Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i World Soccer

Forget Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup, forget the try-to-please-all finals in 2030, the focus is now firmly on one year hence in Canada, Mexico and Donald Trump’s United States. No one quite knows what to expect. This is not, initially, because of the unpredictable president but because of the scale of the event. CONCACAF has found itself the meat in a sandwich of international and regional football politics and politics in general The finals will feature 48 teams, which is not far short of a quarter of FIFA’s membership, demanding a massive swirling movement of not merely teams, officials and media but thousands of fans. Canada and Mexico, with only a comparative handful of early-stage matches, should not be too demanding. The US, however, is another matter. When the US…

“Finally, the court has dispensed justice, and for me, my family and my friends this is a big thing. I’m full of emotion right now” Ex-FIFA president Sepp Blatter speaks out after both he and former UEFA president Michel Platini were cleared of corruption by a Swiss court 4 Teams that have secured their places at the 2026 World Cup finals alongside the three North American co-hosts: Japan, Iran, New Zealand and Argentina. $1bn Total prize money that will be on offer at the expanded 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, including up to $125 million for the winners. 31 Confirmed teams at this summer’s Club World Cup after Mexican side Leon were removed by FIFA for failing to meet tournament criteria on multi-club ownership. Both they and fellow CWC qualifiers…

Which team currently has the upper hand in the title race? “Hay Liga.” That’s the phrase that gets bandied around Spanish football when the title race is heating up. And this season, without doubt, hay Liga: ahead of March’s international break, the big three – Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid – were all in with a chance of the title. Barca started life under Hansi Flick extremely well, winning11 of their first 12 league matches to open upaninepoint lead at the top of the table. But a slump in form from November to January, when they won just one in eight league matches, allowed the chasing pack to catch up. They’ve already played Atleti twice – including their stunning 4-2 comeback win at the Metropolitano just before the international…

Can anyone close the gap to Paris Saint-Germain? If anything, the gap has got wider. Progression in the Champions League at the expense of Liverpool earned PSG European acclaim, as Virgil van Dijk described Luis Enrique’s side as the best he has faced this season, and domestically they are peerless. “For me, in Ligue 1 today, there is PSG and then there are the others,” said Lille manager Bruno Genesio. “They are on a different planet to the17 other teams in the league.” Since QSI’s takeover of PSG back in 2011, there has been a vacuum of sustained competition. Montpellier, Monaco and Lille (twice) have all won Ligue1 titles in that time, but no team has managed to consistently push PSG in recent years. There is a clamour in France…

AUSTRALIA Preston Lions roaring again On the approach to the Genis Steel Stadium on a match day, you can almost smell the ground before you see it. The smoke from the open-air barbecues churning out thousands of Macedonian-style kebapi rolls wafts over the stands of the compact ground long before kick-off. Long renowned as one of Melbourne’s most historic clubs, Preston Lions are enjoying something of a revival as they welcome arch-rivals South Melbourne to the northern suburb of Reservoir on a cool March night. By the time the final whistle blows, the Preston supporters among the heaving crowd of 9,036 will be celebrating their first win over their fiercest rivals since1987. Almost 16 years after they were first relegated from the top tier of Victorian football, the club founded…

MCO FILES Club: Juve Stabia Owners: Brera Holdings (38.46 per cent) MCO connections: Brera Holdings also owns Italian amateur club Brera FC, a stake in Black Bulls in Mozambique and Ilch FC in Mongolia, and 90 per cent of FK Brera Strumica in North Macedonia. Player connections: Two players are expected to move from Africa to FK Brera Strumica this summer, providing visas can be arranged. Italy is fertile ground for investors looking to build up multi-club portfolios. Only three countries – the United States, England and Spain – have more clubs in MCO than Italy, where 26 sides have owners or shareholders with control or significant holdings in other teams. More than half of Serie A’s clubs are majority foreign-owned, including nine by North American investors. Now, Juve Stabia,…

Preview With six consecutive Brazilian winners, four of which came in all-Brazilian finals, Brazil’s domination of the Copa Libertadores is almost total. The growing financial gap to the rest of the continent, plus the fact that they have seven teams in this season’s competition (Argentina has six clubs in the field of 32, everyone else has two or three), means that the 2025 title is almost certain to stay in Brazil. But there are reasons to believe that the playing field might be more level this year. One reason is the Club World Cup, which creates an extra challenge for reigning champions Botafogo, plus Flamengo and Palmeiras, the big hitters over the past few years. While the others are resting, the big three Brazilians will be playing a competitive tournament…

