List of All Articles with Tag 't'

Lionel Messi will leave Paris Saint-Germain this summer after two seasons at the club. The manager Christophe Galtier confirmed the news ahead of PSG’s final game of the season this weekend. “I had a privilege of coaching the best player in the history of football,” Galtier said. “It will be Leo’s last match at the Parc des Princes against Clermont.” Messi, 35, has been linked with a return to Barcelona, and manager Xavi revealed this week that talks have taken place. “I told the president that Messi return makes sense,” Xavi said. “No doubts at all, he is perfect for our system and idea. I’ve the tactical plan in mind with Leo. It’s up to Leo. I think he has to decide, it’s up to him… I’m speaking with Leo, yes.” While a reunion with his former club would be the romantic choice, there are also lucrative offers on the table from the US, where the David Beckham-owned Inter Miami are exploring a deal, and Saudi Arabia. Al-Hilal are prepared to pay the Argentinian £1bn over a two-year period in order to compete against his former rival Cristiano Ronaldo, who plays for Al-Nassr. Messi has made 74 appearances for PSG, scoring 32 goals. He arrived in the French capital to great fanfare but struggled to make an impact in his first season and was overshadowed by teammate Kylian Mbappe, as they won Ligue 1 but crashed out of the Champions League in the first knockout round. This season has been a similar story, albeit with the added bonus of a French Cup triumph. Messi was booed by some PSG fans following the World Cup after leading Argentina to glory against France in the final. Read More Karim Benzema weighing up €100m offer to leave Real Madrid On This Day in 2011: Lionel Messi stars as Barcelona win Champions League Harry Kane taking inspiration from greats as he eyes another decade at top

Lizzo has threatened to quit music after being hit with horrific comments about her weight "daily". The 'About Damn Time' singer has been vocal about trolls in the past but on Wednesday (31 May) shared several examples in a string of now-private tweets. "I JUST logged on [to] the app and this is the type of s*** I see about me on a daily basis," she wrote on Twitter. She included a post from one brutal critic Layah Hailpern, who said: "How is Lizzo still THIS fat when she’s constantly moving this much on stage?! I wonder what she must be eating." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Lizzo went on to say "Then someone in the comments said I eat ‘lots of fast food,' before exclaiming how she "literally stopped eating fast food years ago." She explained how she's "tired of explaining myself all the time and I just wanna get on this app w/out seeing my name in some bulls***". A separate post saw the star react to another comment, reading: "I don’t think Lizzie wants to be smaller... yet... If she did, she would be. It’s her brand." Lizzo hit back: "This is what my body looks like even when I’m eating super clean and working out. Y’all speak on s*** y’all know NOTHING ABOUT and I’m starting to get heated." The 35-year-old continued: "The Love definitely do not outweigh the Hate on social media... all because I’m fat???? This is CRAZY. "I HATE IT HERE," she fumed, before threatening to quit music. "Y’all don’t know how close I be to giving up on everyone and quitting and enjoying my money and my man on a F***ING FARM." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Pristina and Belgrade trade blame after ethnic Albanian mayors were elected in ethnic Serb areas.

National Donut Day is celebrated the first Friday in June. Learn the history behind why we celebrate Donut Day (not to be confused with Doughnut Day).

Shares of Chewy Inc rose nearly 20% in premarket trading on Thursday after the online pet supplies retailer

Laura Woods is one of the best in the game when it comes to presenting live sport, but she’s had to put up with a lot of nonsense from viewers over the years. The 35-year-old has said she receives strange questions from time to time – and most of them relate to her feet. Woods spoke about the fact that the most bizarre DMs she receives from fans always tend to arrive after her feet are seen on Instagram or during a live broadcast. Appearing on Sam Thompson and Pete Wicks’ podcast Staying Relevant, Woods said: "Every time I have no shoes on in a photo, the amount of people that say I've got boat feet. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter "They're a size seven which is a UK average for a woman by the way. [I get] 'How big are your f***ing boats?' And I'm like ‘they're not that big.’" Woods even has her own profile on Wikifeet - a website for celebrity foot fetishists - which fans have put together using pictures from her social media pages. Woods isn’t afraid to respond to fans, either. "I've replied a couple of times [to negative messages] about people's manhood... but it's only ever a retaliation,” she said. "I never understand when people say, 'Oh but you can't say that'. Am I a sitting duck? Just because I'm a broadcaster, you're allowed to say anything you want about me and as soon as I reply - and I will win, like I'm very stubborn about things like that - I will f***ing fight to the death." Meanwhile, Woods got more than she bargained for during a recent radio phone-in, after a Premier League star admitted he had a crush on her live on air. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

