Wrexham's seven-match unbeaten run in the Championship came to an end on Wednesday as they went down 2-0 against a dominant Hull City on the road. The Red Dragons' star forward Kieffer Moore had a night to forget as his two costly misses cost Phil Parkinson's side crucial points. Wrexham have dropped to 14th place in the second tier after the defeat.
دافع فران سوتو، رئيس اللجنة الفنية للحكام بالدوري الإسباني، عن عمل هيئة التحكيم بشكل عام، وعن الحكم أليخاندرو كوينتيرو جونزاليس بشكل خاص، عقب أحداث مباراة ريال مدريد وسيلتا فيجو.
وشهدت مباراة ريال مدريد وسيلتا فيجو بالجولة الماضية للدوري الإسباني، جدلاً تحكيميًا واسعًا، بعد طرد ثلاثي مدريد، ألفارو كاريراس، فران جونزاليس، وإندريك، وانتقد تشابي ألونسو مدرب الفريق، أداء الحكم أليخاندرو، مؤكدًا أنه أثر على المواجهة وأربك اللاعبين.
وأوضح سوتو في تصريحات نشرتها صحيفة “ماركا” الإسبانية: “بصراحة، كنت أتوقع توترًا أقل، هذه حقيقة، توقعت أنه مع إجراءات الانفتاح والشفافية التي نتخذها، سيكون هناك توتر أقل، وجودكم هنا اليوم (الصحافة) حدثٌ تاريخي، ليس لدينا ما نخفيه، وأبوابنا مفتوحة، ما أطلبه من الجميع هو احترام الحكم”.
ورفض سوتو التعليق على كلمات لاعبي ريال مدريد تجاه الحكم، مؤكدًا أن أليخاندرو كوينتيرو قد يُدير مباريات ريال مدريد مجددًا هذا الموسم.
وأكد سوتو: “من خلال لجنة التعيينات، نسعى لضمان إدارة جميع الحكام مباراة واحدة على الأقل لكل نادٍ، سنتخذ القرارات التي نراها مناسبة بشأن المباريات المُقامة، ولكن دون أي اعتراض سواءً كان داخليًا أو خارجيًا”.
وبخصوص تصريحات كارفاخال (لمطالعتها من هنا)، التي سجلها كوينتيرو في تقرير المباراة، أفاد سوتو: “سجل الحكم ما سمعه في التقرير، وستتخذ لجان المسابقات القرارات المناسبة”.
كما رفض رئيس اللجنة الفنية للحكام وصف العلاقة مع ريال مدريد بأنها متوترة أو متقلبة، وأتم: “لم نتحدث معهم، وهذا ليس أمرًا يجب علينا فعله، نحن خدام كرة القدم؛ علينا اتخاذ أفضل القرارات الممكنة والتركيز على عملنا”.
The South Africa and MI Cape Town batter talks about his start in the game, his successful 2024, and about being mentored by Hashim Amla
Firdose Moonda08-Feb-20256:28
Ryan Rickelton: “With T20s, there’s a lot more pressure on every delivery”
Players often remind us that Test cricket is thus named because of the challenges it poses, but for Ryan Rickelton there was something more difficult: T20s.South Africa’s first Test double-centurion since 2016 found scoring those runs easier than the 303 he compiled in seven innings for finalists MI Cape Town in this season of the SA20.”I grew up wanting to be a Test player and thought that in T20, you can just whack a few, but T20 cricket is flipping hard. It’s different, but it is harder,” Rickelton says.Related
Invincible Rickelton gives his international cred a shot in the arm
Rickelton's marathon 259, Verreynne century thump hapless Pakistan
Ryan Rickelton, the new showstopper at Newlands
“Test cricket is very hard, but with T20s, there’s a lot more pressure on every delivery. In Test cricket, you can bide your time and work your way through it at a lower intensity. In T20s, you’ve got to score [off] every ball. There’s always pressure on you, internally, externally, there’s more detailed analysis on you as a player, and against your opposition. They’re always trying to hit your weaknesses. There’s a lot more to it than it seems.”And it took some time for Rickelton to work that out. While he has largely consistently averaged high in first-class cricket, he had a pronounced blip in T20s a little over three years into his career, after which his average came back up to 25 and his strike rate to over 130 last year. He finished as the top scorer at the 2023-24 SA20, which was around the time that he began to think about how to change techniques for different formats after talking to Hashim Amla, his batting coach at Lions and MI Cape Town.Related
Invincible Rickelton gives his international cred a shot in the arm
Rickelton's marathon 259, Verreynne century thump hapless Pakistan
Ryan Rickelton, the new showstopper at Newlands
