Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i World Soccer

Also from the publishers of World Soccer Presents £7.99 As Messi mania swept football, we were there every step of the way to track Leo’s epic journey. £7.99 A collection of interviews including Kaka, Ronaldo, Cruyff, Sacchi, Xavi, Pele, Klinsmann and Wenger. £7.99 The greatest coach of all time or a flawed genius? You decide after reading this dedication to Pep. £7.99 Celebrating the history of our award winners, such as Platini, Maradona, Zidane, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. £7.99 An anthology of the latter era of the Prem, including Manchester City’s rise and Leicester’s shock title win. Annuals, Bookazines & Merchandise £9.99 Our ranked countdown of football’s greatest-ever club, international, player and managerial rivalries. £9.99 A look back at 30 years of MLS: the stories, fans, rivalries and players that made…

It’s about the World Cup. That’s the target, that’s the dream. When those representing England Under-17s, Under-19s and Under-21s reported for duty this summer, they were told they were building towards winning the World Cup. Whether in 2026, 2030 or 2034. The head coach of the Under-21s, Lee Carsley, even put up a photograph of the trophy at England’s base camp to concentrate the thoughts of Tino Livramento and Elliot Anderson, two players with realistic hopes of being included in Thomas Tuchel’s squad for the 2026 World Cup squad. To the outside observer, there appears an inherent contradiction at the heart of the FA’s international programme. The FA appointed a trophy hit-man, Tuchel, as head coach simply to get England seniors over the line. It’s all about the short term.…

There has been a belief among some, certainly since the 2010 World Cup, that there is something slightly bloodless about the style of football popularised by Pep Guardiola, which has come to shape the play of almost every elite side. That’s obviously a generalisation; the football Barcelona played under Guardiola was not the same as that played by Spain under Vicente del Bosque, even if it shared similar principles. For one thing, Barcelona featured an individual of extraordinary talent in the form of Lionel Messi. Besides which, it was clearly enormously successful. If people found something cold in the precise passing lines and the relentlessness of Guardiola’s Bayern Munich or Manchester City at their best, it was a matter of personal taste. Only in this past season, as City struggled,…

“Taking into account the circumstances and a loss of trust in the coach [Michal Probierz], I have decided to resign from playing for the Poland national team for as long as he remains in charge” Poland’s all-time top scorer and record appearance maker Robert Lewandowski makes a statement on his international future after being replaced as national team captain. Just days later, following a 2-1 defeat to Finland, Probierz stepped down FIRST TRANSFER WINDOW: JUNE 2025 The first transfer window of the summer closed in early June. Here are some of the biggest deals from that opening window… FREE TRANSFERS…

After winning the top scorer prize seven times in a row in his domestic league (six times in France and once in Spain), Kylian Mbappe finally has a European Golden Shoe to go with it, becoming only the third Real Madrid player after Cristiano Ronaldo and Hugo Sanchez to claim the award. Mbappe’s tally of 31 goals in his debut season in Spain saw him edge out Sporting striker Viktor Gyokeres and prolific Liverpool talisman Mohamed Salah to the gong, though it is the lowest Golden Shoe-winning tally for11 years – Luis Suarez and Cristiano Ronaldo also scored 31 goals when jointly winning the prize in 2013-14. As in former years the award winner is decided on points using UEFA’s coefficient ranking system, which rewards players in the most competitive…

You would think that with a name like Pyramids, the new African champions have been around forever. But apart from their name, everything about the Egyptian club is new. Manufactured, in fact, if the sentiment of Cairo’s taxi drivers is anything to go by, dismissing them with a haughty disdain. That is because almost every citizen of Cairo is either an Ahlawy or Zamalkawy – there are few who fall between the cracks. Either you support Al Ahly, as a substantial number of the 20 million-plus crammed into the city do, or their long-standing rivals Zamalek, who had a more aristocratic lure but have lost a lot of lustre since the reign of their eccentric former president Mortada Mansour. Cairo has other clubs, among them Al Mokawloon (“Arab Contractors” in…

