Latest Sports Stories

Football News

Mikel Arteta must find the balance between newfound freedom and tried-and-tested solidity against Luis Enrique’s attacking machineWelcome to Budapest: city of stew, city of pavement squares, city of men in cotton smocks offering brisk muscular relaxation in geothermally heated cubicles. Eleven days on from the profound emotional release of winning the Premier League title it seems fitting Arsenal will approach their season’s endgame in a city that is basically perfect for a restorative summer city break.Saturday afternoon at the Puskas Arena already looks like a twin-track event for Mikel Arteta’s team, an occasion that changes shape according to the angle from which you see it. On one hand, victory against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final would represent the greatest day in Arsenal’s history. On the other, this is an occasion that feels strangely light, fun, celebratory, a free-hit kind of final.And this really is something new for a team whose entire public identity in the age of Arteta has been defined by the curation of anxiety, every step or stumble pitched as a referendum on the validity of the project, on the basic character of the knitwear-clad avatar of pain striding along at the front of the parade.When was the last time this team were able to approach a day like this without some deep clog of existential dread? How will a non‑tortured, fully validated, daddy-does-actually-love-us Arsenal carry themselves? What does this team playing without fear even look like?Even the well-meaning performative attempts to enjoy the title run-in felt painfully stiff and processed. Get on the fun boat. Bring the fire. Join us as we micromanage to the last detail the liberating of our own emotions. Suddenly Darth Vader is doing stand-up. Spock wants to disco dance. Mr Pincus, can you hear me Mr Pincus?And now we have this, a chance to breathe, to take the air by the Danube, and to luxuriate in a slight but significant shift in the tone and texture of this Arsenal era.Perhaps the travelling fans can simply enjoy looking around for omens. English teams have played four Champions League ties at the renovated Puskas Arena, winning four and not conceding a goal, although admittedly none of their opponents could field a furiously irresistible Georgian goal-werewolf.Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, also English, have played sold‑out mega-shows there. As have Depeche Mode, who have a French name but are in fact from Essex. So unlucky there, Paris. Even the Ballon d’Or ceremony has been moved to London, which would certainly be handy for dual Euro and World Cup king Martín Zubimendi/Declan Rice.In the real world PSG will be favourites to win, and with good reason. They’ve done it before. They have a clear advantage in attacking personnel, a team that approach these occasions armed to the teeth, a bayonet in each sleeve, a back-up Kalashnikov in their waistband.But there are new variables now, fresh unknowns. Two key things have changed. The most important is Arteta himself, both in his professional status and his relationship with the club.A few weeks ago some more deranged elements of the wider online fanbase were calling for him to be sacked. The scepticism wasn’t confined to the hysterical fringe. There have always been doubts, and a surprisingly heartfelt wider desire for Arteta to fail, to be exposed as a helmet-haired fraud, an empty pair of grey slacks; annoyance at the capering presence at the edge of the picture, the paperclip-salesman sloganeering, the sense of being lectured by a male wellness tycoon. As recently as this season’s semi-finals the French press was making sly references to Arteta’s “overly emotional register”.Well, not any more. Football is an outcome-based industry. Elite clubs crave success. Elite players respond to it. And Arteta is now unarguably an elite coach. Even getting to a Champions League final is an act of levelling up. It makes you a Max Allegri, a Mauricio Pochettino. Winning it would be something else altogether, a fresh name on a list that over the past 12 years reads Carlo Ancelotti, Zinedine Zidane (three times each), Luis Enrique (twice), Jürgen Klopp, Hansi Flick, Thomas Tuchel and Pep Guardiola; basically the capi dei capi, the guys who get to do the jobs.Arsenal’s executive has never publicly wavered on Arteta. But that gravity has shifted. The club now has an asset to placate, to hang on to, the star of his own title-winning project, and a manager who will be of interest to Spain’s big two, to PSG themselves, to the Football Association in due course.Another interesting note of trivia: Arteta would be the first English coach to win the European Cup since Joe Fagan in 1984. Well, he does at least have a British passport and live in London. And he is also the best qualified British candidate to manage the England team. Maybe this is his destiny. Maybe the set pieces, the big lads at the back, all make sense in this light. Maybe the game isn’t actually gone, but back.Perhaps not. But that moment of status-uplift is hugely significant. Arteta has a Scottish Premiership title as a player at Rangers and FA Cups as captain and coach of Arsenal. But winning the Premier League is by some distance the most significant moment of his 27-year professional life.This is a football personage who has made an elite-level career out of almost but not quite reaching the summit. As a kid he made it to La Masia, but not through La Masia, blocked by an extreme wealth of talent, including, among others, Luis Enrique. He went to PSG for almost 18 months, but in a period when this meant winning the Intertoto Cup. He went to post‑peak-Wenger Arsenal, the years of shrinkage and falling away.Perhaps he could find elite validation with a steamrollering Spain? But steamrollering Spain already had Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Xabi Alonso, Cesc Fàbregas, Sergio Busquets, David Silva and Santi Cazorla, and Arteta never won a cap. Hang on, maybe he can play for England! Except, no, Fifa says he can’t.Arteta’s coaching career also kicked off with a spell of standing near someone else while they won things, before three successive second places at Arsenal. He may project certainty, process chat, trusting the methods. But Arteta is also human. He has spoken of doubts, of a feeling that maybe it’s just not me. Except, it is him. Arteta is the captain now. Will he look, speak, walk differently?Ideally not. There is a theory out there Arsenal will experience The Freeing Up. The ankle weights are off. The handbrake will not just be released via the annoying electric button, but jimmied out with a screwdriver and thrown through the side window.Is this a good idea? Does it make sense for Arsenal to abandon the disciplines that took them to this place, just as they come up against Europe’s most unforgiving attack? Live by the rigidly disciplined tactical straitjacket, die by the rigidly disciplined tactical straitjacket. You’re not going to outdance Michael Jackson. But you may beat him at a really long and painful game of Scrabble.Arsenal are not the defensive nihilists they have often been cast as. Much of the season has been spent managing the absence of their most creative players, with a centre-forward who runs about as if he’s being chased by a sheepdog. PSG are also less freewheeling than they have been painted. Both of these teams start from a position of achieving control. They rank one and two for fewest shots conceded in Europe’s top five leagues. PSG have four attacking players of genuine high quality, but their effectiveness is built on a structure that allows them to run forwards and seek out duels. This is not a free-flowing, off-the-cuff team. It is attacking super-strengths implanted into a system.It seems likely the outcome will rest on how Arsenal defend and counterattack in wide areas. There is a precedent here. It is easy to forget that for 26 minutes in Paris last May, Arsenal dominated these same opponents, and in an interesting way.Luis Enrique’s team pinned Arsenal’s full‑backs in their own half in the first leg of that tie. At the Parc des Princes Myles Lewis-Skelly and Jurriën Timber came inside fearlessly, flooded the midfield and enabled a hugely aggressive pressing structure. Arsenal couldn’t finish the chances they made. Fabián Ruiz scored a brilliant goal to kill the tie. But the plan worked while it worked.Logic still suggests PSG have too much attacking power. But if Arsenal can keep it goalless for an hour the game may just start to lean towards this new-look champion team, out there just living for the moment (context: probably not just living for the moment). It will as ever come down to details. And maybe, just maybe, to that absence of fear.

