List of All Articles with Tag 'al'

The semifinals of the 2023 U.S. Open Cup are set with four MLS teams remaining.

As the PGA’s Canadian Open tournament kicked off, the talk wasn’t about the playing conditions, the $9 million

The Michigan football schedule for 2024 and 2025 was officially released with the Wolverines facing a gauntlet in the new Big Ten.The new Big Ten schedule with USC and UCLA in the fold required some big changes from the conference.Out are divisions. In are protected rivals and a flex schedul...

West Ham enjoyed a heroes’ welcome as fans lined the streets of east London to celebrate their Europa Conference League glory. The Hammers won their first major trophy since the 1980 FA Cup, and a first European title since 1965, when they beat Italian side Fiorentina 2-1 in Prague on Wednesday night. And their jubilant supporters, decked out in the famous claret and blue on a warm and sunny evening in the capital, packed the pavements as the Hammers paraded the silverware on an open-top bus. The squad’s journey started at the site of their former home at Upton Park and finished at Stratford Town Hall, where they enjoyed a reception. Only West Ham fans of a certain age will ever have seen their side celebrate success like this, with a similar parade being held after that 1965 European Cup Winners’ Cup victory, where the likes of Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters got the taste of winning trophies. But the younger generation made the most of it, climbing on lamp posts and bus stops to get the best vantage point of their heroes while also letting off flares. David Moyes may have joined Ron Greenwood and John Lyall in earning immortality as managers to win a major trophy with the Hammers but he initially endured a lessened role on the bus, taking pictures of his players as they posed together. But he was soon joining in with the celebrations, dancing and jigging with the trophy on his head. Lifting the trophy appears to be a fitting way for captain Declan Rice to bow out, with chairman David Sullivan confirming the England international will be allowed to leave the club this summer, with a bidding war expected to commence soon. Rice was emotional on top of the bus, admitting it does not feel “real”. “This is absolutely incredible, when you’re a kid and you love football as much as I do, and the lads do, you see teams having trophy parades,” he said. “I was once a kid watching teams do trophy parades and now to be doing one and captaining the side is just so, so special, I can’t even put into words. “We knew it would be exciting and the fans would come out, I am just trying to take it all in, we don’t get to experience this ever. These moments don’t come around very often. “I’ve seen top captains over the years lift trophies and it was my time at West Ham to lift the trophy. It doesn’t really feel real. “At 24, captain of West Ham lifting a trophy in a European competition, I don’t think it is going to hit me for a while, but I am going to enjoy it and be as happy for as long as possible. “Bobby Moore, Billy Bonds, I am seeing messages that I am now in that category, I don’t really know what to say. Bizarre.” Moyes spent much of the season under pressure following a disappointing Premier League campaign, but Rice believes he is now the club’s best-ever manager. The England midfielder added on Sky Sports News: “I think he goes down as the best manager West Ham have ever had. The circumstances, when he first came in, kept us twice, European competition, we finished fifth, sixth, a semi-final (Europa League) and now we’ve won this, he deserves all the credit he gets. “He’s a top man and as you can see he is buzzing.” Jarrod Bowen was West Ham’s hero in the final as he scored a 90th-minute winner, capping off a remarkable turnaround in his career having been playing at non-league Hereford nine years ago after being rejected as a youngster by Aston Villa. “I love the game and these moments make it all worth it, the rejections and not going the way you want it,” he said. “You fast forward 10 years and you are on an open-top bus parade for winning a European trophy so from where I have come, my mum was crying on the phone, my dad was there. “It is a bit surreal to say I have won a European trophy from where I have come from. I love it.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Jonny Evans back in Northern Ireland squad for Euro 2024 qualifiers Karolina Muchova stuns Aryna Sabalenka to set up final showdown with Iga Swiatek Erling Haaland on a mission to realise Champions League dream with Man City

Kyle Walker explains what will put Man City into the bracket as Man Utd, despite recent domestic dominance.

The Los Angeles Angels' chances of keeping Shohei Ohtani past this season are slim to none according to one MLB insider.The MLB hasn't seen a star of Shohei Ohtani's stature and caliber in a long time. Ohtani's contract with the Los Angeles Angels expires at the end of the se...

