Atletico Madrid make contact with Benfica target Thiago Almada
The Argentine midfielder has been impressive for the Ligue 1 outfit since joining them on loan from Brazilian club Botafogo at the start of the year.
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The 24-year-old bagged two goals and five assists in all competitions, helping Les Gones secure Europa League qualification.
He was also outstanding for the Argentine national team in their recent international break, making a strong case to feature in next year's World Cup.
Having won their appeal to remain in Ligue 1 this season, Lyon are preparing a new loan offer to keep hold of Almada.
However, Portuguese giants Benfica have proposed a deal worth €28 million to secure his signature.
Almada has also given his green light to a move to Benfica, who will be playing in the Champions League in the upcoming season.
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Atletico have joined the transfer race, initiating contact to learn about Almada's availability, price tag and wage demands.
The former Atlanta United star could be tempted to join the Argentine contingent at Atletico, featuring Giuliano Simeone, Julian Alvarez, Rodrigo De Paul, Nahuel Molina and manager Diego Simeone.
But Atletico are yet to present a concrete offer, meaning Benfica are still the frontrunners to land Almada.
Almada is viewed as a potential replacement for his compatriot De Paul, who is nearing a move to Major League Soccer team Inter Miami.
The Lyon loanee could be one of the many midfield reinforcements in this transfer window.
After securing the transfer of Alex Baena, the Colchoneros are working to finalise a deal for Real Betis midfielder Johnny Cardoso.
Bayer Leverkusen's Exequiel Palacios is also on Atletico's wishlist.
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Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tour de France stage 10 preview: Route map, profile and start time as GC contenders set for battle on Bastille Day
After a bit of a lull in the general classification battle over the weekend, the race will ignite properly today on the first mountainous day of this year's Tour de France. Saturday and Sunday saw the sprinters take the spotlight, with Jonathan Milan and Tim Merlier winning stages 8 and 9. Despite plenty of nerves and tension in the peloton, there were no shifts in the top 10 of the GC standings, although Tadej Pogacar suffered a blow in the form his talented teammate Joao Almeida abandoning the race. The first mountain joust of this year's race falls, fittingly, on Bastille Day, with the necessity of racing on the French national holiday ensuring that the Tour's first rest day – almost always on the second Monday – has been pushed back to Tuesday. That means there will be some extra-tired legs in the bunch at the start line in Ennezat; the question is, which of the riders will suffer, and who will rise to the top? There are 4,450m of elevation gain to be surmounted today, the toughest day of the race so far, featuring a whopping eight categorised climbs: seven cat-twos and only one cat-three, all packed into 165km of racing. The last is a summit finish at le Mont-Dore, Puy de Sancy, a 3.3km climb averaging 8%, a biting finish to a really punchy day in the saddle. Can the French riders seal a memorable Bastille Day victory? They'll have to get past the GC men first... Stage 10 starts at 1.10pm local time (12.10pm BST) with an expected finish time of 5.25pm local time (4.25pm BST). In years gone by this would have been an ideal breakaway stage, packed full of climbing but not quite difficult enough for the general classification contenders to be tempted... but that's without reckoning with the marauding Tadej Pogacar. With it being Bastille Day, the likes of Aurelien Paret-Peintre (brother Valentin is on support duty for Remco Evenepoel, which rules him out) and Valentin Madouas might be set loose in a bid for a rare French victory; the terrain is probably not tough enough for Lenny Martinez, but he might have a dig too. Kevin Vauquelin is the most in-form of the French climbers but is likely too close on GC to be allowed up the road. Could this be one for French veteran, breakaway stalwart and fan favourite Julian Alaphilippe? Or even his fellow elder statesman Warren Barguil? One can only hope... Hedging my bets here, but if it comes down to a GC battle, Oscar Onley has a fourth place and a third place to his name already on the punchier stages and is a real climber. It may yet be the young Scot who breaks French hearts - if it isn't Pogacar himself.
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Power versus weight: Are the Tour de France's top climbers getting heavier?