Sydney Schertenleib’s middle name is Joy, which is what the whole of Switzerland will be hoping the nation’s biggest female football talent brings during their historic home European Championship. With 34-year-old Ramona Bachmann, the previous attacking icon of Swiss football, suffering a devastating ACL injury pre-tournament, more and more eyes will be on teenager Schertenleib, whose fledgling talent has already taken her to European giants Barcelona. The tall, skilful and undoubtedly talented young star is a product of the FC Zurich academy, joining the club at the age of ten. She played with the boys until15, when she graduated into the women’s first team. “I saw her for the first time when she was probably11 or12 years old,” recalls Ivano Sicuro, then the talent manager at FC Zurich, who now…

With wages booming, an increasing number of high-profile players have been able to buy stakes in one or more clubs. Kylian Mbappe’s Interconnected Ventures bought a majority stake in the French club Caen through its investment arm, Coalition Capital, for a reported €15 million last year, while in February Real Madrid co-star Vinicius Junior invested in Portuguese club Alverca, who achieved promotion to the Primeira Liga in May. In April, their then-team-mate Luka Modric invested in EFL Championship side Swansea City. So far, that trio have stuck at one club but plenty of other big stars have begun to embrace multi-club ownership. The same year that Gerard Pique acquired FC Andorra, Brazilian legend Ronaldo purchased an 82 per cent stake in Spain’s Real Valladolid. Three years later, he acquired his…

When you arrived at Stade Abidjan at the age of 25, you became the youngest manager in any top division in world football. Just over two years later, the club has just picked up its first league title since 1969. How do you explain this success? It is an intense emotion because it had been 56 years since the club won the league. The season was long with the CAF Champions League, the national cup and the league. When I arrived in January 2023, the club was in the relegation zone and a few months prior had come up to the top division after a few years in the second tier. But Stade Abidjan is a historic club, the first Ivorian team to win the Champions League back in the1960s.…

Has the Copa Libertadores become too predictable? It is a fair criticism given the six consecutive Brazilian wins, an unprecedented period of domination by one country. At the end of this year’s group phase, with16 teams eliminated and16 going through to the knockout stages, there were very few surprises. One does stand out, though. Universitario became the first Peruvian side to make it out of the group stage since 2013, grinding their way past two Ecuadorian teams, Independiente del Valle and Barcelona, with a respectable recent track record in the competition. That aside, the accusation of predictability would appear to be confirmed by a glance at the list of qualifiers. But the way it happened was not as straightforward as might have been expected. True, Palmeiras won all of their…

Al Ahly won the Egyptian Premier League title for the third time in a row, keeping up an endless run of trophy success. But this record-extending 45th crown was clouded in controversy and is being contested. They finished two points above Pyramids, the new force in the Egyptian game whose rapid rise to prominence was crowned with a first-ever African Champions League trophy against expectation in June. Only days earlier, however, Al Ahly made sure of the league title after a three-point deduction was rescinded on appeal. Ahly failed to turn up for their much-anticipated derby against Zamalek in March when their request to have a foreign referee handle the match was rejected. Referees from Europe, and even elsewhere in Africa, have often been used in past Cairo derbies as…

Finals Semi-Finals Jun 4 – Munich Germany1 (Wirtz 48) Portugal 2 (Conceicao 63, Ronaldo 68) Germany: Ter Stegen – Anton (F. Nmecha 71), Tah, Koch; Kimmich, Pavlovic (Adeyemi 71), Goretzka, Mittelstadt (Gosens 60); Sane (Gnabry 61), Wirtz, Woltemade (Fullkrug 61). Portugal: Costa – J. Neves (Semedo 58), Dias, Inacio, Mendes; R. Neves (Vitinha 58), B. Silva; Trincao (Conceicao 58), Fernandes, Neto (Jota 83); Ronaldo (Palhinha 90). Jun 5 – Stuttgart Spain 5 (Williams 22, Merino 25, Yamal 54 pen, 67, Pedri 55) France 4 (Mbappe 59 pen, Cherki 79, Vivian 84 og, Kolo Muani 90+3) Spain: Simon – Porro, Le Normand (Vivian 77), Huijsen, Cucurella; Merino (Gavi 90+1), Zubimendi, Pedri (Fabian 64); Yamal, Oyarzabal (Aghehowa 77), Williams (Olmo 64). France: Maignan – Kalulu (Gusto 63), Konate, Lenglet (L. Hernandez 72),…

In years gone by, summers without a men’s World Cup or European Championship gave us the opportunity for a bit of calm before the new season. Not anymore; these days, there’s always a big game somewhere. Next month, we’ll be rounding up the Club World Cup, CONCACAF Gold Cup and European Under-21 Championship, but in the meantime we’ve tried to take stock of everything else: the road to the 2026 World Cup, clubs on the rise in Egypt and Canada, a potential star of the Women’s Euros and the Premier League’s most expensive player of all time – plus plenty more.…