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SHADES OF GREEN By Chris Lee (Pitch Publishing, £14.99) Join football writer Chris Lee on a journey of discovery to learn about one of the world’s oldest soccer cultures. Chris travels around Ireland in search of historical stadiums, lost clubs, vibrant fan cultures, symbolic murals and more. From the tifos of Dublin’s oldest derby to George Best’s living room, Chris talks to fans, historians and academics to find out more about the Irish football story. Along the way, he uncovers a complex tale of politics, identity and division, but also one of hope, reconciliation and glory. TRAILBLAZERS By Matthew Oldroyd (Pitch Publishing, £25) Trailblazers: The Groundbreaking History of Nottingham Forest Football Club explores the remarkable pioneering traditions and unique heritage of the Garibaldi Reds, where, in times of peril or…

SEASON RANKINGS Cumulative votes through the season GOALKEEPERS Jan Oblak (Atletico Madrid) 12 Alisson (Liverpool) 7 David Raya (Arsenal) 5 Matz Sels (Nottingham Forest) 4 Yann Sommer (Internazionale) 4 Thibaut Courtois (Real Madrid) 3 Michele Di Gregorio (Juventus) 3 Caoimhin Kelleher (Liverpool) 3 Emiliano Martinez (Aston Villa) 3 Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich) 3 David De Gea (Fiorentina) 2 Peter Gulacsi (RB Leipzig) 2 Franco Israel (Sporting) 2 Alex Meret (Napoli) 2 Inaki Pena (Barcelona) 2 Noah Atubolu (Freiburg) 1 Marco Carnesecchi (Atalanta) 1 Lucas Chevalier (Lille) 1 Kepa Arrizabalaga (Bournemouth) 1 Mike Maignan (Milan) 1 Simon Mignolet (Club Brugge) 1 Vanja Milinkovic-Savic (Torino) 1 Kevin Trapp (Eintracht Frankfurt) 1 Michael Zetterer (Werder Bremen) 1 DEFENDERS Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool) 30 Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool) 20 Federico Dimarco (Internazionale) 13 Giovanni Di…

How exciting is the Serie A title race this season? Even if the same old face, reigning champions Internazionale, are out in front as we run into the final furlong of the 2024-25 Serie A title race, do not think for one minute that this has been a predictable and dull season. For a start, since August, no fewer than six different teams – Atalanta, Inter, Juventus, Napoli, Torino and Udinese – have, at different times, led the race. At the heart of the contest has been a ding-dong battle involving Inter, Napoli and Atalanta. Previewing this year’s title contest last summer, your correspondent was one of many commentators who suggested that Inter remained the strongest side in the land. For a start, they retained all the key elements in…

Ollie Watkins’ rise to the top of football has been unorthodox to say the least. Now playing, and scoring, in the Champions League for Aston Villa, after firing England to the final of Euro 2024, it is hard to believe that there were times when he had to fight for recognition. His journey up the English football pyramid to the pinnacle saw him shine as a youngster on the fields of Devon, before rising up the ranks via Exeter City, Weston-Super-Mare, Brentford and Villa. There was no fast-tracking for Watkins. At times, the idea of scoring a last-minute winner for his country against the Netherlands in the semi-finals of a major tournament would have been barely believable. He wasn’t a teenage sensation like a number of his international compatriots. But…

SAUDI ARABIA Building asuper club in the desert With the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Newcastle United have the richest ownership group in world football, trumping the likes of Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City. Yet thousands of miles away, in the remote northwest of Saudi Arabia, Neom SC can claim to match the Tyneside club. They may not have catchy slogans like “Dream Bigger”, but their ambitions match those of Europe’s giants. In the desert, the Saudis want to build a super club. In June 2023, PIF took control of Saudi Arabia’s four marquee clubs, nationalising Al Nassr, Al Hilal, Al Ittihad and Al Ahli. It was all part of an overhaul and major shake-up of Saudi Arabian football. The press release also detailed that seconddivision club Al Suqoor would be…