Jonas Vingegaard and Matteo Jorgenson are perhaps both expected to finish in the top five of this year's Tour de France, lofty heights reserved for the sport's climbers, but after stage two of the event last weekend, the pair joked about adopting a very different discipline. 'You're a sprinter now,' laughed Jorgenson, after Vingegaard had almost outsprinted Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel for stage victory in Boulogne-sur-Mer. 'I like it. You'd said you were huge — so you had to back it up now.' Advertisement 'You don't grow this for nothing,' Vingegaard smiled back. The Dane is still a skinny figure but had announced before the Tour began that he had spent his off-season adding muscle mass for increased explosivity. Two days later, on stage four to Rouen, Vingegaard resembled one of the world's best puncheurs, as well as one of its best climbers. Following Pogacar's attack in the closing kilometres, Vingegaard produced the best one-minute power effort of his career, matching the Slovenian's famed acceleration. And what's more, looking at the current top 10 of this year's general classification, Vingegaard is not alone in possessing power. Even ignoring Van der Poel (who will not be a contender come the mountain stages), the general classification (GC) battle also includes Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel, who are both more muscular athletes, as well as the likes of Kevin Vauquelin (third), Jorgenson (fifth), and Florian Lipowitz (eighth). All of the above weigh more than 68kg, while Derek Gee finished fourth in the Giro d'Italia last month while weighing 75kg. Traditionally, elite climbers have focused on shedding weight to increase their watts-per-kilo figure — from 1990 to 2020, the average weight of a Tour rider fell from 72kg to 68kg. Grand Tour champions of the last 20 years such as Chris Froome, Bradley Wiggins, Nairo Quintana, Alberto Contador and Fabio Aru are all noted proponents of this approach. Previously, Vingegaard may have fallen into their camp. But this year, his outlook has changed — attempting to improve his watts-per-kilo by supercharging his power with a modest increase in muscle mass. The race hits the mountains of the Massif Central today (Monday) — the first real test of his new approach. Already a two-time Tour champion, it is an undeniable risk for Vingegaard. Is the 28-year-old in the vanguard of a new trend in cycling — and will his reconditioning pay off? Mathieu Heijboer is head of performance at Vingegaard's Visma Lease-a-Bike team and has worked extensively with the Tour contender in recent months. 'Jonas started doing this as a consequence of his nasty crash (in the Tour of the Basque Country) last year,' he explains. 'When he was in intensive care, not able to ride at all, and just laid in his bed, he lost quite a bit of muscle mass that we had to regain. Advertisement 'Last year, we didn't necessarily have time for that, but this winter we were able to approach it from a longer-term perspective. This is mostly in the legs, but to cope with hard accelerations you have to be strong in your torso and your core — he needed to cope with those high peaks, those high power outputs.' At the 2024 Tour, Vingegaard had noticed he was losing out to Pogacar at high-watts moments, identifying it as a key weakness ahead of this year's race. By following Pogacar in Rouen, he showed the improvements he has made. 'Cycling is an endurance sport, but it's also one where you need to distance yourself from your opponent,' says Heijboer. 'The level is so high now, and in these races, the difference is made solely by explosiveness — which rider still has acceleration in their legs. In the past, maybe some riders were stronger in the aerobic part and could just ride faster. Now that difference is getting smaller and smaller.' But knowing how to add that muscle is part of the challenge. Riders don't want to add muscle in the wrong places — upper-body strength is of limited usefulness to a climber — and, as the Red Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe team's director of coaching Dan Lorang explains, will often train in very specific ways. 'Riders try to use as many of their muscle fibres as possible,' Lorang says. 'It's sometimes not about adding new fibres, because you need to feed them with more oxygen, but about recruiting all the fibres you already have to become more explosive, and to gain more resilience. But you still need to keep the endurance, so you're not too tired to use those muscles. 'Most of that training takes place on the bike, because it makes no sense to have muscles you can't use on it, but gym work also helps add muscle fibres. You don't want upper-body weight that you just need to carry up the climb.' Advertisement 'There was once a time when the skinny climbers were the top GC contenders,' adds Heijboer. 