List of All Articles with Tag 'b'

Lionel Messi has insisted he has resolved a dispute he had with Robert Lewandowski over comments he made at the 2021 Ballon d'Or ceremony.

The Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide face off in the 2023 SEC Championship Game. Here is how you can watch the big game.

A major trade deal between the European Union and South American economies received a serious setback after French

Manchester United's flight to Newcastle was cancelled hours before their match at St James' Park kicks off on Saturday.

As legends like Gianluigi Buffon and Miroslav Klose start to decide what Euro 2024 will look like, most of its audience will be watching the Premier League and the other domestic competitions. That will of course change by June, but 5pm Saturday is a strange time for a draw, that maybe touches on the strange place both the competition and Uefa are in right now. It’s not even like this draw holds the anxiety supporters used to associate with such events for major nations like England. That isn’t down to how good Gareth Southgate’s team are right now, either. No matter what names come out, over half of the competition will be spent eliminating a third of the field. The 36-game group stage will see 16 teams out of 24 go through to the next round. It is literally harder to get knocked out. That has of course been the case for most of the qualification campaign, a problem when a competition has been so expanded. It almost feels like it would be better to just finally push the Euros out to a more symmetrical 32 teams and considerably shorten the way you get there. As it is, Buffon and Klose will almost be deciding another preliminary stage in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall on Saturday. It should be acknowledged that Euro 2020 was immediately an entertaining tournament but it was still lopsided and it’s hard not to put part of the emotion down to the fact it was one of the first major events with crowds after Covid. Euro 2024 draw LIVE: England, Scotland and Wales discover finals opponents for Germany Before it, the first 24-team Euros in 2016 had mostly been a drab competition in terms of the football, characterised by low-scoring games where a series of smaller national sides played defensively reductive tactics. Wales, still having to go through the interminable play-offs for this, were one of the exceptions. They still wistfully talk about their time in France eight years ago. It was certainly difficult to fault the setting, and it is much the same with this. That is why Euro 2024 is a bit of a watershed. It is the first “traditional” tournament - to use the words of one federation head - in eight years. In the time between, there has been a World Cup in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. While anyone who was there would say that did an important job of reminding me people the country and its culture are always different to the state, events since have meant it will now be seen as a modern 1936 Olympics. The Russian national team’s absence from all this due to the suspension for the invasion of Ukraine are a reminder of that. Resentments still linger within Uefa over a recent attempt to bring back youth sides. Euro 2020 was then a continent-traversing competition, that the governing body have vowed never to do again. Aside from obvious environmental concerns, to go with the Covid restrictions, it diluted that sense of a nationwide party that comes with more self-contained tournaments. Not that there was much of a party in Qatar for the World Cup that followed. Very few fans travelled, and the legacy of that tournament commonly perceived is a litany of migrant labour abuses. None of this is to say western Europe is perfect, but you only have to compare the atmosphere around Doha with that of Germany for the 2006 World Cup. That is the memory that frames these Euros. Even a relative lack of excitement about the draw is tempered by the anticipation of a similarly great summer next year. That is where there is a little twist to this, though. Germany now finds itself on the more complicated other side of the process that led to that joyous Sommermarchen of 2006. Then, a national football talent programme combined with a football construction boom, to foster a love for an exhilarating new team as well as a sense of reunified nation finally coming together after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, some of it is coming apart. Most immediately, the team hasn’t been good. None of those tournaments since 2016 have seen Germany get past the last 16, and the two World Cups brought elimination at the group stage. The old certainties about their national team have gone. You have frequently been able to write them off. You can’t even write about the coming talent in the same way, as Germany has been engulfed by debate over the type of players they produce. Federation officials have been sent abroad to figure out how you produce number-nines again. Julian Nagelsmann, for all his talented sophistication, isn't necessarily a rallying coach. Much more seriously, this has fed into some distasteful national debates about immigration and national identity, that has touched previous stars like Mesut Ozil. It is also known that there was tension regarding the decision to make a gesture over the rainbow armbands in Qatar. Far from the happiness of 2006, there are now fears of hooliganism in the build-up to the competition, fired by incidents like Eintracht Frankfurt fans before last season’s Europa League final. To bring it all full circle, there is also tension between the Bundesliga and the national federation, when it was their own unification under one umbrella that was seen as crucial to rebooting German football before 2006. It has got to the point where the 24 qualified nations may not even use Bundesliga training grounds. And yet, it’s still Germany. There’s still a talent like Jamal Musiala. It’s still so easy to get around. The country remains blessed with the kind of infrastructure that most other nations would dream of, so they could host a tournament just as easily. It will be hard for Uefa not to put on a show. This is precisely where there is also pressure on Uefa, however, to feed into the hint of growing dissatisfaction against Aleksander Ceferin. The governing body has recently found it difficult to get events right. While Euro 2020 was initially organised relatively smoothly, the final at Wembley was a near-disaster. The following year’s Champions League final in Paris was even worse, and everyone was fortunate there wasn’t loss of life. The chaos around this year’s showpiece in Istanbul, then, showed a lot of lessons hadn’t been learned. It summed up a sense that the European body, previously a model of that sort of technocratic competence, wasn’t properly anticipating obvious problems. This all comes amid growing fissures in the political infrastructure. There is a growing belief that Ceferin has been too self-satisfied since the victory over the Super League in April 2021. That crisis was precipitated by problems that came from financial disparity in European football, an issue that has got worse over the Slovenian’s seven years. The 2024 Champions League reforms are meanwhile commonly viewed as just institutionalising the Super League in another way. Ceferin is also being privately criticised by complacent reactions to huge issues like multi-club ownerships and the threat of the Saudi Pro League. It is known that the subject of whether the kingdom’s clubs would ever come into the Champions League was at least raised in informal circles near the top of Uefa. That prospect was rejected, over a fear of a LIV Golf situation. Saturday’s draw will bring all of the federation heads together, and a lot of private chats about all of this. Many are currently raising questions over whether Ceferin will pursue another term in 2027. The rules stipulate that any federation president can only serve three terms, and Ceferin came in halfway through one after the fall of Michel Platini. Other executives within European football are already talking about how it would be "bad governance" if he sought another term and tried to stay in power. If this seems a long way from the opening game in Munich on 14 June, it has influenced international football. The concentration of resources in pockets of western Europe has had an effect, as have Uefa’s policies on development. It is a slightly strange era in international football, where there is a huge middle class in terms of quality and not many truly elite sides. France and England are the obvious favourites, and will be the two teams everyone else wants to avoid. That landscape may change in the long months until the Euros start, and good sides can quickly develop. That was witnessed with the defending champions, Italy, in 2021. The current landscape is still what everyone travelling to Hamburg is surveying right now. As it is, a worst-case group for England would probably be Denmark, Netherlands and Italy. A best case might be Albania, Slovenia and a play-off winner. For Scotland - or potentially Wales after their play-offs - the hope will be to avoid France, Denmark and Italy but they might fancy Belgium and Albania. England should still get through regardless. Southgate has bigger ambitions. The main consequence of Saturday will be sorting logistics, as well as travel between games and their first-choice base in the Black Forest. Again, it is still Germany, though. That just comes with a few more complications than before. Read More When is the Euro 2024 draw and what are the pots? Anthony Gordon can make England statement by outshining Marcus Rashford England’s Euro 2024 squad: Who’s on the plane, who’s in contention and who has work to do? Uefa announces changes to Women’s Champions League and second European competition Police charge more than 40 away fans after major disorder outside Villa Park Liverpool’s Europa League job is done, but Mohamed Salah is just short of milestone