Gianni Infantino, if he has any time for private reflection between joshing fellow presidents, probably cannot believe his luck. He is the most powerful supremo FIFA has ever had, propelled to a position of Big Brother omnipotence by the power vacuum created by the FIFA-gate scandal. Harold Wilson once said, famously, that a week is a long time in politics. Hence a decade is an eternity in football politics. Yet anniversary recall remains clear for those of us awakened at six in the morning in Zurich in May 2015 to rush down to the swish Baur au Lac. Here, hotel staff were holding out bed sheets to shield the shame of the seven FIFA powerbrokers slithering into police cars en route to detention and extradition. “Bizarre” was hardly the word…

“I made [Brazil] available to host the next [Club] World Cup. [Gianni Infantino] was very happy and said that it was totally possible. Now we are going to work to make it happen” Samir Xaud, the new president of the Brazilian FA, puts his country up for hosting the 2029 Club World Cup OBITUARIES Waleed AL JASEM (1959-2025) Defender who played 44 times for Kuwait, including the1-0 loss to England and 4-1 defeat to France at the1982 World Cup, the latter of which was interrupted when KFA president Sheikh Fahad Al Ahmed Al Sabah stalked on to the pitch to protest against a France goal (subsequently disallowed). Spent his entire senior career with Kuwait SC. ARTUR SANTOS (1931-2025) Defender Artur Santos played 382 times for Benfica between1950 and 1961, retiring…

“Despite genuine and vocal support across the football world, the ruling did not fall in our favour. We are heartbroken by the outcome …Nevertheless, we accept responsibility. And we’re sorry” Irish club Drogheda react to being expelled from the 2025-26 Conference League due to UEFA’s multi-club ownership rules 12 Serie A clubs that will begin the 2025-26 season with a new coach: Inter, Atalanta, Roma, Lazio, Milan, Fiorentina, Lecce, Parma, Torino and Cagliari, as well as newly promoted Pisa and Cremonese. 42 Age of Cristiano Ronaldo at the expiration of his latest contract after he signed a new deal with Saudi side Al Nassr until 2027. 11 Goals scored by Andy Carroll in 21 games for Bordeaux after the ex-England and Liverpool striker left the French fourth-tier club. 2 Stints…

To say that little was expected of Vancouver Whitecaps before this season started would be an understatement. In February, when MLS’s nine-person panel of experts submitted their annual predictions for the 2025 campaign, only one expected the Caps to place higher than tenth in the Western Conference, one had them finishing last and another two predicted a place in the bottom three. In their defence, the predictors were trying to guess the fortunes of a club whose future both on and off the pitch had been cast into doubt. The Whitecaps had parted ways with head coach Vanni Sartini, who had qualified for the MLS Cup play-offs in three of his four attempts at the helm and won three consecutive Canadian Championships. He was replaced by Jesper Sorensen, who had…

ARGENTINE PRIMERA DIVISION – A BRIEF HISTORY The oldest professional football league outside the UK is dominated by the Superclasico teams, River Plate and Boca Juniors, who boast 38 and 35 titles respectively. Alongside them, Racing, Independiente and San Lorenzo make up the “Big Five”. Historically, Argentina may have more Libertadores titles than Brazil, but Brazilian sides have won the last six Copas – a sign that Argentina is falling behind. Boca reached the final in 2023, but the last Argentine winners were River Plate in 2018. Nonetheless, Argentine clubs continue to produce top-class talent for export. The league remains famed for its matchday atmosphere, although away fans have been banned for12 years due to violence. THE FORMAT The league format has been in constant transition for ten years since…

Congratulations on winning the Belgian Pro League title. After coming so close in recent years, how does it feel to have actually done it? It feels good. It’s almost disbelief, because we weren’t expected to do it this year and I thought we’d probably had our best opportunities already. It was an incredible achievement and so deserved, especially as we’d missed out by small margins in the last few years. What a way to do it, breaking the record for the most points in the play-offs and holding off Club Brugge right until the end. It was really special to win nine and draw one of our last ten games. It was joy and elation for everyone involved. This was Union’s 12th title, but their first for 90 years. What does…