Amla was once regarded as a red-ball specialist but he broke the record for being the fastest player to 5000 ODI runs and ended his career with the most hundreds in the format for South Africa.”I spend a lot of time with Hash,” Rickelton says. “He was a phenomenal player and a calm guy in the way he dealt with his success and his failure, so that’s awesome. It’s just hard to obviously deal with both sides of the spectrum, but he was an incredible player and he’s a very good coach.”Batting is very relationship-based, and having spent three years with him, I can trust his eyes and his perspective as a coach. It’s also nice to have someone that’s around frequently. Even when I move up into the Proteas space, he’s still the guy I call back. He’ll watch [me play] and I’ll toss some thoughts to him. It doesn’t mean that I disregard anyone else’s [views], but the guys that can see little intricacies coming into your game or what you’re thinking behind the scenes are the kind that can relate to you a little bit more.”Under Amla’s guidance, Rickelton had the best year of his career in 2024, bookended by topping the SA20 run charts and scoring his first Test hundred, against Sri Lanka in December. Suddenly, high-level cricket in any format seemed fairly easy for a batter who wasn’t even sure South Africa was where he wanted to carve out his career.Growing up as the son of the director of sports at one of the country’s most prestigious schools, St Stithians, Rickelton finished school with no idea what to do next, so he moved to New Zealand to try and play for New Zealand, he says.”My dad’s best mate worked for Wellington Blaze. He called my dad and said, ‘Why don’t you just send Ryan over?’ I was young, so I went.”Rickelton’s 259 against Pakistan is the joint seventh-highest Test score for South Africa•Rodger Bosch /AFP/Getty ImagesHe describes his New Zealand stint as something of a gap year, where he discovered how little he actually knew.”I still don’t understand why I went. I think it was just that I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I wanted to go to Stellenbosch [university] because all my mates were going there, but I think that could have derailed a few things. It was one of those things where I thought: let me just go have a look. We chatted to Grant Elliott [former Wellington and New Zealand allrounder] as well, and he said [it’s] a great set-up at Wellington – and it was. Maybe if I went two-three years later, I would have probably stayed there. But I was just a kid. All my mates were on this side, having a good time, my whole family was on this side, and I’m 12 hours ahead in Wellington, not really sure who to talk to or what to do. It really forced me to grow up quite quickly.”Though Wellington offered Rickelton the opportunity to come back for another season, he decided to stay at home and started studying at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in 2016. The coach of the university cricket team, Richard das Neves, the current Titans interim head coach, knew Rickelton from the Johannesburg club cricket scene and took him under his wing.”I did a finance degree through UJ for three years, played my Varsity Cup, and I always kind of said to myself at the end of this degree, I’ll know if I’m good enough or not. I’ll give it these three years, I’ll be in and around the Gauteng system. I got an amateur contract and gave myself three years to have a full crack at it. And if it worked, cool. If not, I didn’t want to be just plodding about. It was either going to work or it wasn’t.”It worked. By the time Rickelton graduated, he was upgraded to a professional contract. And so began the journey to try to earn national honours.He was third on the One-Day Cup batting charts in 2019-20 and fifth in the 2021-22 first-class competition. In March 2022, he got his first call-up to South Africa’s Test squad, for a series against Bangladesh. Several first-choice batters were unavailable since the series clashed with the IPL, so Rickelton played both games and went on the 2022 tour to England, where he played one match.Rickelton (seated, first from right) was part of the South African side that reached the 2024 men’s T20 World Cup final•Matthew Lewis/ICC/Getty ImagesHe scored 224 runs at 22.4 from his first seven Tests and did not look convincing.”I was just trying to make it work and I had played a little bit of county cricket, but the conditions where I played [Northamptonshire] compared to that Test match [at The Oval] was chalk and cheese,” he says. “I was facing Stuart Broad and Jimmy [Anderson] at a packed house in The Oval on a green one, and that was always going to test me. Obviously, we got hammered in that Test and it wasn’t pretty. But you look back and say, well, at least I got the opportunity. I could physically learn and see for myself.”Rickelton was ruled out of South Africa’s Test tour to Australia in December 2022 as the board’s medical team was concerned about a bone spur in his ankle. He says he chose not to have surgery for it at the time under the advice of his own physiotherapist, who said he could go two years without having surgery and could keep playing for the summer, one