Football News

Gunners face PSG in Budapest final on Saturday‘We have one, and now we want the second one’Mikel Arteta has dismissed suggestions the pressure is off Arsenal in Saturday’s Champions League final after their first Premier League title for 22 years and insists he and his players are hungry for more trophies.Paris Saint-Germain, who defeated Arsenal in the semi-finals last year before being crowned European champions for the first time, saw off Chelsea, Liverpool and Bayern Munich in the knockout stages and are strongly fancied to retain their crown. Jurriën Timber looks likely to start after Arteta confirmed the Netherlands defender had recovered from a groin injury, although he has not featured since the win over Everton on 14 March.Arsenal have yet to win the Champions League and reached the final on one previous occasion, in 2006, when they were defeated by Barcelona. Arteta is determined Arsenal seize their opportunity on the biggest stage in club football after finally ending their long wait for the league title.“The ambition is bigger,” the manager said. “We have one, and now we want the second one. That’s all we’ve been talking about. There has to be a platform to reach bigger destinations and to aim for more. And the team is capable, because we’ve shown it in the last two seasons, in this competition. What we’ve done this season in the competition, and I want the players to be so confident that we’re going to win.”Arteta, asked whether he had noticed something different when he looks in the eyes of his players, said: “That they want more. Going through those moments brings you a different kind of desire. Because you lift it, you know exactly how it feels. You want to reproduce that feeling as many times as possible.“We have the opportunity to write a new chapter in the history of this football club. And in order to do that, we have to play with such clarity, a lot of courage, and a relentless desire to win. We have those three aspects, and I’m sure we’re going to be close to winning.”Bukayo Saka, who scored Arsenal’s goal in last season’s 3-1 aggregate defeat by PSG, revealed that Thierry Henry – part of the team that lost to Barcelona 20 years ago – had been in touch this week to offer encouragement. The England forward said it would round off a perfect season if they can beat PSG and that winning the Premier League after finishing second three years in a row had given the players plenty of confidence.“We all know where my journey started as a seven- or eight-year-old at Hale End – it was a long, long way away from trying to win the Champions League with Arsenal,” he said. “It feels like this last week it’s all become a reality and tomorrow is another exciting opportunity to create more history and win another for the club that I love. That goes a long way and it helped us win the title and hopefully it will give us an advantage on the pitch here.”Saturday’s game will be Arsenal’s 63rd of the season, more than any other team from the top five European leagues. It will be PSG’s 56th but Saka insisted fatigue would not play a part.“We’ve had a week to recover and we’re ready to go again and a game like this is not going to be decided on minutes,” he said. “It will be decided on moments and which team can produce a bit of quality and be well organised.”