There will be more at stake than just the title when the Copa America Femenina kicks off in Ecuador in mid-July. With the Women’s World Cup coming to South America for the first time in 2027 with Brazil as hosts, many eyes will be assessing the level of interest the tournament evokes in the continent, and the development of the teams. Beset by misogyny and severely underfunded, the women’s game has struggled in South America, as highlighted in the 2023 World Cup qualifying play-off tournament when Chile lost 2-1 to Haiti and Paraguay succumbed1-0 to Panama. Brazil and Argentina subsequently crashed out in the group stage with just one win between them, leaving quarter-finalists Colombia as CONMEBOL’s only last-16 representatives. The prospect of playing at the 2027 World Cup, with…

Argentina’s 2025 Apertura ended in celebrations that were 120 years in the making. The perennial underdogs Platense won their first-ever major trophy, thanks to a brilliant goal from Guido Mainero in the final against Huracan. Boasting less than10,000 members, Platense are nicknamed El Calamar (The Squid); the pitch they used to play their games on would regularly flood, leading a journalist to say the players manoeuvred through the mud “like squid in their ink.” In a country where many clubs pride themselves on developing world-class talent, Platense’s biggest claim is perhaps to have handed future world and European champion David Trezeguet his professional debut at the age of 16. Not that the connection was long-lasting – after just five games, the Franco-Argentine centre-forward moved to France in the mid-1990s to…

While Mamelodi Sundowns’ fell short of their Holy Grail once again by missing out on the African Champions League, their domestic dominance continued uninterrupted. Defeat for the Pretoria-based club, owned by Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Patrice Motsepe and his family, against Pyramids of Egypt in the Champions League final was a major blow that took much of the gloss off an eighth successive South African championship. Sundowns won by12 points with Orlando Pirates in second spot for the third year in a row. The previous season it was 23 points, while in 2023 the difference between first and second was16 points. Sundowns’ title came despite a managerial change in December, when Manqoba Mngqithi was removed and Miguel Cardoso took over. The hope was that the Portuguese coach would…

RED SEA CAMELS RETURN FROM EXILE If you had scrolled down to the bottom of the FIFA men’s world rankings at the start of the year, you would have seen the usual suspects bringing up the rear: US Virgin Islands, Anguilla and San Marino. But even further down, you would have found FIFA’s 211th member nation, Eritrea, with the word “unranked” by their name. This is because any country that goes without an official match for 48 months drops out of the rankings completely, and Eritrea hadn’t played since a friendly against Sudan in January 2020. But in May, Eritrea made the surprise announcement that they would play Niger and South Sudan in a tournament held in their capital, Asmara, to mark 32 years of independence (from Ethiopia). After South…

2025 COPA LIBERTADORES Group A May 27 – Rio deJaneiro Botafogo (Bra) 1 (IgorJesus 38) Universidad de Chile (Chi) 0 May 27 – La Plata Estudiantes (Arg) 2(Cetre10, Gimenez 24) Carabobo (Ven) 0 *Enter Copa Sudamericana play-offs Group B May 27 – Buenos Aires River Plate (Arg) 1(Colidio 36) Universitario (Per)1 (Concha 45+2) May 27 – Quito Independiente del Valle (Ecu) 2 (Mercado 64, Re. Ibarra 69) Barcelona (Ecu)1 (Caicedo 24) *Enter Copa Sudamericana play-offs Group C May 28 – Rio deJaneiro Flamengo (Bra)1 (Leo Pereira 66) Deportivo Tachira (Ven) 0 May 28 – Quito LDU Quito (Ecu) 3 (Alvarado15, Alzugaray 44, 53) Central Cordoba (Arg) 0 *Enter Copa Sudamericana play-offs Group D May 27 – Sao Paulo Sao Paulo (Bra) 2(Sabino 26, Luciano 84) Talleres (Arg)1 (Girotti 39) May…

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THE SCOUTING GAME By Chris Robinson (Pitch Publishing, £16.99) The Scouting Game: An Insider’s Guide to Talent Spotting Football’s Next Stars brings us the inside story of the hidden world of top-level football scouting from a man with 30 years’ experience in the professional game, and more than a decade in the recruitment team at Chelsea’s renowned academy. It reveals how scouts work, what they look for and how they report on players at all levels – grassroots, academy, first team and opposition scouting. KENDALL’S GLORY YEARS By Steve Zocek (Pitch Publishing, £18.99) Kendall’s Glory Years: In Their Own Words sees former Everton players and backroom staff give you the inside track on Howard Kendall’s illustrious first spell in charge of the Toffees. Packed with previously untold tales from the Goodison…