'But I think when the likes of Primoz Roglic became a top rider, there was an explosion in what you'd call the more muscled climbers. It's because they're able to cope with accelerations, and are less vulnerable to crashes, weather extremes, and the like, so they're just better all-rounders.' While there have been increases in weight during certain eras of the Tour — Miguel Indurain won it five years running from 1991-95 at 80kg, and was nicknamed 'Big Mig' — that era coincided with plenty of time-trialling kilometres, where absolute watts begin to take priority over watts per kilo. But in recent editions of the Tour, time trialling kilometres have dropped to their lowest ever level. Evenepoel, currently second on GC and the world's best time-triallist, is another to have added muscle mass in recent seasons. He added strength a couple of years ago, with his coach Koen Pelgrim describing at the time how: 'He kicks off more absolute power, but because his weight is only slightly higher, his watts per kilo has not increased… we see the explosiveness in his data.' However, speaking in the central French town of Chinon ahead of stage nine beginning there on Sunday, Pelgrim did not feel that the notion of adding weight is a universal trend. 'I think it's mainly individual cases,' he argued, perched on a car bonnet outside his Soudal-Quickstep team's bus. 'Obviously, in the first 10 days of the race, explosivity is a big part of the racing, but when you get to the big mountains, but for the long efforts, the power-weight ratio is still going to be crucial. It might be the case that more attention is being paid to off-bike strength training, but, especially for GC riders, not all of them are deliberately trying to add muscle mass.' With Vingegaard's specific training aside, it may be the case that riders' increased size just reflects a sport that helps riders who are inherently bigger, rather than necessarily needing to bulk up. 'What has changed is the dynamics of the race,' says Red Bull's Lorang. 'You still see skinny riders, but it's really hard for the 55kg guys to be competitive because they're losing too much energy on the flat. If you look at the flatter stages, you need absolute power, and the larger GC contenders have that. It's harder and harder for light riders to be successful over three weeks.' Advertisement With the average speed of the 2025 Tour — 45.6kph after stage nine — the second-fastest in history, behind only 2005, it is clear how this heft can play a role — crosswinds have already affected two stages. But one rider who says he has not bulked up, but dropped weight, is Lidl-Trek's Mattias Skjelmose, who sits 10th on GC entering the mountains. 'Maybe it wasn't muscle that I lost, but my fat percentage went down,' he says. 'It's a very thin line around gaining muscle without also gaining fat — and you also never know whether the muscle is placed right.' Skjelmose's acceleration this year has appeared impressive as well — in April, he outkicked Pogacar and Evenepoel to win the prestigious Amstel Gold one-day race in the Netherlands. 'My coach's approach is that explosiveness is more genetic than trainable,' he says. 'Of course, you can make some improvements, but in an endurance sport, it's still much more important, for the type of rider I am, to improve my aerobic capacity than short explosivity.' But even if Vingegaard's muscle gain is not ubiquitous across the peloton, one area that has gathered increased attention is the concept of sitting at a healthy weight — not being lighter for the sake of being lighter, but finding the optimal weight for your body. 'When we talk about power-to-weight ratio, I feel we often forget about the power part,' says the EF Education-EasyPost team's nutritionist Anna Carceller. 'You don't just want to be lean, but you want to have that power, to be the best version of yourself. It's not just about the ratio but because of both. 'We need to remember the part of being able to have healthier muscles, a hormonal environment that means your body can adapt to the training — and then try to get as lean as possible in the approach to the race.' Advertisement A good example is Uno-X Mobility rider Jonas Abrahamsen, who put on 20kg before last year's Tour while recording his best ever climbing performance. During this process, his peak power increased from 900 watts to 1500. 'When I started cycling, it was very popular to be skinny,' the Norwegian told The Cycling Podcast. 'All my favourite riders were very skinny and I was looking up to them, hoping to be 60kg. But that was hard, because I was always hungry. 'I felt like I hadn't progressed in my career as I had hoped to, so I needed to do something to be better. I know my muscles do better when they get more fuel, so I started to do that, and felt stronger and stronger every year.' The biggest difference came in his general health — by beginning to fuel, his body went through what he termed a 'delayed puberty', where he got taller and needed to start shaving. 'I think a lot of riders here are at a point where it's not very healthy to be for a long time,' says Skjelmose. 'But we are in a sport where everything matters, and if you can find a small percentage by being a bit lower, then that's where we go. I don't think it's healthy at all. But it's elite sport. We go to the limit.' 'Riding six hours a day, you're just starving (hungry) all the time — starving night and day,' four-time Tour champion Froome said during his career. Pogacar, currently the sport's best rider, has a different perspective. 'I'm getting older, so I'm not so obsessed anymore with going cake on cake, or just eating s**t,' the now 26-year-old told The Peter Attia Drive Podcast last year. 'My diet is the same all year round. I never restrict too much or say to myself, 'I can't eat cake or chocolate.' But (I eat) in measurements, and when the time is right. 'If you restrict too much, one time you will break and go completely crazy. That's not a good relationship with food. You need to have balance.' Advertisement Cycling's elite riders are not necessarily deliberately adding muscle, like Vingegaard. But the sport is beginning to favour larger athletes, reversing a decades-long trend — and is slowly shedding its weight stigma. For more cycling, follow Global Sports on The Athletic app via the Discover tab