Rickelton said he “was not willing to miss.”The physio’s advice seemed justified when Rickelton scored four hundreds across formats in five weeks while South Africa crashed and burned in Australia. “It looked like a tough tour,” he says.He eventually had the surgery in April 2023, which ruled him out of county cricket that summer but also gave him the best chance of playing for South Africa. However, he had to bide his time. Rickelton has mostly been seen as the reserve batter and only got a regular run this summer after Wiaan Mulder broke a finger in the Durban Test against Sri Lanka.Fortuitously, in Gqeberha, Rickelton was also given the chance to play higher up the order, which is what he prefers, so he knew it was his time to shine. The pressure he always feels in T20 was on him.In three SA20 seasons so far, Rickelton has scored nearly 1000 runs at a strike rate of 161.28•SA20″I’d only played seven games at the time and there was that question mark over me from you guys [media] and from myself as well: ‘Can he do it?’ So when I walked in there, I locked in. I was chatting to Hash about just trying to watch players and how guys aren’t sticking to their strengths, and trying to emphasise what I do and do it well for the whole day, if not the next day as well. It was very against how people think I play, but I can do that as well and spend lots of time out the crease and score slowly if it’s needed.”In the end, he described the knock as one of relief, not celebration, and it was followed by three low scores. Then came 2025 and the 259 at Newlands against Pakistan and Rickelton is starting to realise his life has changed.”To get 250 is definitely not something I would have thought of, but as I walked off, KG [Rabada] gave me a hug and he said, ‘This is so massive. This is huge.’ And I told him I actually [didn’t] understand it. Maybe you don’t know what it really means until late in your career,” Rickelton says. “It has maybe increased my profile and it was incredible to be part of history. I can’t remember too much, but I can remember the roar for both the hundred and the double. It was spectacular.”The accolades have kept coming. At Newlands, Rickelton has established himself as one of MI Cape Town’s darlings and his opening partnership with Rassie van der Dussen is the most reliable in the competition. His three half-centuries in this SA20 have been scored with freedom and confidence, the signs of a player who is comfortable in his own game, and it’s a feeling he hopes to take into his first IPL later this year.”I’m not sure what to expect. I’ve chatted to lots of guys about the IPL and you hear all these things and you think, ‘This is big boy stuff.’ I’m probably a little bit nervous of how the whole two or three months are going to play out. But you never know if you have a good two months here anything can happen.”That is how Rickelton is approaching things from now on: being open to the possibility of achieving things he didn’t dream of. “I’ve got a big six months ahead. If I can get a bit of the rub of the green, work hard and things can go my way, a lot can change quite quickly. I know I’m going to fail along the way. It’s normal, but just try and balance it out and say, you know what, in the bigger picture, if I have a good six months now, anything can happen. A year ago, I wasn’t sitting near here. Today, after one tournament, everyone says: this guy knows what he’s doing.”However difficult or easy it is.
West Ham insider ExWHUemployee has shared some “unfortunate news” out of the club with Nuno Espírito Santo dealt another injury blow.
The Hammers had a rare afternoon of celebration last weekend as Nuno oversaw his first win since taking charge.
West Ham put top four-chasing Newcastle to the sword in a 3-1 victory which was also their first Premier League win at the London Stadium in 248 days.
Goals from Lucas Paqueta, Sven Botman (OG) and Tomas Soucek cancelled out Jacob Murphy’s stunning early opener to gift the east Londoners an absolutely vital three points, with Nuno explaining his plan to make the London Stadium a fortress when asked about the fan protests after full-time.
Nuno tinkered with his team once again at home to Newcastle, but unlike his questionable selections against the likes of Brentford and Leeds, his decisions paid dividends.
Jean-Clair Todibo put in what was one of his better West Ham performances in the left centre-back role, with highly-rated youngster Freddie Potts impressing after finally being given the chance by Nuno.