The 2023/24 Premier League season is under way and you can follow every game and every goal right here with The Independent. This year sees Manchester City try to defend their crown and claim a historic fourth title in succession. Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering City, who also won the Champions League and FA Cup last season, will have to see off Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and the rest to claim an unprecedented sixth league title in seven years. Meanwhile Luton Town are making their first appearance in the Premier League, having risen from non-league in an incredible decade of progress. They followed Championship winners Burnley and second-placed Sheffield United in earning promotion to the top flight. Follow the latest action from the Premier League below.

The 2023/24 Premier League season is under way and you can follow every game and every goal right here with The Independent. This year sees Manchester City try to defend their crown and claim a historic fourth title in succession. Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering City, who also won the Champions League and FA Cup last season, will have to see off Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and the rest to claim an unprecedented sixth league title in seven years. Meanwhile Luton Town are making their first appearance in the Premier League, having risen from non-league in an incredible decade of progress. They followed Championship winners Burnley and second-placed Sheffield United in earning promotion to the top flight. Follow the latest action from the Premier League below.

The 2023/24 Premier League season is under way and you can follow every game and every goal right here with The Independent. This year sees Manchester City try to defend their crown and claim a historic fourth title in succession. Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering City, who also won the Champions League and FA Cup last season, will have to see off Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and the rest to claim an unprecedented sixth league title in seven years. Meanwhile Luton Town are making their first appearance in the Premier League, having risen from non-league in an incredible decade of progress. They followed Championship winners Burnley and second-placed Sheffield United in earning promotion to the top flight. Follow the latest action from the Premier League below.

We’ve entered the final month of 2023, and fingers crossed stocks will have a great finish after a

All of the controversial VAR decisions that have come to haunt Manchester City in their various Champions League and Premier League meetings with Tottenham Hotspur

