Champions League grades: top marks for Shakhtar, United sink to new low

The latest round of Champions League games are in the books. We run through the standouts, surprises and disappointments, grading all 32 teams

Editor’s note: these grades are for teams’ performances in this week’s round of matches rather than their chances of winning the competition as a whole. Continue reading...

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The Ronaldo show is unstoppable and reduces others to bit-part players | Jonathan Wilson

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In this world of celebrity worship, the winning of football matches is a secondary concern. It’s all about Ronaldo There is a fascination always as legends fade, to watch how they rage against the diminution of their own powers, to see embodied in one shrugging, pouting frame the eternal human battle with mortality. Decay and decrepitude have their allure; what the romantics saw in a ruined abbey, so others will see in the dwindling figure of Cristiano Ronaldo. Some day there will be a Portugal match that is not about Ronaldo – but not here, not yet. It wasn’t just about the penalty he had saved by Jan Oblak in extra time, which left him in tears. He did, at least, make up for it in the shootout. Everything is about Ronaldo; Portuguese football has become the great psychodrama of his ageing. Diogo Costa may have saved three penalties in the shootout, but even then this was about Ronaldo. Continue reading...
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Manchester United confident on financial fair play despite £113m loss

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* Club records revenues of £661.8m in year to 30 June * ‘Our clear objective is to return to the top,’ says Berrada Manchester United are confident they comply with Premier League and Uefa financial rules despite posting a £113.2m net loss in their latest accounts. It is the fifth consecutive year United have made an annual loss, with the club £115.5m in the red in 2021-22 and £42.1m in 2022-23. Profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) permit a £105m loss over a three-year period, but within the regulations certain deductions are allowed in relation to investment in infrastructure, the academy and women’s teams, among other things, which United believe means they will not fall foul of spending regulations. Everton and Nottingham Forest received points deductions last season after exceeding permitted losses in regards to PSR. Continue reading...
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Increasing diversity among leaders in football is more than a moral priority | Jason Stockwood

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Diverse businesses perform better – so why is sport so slow in appointing leaders from across every section of society? On Thursday 22 October 1992, I attended an event in Crewe to hear Simon Armitage, a newly published poet, read his work. I remember the date because I still have the ticket and poetry recitals were not a normal night out for those of us who grew up in the pubs and clubs of Grimsby in that era. It was a night that changed my life as I glimpsed a possible world that could coexist alongside the heavy-drinking, sometimes scrapping, football-loving culture and the constraints men set themselves back then. Some constraints were self-imposed, others were rooted in the ignorance and prejudice of the time. This was typified when, years later, my mum found out I liked the creative arts and her response was to ask if I was gay. A bizarre conclusion, unthinking and uneducated, but not unusual then. Simon was one of the first poets I saw – a cool young Yorkshireman who wrote a...
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