Despite reports suggesting that Nuno doesn’t fancy Callum Wilson up front for West Ham, the Portuguese elected to start him against Eddie Howe’s side and drop Paqueta back to his preferred midfield role.
The striker conundrum is one of West Ham’s major dilemmas, but ExWHUemployee says Nuno could welcome back Fullkrug pretty soon.
Sharing an injury update, the insider claims that he is on track to return ahead of schedule, as is Konstantinos Mavropanos.
However, he also has some bad news.
West Ham dealt Lukasz Fabianski blow as Nuno takes action
Writing via his Patreon, Ex explains that Lukasz Fabianski has now suffered a back injury which required him to be carried off in training at Rush Green.
As a result, Nuno made the personal decision to recall young keeper Finn Herrick from his loan at Boreham Wood.
The Pole, who was released by West Ham only to be brought back in the summer, played 90 minutes for the club’s Under-21s against MK Dons in the EFL Trophy back in September.
The 40-year-old has made 216 first-team appearances for West Ham and was a more-than capable back up to the likes of Areola and Hermansen, but following this injury, it is unclear what the future holds for Fabianski with his contract up at the end of 25/26.
MatériaMais Notícias
A Fifa retirou o transfer ban que impedia o São Paulo de realizar contratações e registrar novos reforços. A confirmação foi feita nesta segunda-feira (8).
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O clube realizou o pagamento de cerca de 1,2 milhão de dólares à Bama, empresa de agenciamento de atletas responsável pela contratação de Calleri em 2021. O valor corresponde a uma comissão de intermediação e foi pago na quarta-feira (3), mas só foi registrado oficialmente nesta segunda-feira (8).
➡️Tudo sobre o Tricolor agora no WhatsApp. Siga o nosso novo canal Lance! São Paulo
Com a liberação, o São Paulo ganha mais tranquilidade em meio a problemas políticos, pressão da torcida por resultados e até depoimentos ao Ministério Público.
continua após a publicidade
Vale destacar que a janela de transferências abre em 5 de janeiro e, até o momento, o clube ainda não anunciou nenhuma negociação.
Segunda punição no ano
Este é o segundo transfer ban do São Paulo na temporada. O Tricolor sofreu o primeiro em agosto, após o atraso de parcelas da contratação de Damián Bobadilla com o Cerro Porteño, ex-equipe do jogador. A dívida, em si, foi quitada no mesmo dia.
➡️ Calleri promete reação no São Paulo em 2026: ‘Daremos a volta por cima’
Jonathan Calleri em 202518 jogos (14 titular)3 gols4 assistências164 minutos para participar de gol1.7 finalizações por jogo (0.4 no gol)10.3 finalizações para marcar25% de conversão em grandes chances0.8 passes decisivos por jogo5 grandes chances criadas46% de eficiência nos duelos1.4 faltas sofridas por jogoNota Sofascore 6.86
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Futebol NacionalSão Paulo
The Dodgers are World Series champions once again after pulling out a dramatic comeback against the Blue Jays in Game 7 at the Rogers Centre.
Trailing 4–3 heading into the ninth, the script was set for the Dodgers’ entire postseason hopes to come down to Shohei Ohtani, who was set to bat third in the inning. But before Shohei got to the plate, second baseman Miguel Rojas, batting out of the nine-hole, decided he’d rather handle things himself, and smacked a game-tying home run to left.
If you were surprised by this display of power from Rojas, you were not alone. Rojas had just seven dingers through the entire 2025 regular season, and has gone yard just 57 times through 12 seasons in the majors. But in the ninth inning with his team in need of a hero, he stepped up.
Mookie Betts, like Ohtani, is one of the stars on the Dodgers you might have thought would be more likely to turn up as the hero in the ninth. Talking after the game, Betts admitted that even he was stunned by Rojas’s big play.
“No shade to Miggy Rojas, but nobody is really expecting a homer with two outs from Miggy Rojas,” Betts told the Fox postgame desk. “And he did. It was one of those things. We believe in him, but we didn’t know about a homer, right? It’s just fitting. If you’re around a group of guys, you know who the mic guy is. The guy that’s on the mic to get everybody going. He’s our mic guy. For him to come up big, he’s like our glue.”
Baseball is a team sport, and every batter from the top to the bottom of the lineup has a role to play. It turns out that Rojas’s role in the nine-hole was even bigger than expected.
