Sport
City keep up pressure as Liverpool fall at the last
Manchester City cut the gap on leaders Arsenal to four points with a comfortable 2-0 victory over Wolves. The hosts opened the scoring in the sixth minute as Matheus Nunes’s cross found Omar Marmoush – starting in place of the dropped Erling Haaland –...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Shaun Wane leaves England head coach role
Shaun Wane has stepped down as England head coach nine months before the Rugby League World Cup. Wane was the subject of much criticism after England lost 3-0 in the Ashes series last autumn, but had said he “knew he was the best man” to lead England...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Tributes paid to Spurs great Martin Chivers
The former Tottenham and England striker Martin Chivers died this week at the age of 80. He was a club and British-record signing for Spurs when he joined from Southampton in 1968 for £125,000, and went on to win the League Cup and Uefa Cup with the...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Old Firm defeat ramps up pressure on Nancy
Celtic manager Wilfried Nancy was booed down the tunnel after his side lost the Old Firm derby 3-1 to Rangers, extending his poor start in the role. Celtic took the lead through Yang Hyun-jun but Youssef Chermiti scored twice in the second half to put...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Rebirth or obit for the King George Chase in the race against developers
Everyone has their ghost places: the long-gone venues, with traces in brick or grass of what they were before the housing estate or retail park descended, and the club that lived there moved or died. Britain is known for its pretty racecourses. In a...
Read Full Story (Page 3)
Alcaraz splits from coach as Wawrinka bows out
Carlos Alcaraz announced that he was parting ways with his coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, after a seven-year partnership which has seen the Spaniard win six Grand Slam titles. Ferrero, a former world No1 himself, first started working with Alcaraz when he...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Waugh wins World Triathlon title
Kate Waugh won the T100 Triathlon World Championship final in Qatar to win the overall world title, vindicating her decision to step up to the distance. The 26-year-old began focusing on the longer competition, which is made up of a 2km swim, 80km bike...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Dominant Man City ease past Sunderland
Manchester City narrowed the gap on Arsenal to two points as Rayan Cherki inspired them to a 3-0 win over Sunderland, with goals from Rúben Dias, Joško Gvardiol and Phil Foden, after the Gunners had lost to a last-second Emiliano Buendía goal at Aston...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
R360 rebels’ delay casts doubt over its viability
R360, the controversial global rugby series aiming to lure the game’s leading players, has pushed back its launch date two years to 2028, raising major doubts over its viability. Eight leading Test nations, as well as the British and Irish Lions, have...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Australia go for Ashes experience in first Test
Australia named just one player under 30 – Cameron Green – in their squad for the first Ashes Test as uncapped opener Jake Weatherald was preferred to Sam Konstas. Tasmania’s Weatherald was the leading run-scorer in last season’s Sheffield Shield and...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Vieira leaves Genoa
Patrick Vieira has left his role as Genoa head coach by mutual consent, with the team bottom of Serie A. The Arsenal legend had been in charge of Il Grifone since last November but are winless in their opening nine matches this season having finished...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Jarman floors his rivals for a unique double
Jake Jarman became the first British male artistic gymnast to win world titles on two different apparatus as he took gold in the men’s floor final in Jakarta on Friday with an astonishing score of 14.866. The Olympic bronze medallist won on the vault...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Super League expands
York Knights and Toulouse Olympique will join the expanded 14-team Super League in 2026. The first 12 teams are chosen by a grading system formulated by IMG, while an independent panel chaired by RFL board member Jonathan Caine selected the final two....
