Archive August 4, 2025

As Ireland’s preparations for the start of the Rugby World Cup come to an end, Ireland’s Neve Jones says there is “no ceiling” for her team.

In Pool C of the tournament in England, Scott Bemand’s team will face Japan, Spain, and New Zealand.

Jones, who was a member of the Irish side that lost to the Irish in the final World Cup in 2021, has urged her team to appear on the big stage as they attempt to escape the group stage.

“The coaching staff and players we’ve all bought into everything,” she told BBC Sport, “but we’ve been on an incredible journey, from coming last in the Six Nations two years ago to the World Cup.”

“We want to strive for excellence because we are all on the same page.” No ceiling is set for our performance, so it’s about coming in and giving it a try.

Since moving from Malone in 2022, Jones, who featured in Saturday’s 27-21 victory over Scotland, has won three medals at Gloucester-Hartpury.

After some difficult years playing for her country and seeing sustained success at club level, she is pleased that she has been able to enjoy a return to results with Ireland.

“I would have really good seasons at Gloucester, and then I’d come here and pull on the green jersey is something you’re proud to do,” she continued.

Fantasy football also debuts on Friday, August 15th, while the Premier League does.

The official Fantasy Premier League game features the BBC Sport League, but you can also sign up via this link by entering the code bbcfpl.

Can you beat BBC experts Alistair Bruce-Ball, Statman Dave, and Chris Sutton from BBC Sport’s FPL Podcast?

In the second week of January, he placed first in the world, finished 22 weeks in the top 15, 18 weeks in the top 10, and three times in the top three.

“I was anticipating it would be a special season, but I was waiting for it to all come to a crashing a bit,” says Max.

I took a two-week vacation in Japan with 3 a.m. deadlines, and I realized that my run would end there.

“But I ended up watching Footy on the plane!” At the end of the season, I had to delete X from my phone because it was so nerve-wracking.

Max avoided a lot of FPL content and concentrated on “making my own choices,” unlike many FPL managers.

He continues, “Everything I did last season was purely gut instinct.” I avoided YouTube and wasn’t on X for the majority of the season, trying to be conscious of doing my own thing and not being influenced by various sources.

You can get bogged down in statistics and overanalyse, according to a maths teacher who avoided statistics.

In the biggest US Athletics Championships upset, Sarah Calvert defeated Olympic silver medalist Laura Muir to claim the 1500-meter title.

The 24-year-old Livingston AC runner’s personal best is 15 seconds worse than her fellow Scot, who is also a Scot.

However, Calvert fought back from the outside to win the biggest race of her career just as Revee Walcott-Nolan and Erin Wallace appeared to be bursting through on the inside of the final straight.

She won in Birmingham a week after taking silver at the German Summer World University Games.

She told Scottish Athletics, “I thought the world juniors championship last weekend was a big breakthrough, but this is crazy.”

“It’s crazy. Never mind this year, I didn’t anticipate that to occur.

It turned into a slow, tactical race as the UK Championships doubled as the British trials for the World Championships in Tokyo next month.

With England’s Walcott-Nolan finishing third and Giffnock’s Wallace tying for fourth, Calvert’s winning time of 4:16.27 was eight seconds slower than her own personal best.

A quick, tactical race definitely plays into my hands, she continued.

After revealing his departure from Tottenham over the weekend, Son Heung-min is expected to join Los Angeles FC for around £20 million.

After ten years at Tottenham, the forward announced in a press conference on Saturday that he would leave this summer.

And the 33-year-old appears to be on the verge of signing for Major League Soccer (MLS), which could even be a record-breaking fee, possibly more than Atlanta United’s $22.5 million acquisition of Middlesbrough for Emmanuel Latte Lath in February.

Although the transfer’s final details are still being discussed, his move to LAFC is now regarded as contingent on the completion of all paperwork and a medical.

Son, who is contracted with Spurs until 2026, made his anticipated final appearance on Sunday in a 1-1 pre-season friendly against Newcastle in Seoul.

When he was substituted in the 65th minute, his Spurs team-mates and the opposing Newcastle players performed a guard of honor. Tottenham will now travel to Germany on Thursday for a pre-season match, where they will face Bayern Munich, and Harry Kane will have a chance to spend some time in his home country, South Korea.

Son made 454 appearances for Tottenham since joining from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015, scoring 173 goals.

It is prudent to watch closely to see if any signs of recovery are developing before making a judgment because Manchester United have been so underwhelming, erratic, and have talked so many good games without actually delivering.

Ruben Amorim is correct in this regard.

If United lose to Arsenal at Old Trafford in their Premier League opener on August 17, he knows his brutally honest assessment of United and his welcome openness in blatantly describing how he is trying to improve things will be useless.