Wolves and their search for a new manager took a dramatic twist on Saturday with news of Rob Edwards standing down from the dugout for Middlesbrough’s clash against Birmingham, but he hasn’t been the only tactician on the Old Gold’s shortlist.
Their disastrous season has plunged from bad to worse, with the club now desperately scrambling to appoint Edwards after Vitor Pereira was sacked on November 2.
Wolves’ winless start has left them rooted to the bottom of the Premier League table, and they remain the only side without a victory in England’s top four divisions, having taken just two points from their opening 10 top flight games.
History is firmly against them – no club has ever survived with two or fewer points at this stage of a Premier League season — a stat which seriously threatens to condemn Wolves to relegation after eight straight years in the top tier.
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Wolves results in the Premier League so far |
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Wolves 0-4 Man City |
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Bournemouth 1-0 Wolves |
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Wolves 2-3 Everton |
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Newcastle 1-0 Wolves |
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Wolves 1-3 Leeds United |
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Tottenham 1-1 Wolves |
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Wolves 1-1 Brighton |
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Sunderland 2-0 Wolves |
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Wolves 2-3 Burnley |
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Fulham 3-0 Wolves |
Wolves have also become only the third side in Premier League history to concede 20 or more goals in their opening 10 games of two consecutive seasons, shipping 27 last season and 22 this campaign.
After Pereira’s dismissal, and following their week-long managerial search, Fosun have now turned their attention to Edwards.
The 42-year-old was once part of the club’s coaching staff, working with the U18s in 2014 before being promoted to a first-team coaching role in 2015. Since then, Edwards guided Luton Town to Premier League promotion in 2023, and made a fine start to life at Boro this season.
However, he could now be on the move just months after signing a three-year contract.
The situation reached breaking point today when Edwards was stood down from taking charge of Boro’s home game against Birmingham amid continued interest from Wolves. Edwards also didn’t take Boro training on Friday, and his pre-match press conference was cancelled, after Boro rejected Wolves’ approach seeking permission to hold talks on Thursday (Sky Sports).
Now, it is believed that Edwards is “looking likely to join Wolves” as he eyes a return to the top flight.
Boro released a statement today too, confirming that they’ve now granted Edwards permission to speak to Wolves.
All of this comes after Wolves initially explored bringing back former manager Gary O’Neil, but he withdrew from the race citing a timing issue.
Now, as per TEAMtalk, there’s been a “major twist” on O’Neil’s own future after his “advanced talks” to re-join Wolves.
According to their information, following a “dramatic U-turn” over returning to Molineux, with O’Neil once believed to be closing in on an agreement, it is now believed that Southampton is his most likely destination.
The Saints have made an approach to O’Neil, and talks are expected to intensify in the coming days as all parties seek to reach a swift deal.
Taking this into account, it is a wonder why O’Neil ruled himself out of the Wolves job but could now take up a position with the struggling Championship side.
O’Neil was appointed Wolves head coach in August 2023 and led the club to a 14th-placed finish and the FA Cup quarter-finals in his first season. More impressively, despite inheriting a squad in turmoil just days before the season began following Julen Lopetegui’s abrupt exit, and with minimal transfer backing, he steered the side to a respectable finish and earned plaudits for steadying the ship.
His first season included victories over Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur, with Wolves reaching eighth at their peak that campaign.
O’Neil apparently remains “highly respected” in Premier League circles too (Miguel Delaney), but after his rejection, Edwards appears to be closing in on the role.
Mikel Arteta has built a superteam at Arsenal over the last five years.
While the likes of Gabriel Martinelli and William Saliba were signed under Unai Emery, and Bukayo Saka made his debut under the former manager, the Gunners’ former captain has signed a host of world-class players since taking the job.
Arguably, the best player to join the North Londoners over the last few years has been Declan Rice, who is now undoubtedly one of the best midfielders in the Premier League, if not the world.
So it’s encouraging that Arteta already looks to have his ideal heir for the Englishman in the squad today.
Rice's development at Arsenal
This season is Rice’s third at Arsenal, and while he’s been a crucial member of the team since his first, his role has changed year-on-year.
For example, he spent most of the 23/24 campaign playing at the base of midfield, as the club’s go-to six, making 31 appearances there, 19 in central midfield and just one at centre-back.