NATO officials are in a race against time to avoid the embarrassment of seeing the alliance miss its own stated aim of admitting Sweden to the alliance by July 11.

Scientists who were attempting to map an abandoned ant hill didn't expect to find a mega-city when they shot the hill full of cement, but that's exactly what they discovered. Over three days, scientists pumped 10 tons of cement into the empty ant hill to map its networks. After the cement dried, they dug for weeks around it. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The excavation revealed an incredibly impressive, intricate, and bizarre ant mega-city. The mega-city was a truly colossal undertaking. A video revealed that the ants created the structure by displacing 40 tons of dirt. And it really is a mega-city. The ants networked to disposal pits and fungus gardens. Each tunnel was designed to ensure thorough ventilation and reduce transport time. The narrator disclosed the truth. That despite the complex nature of the mega-city, there was no single architect of any - but it was down to the collective will of the colony. "Everything looks like it has been designed by an architect a single mind but of course, that isn’t true," they said. "This colossal and complex city was created by the collective will of the ant colony, the super organism." The short resurfaced clip is from a much longer piece called Ants! Nature’s Secret Power. You can watch the full documentary here. Our city designers should take a few notes. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Former Slovakia captain Marek Hamšík is retiring from soccer at the end of the season

From a drag king who fought discrimination on the streets of New York to a famous mathematician who stood up to adversity, here are five LGBTQ figures to know.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said it was "unfortunate" China declined a US offer to speak at a defense summit this week in Singapore and that the ongoing lack of communication could result in "an incident that could very, very quickly spiral out of control."