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Protests outside Israel’s qualifier with Norway
More than a thousand protesters demonstrated before Norway’s World Cup qualifier against Israel in Oslo yesterday, over the war in Gaza and calling for the Israelis to be suspended by Fifa and Uefa. Uefa’s board was due to make a decision on whether to...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
United win to keep Amorim safe in his job, for now
Ruben Amorim staved off his Manchester United sacking for at least another couple of weeks by overseeing a 2-0 home win over Sunderland thanks to goals from Mason Mount and Benjamin Sesko. A second Premier League win in three matches, the positive...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Europe making light work of Scheffler and USA team
Europe are on course for a seismic Ryder Cup victory in the Long Island sun after winning three points in yesterday’s foursomes, taking an 8.5-3.5 lead over the USA – a record-equalling margin for a European away team after three sessions. Playing...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Fulham win is not so good for Gudmundsson
Gabriel Gudmundsson’s bright start to life with Leeds after signing from Lille this summer came to an abrupt end with a highly unfortunate own goal, giving Fulham a 94th-minute winner at Craven Cottage. An unsighted Gudmundsson inadvertently turned...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Chelsea’s winning start in bid to crack period stigma
Chelsea began their Women’s Super League campaign with a 2-1 win over Manchester City but it also marked the start of their new shorts sponsorship. Partnering with Here We Flo, a period care brand, the team wore shorts with red period stains on the...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
England squad announced
Elliot Anderson received a first call up to Thomas Tuchel’s England squad ahead of the World Cup qualifiers against Andorra and Serbia. The Nottingham Forest midfielder had previously received a senior call-up for Scotland but withdrew from that squad...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
YouTube channels get Bundesliga rights
Two popular YouTube channels, That’s Football and The Overlap, will show every Friday Bundesliga match this season, winning non-exclusive rights alongside the BBC. Dubbed the “Alan Partridge of Manchester United YouTube”, Mark Goldbridge, a former...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
England’s double struggle
England’s men and women endured a torrid week as they both failed to reach the EuroHockey Championship semi-finals for the first time. Silver medallists in 2023, England’s men lost 3-2 to France after a last-second winner, while Spain defeated the...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
‘Palestinian Pelé killed by Israeli forces’
Palestinian footballer Suleiman al-Obeid was shot and killed by Israeli forces while waiting for humanitarian aid, the Palestinian Football Association announced on Thursday. Winger Al-Obeid, 41, known as “the Palestinian Pelé” and described as “one of...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Tortured, traumatised, but football saved me
It started with blue. His family all supported Al-Hilal – the Sudanese original, formed two years before Saudi Arabia – who play in this vibrant royal blue. At seven, it always feels like your favourite colour can determine your future. It turns out it...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable to sign for Israel team now’
Former Israel-Premier Tech rider Alessandro De Marchi has addressed the cycling world’s silence about the war in Gaza, saying that he would no longer feel comfortable riding for the Israeli team. The Israel-Premier Tech team were founded in 2014 and...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
ICC in talks to start cricket club world championship
A club world championship for T20 cricket franchises and clubs could be active within two years, The Observer has learned. Talks between the leading national boards such as the England and Wales Cricket Board and Cricket Australia over creating a...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
The stalled future of F1’s Christian Horner
On the eve of the 2025 Formula 1 season, hundreds of Red Bull Racing staff shuffled into a room at the team’s Milton Keynes headquarters. To the backdrop of its championship-winning cars, Christian Horner confidently declared the team’s “mission to...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
‘Winning London 2012 means more than gold’
Chatting to Sebastian Coe about today’s 20th anniversary of London being awarded the 2012 Olympic and Paralympics, we are approached by a stranger. “Sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to shake hands and say thank you for the Olympics,” the man tells...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
The company taking on trolls with help from AI
Every day, thousands of abusive messages flood the social media of the world’s top athletes. In just the last fortnight Katie Boulter has described receiving regular death threats, while Emma Raducanu’s stalker tried to buy Wimbledon tickets. As The...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Why women are forced to endure online abuse
No athlete should open their phone to find death threats aimed at her and her family. Yet this is the reality for many sportswomen, including Katie Boulter, Britain’s second-ranked female tennis player. She revealed following her French Open...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
‘Is he going to be known just as one of the only ones?’