Football News

Luis Enrique: ‘Retaining it is source of inspiration for us’Expects to name same outfield 10 as in 2025 finalLuis Enrique has insisted Paris Saint-Germain’s motivation to retain their Champions League title is greater than Arsenal’s quest to be crowned European champions for the first time.PSG demolished Inter 5-0 in last year’s final in Munich and are strong favourites for Saturday’s showdown at the Puskas Arena in Budapest. Arsenal have reached this stage for the first time since 2006, when they lost 2-1 to Barcelona in Paris, and Arteta caused a stir in the week when he said: “We will be European champions on Saturday.”Luis Enrique refused to say if that declaration has provided his players with extra motivation but did say that the chance to become only the second team in the Champions League era to retain their title, after Real Madrid, and ninth in total is driving his players. “Yes, it is powerful,” said the Spaniard of Arsenal’s desire to win a first title. “But do you know how powerful trying to win the second one in a row is? It’s bigger. So we’re ahead. I don’t think there’s any better motivation than winning the Champions League. We will see tomorrow who is better – we both won our respective leagues and I’m going to focus on what is positive for my team. So that we can show the best of ourselves.“It’s a source of motivation for us. We have already gone down in the history books as one of the best teams in Europe. But that’s what we’re looking for. You never know when you’re going to be back in the Champions League final and you have to make the most of it.”Ousmane Dembélé and Achraf Hakimi have been included in PSG’s squad for the final after recovering from injury, with Luis Enrique – who has won 11 of the 12 finals he has contested as a manager – expected to select 10 of the team that started in Munich 12 months ago. Dembélé’s participation was in doubt due to a calf injury but the France forward said he was never worried about missing the final and warned that PSG are itching to finish the job.“We’re a young squad who are highly ambitious and we don’t want to sit on our laurels,” he said. “We know that it would be something historic if we can pull it off. If we want to be great players then these are the trophies that we need to be winning time and again.”