However, towards the end of that first year and most of last season, Arteta decided to move him slightly further up the pitch, into the left-eight.
In all, the Englishman ended up making 37 appearances in the middle of the park and just 15 in defensive midfield, which helped him end the campaign with an impressive tally of nine goals and ten assists, although plenty of the latter came from set-pieces.
Going into this season, most fans and pundits alike expected Arteta to keep playing his £105m further up the pitch, especially as he proved himself to be a brilliant box-crasher last season.
CM
64
12
16
DM
51
5
8
CB
1
0
0
However, while his statistics do show him starting more games in central midfield – eight to five – he is actually now playing that little bit deeper again, often interchanging with the sensationally gifted Martin Zubimendi.
The former West Ham United captain has even said as much, telling reporters after England’s game against Wales earlier this month that the manager has “adjusted my position at Arsenal a bit this year to give me a bit more freedom to drop deeper but to also get in the box when I can.”
You can see evidence of him playing that little bit deeper at times this season in his underlying numbers.
For example, according to FBref, he is completing 7.47 progressive passes and 2.91 progressive carries this year, compared to 6.11 and 2.87 last season.
In all, Rice remains one of Arsenal’s most important players and an archetypal all-action midfielder, so it’s good news that Arteta and Co already have his perfect heir in the squad.
Arsenal's Rice heir
Now, upon first glance, it might not be immediately apparent who the Rice heir in Arsenal’s squad is.
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After all, Christian Nørgaard is 31, and Zubimendi is the same age as the Englishman at 26.
However, instead of being among the club’s current crop of midfielders, the ideal long-term replacement for the former West Ham United captain is down as a defender, and it is, of course, Myles Lewis-Skelly.
The Hale End gem, whose “talent is scary” according to one content creator, might play almost exclusively as a left-back for the first team, but he spent much of his time in the junior game playing in the middle of the park, and the skills he picked up there have shone through for the senior side at times.
For example, against Atlético Madrid, he picked up the ball in the middle of the park, drove past half the side and delivered the ball into Gabriel Martinelli’s feet for the Gunners’ second goal.
That run demonstrated several skills needed to make it as a top-quality central midfielder, such as the physicality to hold off defenders, the close control to get past them, the understanding of space, and, crucially, the weight of the pass at the end.
Moreover, the ability to drive with the ball like he did is one of Rice’s best traits, so while Arteta and the coaching staff will have to work on transitioning the teenager from full-back to midfield over the coming years, they can rest easy knowing he’s already an elite ball player.
There are other reasons why the Islington-born gem could become as sensational an eight in the future, though, such as his mentality.
For example, it’s so easy to forget that he is still so young, as it seemingly does not matter who he is up against, be it Real Madrid or Manchester City, the Hale Ender is, as Rice put it himself, utterly “fearless.”
It’s this willingness to challenge any attacker or try to beat any defender without hesitation that has also led club insider Hand of Arsenal to label the young gem a “future captain,” a title many have also given the former West Ham star.
Ultimately, given Rice’s age, Arsenal do not need to worry about replacing him just yet. Still, when they do eventually have to, they’ve already got the perfect candidate in Lewis-Skelly.
Arteta's £120k-p/w "wild horse" looks like this season's Timber at Arsenal
Just like Timber, the international monster is having an incredible season at Arsenal this year.
ByJack Salveson Holmes Oct 28, 2025
كشفت تقارير صحفية إسبانية، أن برشلونة تلقى دفعة معنوية قوية بشأن داني أولمو، الذي يقترب من العودة والتعافي من الإصابة التي أبعدته عن صفوف الفريق.
وبحسب صحيفة “سبورت” الإسبانية، فإنه من المرجح أن يعود داني أولمو للمشاركة مع برشلونة ضد إسبانيول، في 3 يناير، في مباراة تمثل نقطة تحول حاسمة في موسمه.
ويغيب داني أولمو عن الملاعب منذ تعرضه لخلع مؤلم في كتفه الأيسر، خلال فوز برشلونة أمام أتلتيكو مدريد بثلاثية لهدف واحد.
وأشارت تقارير أخرى إلى أن برشلونة قد يستعيد أحد أبرز لاعبيه، حيث من المتوقع أن يحصل الألماني مارك تير شتيجن على التصريح الطبي الأسبوع المقبل، ليعود لقائمة الفريق ضد أوساسونا.