What attracted you to Juve Stabia? Every team in Serie B can beat every team in MLS, but by the time you’ve paid the franchise fee it’s $600m for an MLS team – and that’s not affordable. We looked at eight teams in Italy and got term sheets from four before we decided on Juve Stabia and met some strange people on the way. I like working with people who succeed with scarcity rather than abundance. That’s what appealed to me about Juve Stabia: backing the people who get things done. Brera is the first multi-club ownership group in the world to float on a stock market. How did that happen? It was an interesting proposal and I’ve taken 60 companies onto Nasdaq through my job at Boustead Securities. What…

2024-25 TEAMS EKSTRAKLASA – A BRIEF HISTORY With a national league first founded in1927, Poland is approaching the100th anniversary of top-flight football in the country. Unlike other leagues across Europe, the Ekstraklasa title has been divided fairly equally among a number of clubs; in the last six years, there have been five different winners, including three first-time champions – Jagiellonia Bialystok, Rakow Czestochowa and Piast Gliwice. THE FORMAT These days, the format of the Ekstraklasa is straightforward:18 clubs play each other home and away, with the top team named champions and the bottom three relegated. This is the fourth season since the number of teams was increased from16, and the fifth since the previous format of splitting the league in half (into championship and relegation rounds) for the final seven…

Canada has always had a successful women’s national team, so how will a domestic league improve the country’s football? The most important thing a pro league is going to do is ensure we keep performing at that level. Women’s football has really grown through national team investment. Canada did that well in the first few decades of the women’s game and we’ve been able to win Olympic medals, but the game is becoming more and more developed. All the investment in the last few years is going into building strong professional leagues. This means there are more pathways to develop top talent. We’ve been a top ten nation for years, yet we were only one of two countries in the last Women’s World Cup that didn’t have a league –…

The eventual winners of the 2025 Copa Sudamericana may not even be present in the draw for the group phase. That is because in July the field is augmented by eight teams from the Libertadores – those who finish third in their groups – who will playoff against the Sudamericana group runners-up for a place in the last 16. In 2020 and 2022 the trophy ended up in the hands of teams who had fallen out of the Libertadores, and this, obviously, makes the Sudamericana difficult to predict at this stage. One general consideration can be made. While the Libertadores is held in a Brazilian grip, the Sudamericana has given the rest of the continent a chance. Since the current format was introduced in 2017, Athletico Paranaense are the only…

Senegal were the winners of the Under-17 Africa Cup of Nations two years ago and, with the majority of that squad still intact, they will be heavily fancied for success at this year’s Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations finals, which are being hosted in nearby Ivory Coast from April 26 to May 18. The Young Lions of Teranga are also the defending champions from the 2023 Under-20 Cup of Nations in Egypt, but that generation has now moved on. Still, the West African nation keeps churning out promising youth talent, in no small measure due to the multitude of youth academies dotted across the country, and the Under-17 champions of two years ago have moved up seamlessly to the older age category. Serigne Saliou Dia has been appointed Senegal’s new…

2026 WORLD CUP QUALIFYING AFRICA Section • 9 direct slots available, plus 1 play-off slot Group A Mar 20 – Paynesville Sierra Leone 3 (Bundu19, Mu. Kamara 61, I. Turay 90+6) Guinea-Bissau1 (Monteiro 68) Mar 21 – El Jadida Burkina Faso 4 (Tiendrebeogo12, B. Traore 33, Zougrana 47, L. Traore 67) Djibouti1 (Akinbinu 88 pen) Mar 21 – Casablanca Ethiopia 0 Egypt 2 (Salah 31, Zizo 40) Mar 24 – Bissau Guinea-Bissau1 (Banjaqui 36) Burkina Faso 2 (L. Traore 6, 73) Mar 24 – ElJadida Ethiopia 6(Desta19, 52, 70 pen, Nassir 34, 37, 58 pen) Djibouti1 (Akinbinu 51) Mar 25 – Cairo Egypt1 (Zizo 45+2) Sierra Leone 0 Group B Mar 21 – Kinshasa DR Congo1 (Bongonda 45+3) South Sudan 0 Mar 22 – Lome Togo 2 (Klidje 4, Denkey…

JAPANESE BENCH-WARMER MAKES RARE OUTING Back-up goalkeepers can often go quite some time without making an appearance, but few have had to wait as long for a taste of action as Kawasaki Frontale shot-stopper Shunsuke Ando. The 34-year-old, who had not played a single minute of competitive football since 2016, was given the nod for the AFC Champions League Elite clash with the Central Coast Mariners. He showed no signs of rustiness, keeping a clean sheet in a 2-0 win that secured second place for Kawasaki in the East region league phase of Asia’s premier club competition. At the time of writing, Ando had not played again since, and looks unlikely to add to his meagre career tally of 25 appearances in16 years any time soon. One might expect the…