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
Rayan Cherki's lofted passes into the box can help Manchester City fill a Kevin De Bruyne-shaped hole
Now that the dust has settled on Manchester City's dramatic exit from the Club World Cup, they may begin to look back at the inaugural playing of this expanded version of the tournament for what it was; an incredibly lucrative, and fairly encouraging, two weeks in the American sunshine before their summer holidays. Advertisement Many will have expected Pep Guardiola's side to go further than the round of 16, maybe even win the entire competition. But while the eventful nature of their 4-3 defeat by Al Hilal of Saudi Arabia may leave a bitter taste in the mouth, the fluidity of City's attacking approach play throughout their four games in the U.S. — with new signings Rayan Ait-Nouri, Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki all involved — provided plenty to be excited about with the start of the next domestic season now just over a month away. There were moments against both Juventus in the final group match and then Al Hilal, in which City looked vulnerable on the transition, which had also been the bane of their failed title defence during the 2024-25 campaign. And in the Premier League — home to some of the stingiest, low-block defences and most devastating counter-attacking sides anywhere in Europe — there is work to be done to ensure that their counter-press is not unpicked as regularly as it was towards the end of last year. But equally important to City is that they have a variety of methods to continue creating chances against those deep defensive structures; to make their control of the ball count, and to take the game away from their opponents before the inevitable counter-charge arrives. In that respect, 21-year-old Cherki already looks to be a particularly shrewd addition to the squad. It's nothing we didn't know before — Cherki had already cultivated a reputation in French football as a maverick, a genuinely unpredictable creative player with an incredible variety of passes in his locker. Able to switch up the pace and the angle of an attack with quick flicks and two-footed play, he has been quick to prove his worth in a City shirt when it comes to floating passes into congested penalty areas, demonstrated with his immaculate assist for Phil Foden against Al Hilal, despite all 11 opposition players being between the Frenchman and the goal. The best attacking players increase their team's chances of scoring a goal by putting the ball exactly where the other lot's defenders don't want it to go, and in that regard, now-departed long-time City star Kevin De Bruyne was one of the best English football has ever seen. We are, of course, exceptionally early in Cherki's City career, which makes it impossible to tell where it all goes from here. But from what we've already seen, his lofted passes over the top of settled defences could be one method that club scouts identified to recoup at least some of the creative incision the club lost when De Bruyne left City last month after 10 years of sterling service. Flicking through the catalogue of Cherki's most dangerous passes, it's especially noticeable how inventive and skilful he can be when there are multiple defenders in the way. From across the width of the pitch, he is adept at getting his team into the penalty area, as illustrated by the quick ball-roll and punched pass through the lines for Lyon against Reims in the clip below. Though the pace and elevation of the original pass is a bit too much for Nicolas Tagliafico to handle, Cherki's ability to manipulate angles and find gaps often catches defences off-guard, taking multiple players out of the game with unexpected changes of direction and pace. That kind of cheekiness and imagination is at the heart of Cherki's game. This is a player able to chisel his way through set defences with a mix of technical skill and vision that few others can match. Here he is on France Under-21s duty (when he'd only just turned 19, by the way) in September 2022, running at the Belgium defence before spotting a scooped pass in to Elye Wahi, who takes the ball around the goalkeeper and scores. Pausing the clip at the moment of release (below) highlights the creativity of this assist. At speed, and midway through a mazy dribble, Cherki picks out a pass into the box that leaves opposition defenders flat-footed and unable to react to the surprise ball in behind them. It's something