اقرأ أيضاً.. رافينها يحسم الجدل بشأن أنباء رحيله عن برشلونة إلى الدوري السعودي
ويمر شتيجن بالمرحلة الأخيرة من التعافي من إصابة في أسفل الظهر، أبعدته عن الملاعب لعدة أشهر، ويتقدم بشكل رائع وزاد من كثافة تدريباته اليوم بشكل ملحوظ، لاستعادة لياقته البدنية الكاملة.
وستمثل عودة تير شتيجن إلى برشلونة إنجازًا هامًا، بعد أكثر من أربعة أشهر من الغياب، وهي فترة غياب أطول بكثير مما كان متوقعًا وقت خضوعه لعملية جراحية.
ويستعد خوان جارسيا لحراسة مرمى برشلونة بشكل طبيعي، بعد أن أثار القلق بتعرضه لكدمة عقب الفوز ضد ريال بيتيس بخمسة أهداف لثلاثة على ملعب لا كارتوخا، حيث شوهد وهو يعرج قليلاً أثناء صعوده لحافلة الفريق في طريقها للعودة لمطار إشبيلية ومرة أخرى أثناء صعوده للطائرة مع بقية الفريق ليثير تكهنات حول حالته البدنية.
وكانت تدريبات برشلونة قد شهدت مشاركة رافينها بشكل طبيعي قبل لقاء آينتراخت فرانكفورت.
وكان فليك قد فضل إراحة البرازيلي ضد ريال بيتيس كإجراء احترازي في الدوري الإسباني بعد معاناته من إجهاد عضلي طفيف.
Historically, the winner of Game 1 of the World Series has gone on to win the Fall Classic 64% of the time.
That's good news, of course, if you're a fan of the Blue Jays, who emphatically captured Game 1 of the 2025 World Series on Friday night by a final score of 11–4.
Here are three takeaways from Toronto's series-opening win.
The single biggest storyline entering the World Series was the Dodgers' starting rotation and its dominance throughout the postseason. Entering Game 1, Los Angeles's starters boasted a 1.40 ERA this postseason, and were coming off a dominant NLCS in which they held the Brewers to a .118 batting average as a team.
Getting to the Dodgers' bullpen was going to be paramount for the Blue Jays, not only against Los Angeles ace Blake Snell in Game 1, but throughout the series.
Snell pitched three scoreless innings to begin the game, but Toronto made him work. The Blue Jays put runners on base in each of the first three frames, driving Snell's pitch count up in the process. In the fourth, the tough early at-bats paid dividends. Trailing 2–0, Toronto catcher Alejandro Kirk singled before center fielder Daulton Varsho took a Snell four-seam fastball deep to dead center to tie the game.
The game was all square, which of course was only a precursor for what was to come in the sixth.
This was a big storyline heading into the World Series. Could the Blue Jays get into the Dodgers bullpen and make the unit pay? As previously mentioned, the Los Angeles starting rotation entered the Fall Classic with a 1.40 postseason ERA. The bullpen, on the other hand, had a 4.88 ERA.
The sixth inning of Game 1 provided a blueprint for how Toronto could win the World Series. Grind out good early at-bats against the Dodgers starters, then attack the bullpen. The Blue Jays posted a nine-spot in the sixth, blowing the game open with the most runs scored in a single inning of a World Series game since 1968. The grand slam from Toronto utilityman Addison Barger – which effectively put the game away – was the first pinch hit grand slam in World Series history.
Three of the nine runs in the sixth were charged to Snell, the remaining six were courtesy of the Los Angeles bullpen. You can't ask for much better than that if you're a fan of the Blue Jays.
The Dodgers need more out of the top of their lineup, starting in Game 2. Designated hitter Shohei Ohtani hit a two-run home run in the top of the seventh, which came with Los Angeles trailing 11–2. Toronto fans are certainly happy that Ohtani's biggest hit of the night came with the game well in hand. He finished 1-for-4. Shortstop Mookie Betts and first baseman Freddie Freeman were a combined 1-for-7 on Friday night, underscoring the Dodgers' struggles at the plate.
The track record of those three players is way too good to expect another pedestrian performance in Game 2. More tone-setting at the top of the lineup will be something to keep an eye on for the Los Angeles on Saturday.