Football News

In the runup to the Champions League final, the Arsenal manager’s first footballing steps in the Basque Country and Barcelona are recalled by those who shared themThe way Santi Cazorla tells it, rolling about laughing, Mikel Arteta may just be the worst person you could ever wish to watch a match with. Which is why he knew his friend would be a coach and why he told him to go away and become one, convinced great things were coming. “When we were injured at Arsenal, we used to meet at home for games, and he would grab the remote and pause it,” Cazorla recalls. “I would say: ‘What are you stopping it for?’ He would say: ‘No, go back, go back,’ rewind it 30 seconds, and then ask: ‘What do you see?’ I would say: ‘I see a paused screen. I don’t see anything!’”So Arteta would explain. “‘Don’t you think this player is badly positioned? … If he goes a bit deeper, this space opens up … if the pivot goes there, this happens … that line should be deeper …’ I would look at him and think: ‘What’s with this guy?’” Cazorla continues, still cracking up. “He was a coach already. All game, every game: pausing, rewinding. The match is finished and we’re only in the 35th minute. ‘Do you see it?’ ‘Yes, yes, you’re right, now come on, press play.’ But I didn’t see it. I love football, I can watch it all day, but I don’t notice those things. Mikel does. I think it’s a gift.”Born in Gipuzkoa, the smallest province in Spain and an outlier producing a quantity of elite managers that invites an investigation, Arteta was always a bit different; everyone says so. Which isn’t to say that those who shared his first steps saw what Cazorla did, still less the coach who leads Arsenal into the Champions League final. Fond though they are, and there is warmth in every word, most didn’t see a coach just yet, but they saw something. Not talent exactly, although that too, but something else a little deeper, lasting.“Mikel caught your attention very young,” Jon Ayerbe says. “The word I’d use is alive; you saw it in his eyes. He grasped everything fast, had character and was so competitive. Give him the ball, he’ll find a solution. And he was a year younger than us, eh.”“Above all, he was the most intelligent,” Álvaro Parra adds. Mikel Yanguas says: “You looked at him and thought: ‘Bloody hell, he’s got something special. If anyone makes it, it’s him.’ He had personality, ambition.” Ayerbe, Parra and Yanguas played with Arteta at Antiguoko, a youth club in San Sebastián that took on professional academies and won.Arteta was good enough at tennis to have pursued a different path, his father making him choose his sport, and Antiguoko’s former coach Roberto Montiel enjoys recounting an Arteta goal against Real Sociedad, all cheek and technique, that reminds him of Lionel Messi. Arteta was two-footed and tiny then, a No 10 who later became a No 4, and “a born sportsman”, Montiel says. He was dedicated and smart, too. “He was always clear he would make it and sacrificed his life for it,” Parra says. “He went to Barcelona, leaving everything behind. And later he turned down lucrative offers – Dubai, Qatar, the US – to work with Guardiola at Man City because it was the right step.”At 14, Arteta had begun training at Athletic Club, 100km west along the AP-8. There, one of his coaches was the future Athletic, Eibar, Sevilla and Olympiakos manager José Luis Mendilibar, who was struck by this kid that never lost the ball and always played with clarity and sense. “What you could imagine, thinking about it now, was that someone with that intelligence and understanding would also develop an ability to explain it to others, so they could understand too,” Mendilibar wrote later. That sentiment is echoed by Luis Fernández, the coach who signed an 18-year-old Arteta for Paris Saint-Germain in 2001. “When you told him what you wanted, he did it first time,” Fernández says.By then, Barcelona had shaped him too, the first formative experience away from home. “It was 1997,” Yanguas recalls. “Someone saw us representing Gipuzkoa at an Easter tournament and invited us to a trial at Barcelona. We stayed near Pedralbes and at the end they said yes to the three of us: me, Mikel and Jon Álvarez. We left that summer: 17 August, the day of San Sebastián’s fiestas, so I remember it well.”They moved into La Masia, the traditional Catalan farmhouse alongside the Camp Nou that was Barcelona’s spiritual home and an actual home to 32 boys aged 11 to 18, three or four of whom were basketball players. Andrés Iniesta, Carles Puyol and Iván de la Peña were among them. Pepe Reina would become one of Arteta’s closest friends. Each dorm had four bunks, a couple of camp beds sometimes squeezed in too. Through the window they could see the pitch where Bobby Robson’s team trained. Well, part of it: a screen covered half.“It was just us, the cooks, the security guard and one guy overseeing everything,” says Roberto Trashorras, who became close to Arteta. “It’s totally different nowadays. We sorted things out among ourselves. Because we were alone, we looked after each other. There were no mobiles. I remember queueing at midnight to ring home from the payphone, Puyol and De la Peña ahead of me. We were teenagers, so there’d be the usual messing about: jokes, water bombs. Mikel was funny, extroverted, but we were the victims usually … until you get a bit older and it’s your turn.”A bus took them to school – parents chose between three options – they would train and then … well, not much, Yanguas says. “We would go to [the department store] El Corte Inglés; we were from San Sebastián, a small city, and we didn’t have an El Corte Inglés there. Or we’d go to the cinema. I remember seeing Titanic with Mikel, Victor Valdés, Fernando Macedo. At weekends your parents would come.”They were 15 and, looking back, Yanguas admits he wasn’t ready. Although that cadete (under-16) team were national champions, he returned to San Sebastián at the end of the first year. “It was hard for me,” he says. “I think about it now and I was an introvert. Mikel was different, better prepared: more outgoing, more adaptable, better at relating. Maybe inside he was struggling but we saw someone who handled it very well. On the pitch too: he would demand the ball. I thought it was natural then but I coach now and realise it’s not. No one offers, no one asks for the ball. Mikel did constantly. It’s hard to do that: ‘Give it to me, I’ll sort this.’ He was surrounded by great players but had the confidence and self assurance to do that.”Jofre Mateu was two years older than Arteta, with whom he would play in the B team, and had already made a first-team appearance. “Mikel used to laugh about his hair. He said he had ‘bull’s hair’: so hard and it didn’t move. But, honestly, the thing I most remember is that one day he took my car when he was learning or recently passed and crashed it into the Masia wall.” Jofre laughs. “It was three metres, impossible to crash. Impossible. And he goes: ‘Nah, nah, relax, I-don’t-know-what.’ He puts his arm on the window, looks back to reverse, but he’s putting it in first. ‘Yeah, I think you need more lessons. You can take taxis from now on.’ My car was only two months old: a VW Golf.”Which raises an obvious question: are you stupid? “Totally,” Jofre says. But, actually, handing over the keys wasn’t a risk: if anything defined Arteta, he says, it was how sensible he was. “He wasn’t there to piss about, he was there to do the right thing,” Jofre says. “He was super-responsible, he had something.”In fact, another scene defines Arteta better. “Thiago Motta was hot-headed and in a training session he got in a fight, which wasn’t unusual,” Jofre says. “I don’t remember who with, but it wasn’t Mikel, yet he steps in: ‘Thiago, man, you’re teammates: you can’t do this.’ I remember it because Mikel didn’t really have the ‘weight’ to do that. It would be like Marc Bernal standing up to, say, Gavi now. He didn’t do it in an ugly way, but he did it. Clearly, firmly. And we just all stopped. Like: ‘Olé tus huevos [Good on ya].’ I think that said something about him: he wasn’t the star, but he’s not going to let that happen.”La Masia was a footballing education, entirely new. “The players who arrive are the best in their teams but Barcelona make you think about tactics, space in a way that’s not normal,” says Luis Carrión, a Barcelona B teammate. “At Antiguoko, Mikel would have had the ball all the time; here he had to wait, occupy the right space. By standing still, you see a solution, a way out. They’d explain concepts – third man, triangles, final line – but it wasn’t ‘classes’, more repetition: passing drills every day.”Trashorras says: “Mikel was a dribbler, arriving in the area, but he learned to play one, two touches, not lose his position. One of the things that most struck me when I first got there is they would say: ‘Don’t go looking for the ball, the ball will come to you.’ ‘Yeah, but, it’s just there, I can …’ ‘No, no, no. Don’t invade someone else’s space.’ It can be hard to adapt but Mikel was sharp. It’s really, genuinely different. Pffff, it’s like a religion. And then when you leave it’s different too.”Not that Barcelona’s creed was Arteta’s only faith. There is a simple reason why he didn’t make it in Catalonia, or two of them – Xavi Hernández and Iniesta – but there was a world out there, ideas and character shaped across four countries, experiences in Spain, France, Scotland and England. “When I became PSG coach I asked for Mikel because I watched him in the juvenil [under-19s],” Fernández says. “I followed Johan Cruyff’s ideas, the importance of the pivot, loved Pep Guardiola and wanted a player of that type.“On the pitch you see Mikel’s intelligence, his understanding and, for sure, that comes out later when he becomes a coach. He had the perfect attitude to coach: professionalism. He was responsible, listened, learned and you didn’t need to keep telling him. He was an example for everyone. I admire him. I’m sensitive and when I see him and Gabi [Heinze], his very good friend in Paris, it makes me so happy. If you had asked me then if he would be a coach, I’d have said: ‘No.’ He wasn’t: ‘Do this, do that.’ I think he learned with Pep. I went to see him do a session and thought: ‘Bloody hell, look at Mikel.’ But it was always in him.”It just had to come out. “He was a kid with personality: polite, very professional for his age,” Carrión says. “A coach? You never know, but he watched a lot of football. I ran into him recently and we chatted about football; it’s always football.” With time, Yanguas suggests, you learn to express, understand and analyse the spaces you saw naturally, and Arteta always saw those. Focus and passion came as standard. Jofre, asked if he saw a coach in Arteta, replies: “Zero. But if you asked me about Xavi, I would have said zero. Luis Enrique, zero. Guardiola … OK, yes. But we were kids still, teenagers at La Masia more interested in the next game, some girl or where we’re going on Saturday.” Trashorras agrees: “With Pep, you saw it; with Mikel I couldn’t claim to have done, but you can’t argue with what he’s done.” In part because Pep did see it.And so, via Paris, Glasgow and Liverpool to Santi’s sofa in London, an offer and a new era, the other Arteta that was always inside somewhere. “We confided in each other; he was the captain, always looked after me and my family and helped so much during my injury,” Cazorla recalls. “He said: ‘What should I do, Santi? Keep playing, which I like most, or take the opportunity as Pep’s assistant?’ I love playing but there’s no better place to start coaching and I have a good relationship with him.’ I said: ‘Mikel, if that’s what moves you, go for it.’ It’s a difficult step but I was sure it would work. I would watch him pausing games and think: this guy is already a coach. I’d tell him: ‘You’re thinking beyond what a player does.’ And he would say: ‘Yeah, I see things that make me think I should be a coach. I feel that I am.’”