Marine’s 2021 FA Cup run was so far detached from reality that their manager, Neil Young, remembers every kick like a vivid dream. He can still see the last penalty of the shootout which shocked League Two Colchester United on their own patch in the first round, “one of my greatest memories in football”. He can still picture Niall Cummins’ dramatic 120th-minute winner against Havant & Waterlooville in the second round which sparked “bedlam,” even in an empty stadium in lockdown. That result was their ninth knockout win of the competition and it put Marine AFC, a volunteer-led club playing in the Northern Premier League Division One North West, into the hat for the third round with some of the biggest teams in the world. It was only the second time an eighth-tier side had ever reached that stage of the FA Cup. On the face of it, the third-round draw is a ludicrous enterprise. Here was a team made up of plumbers, teachers, factory workers and a car salesman, paid a total weekly wage of £750, with the possibility of being competitively matched against some of the best footballers on the planet. “When you get to the third round, let’s be honest, it’s likely that you’re not going to go any further,” Young tells the Independent. “You are hoping for one of the big teams. “I go back to when I was growing up, the third round was always the one you were waiting for. I was a Liverpool fan and you were always wondering who you were gonna get. Now I was looking at it from the other side.” The possibilities were remote. The chances of drawing one of the so-called big six was around nine per cent. The chances of drawing the team on top of the Premier League and the manager he most wanted to pit his wits against, Jose Mourinho? Only 1.6 per cent. But after such a rare run into the cup’s deepest waters, Marine were desperate to get lucky. The draw itself was made in a studio, but the BBC’s programme was hosted by Mark Chapman at Marine’s ground, immediately after their televised second-round win over Havant & Waterlooville. “It was outside, and it was absolutely bloody freezing,” remembers Young. The manager was stood with his captain, Cummins, and the BBC production team, watching the draw on what turned out to be a slightly delayed picture on a giant TV screen. He watched as Robbie Savage fished out No 58, Marine, followed by No 39, Tottenham Hotspur. “Once the ball got drawn out, we heard a massive cheer go up,” Young says. “We didn’t just hear it from our directors in the stand below us - our ground’s got houses on top of it and you could hear the cheering from the houses. I could actually hear the cheer before the name came up on the bottom of the screen. “It was a surreal moment. And as soon as that draw was made, the phone never stopped ringing.” Young was live on Sky Sports News 15 minutes later, and hopped between radio shows all night. It was relentless, and Young was forced to take a week off work – he works for a local train operator – to cope with the buildup. Liverpool invited him to watch Spurs at Anfield the week before the tie and offered up their footage of Spurs and detailed analytics. He had hoped for an away trip, but on reflection: “You’re thinking, away at Tottenham, for example, it could be a bloody cricket score with the size of the pitch and everything.” The game itself is another crystal clear memory. The gap between the two clubs was 161 places, the biggest in FA Cup history, but Mourinho took the game seriously and named a strong side. International stars like Dele Alli, Joe Hart, Toby Alderweireld, Lucas Moura and Gareth Bale all graced Marine’s Rossett Park. Before kick-off, Mourinho sought out Marine’s one Portuguese player, a reserve goalkeeper, and gifted him a signed Spurs shirt with his name printed on the back. “He also got me a shirt with my name on the back which he signed for me, which is framed in my house,” says Young. “He came out of his way before the game to talk with me, we spent half an hour on the pitch making general conversation. He was a really nice guy, humble, not what people see on the telly. He assumed we’d only played two or three games to get there and was amazed it was our 10th game, he could not believe it. “He said, ‘I hope you know if you beat us today, I’ll be back here tomorrow morning looking for a job’.” Spurs were too good, of course, winning 5-0. Yet Marine hit the woodwork at 0-0 and fans still ask Young what might have been had that shot found the net. “I tell them we would have lost 5-1 instead,” he laughs. Young has great respect and appreciation for the way Tottenham approached the tie. “It was freezing, there were no supporters, but they sent a real strong team and then they brought Bale on. We were chasing after them for most of the game but what an experience for our players. And it’s changed our football club.” Tottenham fans bought “virtual” away tickets to raise £300,000 for Marine, and Spurs later treated Marine’s players and staff to a trip to north London to watch their FA Cup third-round tie the following season. Marine’s old facilities essentially made it a part-time social club; now they have two restaurants open all day, every day, generating life-giving revenue for the club. So does the new 4G pitch which is used by local teams and schools. The average gate has jumped from around 200 before the Cup tie to around 1,300 now, and buses full of travelling supporters follow the team on the road. The magic of the FA Cup is a well-worn cliché but there is little else in sport quite like the third round, little that can replicate the sheer otherworldly possibility of that draw. That moment, stood in the bitter cold as cheers rang out from the houses and Tottenham Hotspur flashed up on the screen, will live with Young forever. “It was a special moment in my life. I played a bit myself non-league, and then I got a bad injury and took the decision to pack it in at a very early age and go into the management side. My career started on Sunday mornings at Birkenhead. Things progressed and for that to all come together, in the third-round draw of the FA Cup against Tottenham Hotspur, to be playing against a guy who’s won everything and one of the best that’s ever done it in Jose Mourinho… it was unbelievable.” Read More When is the FA Cup third round draw? What time is the Euro 2024 draw and what are the pots? Uefa announces changes to Women’s Champions League and second European competition When is the FA Cup third round draw? What time is the Euro 2024 draw and what are the pots? Uefa announces changes to Women’s Champions League and second European competition

Harry Kane told Tottenham Hotspur at the end of last season that he felt it was "time to move on", paving the way for his summer transfer to Bayern Munich.