A week after the death of the most prominent Black referee in English football, Uriah Rennie, campaigners say changes are coming too slowly to the elite game. The chairman and co-founder of the Black, Asian and mixed heritage referees support group...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Make Andorra suffer? It was the poor fans who had it worst of all
The self-appointed buzzword of Thomas Tuchel’s England regime has been “suffering”: suffering in pursuit of glory, suffering to make opponents suffer more and, in a muggy Barcelona, making fans suffer the most. Suffering in a match like this, against...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Yates’s peak performance puts the Giro in his grasp
Simon Yates achieved a dramatic and tearful redemption in the Giro d’Italia yesterday, executing a memorable ambush on the same gravel climb that cruelly dashed his hopes of final victory in 2018. The Lancastrian, winner of the Vuelta a España in...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Breaking: Sky Sports struggling to adapt to world it helped create
The platforms are new, and the delivery can – at times – resemble avant garde performance art, but the look is instantly familiar. In recent years, a thousand football channels have bloomed on streaming services like YouTube and Twitch, hours and hours...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
The skort rebellion reaches crisis point
Irish sport has been plunged into chaos as a growing revolt over what women wear has gathered pace. Camogie, the women’s version of hurling, is played by approximately 100,000 women in Ireland, with the amateur participants required to wear a ‘skort’,...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Cricketing world left in the dark after IPL shutdown
First the blackout, then the shutdown, now the ceasefire and continued uncertainty. If it feels perverse to discuss such trivialities as sport given the human impact of a worrying albeit apparently de-escalated conflict between India and Pakistan, it...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Draper’s feat of clay proves he has joined game’s elite
When Jack Draper walks out on to the court at Caja Magica in Madrid this afternoon, he will already know that he has become the first British man since Andy Murray to crack the top five of the ATP rankings. Instead his focus will be on winning a...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Champions... but by the tightest of margins
When England head coach John Mitchell took charge of the Red Roses in 2023, he said his mission was to turn the team from winners into champions. With the clock in the red after 80 tantalising minutes, one point separated England from their seventh...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Onana’s scorching strike seals Villa’s stunning demolition job
4 ASTON VILLA Watkins 1, Maatsen 64, Burn 73og, Onana 75 1 NEWCASTLE Schär 18 Nobody seems to have told Aston Villa the season is winding down. At a boisterous, increasingly gleeful Villa Park Unai Emery’s side moved up to sixth with a...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Wissa strikes to bring Arsenal down to earth
1 ARSENAL Partey 61 1 BRENTFORD Wissa 74 The last time we were here, on Tuesday night, Arsenal enjoyed surely the finest occasion in Emirates Stadium history. The 3-0 win over Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
‘This is the summit for me’: Mullins joy as son leads home glorious 1-2-3
There have been many remarkable races and afternoons in Willie Mullins’s training career during his rise to unprecedented dominance in National Hunt racing, but never anything to match the nine minutes of yesterday’s Grand National at Aintree, as Nick...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Sels excels to be Forest’s shootout hero and book semi-final spot
0 BRIGHTON 0 NOTTM FOREST Forest won 4-3 on pens This season just keeps getting better for Nottingham Forest. A third successive penalty shootout victory in this season’s FA Cup thanks to the heroics of goalkeeper Matz Sels booked a place in the...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Tyson and Warren lead tributes to a boxing legend
Boxing figures and sports stars from around the world have paid tribute to the former world heavyweight champion George Foreman, who died on Friday aged 76. The death of the boxing Hall of Famer and entrepreneur was announced by Foreman’s family on...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Perfect 10 for England as Pollock caps demolition job
14 WALES | 68 ENGLAND England saved their best until last in this seesawing Six Nations season with a record 10-try demolition of a chastened Wales. Cardiff’s cauldron has never witnessed a heavier Welsh championship defeat as a white-hot English side...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Bielle-Biarrey goes on the run as France turn Irish hopes to dust
This was not just a game of two halves, it was a story of two games. In the first you were counting yourself lucky to be witnessing a compelling match where, for a change, the atmosphere in the crowd complemented the action on the field. In the second...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Head-high tackle on Mateta clouds Palace’s progress
Crystal Palace progressed to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup at a sun-kissed, slightly distracted Selhust Park. A win against opponents who played with 10 men for 85 minutes was comfortable enough. Sadly, this south London derby will be remembered...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Agony for Russell as missed kick hands victory to relieved England
At long last England have shaken off their Calcutta Cup blues. Never in the previous 153 years of this fixture had Scotland managed five successive wins over the auld enemy and another tartan triumph really would have had them dancing in the streets of...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Marmoush restores City’s dash in 14-minute blitz
Omar Marmoush arrived in the winter window as a 20-goal forward for Eintracht Frankfurt and against Newcastle emphatically showed why, via a scintillating 14-minute first-half hat-trick that tore the opposition apart. For the Egyptian and Manchester...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Fumbles cost France dearly as Daly delivers stunning finale
