🎥 Watch behind the scenes of Will Still's first day at Southampton
🎥 Watch behind the scenes of Will Still's first day at Southampton
Southampton manager Will Still wasted no time getting stuck into his new role and has already begun his duties.
The former Reims and Lens boss was in attendance at St Mary's on Sunday as his new charges concluded their Premier League campaign with a 2-1 defeat to Arsenal.
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Just two days later, Still headed to their Staplewood Campus to conduct his first official duties as manager, looking relaxed whilst participating in plenty of handshakes, photo ops and interviews.
Can Still revive the Saints' fortunes and lead the South Coast club to promotion from the Championship next season?
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New York Times
6 minutes ago
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Chelsea's 2024-25 player of the season: Moises Caicedo
Who is the best player in the Premier League never to have featured in the Champions League? It is hard to think of a worthier answer to this particular question than Moises Caicedo, but he will not be eligible for much longer. Chelsea will be back in Europe's elite club competition next season, and the soft-spoken but tough-tackling Ecuador international might be the single most significant reason why. Advertisement Caicedo is the only member of Enzo Maresca's young squad to start all 38 of Chelsea's Premier League matches in 2024-25. The last Chelsea player to achieve the feat was Cesar Azpilicueta in 2018-19, and the last midfielder to do it was Frank Lampard in 2004-05. Joining that exclusive club is a testament to the 23-year-old's endurance, but also to his vital importance. He has been the ever-present reference point for Maresca's midfield, around which an inverted full-back can roam, ahead of which Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez can focus the bulk of their energies on the final third without worrying that Chelsea's defence is liable to be exposed. At times, it has felt as if he holds the entire team together — even on the occasions when he has been the nominal right-back inverting into midfield next to Romeo Lavia. 'When you've got Caicedo next to you, it's a dream, really,' Palmer told Sky Sports, as reported by MSN, after Chelsea's 3-1 win over Liverpool earlier this month. 'From the start of the season until now, he's been our best player. He's a machine. He wins everything back (for the team), always gives 100 per cent every day, he's humble, he's nice to everyone, and everyone loves him.' Palmer would have had a strong case to retain his Chelsea player of the season crown if he had managed to carry his 2024 production into 2025. Fernandez has had excellent stretches of form under Maresca this season. Marc Cucurella has bolstered his Stamford Bridge cult-hero credentials by darting upfield from left-back to score several key goals. Levi Colwill has been a fixture in Maresca's defence and scored the most important goal of the season against Nottingham Forest to seal a fourth-place finish. Yet it is a mark of just how good Caicedo has been that among his team-mates and Chelsea supporters, there was no real debate before the voting and no argument after he swept the board for men's first team awards at the club's awards ceremony earlier this month. Advertisement Midfielders who do their best work winning the ball back can sometimes be overlooked for individual credit, but not at Chelsea. This is the club where Claude Makelele was adored, where Nemanja Matic became a revered two-time Premier League champion, and where N'Golo Kante regularly drew gasps from the Stamford Bridge crowd as his otherworldly ability to take the ball from opponents cemented him as the most uniquely dominant midfielder of his generation. Caicedo, with his prime years still ahead of him, has already done enough to distinguish himself as part of that proud lineage. His aggression can sometimes get the better of him, and there are moments when he is overly ambitious in his attempts to poke the ball away. But relatively regular yellow cards are a small price to pay as he engages in the process of exploring the limits of his destructive talents. Opponents already respect his ability to disrupt or derail their attacks, and Chelsea's vast defensive improvement, impossible to ignore under Maresca, has a lot to do with Caicedo. 'Moi is just breaking up everything and making everything look so easy,' Colwill told Chelsea's official YouTube channel after last month's 1-0 win over rivals Tottenham. 'If I had a mic on me when I'm playing, all you'd hear is, 'Wow, Moi'. That's all I do because he makes it so easy for us in defence because he stops everything before it gets to us.' Caicedo's consistent aggression is all the more important at the heart of a young, technical Chelsea team that is often accused of lacking physicality and bite. On good days and bad, he sets the tone without the ball, as well as directing possession with poise and polish. Maresca has already publicly claimed that he is the best defensive midfielder in the world, and any Premier League team of the 2024-25 season which does not include Caicedo raises eyebrows at Stamford Bridge. The question going into next season is not whether he is ready for the Champions League, but whether the Champions League is ready for him.