Football News

The New York mayor scored a range of responses attending Eid prayers in an outfit combining football and faithSince Arsenal won the Premier League for the first time in 22 years this month, the visibility of the club’s shirts has soared, with celebrities including Romeo Beckham and the singer Mahalia wearing them.One particularly notable fan moment occurred when Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, wore a kurta made out of the team’s 2025-26 away kit to attend Eid al-Adha prayers in the Bronx.Mamdani is a vocal Arsenal fan who wore a club scarf at a recent press conference and received a message of congratulations from former player Ian Wright when he became mayor.Images of him wearing the kurta have been widely shared and, predictably, given that the garment combines football fandom and faith, the response has been divisive.In comments under a post by Diet Paratha – an Instagram account focused on south Asian culture and fashion – one commentator wrote: “Bro noooo how’s my Eid fit supposed to compete with this?”On a post by the fashion website Highsnobiety, someone commented: “When I thought I couldn’t hate this guy any more”, while on one by Versus, a football style platform, another wrote: “Even this Chelsea fan knows how cold this is.”The kurta is a long shirt or tunic originating from south Asia, and Mamdani’s bespoke version was supplied by Jason Andrew. Andrew is one of the founders of Brooklyn Invincibles, an Arsenal supporters club in Fort Greene, New York, where celebrities including Spike Lee, Jason Sudeikis, Sol Campbell and Mamdani watch games.Andrew had just five days to make the item – a deadline exacerbated by a shortage of shirts after the title win. “It’s going to be sold out because every fan who was on the fence about buying one this season is going to grab a piece of memorabilia,” he said.Having sourced the shirts through his connections, Andrew then dispatched them to his longtime tailor in the care of his mother, the daughter of a seamstress, “to walk him through the specifics”.Dr Fatima Rajina, a senior fellow at the Stephen Lawrence research centre at De Montfort University in Leicester who in 2024 curated an exhibition about what Muslim men wear to Friday prayers, believes some of the negative comments around Mamdani’s kurta are about his refusal to hide his faith in public office.“He’s the first Muslim mayor of the most multicultural city in the world and also one of the most significant cities in the world. He’s disrupting a lot of things, socially, culturally, politically,” she said.Arsenal’s reputation as the Premier League club with the most diverse and global fanbase aligns with Mamdani’s vision of an inclusive New York. Any Arsenal-inclined social media feed since the title win has featured videos of celebrations not only in culturally diverse north London, but also from around the world. A video on TikTok shows a man in Uganda wearing an Arsenal thobe –a floor-length garment similar to Mamdani’s kurta.Andrew said the way Mamdani approached the look was on brand. “He doesn’t do anything crazy. He’s like: ‘Hey, I’m a New Yorker. I wear Timberlands, I wear a Carhartt jacket’ … [The kurta] embraces his fandom – we’re no different to him, and he’s no different to us.”Faris and Aaliyah Gohir, the sibling founders of Arsenal Muslim Gooners, said the image of Mamdani in the kurta was a powerful one for their community.“[It] brought faith, culture and football together in one image,” Faris said. “Muslim football supporters often feel invisible, so a globally recognised Muslim Arsenal supporter has certainly put us in the spotlight.”Official Arsenal kits have sought to engage with the team’s diverse fanbase in the past. The British-Sierra Leonean designer Foday Dumbuya designed the club’s 2024-25 away shirt, while a 2022-23 season prematch jersey in Jamaican colours became a favourite at Notting Hill carnival.Now Aaliyah Gohir believes Mamdani’s kurta could be an inspiration for further designs. “Arsenal-branded thobes and hijabs would be popular,” she said. “Female fans are also using AI to design Arsenal abayas … A Muslim-inspired range would feel like a natural next step.”