When Manchester City won the Premier League, Erik ten Hag was not one of the first on the phone to Pep Guardiola. Perhaps that is unsurprising: he is, after all, manager of their rivals. But he is also an old ally, a man who worked with Guardiola at Bayern Munich, one who, just before he took the job at Manchester United, the Catalan had said could succeed him at the Etihad Stadium. They are part of a mutual admiration society. “The way in winning the title is a demonstration of football, everyone likes the way they play: so attractive, so brilliant,” Ten Hag said. “But their season is still not finished as our season is still not finished.” If Guardiola is denied a historic treble, it may be by a man he took under his wing. The man who liked Guardiola’s football so much that he took a backward step to team up with him, leaving a manager’s job at Go Ahead Eagles, who he had led to promotion, to take charge of Bayern’s second team in the German fourth division in 2013, has progressed rapidly. If Ten Hag was playing the long game, looking to further his education, now they meet as peers; at the Etihad Stadium and then Old Trafford this season, at Wembley in the FA Cup final on Saturday. Guardiola has the more storied CV, but Ten Hag is in charge of the bigger club. If, for much of this season, Guardiola could look up the league table and see one of his proteges, Mikel Arteta, above him, now he may be denied the FA Cup by another from his footballing family tree. And yet the sense is that Ten Hag is looking to topple Guardiola, not emulate him. They can come from the same school of thought, but they have attended different classes. Ten Hag is the former Ajax manager and yet Guardiola is more of the Ajax purist. Guardiola is the Johan Cruyff disciple, the man whose thinking was shaped by the man indelibly associated with Dutch football. He was the slow, inelegant reserve-team player parachuted into Barcelona’s Dream Team, who then became a European Cup winner as a player; in 2008, Cruyff advocated giving the untried Guardiola the manager’s job. A spectacular success only enhanced his own legacy. “Without him, I wouldn’t be here,” Guardiola reflected in 2016. Guardiola was exposed to Cruyff’s thinking at a formative age. There is a clip of a 13-year-old Ten Hag asking Cruyff a question on Dutch television, but he is not from Amsterdam or an Ajax product. He grew up near the German border, had three spells as a player and one as a coach at Twente in Enschede. He was 43 when he linked up with Guardiola, 47 when he got the Ajax job. He was, according to his assistant Steve McClaren, known as “mini Pep” at Bayern, when they coached on adjacent training pitches. Yet Ten Hag’s United are not a mirror of Guardiola’s City. There are similarities, but marked differences, too. Arteta’s Arsenal have more common denominators with City. United have topped the Premier League’s passing charts under a former Ajax manager, but he was Louis van Gaal and it was in 2014-15. In 2022-23, as City predictably had the most possession, United trailed in sixth, with 53.7 per cent to the champions’ 65.2. Their pass completion rate was only the seventh best, behind even Tottenham. Meanwhile, as City, partly by having the greatest share of the ball, won the fewest tackles, United won the eighth most. They were eighth for blocks, too. City were 20th. United were less slaves to possession, more reliant on winning duels. They played more long passes and scored the most goals from counter-attacks. United have not been slaves to possession. A difference can be seen in their respective wingers: Guardiola will often pick the pair who give him most control whereas Ten Hag tends to prefer a dribbler, in Antony, and a scorer and sprinter, in Marcus Rashford. United are willing to risk losing the ball more to try and make something happen. The passing statistics of Bruno Fernandes (77.7 per cent completion rate) and Casemiro (78.5) are examples; only Erling Haaland of the City regulars finds a teammate on a lower share of occasions. If United’s style of play in part shows Ten Hag’s pragmatic streak, he has shown a willingness to keep David de Gea, no Ederson with the ball at his feet; Guardiola would surely have ditched a goalkeeper who cannot double up as the 11th outfield player. But they share a fondness for left-footed centre-backs that is a recurring theme among those with Ajax influences. Perhaps Ten Hag’s flagship signing was Lisandro Martinez; he has shown a reluctance to use the right-footed Harry Maguire in his old role as a left-sided centre-back. In converting left-back Luke Shaw to use him in the middle, he has echoed one of Guardiola’s early surprises, when Aleksandar Kolarov assumed similar duties. So far, though, he has eschewed inverted full-backs or hybrid roles like John Stones’, two of Guardiola’s idiosyncratic ploys; in Martinez, Shaw and Varane, however, he simply has defenders who can double up as progressive passers. Ten Hag’s United debut came with a tactic that seemed to come straight from the Guardiola handbook, with Christian Eriksen selected as a false nine. It did not work, though he had greater success at Ajax when selecting Dusan Tadic instead of a striker. His use of Fernandes in a variety of positions has shown a total football ethos; as Kevin de Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan can testify, Guardiola’s midfielders can find themselves given a number of different slots in the side, too. Ten Hag has differed from Guardiola in derbies; a strategy of man-marking in midfield backfired when they went 6-1 down at the Etihad, eventually losing 6-3; with Fred excelling against De Bruyne and Fernandes playing off the right, it worked better in victory at Old Trafford. Perhaps, with his fondness for quick attacks, Ten Hag is trying to tap into United’s traditions, to borrow from Sir Alex Ferguson as much as from Guardiola; his relentless emphasis on a winning mentality echoes the Scot’s attitude. Certainly, his style of football is designed to bring the best from some of those he inherited, such as Rashford and Fernandes, rather than being dogmatically ideological. But were Cruyff still around, the chances are he would have seen his stamp on one of the sides at Wembley: that managed by his pupil, Guardiola, rather than that under a successor at Ajax and a compatriot, Ten Hag. Read More How Yaya Toure changed everything for Man City — and delivered Man Utd a ‘slap in the face’ The year that sportswashing won: A season that changed football forever 5 key talking points as rivals Man City and Man Utd clash in FA Cup final How managers Pep Guardiola and Erik ten Hag fare ahead of FA Cup final Pep Guardiola takes top honours at LMA Awards Injury concerns for Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish ahead of FA Cup final