“Pressure is a privilege. Run to it.” Anthony Gordon’s mission statement will be music to the ears of Thomas Tuchel, who wants England to embrace pressure and also play with more drive out wide. Tuchel desires wingers taking on full-backs, going outside them, rather than turning inside into traffic. One of the most obvious positives of Tuchel’s start as England’s head coach has been his commitment to width. The obsession with possession and overloaded midfields has gripped English football in the Pep Guardiola era. Tuchel still likes his full-backs to step into midfield, as debutant Myles Lewis-Skelly did from left-back against Albania and Latvia in the World Cup qualifiers in March, which leads to more responsibility on the wingers to go it alone. It leads to Gordon and Bukayo Saka…

There has been something very old-fashioned about this Premier League season. This is how football used to be before the Premier League era. By the time Easter approached, everybody was exhausted. Teams would stagger over the line in title run-ins. To challenge on multiple fronts was regarded as so outlandish that when Don Revie spoke of going for what he called “the Triple”, it seemed like monstrous hubris. And, indeed, Leeds did regularly run out of gas late on in seasons, which is why their trophy haul was never as great as it perhaps should have been. Once Newcastle beat Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, the only English club with a realistic chance of winning more than one trophy was Aston Villa, who were in the quarter-finals of both…

“I remember one interview I said I would like one day to come back to Tottenham. I am in the USA, so I am not going to talk about that now, but what I said then I still, after six years or five years, feel in my heart” Mauricio Pochettino hints, in an interview with Sky Sports, that he would like to manage Spurs again one day TRANSFERS LOANS SACKINGS HIRINGS SWITCHES RETIREMENTS Geovany QUENDA The latest addition to Chelsea, the 17-year-old winger will join from Sporting for £44m next summer, while his team-mate Dario Essugo will join this summer for £18.5m. Igor TUDOR The former Juventus defender returned to manage his old club until the end of the season after the sacking of Thiago Motta (more on page 29).…

How have Liverpool adjusted so seamlessly to life after Klopp? Few foresaw Arne Slot succeeding the charismatic Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool so seamlessly in the league. Only £10 million spent, too, and that on a back-up forward in Federico Chiesa. Slot tightened the defence, made the midfield more controlled, improved players like Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai and Cody Gakpo, and built a mood and platform that brought the best out of Mohamed Salah. Slot is also decisive, setting the tone with his half-time hooking ofJarell Quansah in Liverpool’s first game of the season. He has made mistakes, like not respecting the FA Cup sufficiently and not resting players against bottom-placed Southampton at Anfield before facing the epic challenge of PSG in the Champions League and Newcastle in the EFL Cup…

Has Borussia Dortmund’s new head coach turned things around? Dortmund’s Jekyll and Hyde tendencies over the past two seasons, competitive in the Champions League while fading to grey in the Bundesliga, continues to have everyone connected with the Ruhr giants scratching their heads. After a far from impressive fifth-place finish last term, only scraping into the Champions League qualifying spots, the Schwarz-Gelben have fared even worse in the current Bundesliga campaign. After losing no fewer than11 of their first 26 fixtures, they were floundering in midtable and displaying all manner of mental, physical and collective deficiencies. Former midfielder Nuri Sahin, brought in as head coach last summer, never had the requisite charisma and experience to make an impact. When the axe fell in January, the Black-and-Yellows turned to the former…

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Liverpool’s historic 2005 UEFA Champions League triumph, Jerzy Dudek reminisces about his role in the final, while we also have Q&As with in-form Italy and Fiorentina striker Moise Kean and new Sierra Leone coach Mohamed Kallon. Plus, don’t miss our 2025 Oceania Champions League review, coach profile of Bodo/Glimt’s Kjetil Knutsen, and dispatches from Sri Lanka – 2025 SAFF Championship hosts – Croatia, Azerbaijan and Greenland. Print £5.99 Digital £4.99 ORDER NOW shop.kelsey.co.uk/single-issue/world-soccer-magazine Or Call: 01959 543 747 You may have missed… January 2025 February 2025 March 2025 April 2025 SAVE 10% when you spend £25 or more VOUCHERCODE: WSCSHOP10 shop.kelsey.co.uk/WSCBK +44 (0) 1959 543 747 Offers subject to availability. Prices for goods delivered to destinations outside of the UK may be higher Also…