TRANSFERS ⋆ LOANS ⋆ SACKINGS ⋆ HIRINGS ⋆ SWITCHES ⋆ RETIREMENTS “Ange Postecoglou, you are a Tottenham Hotspur legend forever. Thank you, mate” Tottenham Hotspur captain Son Heung-min pays tribute to outgoing manager Ange Postecoglou, who was sacked just16 days after leading the club to the Europa League trophy before being replaced by Brentford’s Thomas Frank Carlos VICENS After four years as Pep Guardiola’s assistant, Vicens left Manchester City to replace Carlos Carvalhal as head coach of Braga. The Spaniard first joined City’s academy in 2017. Russell MARTIN Rangers appointed the former Swansea City and Southampton manager, who spent six months at Ibrox as a player in 2018, to replace interim head coach Barry Ferguson. Simone INZAGHI After quitting Internazionale, Inzaghi joined Saudi side Al Hilal. He was replaced by Parma’s…

MCO FILES Club: FC Andorra Owners: Gerard Pique and Kosmos Holding MCO connections: Pique also owns another club in the lower reaches of Spanish football, Gimnastic Manresa. The idea of players buying into football clubs is becoming increasingly common as stars use their hefty wages and status to help secure a place in the game after hanging up their boots. That path was blazed by Barcelona legend Gerard Pique, who was still at his peak when he set up Kosmos Global Holding in 2017 withJapanese billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani. In December 2018, Kosmos agreed an unlikely deal to buy into FC Andorra with local investors in the Pyrenean microstate. “The idea was to build a club with a unique DNA. FC Andorra is unique: The club represents a whole country and…

Jason, you’re remembered for playing in the Premier League for Crystal Palace, Southampton, Blackpool, QPR and Huddersfield Town, so how did you end up in Cyprus? After playing for Huddersfield [in 2019], I didn’t want to be away from my family again. At that stage of my career it wasn’t about financial gain, it was about happiness. I could have gone to the Championship and played 46 games a season, playing Saturday-Tuesday, and been away from my family again. But the Cyprus opportunity came up and I thought it would be a good move, both professionally and from a family perspective. People automatically thought I was going for the money, for one last payday, but trust me, there was no money compared to what I was being offered back home.…

WOMEN’S AFCON FINALLY BEGINS The 2024 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations belatedly got underway on July 5. Not only did qualification end in 2023, qualification for the 2026 WAFCON has already started. This means Botswana and Tunisia are in the odd position of competing at this tournament while knowing they are already knocked out of the next one. The hosts, as in 2022 and 2026, are Morocco, who currently appear to be the only African nation keen to stage women’s competitions. They also hosted the 2022 and 2024 African Champions Leagues, which are held as mini-tournaments in a central venue. This is part of a general investment in the sport for men and women, strongly backed by King Mohammed VI, providing excellent training facilities and funding professional clubs. Morocco’s commitment…

Melbourne City finally shook off their tag of being the “nearly men” to claim a second A-League Championship – and first since 2021 – at the expense of their bitter rivals, Melbourne Victory. City prevailed in an ugly Grand Final, settled by an early goal scored by Israeli import Yonatan Cohen. The remaining 80 minutes were something of an anti-climax, punctured only by a series of niggly fouls, a bloodied-nose to the man of the match, Mat Leckie, and two further City chances, which could have made the scoreline even more emphatic. City were appearing in their fifth Grand Final in six seasons, but had won only once previously, and any home advantage they might have earned was cancelled out by the presence of Victory’s massive supporter base. But a…

The tournament that pits the two highest-profile leagues in North America against each other has been tweaked once again for 2025, retaining some of the format introduced in 2023 but becoming more refined. The latest rejig of the Leagues Cup sees the annual competition kick-off with a league phase not dissimilar to the one now used in the UEFA Champions League, except with two separate tables – one for Major League Soccer teams and another for those from Liga MX. After every team has played three games, the top four from each of these 18-team leagues will qualify for the knockout stage. However, although teams will be measured against fellow domestic foes in the table, this will not be the case on the pitch. The new format, which sees a…