Jonny Evans is back in the Northern Ireland squad for next week’s Euro 2024 qualifiers but Michael O’Neill will once again be relying on youth with a long list of senior players still injured. Evans – out of contract at relegated Leicester this summer – was unable to add to his 100 caps in March when he was forced to pull out of O’Neill’s first games back in charge of the national team due to a hamstring injury, but is in a 28-man squad to play Denmark away and Kazakhstan at home. But with Steven Davis, Stuart Dallas, Corry Evans, Liam Boyce, Josh Magennis, Conor Washington and Shane Ferguson all still sidelined, O’Neill has included five uncapped players, with 15 of the 28 having fewer than 10 caps. Nottingham Forest defender Aaron Donnelly, West Ham teenager Callum Marshall and Larne forward Lee Bonis have all received their first call-ups, with the uncapped Sean Goss and Eoin Toal again included after not featuring in March’s fixtures. Blackpool striker Shayne Lavery returns after a hamstring injury kept him out of the last squad, although there will be a question over his fitness levels as he has managed only one appearance, as a substitute away to Norwich on the final day, since being sidelined in February. There is also a return for Ethan Galbraith, who earned the last of his two international caps back in 2020. The 22-year-old is a free agent this summer after leaving Manchester United, having spent last season on loan at Salford. O’Neill has been working with several players from both the senior ranks and the under-21s at a series of training camps in recent weeks, aiming to keep his players sharp following the end of their domestic campaigns. Northern Ireland travel to Copenhagen to face Denmark on Friday June 16 before taking on Kazakhstan at Windsor Park the following Monday. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

The quarterback position in the National Football League has changed a lot in recent years. There are a few star signal-callers that were well ahead of the curve.You see this statistic a lot more now. Even though a player doesn’t get credit for a touchdown unless he actually scores it, qua...

Erling Haaland is well aware he was brought to Manchester City to help them win the Champions League. City are just one victory away from claiming the prize they covet most but has eluded them time after time with several near misses in recent years. Haaland has been key to their latest charge to the final, where they face Inter Milan in Istanbul on Saturday, after a prolific first season at the Etihad Stadium. The Norwegian has plundered 52 goals in all competitions since City identified him as the potential final piece in their jigsaw last year and paid £51million to recruit him from Borussia Dortmund. “The Premier League, they won it two times in a row before I came here,” said Haaland. “So they know how to win the Premier League. “The only thing they miss now is the Champions League. You can think and read between the words and the lines – I have been coming here for a reason.” Haaland scored a record 36 Premier League goals as he helped City make it three titles in a row. They followed up that success by winning the FA Cup last weekend. Now City are bidding to join rivals Manchester United in the history books by becoming only the second side to win the treble. I have been dreaming and thinking of it my whole life... as long as I can remember Erling Haaland on winning the Champions League Doing so would see Haaland fulfil a long-held dream of winning the Champions League. “I have been dreaming and thinking of it my whole life,” said the 22-year-old. “It has been my dream as long as I can remember, so a long time. “Of course I have been thinking of this. There is one game left we have to perform at our best in. We have been doing it now for so many games in a row. It’s about keeping going.” Such is Haaland’s love of the Champions League, that he even used to play the competition’s theme music in his car during his younger days. “Yes, there is a video of me doing that,” he said. “You can search it up. It’s true.” Haaland feels his game has improved at City under the guidance of Pep Guardiola – someone he describes as a “detail freak” – but is convinced there is more to come. He said: “I am really enjoying every single day with him, with the intense Pep. I like it. “I am still young, I can improve a lot and I am at the perfect place to work with the best coach and players in the world.”

The MLB standings ordered by average team attendance shows us which fanbases are showing up and which fanbases are checked out.The 2023 MLB season is roughly one-third of the way complete. We have passed the point of "it's early" and arrived at every fandom's mid-year inflect...

Newcastle are considering a number of players relegated from the Premier League as they plan to strengthen Eddie Howe's squad for a Champions League return.