Football News

Arsenal’s former head of coaching recalls the words from Freddie Ljungberg that shaped the young winger’s careerJan van Loon remembers the moment well. As Arsenal’s head of coaching he was guiding Freddie Ljungberg’s first steps in management with the under-15s when Bukayo Saka joined the squad. Saka was regarded as one of the academy’s standout talents but Ljungberg soon concluded the youngster was in danger of not fulfilling his potential.Towards the end of 2016, Ljungberg delivered words to Saka that, according to Van Loon, have shaped the winger’s career. It was a one-on-one evaluation, typically held twice a year in the academy, but also in the room were Van Loon, a strength and conditioning coach and Saka’s father, Yomi.“Bukayo was sitting there feeling pretty confident because he was scoring goals and things were seemingly going well,” Van Loon says. “But Freddie said: ‘I’m actually not that satisfied, because you’ve got so much more in you. You need to take a good look at yourself. From now on, I want to see the real Bukayo. No more hiding in training or going through the motions. No, you’re the first one out there on the pitch and the last to leave it. You’re going to carry the team and take on a leadership role.’”Saka, Van Loon recalls, was taken aback. “He didn’t expect criticism, that he needed to do much more. But he quickly realised that Freddie was doing it out of respect. Freddie said: ‘I’m going to help you with this, I’ll support you, I believe in you.’ And very quickly it turned into something positive.”The conversation remains etched in Van Loon’s memory. “You have to picture it like this: Bukayo was sitting at the table and his dad was in a chair a few metres behind him. We looked them both in the eyes and his dad had a big smile, like: ‘Finally, someone who’s going to help my son get the most out of himself.’ Because he could see there was so much more in Bukayo.”Ljungberg twice won the Premier League with Arsenal, including as part of the Invincibles, and was a member of their team that lost the 2006 Champions League final. Twenty years on the club return to that stage against Paris Saint-Germain on Saturday and if Saka shines on the biggest stage, Van Loon will surely reflect again on that meeting between two of the club’s most celebrated forwards.“It was as if everything just clicked right there, like the pieces of a puzzle falling into place,” he says. “In that moment I felt something great is happening here. It was pure gold … Sometimes, in a player’s career, you can trace things back to one moment where he realises: ‘I can’t let the talent I’ve been given slip away. I have to put the work in now.’ Bukayo made that decision right there. He completely embraced that mindset, and he is still doing that today.“Up until that meeting, Saka wasn’t really standing out. In a way, it was almost too easy for him. Even at 50 or 60% of his ability, he could already be the best on the pitch. He became comfortable, he wasn’t being challenged. Freddie saw that.”Ljungberg left for Wolfsburg the following February and Van Loon took over the Swede’s team. “I hardly had to do anything because Bukayo was doing it all,” says a laughing Van Loon, who departed Arsenal later in 2017. “He was running the dressing room, organising the warm-up, making sure the intensity in training was right. If the work rate wasn’t there, he’d say: ‘Coach, do you have a second?’ He’d stop the session and tell the other players: ‘Right, now we’re going to work … You need to press harder …’ That’s when Bukayo really took off.”A year later Saka was playing for the under-23s, coached again by Ljungberg, and on a freezing night in Kyiv in November 2018 he made his first-team debut. Unai Emery selected him for a Europa League tie at Vorskla Poltava and Saka, aged 17, came on for the final quarter with No 87 on his back. It completed a path shaped by sacrifice – the hours spent honing his skills with his father and brother in the garden, the countless car trips to the Hale End academy with his dad.Within two years Saka had his first England cap, his smooth transition leaving a mark on Chris Powell, Gareth Southgate’s assistant. “I remember how seamless it was for him to fit into training and into the level of play, which was impressive for someone so young,” Powell says. “Playing for your country and being alongside the elite players can be overwhelming for some, but Bukayo has such a good temperament.”Not that Saka’s journey has been without adversity. Most devastatingly, he was one of three England players to miss a penalty in the Euro 2020 final shootout defeat by Italy. Powell made a point of consoling him on the pitch. “I have a son the same age and I just remember thinking: ‘That could have been my son standing there.’ I put my hand on his shoulder to show him he wasn’t alone.”Powell admits he was worried, though: “I thought he might not come back from it. Standing there with Saks on that Wembley pitch, it was in my head that there would be a backlash.”Unfortunately there was, with Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, who also missed penalties, subjected to racial abuse online. Powell says support from Southgate and Arsenal, including from their manager, Mikel Arteta, was vital.“Not only did we get Bukayo back, but I think we got a better player back,” he says. “Sometimes you go through very difficult moments, but those experiences can help you in the end. He has been amazing since, which just shows you his strong mindset and mentality.“I think it’s been almost the making of him. Such a huge moment in his young fledgling career – but he overcame it. He has been taking penalties for Arsenal and England since, scoring massive goals like the one away at Real Madrid last season and producing other massive moments for them. It just shows the stature of a player who is still only 24.”Powell left the England setup after the 2022 World Cup but Saka went on to be coached there by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who from March 2023 until after Euro 2024 worked primarily with the attacking players.“He listens, asks questions and takes on board what you tell him,” says Hasselbaink, who well remembers how Saka achieved redemption from the spot by flawlessly scoring a Euro 2024 quarter-final penalty in the victory over Switzerland. “He was asked and he wanted to take it,” Hasselbaink says. “We practised it many times in training and he looked sharp, full of confidence.”Hasselbaink had helped Saka and others focus on penalty routines. “For some, it’s important to start without a goalkeeper and focus purely on a corner and hitting the far corner, and then repeat that many times. What I also did was mark the middle of the goalpost with bright tape. That highlighted the area where the ball shouldn’t go, because that’s the height where it’s easiest for a keeper to save it. You either hit it hard and high into the corner, which carries some risk, or hard and low.”Hasselbaink admires Saka’s defensive diligence but urges him to focus on his attacking game when he faces PSG’s Nuno Mendes on Saturday. “With Mendes, the most important thing is to attack him, to keep him pinned back as much as possible,” the former Chelsea striker says. “Mendes will want to get forward as much as he can. It should be a very interesting duel.” Hasselbaink is confident Saka will shine: “In big matches,” he says, “ he always shows up.”Saka, 10 years on from that chat, has certainly made the most of his talent. “He constantly wants to keep improving, both as a footballer and in his behaviour as a role model for the youth,” Van Loon says. “He shows that hard work can pay off and that you can deal with setbacks.”