that could be invaluable to City as they look to break down teams intent on defending the edge of their own penalty area, with new team-mates such as Erling Haaland and Omar Marmoush able to pounce on those moments of uncertainty with bursts of acceleration and alert movement in the box. Bringing things back to the present day, data from SkillCorner helps to underline Cherki's capabilities when it comes to breaking down stubborn defensive structures. SkillCorner defines a low block as a recognisable, off-ball shape in which the average position of the deepest three defensive players is within their defensive third. In Ligue 1 last season, Cherki was the player to complete the most passes that led to goals within 10 seconds against said low-block defences (15), pointing to his lock-picking capabilities when the ball is at his feet. Advertisement Alongside the moments of quick-thinking and instinct, however, a more repeatable pattern is emerging; Cherki's lifted passes from deeper positions, or out wide. We saw a glimpse of his crossing ability as he came off the bench for France's senior team in a 5-4 defeat against Spain in the UEFA Nations League semi-finals last month, shifting the ball onto his left and digging out a cross for Randal Kolo Muani to head home and complete the night's scoring. Able to weight these looping passes so that they drop just behind the defensive line, Cherki can target the smallest of spaces to create big opportunities, even when the opposition are camped close to their goal. Where De Bruyne would eke out chances with those powerful, whipped, flat deliveries of his from out wide, Cherki's speciality seems to be pitching these golfing sand-wedge style approaches into the box, producing a near-identical pass to the Kolo Muani one for Foden to score City's third against Al Hilal below. Once again, look at the number of opponents massed in defence; Cherki is faced with what is essentially a back six, but it's the perfect weight of the pass that sees it drop just out of reach of both the central defenders and the goalkeeper for his team-mate to attack. MAN CITY ARE STILL IN THIS FIGHT!! MCI 3-3 HIL Watch the @FIFACWC | June 14 – July 13 | Every Game | Free | | #FIFACWC #TakeItToTheWorld #MCIHIL — DAZN Football (@DAZNFootball) July 1, 2025 Barely three minutes later in that same game, Cherki is at it again, but this time with his opposite foot. Straight from kick-off, he picks up the ball from Ruben Dias, ambles forward, and curls a pass right onto the chest of Marmoush in the penalty area. Unfortunately for City, the Egyptian fails to control, but it's another promising example of how Cherki can find the spaces in behind defences with pinpoint passing from all over the pitch, routinely turning low-probability possessions into high-value chances with his passing. Once again, the numbers corroborate Cherki's impact on the pitch, with the bar chart below underlining his creative ability. Opta's expected assists (xA), a metric that measures the likelihood that a given pass will become an assist for a goal, ranks Cherki as the player who moved the ball into dangerous areas most consistently per 90 minutes on the pitch across Europe's top five domestic leagues last season. Advertisement Increase the finishing ability of the centre-forward on the end of those passes, with Haaland and Marmoush now the likely targets rather than a 34-year-old Alexandre Lacazette, and logic dictates that the underlying quality of Cherki's deliveries should yield an even higher return than he enjoyed with Lyon. In addition to the clear quality City have added to the squad, they were notably dynamic in their off-ball movement at the Club World Cup, making sure to supply the likes of Cherki with options for the pass no matter how much the opposition sat off. According to SkillCorner, City completed 52 runs in-behind the defensive line against Al Ain of the United Arab Emirates in their second group game, and 41 against Juventus in the third one, having only completed 40 or more in four of their 38 Premier League games during the 2024-25 season. It's a sign that they are looking to stretch opposition back lines more regularly — largely through Marmoush and Haaland, but increasingly with late runs from deeper positions by Foden and Reijnders — and not just dominate possession in front of them. In the context of the campaign just gone, those movements are a welcome sight. When City were at their lowest ebb last winter, it often felt that attack could be the best form of defence, but they were too conservative on a number of occasions, unable to put teams away before their defensive disorganisation stung them at the other end of the pitch. The addition of long-time Liverpool assistant Pep Lijnders to the coaching team suggests that City will be making adjustments to their out-of-possession approach. But at the same time, a gradual uptick in direct, attacking runs — and the acquisition of a player in Cherki who is not afraid to take risks to try to find them — points to a City team who will be looking to overwhelm defences with their quality in the attacking third when the new season kicks off next month. And that, even from the neutral point of view, is very exciting news.