Another Saturday night at the movies with a stunningly different conclusion. England have been involved in a few thrillers in recent times but this one could not have had a more dramatic plot twist. The collective roar which greeted the decisive 79th...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Sheehan adds sparkle after England’s bright opening fades
The opening weekend of a Six Nations campaign is all about starting fast and then sustaining that momentum. England were encouragingly quick out of the stalls but, not for the first time, were unable to kick on when it really counted. Instead it is the...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Cool-head Arne refuses to be spooked and is rewarded at last
This was a really good game for Arne Slot. On an afternoon when Liverpool had 35 shots in 90 scoreless minutes, then won the game with their last two in added time, and when those goals were scored by Slot’s first substitute and created by his fourth,...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Guardiola’s tyros on song to hand Class of 92 a humbling
Manchester City’s third win on the bounce was all the sweeter due to their victims having unbreakable Manchester United connections. Salford City, owned by the Class of 92, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Phil and Gary Neville, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes,...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Saliba heads for trouble with Arsenal set on victory
If Arsenal are serious about winning the title this season then Mikel Arteta may want to rethink his plans for the January transfer market. This was another two points dropped in the race to keep up with pacesetters Liverpool as a contentious penalty...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Muir treble underlines Bath’s title credentials
It looks increasingly likely that when the fog of winter lifts, Bath will emerge top of the pile, perfectly placed to launch an assault on the Premiership playoffs. Saracens travelled west aiming to make it four wins from four in December but were...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Durán and Rogers roll over City in a Villa wonderland
Feliz Navidad, Pep. For Manchester City and Guardiola, this was another painful destruction, an unthinkable ninth defeat in 12 matches for a team who have flipped from formidable to fragile and flat. City have lost six of their past eight Premier...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Slot: ‘I could not have asked for more’
Arne Slot said he could not have asked for more from the 10 men of Liverpool after they fought back from Andy Robertson’s early red card and two Fulham leads to salvage a draw. Liverpool dropped points for the second Premier League game in succession...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
City’s defence rocking after Walker errors and late Lewis red
The way things have been going for Pep Guardiola, this could have been much worse. With his side having twice fallen behind to a Crystal Palace side brimming with renewed confidence, the Manchester City manager saw Erling Haaland end his mini drought...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Goals galore
Other Premier League games that provided seven goals in the first 45 minutes: Sept 1997 Blackburn v Leeds 3-4 at half-time April 2000 Bradford v Derby 4-3 at half-time Dec 2012 Reading v Man Utd 3-4 at half-time
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Maddison and Porro rain on Guardiola’s City parade
“Sacked in the morning” was the ecstatic taunt from Tottenham fans aimed at Pep Guardiola when Pedro Porro’s third was rammed in under a classic Mancunian downpour that had abated by the end of Manchester City’s fifth consecutive defeat. The...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Kolbe’s class extends England’s losing streak
20 29 SOUTH AFRICA Finally a performance to make English fans believe in a brighter future. The results are still not falling their way but a fifth defeat on the spin told only a fraction of the story of this compelling match. If the world champions...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Jorgensen is golden as sad England fade to grey
On a grey old day in south-west London few anticipated great splashes of gold and green being daubed on a distinctly monochrome canvas. Australia will for ever remember this gloriously see-sawing game, finally settled by a last-gasp try from young...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Agony for England as Ford’s late fluffs hand All Blacks a reprieve
The first weekend of the Autumn Nations Series was always going to be interesting. Two sides in need of an uplifting result, 80,000-plus spectators keen to renew their big match vows in a newly retitled stadium. It duly delivered a flawed classic and a...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Haaland goes flat out to put City top and send a warning
Manchester City keep powering on in a relentless mode that tells Liverpool and Arsenal they must do the same. Pep Guardiola’s champions are up to top spot with this tight victory and if either Arsenal or Arne Slot’s side can win today’s late kick-off,...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Spot-on Kluivert ensures Cherries drop Arsenal after Saliba’s red
Arsenal’s luck had to run out sooner or later. Mikel Arteta’s side finally surrendered their unbeaten start after William Saliba was sent off – their third red card in their opening eight matches – as Bournemouth celebrated a famous victory thanks to...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Ainslie’s GB bid for coveted Auld Mug hits choppy waters right from the off
You can buy a lot of things with £100m, but it turns out that a good start to the America’s Cup isn’t one of them. After 10 years of work, Ineos Britannia had the worst possible opening to their challenge against Emirates New Zealand, and went two-nil...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
Jaros steps up to help Reds hold on after Jota’s crafted finish
What else is football for other than its swell of emotions? And if it was love at first sight with Jürgen Klopp, when will the Liverpool faithful fall for Arne Slot? A continued superb start to the season, top of the table when it was supposed to be...
Read Full Story (Page 2)