He also is aware that United can provoke extreme reactions, and he acknowledged this after Sunday’s 2-2 draw against Everton in Atlanta established his team as the champions of the four-team Premier League Summer Series.

He claimed that this behavior was typical in our club.

They will say, “If you play well, they will say, “We play really well,” and it’s the same if it’s on the other side.”

After speaking to the press for four minutes, which was barely a sixth of the time he had spent with visiting UK journalists in Chicago on Friday, he decided to leave and watch his team’s non-starters, Joshua Zirkzee, Noussair Mazraoui, Andre Onana, and Lisandro Martinez, complete training on the Mercedes-Benz Stadium pitch.

Amorim’s coaching approach treats his players like adults, which is a significant component. Even though this is football, which is still a top division club, Sir Alex Ferguson’s day one player showed up for a European tour with all his house keys, locked the door, and had to fumble with the keys to the rest of his family inside, and had to squirmly ask another employee to go back and let them out.

A healthy dose of normality, which, as Amorim points out, comes with responsibility, was suggested by United players wandering around Chicago after training, either for a coffee, a bite to eat, or to browse through the extremely expensive shops that make up the “praise mile.”

When the players were wandering around the team hotel, they posed for numerous selfies and many fans asked for them, but no one objected. Ferguson well served by letting the dressing room run.

It has created a more tranquil setting. This contrasts with Erik ten Hag’s prescriptive treatment of late meetings that players receive.

That doesn’t mean Amorim’s world doesn’t have punishments.

The end of training requires having to pack away the training equipment in the small-sided games. And Amorim claimed that the group is aware of poor training performance in his revealing conversation on Friday, rather than just the individual being targeted for a quiet word.

There are also other subtleties. Knowing that Amorim will have his squad back together at Carrington on Wednesday before Saturday lunchtime’s friendly against Fiorentina, a change in time zone change should be less disruptive, training on day one was at 8am to allow a transition through a six-hour time zone swap.

Before the players arrived, Amorim was getting up even earlier to do his morning run and weights.

More intense gym work lasted for an hour during the training period, as well as watching game scenarios, which Amorim takes and club media are not permitted to record.

Instead of being risk-filled and sending out messages without permission, the information is kept to the essentials. It serves as the general framework that Amorim aims to develop. He believes that the players should have the wisdom to make their own decisions in crucial situations.

This implies that the pitches don’t perform all the important work. Set pieces and drills are performed by Amorim’s assistant Carlos Fernandes. The old practice of twice-sessions to exercise has been abandoned.

All of this appears to be good at first glance. After Amorim’s players returned for the start of the pre-season on July 7th, reports from inside the club confirmed that the sports science team were delighted with the results from the early training sessions.

They argued that this suggested that the players had adhered to a very strict and thorough fitness regimen to work on during their free time.

There were some commercial appearances for Manchester United, which they have since reduced to previous home matches.

No player involvement was a part of a delegation that addressed a crowd of Wall Street investment banks and US financiers in New York to try to pique interest in helping to fund the planned £2 billion new stadium project, making it potentially the most significant commercial event as far as the club was concerned.

Nothing significant has changed, and the fact that neither Coe nor Collette Roche, the company’s chief operating officer, spoke to the media in depth about the Los Angeles stadium’s plans in March, were there at the time.

Of course, that’s not Amorim’s area of concern.

He must deliver the pitch. In order to accomplish that, United did look far better than it did last year.

When Amorim’s team has the ball, it was obvious that the frequently discussed three-man defence splits occur when the right and left-sided defenders play their normal central defenses, with Matthijs de Ligt, who is in command of that position, moving into midfield alongside the deeper of the two chosen for those positions.

Even if questions are posed defensively, Amad Diallo poses a significant threat offensively at right wing-back, and Matheus Cunha undoubtedly adds more innovation to Amorim’s attack.

Even though many would argue that finding someone who can bring physicality and energy to midfield would be a better use of the funds United do have, it is obvious Amorim feels that he can find an improvement in Rasmus Hojlund.

Watching Bournemouth’s Alex Scott’s industry highlights Amorim’s squad’s significant weaknesses.

However, this tour has been fairly quiet overall. Overall, Amorim’s team appears content, and there is a sense of optimism in the players that any team needs to succeed.

However, modern football’s culture dictates that everything is seen through the lens of results.

The walk-through might be beneficial. It will be seen if United prevails. Even though it is exactly the same process, if they lose, it will be dismissed as a terrible idea.

The Europa League final winner was scored to Tottenham by a flick off Brennan Johnson, who deflected a deflection off Luke Shaw and then snuck in at the corner despite Onana’s last-ditch effort to keep it out despite the league’s sparse managers talking about. Nothing about this has to do with training or the small margins that managers across the league discuss.

This United does appear to be better. Amorim is communicating his ideas.