Football News

Luis Enrique rotated his squad in Ligue 1, whereas Mikel Arteta relied on his best XI in three domestic competitionsA look at the most basic numbers might have you believe that the Champions League finalists have had equally demanding campaigns. The final in Budapest on Saturday will be the 63rd game of the season for Arsenal and the 56th for Paris Saint-Germain. However, the French side also played seven matches at last summer’s Club World Cup, which means both teams have played 62 matches since the start of last June.Delve a little deeper, though, and there is more to those figures than meets the eye. While Arsenal were able to rest properly last summer, PSG were in the US, reaching the final of a competition played in sweltering heat, which started only 14 days after they had beaten Inter in the Champions League final.They had barely any time off to rest after it, either, because their season started exactly one month after the Club World Cup had ended, with the Super Cup against Tottenham. And their defence of the Ligue 1 title began just a few days later. The newly expanded Club World Cup set up the teams involved for a difficult season, where their players were forced to play catchup on their rivals when it came to rest and recuperation.There is no way of quantifying how much Chelsea’s players were affected by their run to the final, but it is no coincidence that they only won two of their first six league games of the season and went on to finish way down in 10th. Cole Palmer, for one, had such a disappointing campaign that he will not even be at this summer’s World Cup as a result.But, since the new season started, there is no comparison between the demands on PSG’s players and those on Arsenal’s. From the beginning of the 2025-26 campaign, Arsenal have played more matches than any other team in any of the top five European leagues, having gone deep in the League Cup and the FA Cup. And, crucially, their opportunities to rotate have, unlike PSG, been few and far between.For example, when PSG’s domestic season started against Nantes, their team contained just two of the players who had started the Champions League final a couple of months before. Nuno Mendes, Achraf Hakimi, Ousmane Dembélé, Désiré Doué and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia came off the bench to force a 1-0 win, but that level of reinforcement has not been necessary every week. Far from it, in fact.Luis Enrique has regularly rested his players from Ligue 1 games. So, even though PSG have played a lot of matches, their most important players have been rotated heavily and should go into this weekend’s final relatively fresh.Many of PSG’s best players have played very little domestic football this season. Ballon d’Or winner Dembélé started just 11 of their 34 Ligue 1 games; Neves, Mendes and Fabián Ruiz made 13 starts each; Kvaratskhelia 18, Doué and Hakimi 16, and Marquinhos 11. And it’s not like they come off the bench all that much, either. Not one of them has played even half their team’s minutes in Ligue 1 this season.Many of them have been saved for the Champions League, where Luis Enrique clearly feels they are needed more. Mendes and Marquinhos have played more minutes in the Champions League this season than in Ligue 1, despite PSG playing 18 fewer matches in that competition.PSG have had a few injury problems, but players have missed most matches due to rotation. For example, Kvaratskhelia has missed just three league games due to injury, Marquinhos two, Mendes eight, Neves nine and Dembélé 10. They have just been given time off at every opportunity.And the bulk of their squad is made up of young or peak-age players, who should be able to contend with a packed schedule. Resting Marquinhos regularly might be necessary but many of them have simply been kept fresh for this crucial part of the season.PSG’s superiority in Ligue 1 has allowed Luis Enrique to manage injuries and prevent fatigue by carefully curating his players’ workloads, simply through rest whenever they’ve needed it. PSG won Ligue 1 for a fifth season in a row this year. Everyone knows how hard Arsenal had to work to win the Premier League title.Some of that is due to the trauma of their past failures. Three successive second-place finishes meant Arsenal were desperate to win it this time around and were terrified of throwing their lead away to Manchester City again, and they made hard work of getting the points they needed as they stumbled over the finishing line. Beating relegated Burnley 1-0 at home in their penultimate game was made to look like a mountainous task, for example.But they also struggled in the final straight at least in part because of how strenuous the season was, and also because, whether rightly or wrongly, Mikel Arteta chose not to rotate as much.Despite spending big last summer and boosting the depth of his squad, there were certain players he simply would not rotate. David Raya played every minute in the Premier League this season until the title was won – so he missed the final game – and he has started 13 of 14 their Champions League games.Declan Rice and Martín Zubimendi were as good as undroppable in central midfield, with Rice missing just two Premier League games and Zubimendi none. At centre-back, Gabriel Magalhães and William Saliba only missed out on the few occasions they were unavailable. All five of those Arsenal players started at least 30 Premier League games this season, whereas no PSG player started more than 27 in Ligue 1.In all competitions, meanwhile, that group of Arsenal players have all played more than 4,000 minutes of football this season. The only PSG player to break the 4,000-minute mark is Warren Zaïre-Emery.Across both squads, 12 players have played at least 3,000 minutes of competitive football this season, and nine of them play for Arsenal. If Jurriën Timber is passed fit, all of them could start on Saturday.Barring injury, getting through just one more match will not be beyond any of these super-fit players, but the demands of the season could have an impact on which team can last the distance and keep up the intensity their managers demand for the full 90 – or 120 – minutes. PSG could have a decisive advantage.