Long before the Barnsley Beckenbauer was reinvented as the Barnsley Busquets, he was the Barnsley benchwarmer. John Stones enters the Champions League final as a revelation, the man whose career has progressed in an unexpected way by moving forward: literally, given that the centre-back doubles up as a midfielder now. Rewind three years, however, and the most stylish English central defender of his generation had adopted a different, unwanted status: of the substitute, and not even the resident super-sub. When Manchester City exited the Champions League in 2020, he had a watching brief, unused as they were beaten by Lyon. Even that was perhaps not the worst element. Even as Pep Guardiola picked an unusually defensive team against the side who finished seventh in Ligue 1, Stones was not one of his three centre-backs. Eric Garcia was, though he was a teenage rookie. Fernandinho was, though he was a 35-year-old midfielder. Aymeric Laporte was, though he had spent much of the season injured. The backdrop may have been still more damning for Stones: Vincent Kompany had left the previous summer and, after City failed to buy Harry Maguire, the captain had not been replaced. Stones should have been the main man; instead he was the spare man, starting just 12 league games, only featuring for 16 minutes of City’s final five matches in all competitions, fifth in line, with Nicolas Otamendi probably ahead of him too. “It was probably one of the hardest times in my career,” Stones said. “Any game that you don’t play, or feel maybe that you should be playing, every player feels like that when they don’t play, especially here because we’ve got an incredible team, it’s always difficult.” The summer of 2020 felt a crossroads in Stones’ career. After erring by not recruiting a centre-back the previous year, Pep Guardiola bought two, in Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake. The competition for places increased. Perhaps that could have been that for Stones at City; he may have been remembered as a gifted player who fleetingly showed his potential, whose goal-line clearance against Liverpool helped decide the 2019 title race, but who was cast aside in Guardiola’s perpetual quest for improvement. But Stones was adamant he would not be making way. “No, I never thought about that,” he said. “I think as soon as you accept that or have that mindset then you have killed yourself. So I always wanted to stay, I have stayed and I absolutely love it. “I wanted to prove to myself, I didn’t say to anyone, ‘It was because I want to prove to you’. I think, if anything, you have to prove to yourself first and foremost that you deserve to be here, you are good enough to be here, and what you bring to the team. Everyone’s so unique here and I feel that’s why we’ve been so successful.” For Stones, the start of his revival was to look in the mirror. “I literally went back to firstly looking at myself, being super-critical of myself and what I could do better on the football pitch, and then looking into every fine detail, down to food, what food, training, what training, what extras,” he added. “That’s come down to doing stuff here and then going home and doing work, even late at night, or straight after the training and all these kinds of specific things, finding these small margins, put them all together to kind of break where I was at after coming back to playing. It was a big learning curve for me and maybe who I am today.” If there were two phases to his return to prominence, the first was to feature more frequently in his preferred position. He leapfrogged Garcia and Fernandinho in the queue for places. Yet this year has brought another aspect, with an evolution that has come at Laporte’s expense. He has proved City’s renaissance man, taking his assurance in possession – he has a pass completion rate of over 90 percent in both the Premier League and the Champions League in each of his seven seasons in Manchester – to a role further up the pitch. He was long seen as a centre-back with a midfielder’s skillset. It is another thing to spend much of each match in midfield. “People have always said from a young age that they can see me playing in there,” Stones reflected. “I did and still do love playing as a centre-half and I’ve absolutely loved this role as well. I think I have showed myself that I’m able to do it. Maybe I am showing some attributes that I didn’t know that I had, but the manager has seen in me.” He has become the midfield metronome who still spends part of his time marking strikers. He partners both Rodri and Dias whereas three years ago, when City’s Champions League campaign concluded, he was alongside Adrian Bernabe, Tommy Doyle and Claudio Bravo among the unneeded replacements. A transformation in his fortunes has included a makeover as a player. The journey, from bench to defence to midfield, could make the eventual achievement even better. Stones said: “If I hopefully look back after Saturday, with a winner’s medal, it will be super-sweet.” Read More How to cure ‘City-itis’? Pep Guardiola has new template to end Champions League woe Kyle Walker recalls ‘tough’ memory and reveals three teams Man City want to emulate The fresh perspective driving Kevin De Bruyne to Champions League glory John Stones relishing key role as Manchester City chase treble glory Injury concerns for Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish ahead of FA Cup final Pep Guardiola convinced Man City can make most of opportunity to win treble