Latest news with #premierleague
BBC News
5 days ago
- Sport
- BBC News
'A bit of unpredictability'
Thomas Frank believes summer signing Mohammed Kudus is at "the perfect age to perform and take it to the next level" but says he will not speak about players "who are not mine" in relation to Nottingham Forest's Morgan at a news conference for the first time since joining Tottenham from Brentford, Frank was quizzed about acquiring £55m midfielder Kudus from West Ham United."I think it's a great signing from the club," he said."It's top work from Daniel Levy getting a very good player early in pre-season so we can start working with him."He gives us a bit of unpredictability in game. I think his one-on-one actions are top, his passes are top and his finishing is very good. He is at the perfect age to perform and take it to the next level."When asked about the club's interest in attacking midfielder Gibbs-White and Forest's reaction, Frank said: "I will not speak about players who are not mine. I will just speak about the players who are in the Tottenham squad."The Danish head coach also highlighted Son Heung-min and Cristian Romero as two important players in his squad, amid recent transfer speculation around the duo."Two top players," Frank said. "Sonny has been here 10 years and finally got his well-deserved trophy in the summer. He is so important for the team and the club."Romero is a World Cup winner, Europa League winner and Copa America winner, so he is very important for us as well."Both have trained well and both will play tomorrow. I'm very happy with them."A new era for Tottenham begins on Saturday afternoon, as Frank leads the team out for the first time in a pre-season friendly against Reading.
New York Times
5 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Crystal Palace prospect Hindolo Mustapha suffers knee injury
Crystal Palace youngster Hindolo Mustapha is set to be out for six weeks with a knee injury. The 18-year-old is yet to make a first-team appearance but is highly rated at Palace and was named last year's under-21 player of the season. He has been training with Oliver Glasner's senior side since they returned for pre-season training, and played the second half of their 1-0 win over Millwall in Saturday's first game back, with his driving run and through ball setting up Jesurun Rak-Sakyi for the only goal. Advertisement Mustapha was expected to be part of the group which will travel to Austria for a training camp and matches with Augsburg and Mainz at the end of this month — with Glasner having successfully convinced the Palace hierarchy to prioritise fitness over a more commercially lucrative longer trip. The No 10 would have hoped to catch the eye of the coaching staff, having impressed for the Under-21 side last season and come close to making the seniors' substitutes' bench on occasion. His technical ability is considered to be excellent but, off the ball, there is thought to be work needed to further improve. Rak-Sakyi cool with the finish 💪#CPFC — Crystal Palace F.C. (@CPFC) July 12, 2025 It was his goal which opened the scoring in the 3-1 Premier League 2 play-off victory over arch-rivals Brighton & Hove Albion, while he scored an outstanding brace in a 6-0 thumping of Chelsea four days later to help put his team into the semi-finals. Both of those goals against Chelsea were nominated for the club's goal of the season award. In attendance for both games were scouts from the EFL, with Portsmouth manager John Mousinho keeping an eye on Mustapha with a view to a potential loan. League One Wycombe Wanderers, among other sides, also hold an interest. He has been capped three times by Sierra Leone, scoring once. His last appearance came when he played 49 minutes in a 4-1 defeat by Ivory Coast in October last year. Now the teenager faces a race to be fit before the transfer deadline on September 1 although, with his contract due to expire next summer, Palace are likely to only sanction a loan move if he signs a new deal. It is a blow for Mustapha and Palace. He is a perfect fit for Glasner's system and that has benefitted him since the academy switched to it last season, also making strides to improve off the ball where his limitations are most apparent. Advertisement The injury may impact fellow No 10 Asher Agbinone, who spent the second half of last season on loan with Gillingham, but was limited to six appearances for the League Two side due to his own injury. Palace may be more reluctant to send him out on loan early if Mustapha does not recover quicker than expected. Right wing-back Danny Imray has joined Blackpool on a season-long loan. But there are decisions for Palace to make on the immediate future of their young players, whether to keep them as cover for the first-team or loan them out, with many having contracts which expire next summer.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Anthony Elanga's first training session at Newcastle
Watch as new signing, Anthony Elanga, takes part in his first training session with his new teammates out in Austria.