Football News

Arsenal striker scored the winner in the final five years ago and is determined to make up for being ‘in a bad place’ when injured this seasonWhen Kai Havertz thinks back to the 2021 Champions League final, he can’t help smiling. Chelsea’s surprise victory over Manchester City in Porto still feels like yesterday for the Germany striker.“It is something I will never forget,” he says. “As a kid I could have never dreamed I would score a goal in the final and win that game. I will always be proud of it. I just try to take that feeling and hopefully it will happen again.”Havertz is looking ahead to Arsenal’s final against Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest on Saturday, when not many give them a chance of winning. It was the same when Chelsea, managed by Thomas Tuchel, took on a formidable City assembled by Pep Guardiola that had won the Premier League by 12 points. Chelsea had finished fourth, a further seven points adrift.“We were the underdogs on that day, for sure,” Havertz says. “We hadn’t had the best season. But now it is completely different.”Arsenal arrive having won their first Premier League since 2004 and Havertz, who as part of the celebrations posted a selfie with Win, the brown labrador who resides at the training ground, is in line to start. He has been preferred to the £64m summer signing Viktor Gyökeres in recent games against City and Burnley and is relishing the prospect of playing in European club football’s showpiece match for the second time.“There is just so much history with it,” he says. “So many big players played in it, and to be there, to compete to win the trophy, is amazing. I remember as a child I watched all the games – and just to watch that final is something very special. So to play in it is unreal.“You need to get there, and then you still have to make that step and win it. It is going to be hard, but we are going to be well prepared.”Many observers were surprised when Arsenal paid £65m to sign Havertz from Chelsea two years after his Champions League final heroics. But he finished as top scorer last season despite missing its last three months with a hamstring injury and hopes to repay Mikel Arteta’s faith on the biggest stage.“He was the one who brought me to the club and he taught me so much stuff on the pitch – and off the pitch as well,” he says. “I am very thankful for that time, how he helped me a lot when I had difficult moments. That is also very important.“It is nice that we also got him a little gift [the Premier League title] back now. He brought the club back to where it belongs.”Havertz missed almost five months after sustaining a knee injury on this season’s opening day against Manchester United, returning in January. The 26-year‑old was initially expected to be out for weeks, but ended up having two surgeries and spent weeks in a knee brace.“I was in a bad place when I was injured. You are just inside a building. You cannot go out, you cannot walk, you do nothing. But all the players and staff helped me believe in myself and to get back to my best.“Everyone told me from January how there is so much to play. That is where my momentum also shifted and I am just happy that I am here again now. I try to help the team every day. I tried that also when I was injured, just to help them off the pitch. That is always important.”Havertz’s goals at Bayer Leverkusen, his former club, in the Champions League’s last 16 and at Sporting in the quarter-final were crucial, as was his first Premier League goal at the Emirates for more than a year in the win against Burnley that teed up the following night’s title win. He also scored in April’s defeat at the Etihad Stadium.Havertz singled out Arsenal’s Carabao Cup final loss to City rather than that subsequent defeat as the turning point in their season. “It was a moment where we felt we could do so much better and there was so much more in this team and everyone needed to lift their spirits,” he said.“There was the international break after and we just said to ourselves that we need to come back stronger. From that moment things changed a bit and we were more successful. That was a big moment. You are always frustrated when you lose finals, so to come back from it and win the league like this is great.”It ensures confidence is high before facing PSG. Havertz says: “We have been fighting on the highest level for a couple of years now and we have finally won the Premier League. That gives us a big boost. It doesn’t matter if you are an underdog or whatever. We are going to go on the pitch and are going to beat them.”