Over the past decade, Switzerland have become something of a mainstay at major women’s tournaments, missing just the 2019 World Cup since 2015. This year the nation takes centre stage by hosting the 2025 European Championship, looking to emulate the two previous hosts, England and the Netherlands, who both went on to lift the trophy. For a nation ranked 23rd in the world, which has failed to qualify from the group stage in its two previous Euros appearances, that may be a step too far. But this tournament is all about providing a shot in the arm for a country that’s aiming to go from one that qualifies for tournaments to one that can compete in the latter stages. To say they’re trying would be an understatement. Last year, the…

When Project 8, the plan for a first professional women’s soccer league in Canada, was launched in 2022 the national team were Olympic champions. The timing seemed perfect. Two years on, with the Northern Super League’s (NSL) name announced, founding clubs being revealed and broadcast deals struck, the national team were dethroned at the Paris Games amid the drone-spy scandal that cost coach Bev Priestman her job. The team were docked six points, Canada Soccer fined 200,000 Swiss francs, and the sport’s image tarnished. The wave of enthusiasm the competition had hoped to launch on appeared to have beached. Then Donald Trump was elected president south of the 49th parallel, declared a tariff war, and suggested Canada should become the “51st state”. A big surge in Canadian patriotism has resulted,…

You’ve had a really interesting journey to get to Marseille, moving to Germany aged 16 and then back to Canada before eventually making it to one of the big European leagues via Greece and Sweden. Are you more grateful for the position you are in because of this path? I’m definitely grateful every day not only to just be playing for Marseille, but to be able to play football for a living. I know my career path is not a normal one, not one that you hear every day – especially to reach this level. It’s something that I’m definitely proud of, to say that I’ve been able to make it this far in my career from where I started. But I want to continue pushing. I honestly don’t think…

Update The AFC Champions League Elite reaches the quarter-final stage on April 25 with the three Saudi Arabian teams still the ones to beat, even more so now that all the games from now until the May 3 final take place in their country. Even if Al Hilal, Al Nassr and Al Ahli were set to face traditional home-and-away clashes, they would be favourites. But now, as the trio look forward toonelegged games in the city of Jeddah, an all-Saudi final is a distinct possibility. The draw for the last eight, which brings together teams from the west and east in Asia for the first time, is unlikely to be causing too much stress. Al Hilal will take on Gwangju FC. South Korean teams should never be underestimated – the…

With a population of 40,000 and less than a quarter holding a national passport, Monaco has never been a likely candidate to join UEFA. Alongside Vatican City, it is the only sovereign state in Europe without UEFA membership, with the Mediterranean principality represented by Ligue1 side AS Monaco, eight-times champions of France. Nevertheless, Monaco does also have a domestic competition: the Challenge Prince Rainier III, a corporate business league that will celebrate its 50th anniversary when the finals are staged at the Stade Louis II on May 6. The origins of the competition lay in an annual game between staff from the Palace and the Palais de Justice. In 1975, Prince Rainier III asked for the game to be expanded to a competition for company employees across Monaco. Thirty years…

EUROPE 2024-25 UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE Last 16 – 1st Leg Mar 4 – Brugge Club Brugge (Bel) 1 (De Cuyper12) Aston Villa (Eng) 3 (Bailey 3, Mechele 82 og, Asensio 88 pen) Mar 4 – Madrid Real Madrid (Spa) 2 (Rodrygo 4, Brahim 55) Atletico Madrid (Spa) 1 (Alvarez 32) Mar 4 – Eindhoven PSV (Ned) 1 (Lang 43 pen) Arsenal (Eng) 7 (Timber 18, Nwaneri 21, Merino 31, Odegaard 47, 73, Trossard 48, Calafiori 85) Mar 4 – Dortmund Borussia Dortmund (Ger) 1 (Adeyemi 22) Lille (Fra) 1 (Haraldsson 68) Mar 5 – Lisbon Benfica (Por) 0 Barcelona (Spa) 1 (Raphinha 61) Mar 5 – Munich Bayern Munich (Ger) 3 (Kane 9, 75 pen, Musiala 54) Bayer Leverkusen (Ger) 0 Mar 5 – Rotterdam Feyenoord (Ned) 0 Internazionale (Ita)…