BBC News
14-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'It has been a tough road back'
Niall Huggins spoke to BBC Radio Newcastle after Sunderland's 4-0 pre-season victory against South defender has been ruled out since suffering a knee injury in December explained: "It's been great to be back there, it's been a long time. I'm feeling good and I just want to get back to how I was feeling two years ago."It is really underestimated how tough it is mentally. Last time, I had a good run of games and something happens out of nowhere. It has been a tough road back with so many ups and downs. I am just appreciative to be back on the pitch and play football again."We all believe we can do it [in the Premier League] and everyone is looking forward to it. We have a really strong team which we are improving in the off-season. We are going to do what we can to stay up and compete. We are all looking forward to the challenge."Listen in full
New York Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Marc Cucurella interview: Chelsea adaptation, a year of non-stop football and Club World Cup reflections
Just one more game. Three hundred and fifty-six days since the Chelsea squad flew to California for a five-game pre-season tour of the United States, their campaign winds up at MetLife Stadium on Sunday with the Club World Cup final, a chance to make history before a brief opportunity to rest. They have spent the past week in New York, holed up in a hotel on Fifth Avenue but occasionally allowed out to explore between training sessions. There was the wonderful juxtaposition of a social media video showing Cole Palmer wobbling along on a scooter on Times Square, largely unrecognised by the crowds, while his face stares down from a billboard. Cole Palmer on a scooter in Times Square. 🤷🏻♂️🥶 — Chelsea Dodgers (@TheBlueDodger) July 12, 2025 New York is the city that never sleeps. Football is the sport that never sleeps. For Palmer, this is the third consecutive summer with a tournament that stretches well into July — the European Under-21 Championship in 2023, the European Championship in 2024, the Club World Cup in 2025 — and he will hope and expect to feature at the 2026 World Cup too. A three-week break, starting on Monday, would leave them with less than two weeks to build up for the new Premier League campaign, which starts against Crystal Palace on August 17. Advertisement Marc Cucurella, who was part of the Spain team that beat England in that Euro 2024 final last July, says he is looking forward to a break — a Disney-themed cruise with his young family and a chance to switch off and 'not think about football'. But he is not among those who have dismissed the Club World Cup as a Mickey Mouse competition. Sunday brings the serious business of a final against a Paris Saint-Germain team widely regarded as the best in the world right now. He and his Chelsea team-mates would not want it any other way. The winners on Sunday will be the first world champions of the tournament's new era. 'We know that if we win it, we have the badge on the shirt for a couple of years,' Cucurella told a small group of reporters at the team hotel this week. 'I know it's difficult after a long season — the (kick-off) times that we play are a bit difficult because it's very hot — but this is the first time they've done this competition so we can be the first team to win it. That would be amazing.' It would also represent a dramatic turnaround for Chelsea and for Cucurella. For some time after his initial £56million ($75.6m) transfer from Brighton & Hove Albion in August 2022, he was cast and maligned as a symbol of the club's excesses in the transfer market. It was a turbulent period reflected by a huge turnover of players and coaches — from Thomas Tuchel to Graham Potter to Frank Lampard (on an interim basis) to Mauricio Pochettino to Enzo Maresca — but one that Cucurella feels they have left firmly behind them. Cucurella spoke candidly about the adversity he suffered along the way. The way he describes it, the first 18 months sound joyless — partly 'because the team maybe didn't have an identity or didn't have a clear way to play' but also because of the pressure that grew with every poor result. Advertisement 'I struggled a little,' he said. 'In the first months, I was like, 'Oh f***ing hell… .' I enjoyed it more at other clubs because when you win, you're happy all week and the feeling is very different: you win, you're very happy; you draw, it's another point, don't get relegated. But when you come here you feel like you need to win every game. The first games (at Chelsea) I don't feel like I enjoyed. You win? It's your job and you don't celebrate. It's difficult to feel this pressure.' He looks back on an enforced lay-off with an ankle injury, around the mid-point of the 2023-24 campaign, as a blessing in disguise. It gave him an opportunity to rest, reflect, clear his head and adjust mentally to a club where he had known only turmoil to that point. 'It was a bad moment, very tough for me,' he says. 