting back to an increasingly bemused Jeff Stelling back in the studio.

“If I’d tried to blag it at that time, that moment would have been lost forever!” Kamara admits to FourFourTwo, as he explains that rather than pretend he knew what had happened, he needed to talk through what he thought he had witnessed.

The incident had seen Pompey defender Vanden Borre receive a second yellow card, but Kamara interpreted it rather differently.

“With it being a foreign player, Anthony Vanden Borre, he just didn’t react the way I’d expect a player to,” he explains.

“He was shown the second yellow card and just walked away calmly past his manager Avram Grant, who also didn’t react,” with Kamara believing that this lack of reaction could not have meant the incident was so dramatic.

“So it looked like a substitution to me,” he continues. “An English player would have argued his case and caused a scene.”

With Kamara having to face the camera and fill in the gaps, Stelling and the rest of the Soccer Saturday team in the studio would actually have more information to hand.

“Obviously they'd had reports of the sending off back in the studio, which I didn’t see myself,” he admits.

“Jeff’s reaction to my embarrassment was pure class and made the moment a great piece of TV.”