New York Times
16 minutes ago
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The player we can't write about and football's ‘systemic failure' to deal with sexual violence
Faith loves her football club and has followed their ups and downs for as long as she can remember. But her love has been tested in recent seasons by their refusal to suspend a player who has been accused of sexual assault by four different women. First arrested and questioned by police in July 2022, the player was questioned twice more in 2023 and now it's up to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the public agency that conducts criminal prosecutions in England and Wales, to decide whether he should be charged with the alleged offences. Advertisement In the meantime, he has continued to play — and play well — for his Premier League team, but his presence in the side has been difficult for Faith to witness. 'For the first time in my life, I watched a game and I didn't even want us to win,' she explains. 'I just thought, 'This is so wrong' and couldn't get past the idea that he would always be part of our history. It's appalling.' We cannot name the player or his club for legal reasons. We also cannot identify the women who have complained as, in the UK, alleged victims of sexual abuse are entitled to anonymity for life. The UK takes a strict line on the right to privacy. As an example, when we asked the Metropolitan Police, the force that polices Greater London, for an update on this case, it asked us to remove the individual's occupation from the subject line of our email. The force politely explained that they never reveal the occupations of people they question under caution. However, the balancing act between privacy and public interest would tip towards the latter if the player is charged by the CPS. If that happens, we and every other UK-based outlet will be able to publish the name that many of you already know. For now, however, comments on the piece will be turned off and any posts we put out on social media will not be open for replies. 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'For a club to act before that point, it would risk opening itself up to litigation from the player for breach of contract. So they must protect themselves. 'But there is also a duty of care to their employee, who is not guilty until proven otherwise. And our system is very strict on privacy, as was reinforced by a recent Supreme Court ruling about a case involving a high-profile businessman.' This case is known as Bloomberg LP v ZXC and it resulted in the UK's highest court ruling in 2022 that someone under criminal investigation has a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' until they are charged. So, as Kumar Parmar puts it, the club in question here has behaved legally. But that is not the same thing as behaving morally, is it? 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The France international, who left the club once his contract expired in June 2023, was eventually cleared of all charges after two trials that year. He then took City to an industrial tribunal over a claim for £11million in unpaid wages. Last November, the tribunal ruled that he should be paid the majority of that sum. The 30-year-old is now playing for Zurich in the Swiss top flight. These four precedents demonstrate that different clubs handle these cases in very different ways. Three of the four players were suspended but only one of was actually charged, and he was eventually acquitted. 'All clubs should follow one game-wide policy,' argues Faith. 'At the moment, they all do their own thing. Advertisement 'Players under investigation for allegations as serious as this should be suspended. Having to watch someone who has been accused of four counts of rape play every week really is a slap in the face for the survivors. One survivor in this case said that she would never have met the player if she had known he had already been accused of sexual violence. 'Football appears to take this less seriously than someone sending a nasty tweet. There should also be a commitment to provide meaningful support to any victims.' A campaign led by the End Violence Against Women Coalition, gender justice campaigners Level Up and fans' group The Three Hijabis has called on the Premier League and the FA 'to adopt clear sexual-misconduct policies'. These include disciplinary action ranging from suspension without pay to lifetime bans, bringing in minimum standards for tackling violent behaviour and mandatory, gender-based violence training and prevention programmes for young players. 'So far, the Premier League has introduced mandatory consent training, but it has failed to consult women's and gender-justice experts during its development and refused to share its content, so we have no idea what is actually being taught,' says Level Up co-director Seyi Falodun-Liburd. 'The rest of our demands have been ignored.' The Premier League has partnered with a Cheshire-based company called LimeCulture and all academy and first-team players must now receive regular safeguarding lessons, with players and staff also taking a course in 'healthy relationships and sexual consent'. The league has not conducted an audit yet for this season but says all of its clubs met the training requirement last season. 'As the most popular sport in the UK, football has the power to shift public perceptions and behaviours,' says Falodun-Liburd. 'Whether they like it or not, footballers are role models. The Premier League, FA and football clubs must start by acknowledging that this isn't about one player — football has a serious problem with gender-based violence. 'As more women bravely speak out about the physical and sexual abuse they have experienced at the hands of footballers, managers and club bosses, we are seeing just how resistant the Premier League and FA are to taking action to end gender-based violence in football. 'Fans have a role to play in this, too. They have the power to demand their clubs take gender-based violence seriously. We're already seen fans mobilise to write open letters to clubs, hold match-day protests and amplify the issue on social media.' Afzal, whose successful prosecutions of paedophile gangs, so-called 'honour' murderers and high-profile rapists has made him a national figure, is also not convinced football is doing enough. The 62-year-old lawyer has spoken to the alleged victims of the unnamed Premier League footballer and they have told him they fear 'they would be ripped apart by the tabloids, the courts, social media'. Advertisement 'These cases are nearly always about men, but it is usually the character and credibility of their female accusers that comes under attack,' he explains. 'For high-profile cases, the character assassination is worse. So many victims feel that justice isn't worth pursuing. 'There is a power imbalance. The player will have access to the most expensive lawyers and crisis comms specialists. But they will also have thousands of fans who would rather believe them than the accuser and who will back them blindly and excuse any embarrassing details. 'These fans become weaponised and attack whoever has accused their favourite player. They are protecting the badge but they do not think about the values that the badge represents. 'So footballers have fame, wealth and adulation. There is a culture of entitlement and an undercurrent of misogyny. Women are a perk of success, consent is blurred. They get a workshop on consent but are they listening? 'These cases nearly always hinge on one person's word against another's. And every time one fails, victims come to me and say, 'What's the point?'. Trust is further eroded, which leads to silence. It's a systemic failure.' For Afzal, the idea that the clubs' and leagues' hands are tied is 'unbelievable', but he is also angry at how long this case — and so many others — has taken already. 'The bottom line is that sexual assault cases are not expedited,' he says. 'Yes, due process needs to take place but very little thought is given to supporting the alleged victims.' His advice to clubs is simple: stop hiding, issue simple statements to say you have received an allegation of a serious nature against an employee and you are cooperating fully, provide support to the victim and, in the worst cases, after a risk assessment, suspend the player. 'I have talked to the PFA and the leagues about this and told them that they should put the same amount of energy that they've put into campaigns against racism into addressing football's problem with sexual violence,' he adds. Advertisement While the player, his alleged victims, his club, journalists and everyone else with an interest in this case waits for the CPS to decide if it believes it has a winnable case, Faith and other fans are also looking for answers. 'We know there's a problem with sexism and misogyny in the men's game — we know it's bigger than one club,' she says. 'But I want my club to be part of the solution, not the problem.' (Illustration: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic;,)
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
WWE SmackDown results, highlights (May 30): Cody Rhodes goes after John Cena, Logan Paul
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