'But when I was injured, I was three months out and had a lot of time to think more about myself, what's good for me and what I need to work on. The most important thing, it's difficult, but it's to not lose confidence. I'm the same player I was in my first years (at Chelsea) but now I have more confidence in myself. I trust my quality. It can be difficult to understand that when you play a good game, you're not the best — and when you play a bad game, you're not the worst. You always need to try to stay in the same line. It's an important thing to learn in the big clubs. 'I started to enjoy my journey here after my injury. In my first (second) game back, when I played against Leicester (in the FA Cup), I scored. Then that evening, the national team called me because they had an injured left-back. Everything moved forward. In the summer I played the Euros, then we won the Euros and I got a lot of confidence from that. I came here in the summer and everything was better.' Cucurella feels the turnaround began towards the end of that 2023-24 season, under Pochettino, but that things have improved further since Maresca took over. 'The manager arrived with a lot of energy and good ideas and helped me a lot,' he says. 'We had a good season. It's true that for a couple of months we lost a bit of energy and lost some confidence but in general we achieved everything we wanted: we wanted Champions League (qualification) and we did it; we won the Conference League and this is another step for us.' Advertisement At 26 he is already a European champion with Spain. He has the opportunity to become a world champion — not just with Spain again next summer but with Chelsea. From being derided in some quarters after that big-money move, he has become one of the most admired left-backs in the game, a whole-hearted, rigorous defender who makes key contributions going forward. Even so, Sunday's final looks like a step up. In wide areas, PSG have some of the most dangerous players in world football — not just Bradley Barcola, Desire Doue, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, or indeed Lee Kang-in or Ibrahim Mbaye off the bench, but also Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes charging forward from full-back. Some of their performances since the turn of the year, notably in the 5-0 thrashing of Inter in the Champions League final and the 4-0 defeat of Real Madrid in the Club World Cup semi-final on Wednesday, have been irresistible. Cucurella was asked whether he feels PSG are a class above every other team in the world right now. 'I think so,' he said. 'They have shown themselves as this sort of team all season. They have a lot of good players. They play good football. But I think a final is a final and we deserve to be there against a tough team. This is an opportunity to show we have a good team, we have a profile for big things and hopefully we can win.' He looked back on Chelsea's Club World Cup experience. 'We suffered a lot because we lost against Flamengo and a lot of people criticised us,' he said. 'The Benfica game (in the round of 16) with the storm and the crazy minutes after that. But we stuck together and we knew that if we stuck to our plan, we would get better. We deserve to stay here. We (Chelsea and PSG) have shown we are the two best teams in the competition.' The tournament has had its critics, but Cucurella says it has surpassed his expectations, which it appears were not exactly sky-high. 'I think the experience was good, to be fair,' he says. 'I think I expected worse. If you get to the final, you feel better. If you get here and you lose in the knockouts or the first round, that's tough because you feel, 'Oh, I lose my holiday, I lose my time'. But yeah, I think it can be a good experience. 'It's true that it's the first time and maybe they need to adjust some things, small details. But I think in general, I enjoy it a lot. We have the opportunity to play here in America in a big competition against teams that normally you don't play against, other than friendlies. We had the chance to go out and know the city. For me it's a very good experience.' The idea has been floated in FIFA circles that the Club World Cup could be expanded further, to 48 teams, or become a biennial tournament — a suggestion FIFA president Gianni Infantino did not dismiss when The Athletic asked him about the possibility at a media event in New York on Saturday morning. Advertisement Would a Club World Cup every two years be too much? 'Maybe yes,' Cucurella said. 'I think every four years is OK, in my opinion, because it's not too repetitive or too boring. I understand that if people watch games for 12 months, then you don't enjoy it. Imagine if the World Cup was played every summer. It isn't (wouldn't be) the same. The World Cup is once every four years and people expect this. If they get some time off or some rest, I think people enjoy more of the games.' But it probably says something about Chelsea's journey over the course of this season, as much as about the Club World Cup, that Cucurella and his team-mates are bounding into Sunday's final with a spring in their step — certainly when you compare it to their mood and their body language in the darkness of the winter months. Just one more game and a chance to make history and then a brief opportunity to rest and recharge before the madness starts up again just a few weeks later.
