Archive May 7, 2025

The Lawn Tennis Association will continue to broadcast the Queen’s Club Championships through a three-year rights extension from BBC Sport.

The agreement will continue to serve audiences until 2027 across all of the TV, radio, and digital services.

For the first time in over 50 years, women will play in the 2025 edition of Queen’s, and a WTA 500 competition will take place the week before the men take to the courts.

In the grass-court preparations for Wimbledon, the London tournament is a traditional event.

The director of BBC Sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, said, “The grass-court season is synonymous with British summer.”

“The women’s tournament at Queen’s kicks off a significant summer of women’s sporting events,” reports BBC Sport.

In the two weeks leading up to the Wimbledon Championships, the agreement also grants the rights to LTA events in Eastbourne and Nottingham.

Women and men competing in all of our events for the first time this year, according to Chris Pollard, LTA’s managing director of commercial and operations.

The offside rule, which was proposed by former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, would make attackers onside if their entire body is in line with the last outfield defender.

The introduction of the video assistant referee (VAR), according to Wenger, head of global development at the world’s ruling body Fifa, will give the attacker a benefit that many believe has been lost.

Wenger compared the proposed change to a similar course of action from the 1990 World Cup.

A player was deemed offside if he was level with the opponent’s last defender before the goalkeeper both before and during that tournament.

The lowest total goals scored in World Cup history was 2.21 per game on average in 1990.

Wenger recalled the rule change, saying, “It was 1990 after the World Cup in Italy, when no goals were scored.”

When you are on the same line as the defender, “we decided there is no offside.”

The striker benefits from the doubt, according to the saying. The striker did indeed have the advantage when there was a fraction.

Wenger said more trials will take place before a final decision, which could be in 2026, has been made in Italian youth football.

The International Football Association Board (Ifab), one of the sport’s legal bodies, is in charge of any changes to the offside rule.

At its annual general meeting in March, Ifab consented to additional trials being conducted by Fifa.

It states that the trials’ objectives are to determine whether they “foster attacking football and encouraging goalscoring opportunities while maintaining the game’s attractiveness.”

Any potential rule changes would only be made after Ifab’s football and technical advisory panels received input from the football industry.

Former players and referees are among the panel members who have experience in the game of football.

A number of crucial factors are tracked by custom cameras, which show whether an attacking player’s body was beyond the ball’s last defender at the precise moment the ball was played.

The Premier League adopted the technology in April, after it was first used in elite-level football in England during the FA Cup in February.

Following the 1990 World Cup, the offside law was modified to include the modern back-pass rule and three points for a win as the global standard in an effort to promote attacking play.

Manager Mikel Arteta has made the disparaging claim that Arsenal won the previous two Premier League titles because they had more points at the end of those campaigns than Liverpool did when they won the title this year.

Arteta was referring to Liverpool’s recent title win over Manchester City, who had scored less points than Arsenal did when they finished second overall in the previous two campaigns.

Being in the right place at the right time is what makes winning trophies possible. Less points have been scored than we have in the previous two seasons for Liverpool. The 43-year-old smiled and said, “With the points from the previous two seasons, we have two Premier League titles.”

With three games left, Liverpool, who currently has 82 points, may still surpass Arsenal’s 89 points from last season and 84 in 2022-23.

With only four games left in April, Liverpool won the title.

After last weekend’s defeat to Bournemouth, Arsenal are 15 points adrift in second place, three points behind Manchester City. On Sunday, they take on Liverpool at Anfield.

In order to reach the Champions League final on Wednesday (20:00 BST), they will attempt to resurrect a 1-0 first leg deficit against Paris St-Germain to maintain their last chance of winning silverware this season.

“We’ll probably be in the right place in Paris at the right time,” he continued.

Since winning the FA Cup in Arteta’s first season in charge in 2020, they haven’t won much silverware.

The Spaniard has now reached the club’s first semi-final since 2009, but after reaching the Champions League quarter-finals last year.

According to Mikel Arteta, timing is at play in why Arsenal haven’t won as many awards as they would have liked in recent years.

By overturning a 1-0 deficit in the opening game of the Champions League against Paris St-Germain on Wednesday (20:00 BST), the Gunners will attempt to make it one last silverware win of the season.

The Spaniard argued that success comes down to being in the right place at the right time, and that Liverpool’s record-keeping allowed them to win this season’s Premier League.

“We are going to try to do it this season, but winning awards means acting at the right time and place,” Arteta said.

“Liverpool have won the title with fewer points than we have in the previous two seasons.” So we currently have two Premier League titles for the past two seasons.

“It’s possible that we will be in the right place in Paris at the right time and get that spot in the final.”

In their previous two Premier League seasons, the Gunners finished second to Manchester City, which is currently behind Liverpool, who are already defending champions.

They finished the previous campaign five points behind Pep Guardiola’s side, finishing two points behind Manchester City.

However, they are 15 points behind Liverpool, who could still surpass Arsenal’s 89 points last season and 84 in 2022-23 with 82 points and three games left.

Since winning the FA Cup in the Spaniard Arteta’s first season in charge in 2020, Arsenal have not collected any significant silverware.

However, Arteta has now reached the competition’s first semi-final since 2009 after reaching the Champions League quarter-finals last year.

Tottenham Hotspur midfielder James Maddison is a doubt for the start of pre-season with the serious knee injury he suffered against Bodo/Glimt last week.

BBC Sport revealed on Monday that Maddison was almost certain to miss the final weeks of this season – potentially including a Europa League final – as Tottenham determined the full extent of the injury.

That remains the case, and it is understood Maddison’s recovery time is expected to take up to three months, leaving him at risk of missing some of Spurs’ build-up to the 2025-26 campaign.

More positively, Maddison does not require surgery to repair his injured knee and if all goes according to plan with his rehabilitation, the 28-year-old will be fit for the start of next season.

The lay-off arrives as a major blow to Maddison, who has suffered suspected ligament damage.

It denies Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou a key player as the team enter the crucial climax to their season.

Although their Premier League campaign has been hugely disappointing and a bottom-half finish is certain, Tottenham are well placed to reach the Europa League final as they prepare to face Bodo/Glimt on Thursday in the semi-final second leg.

That competition offers them the chance to lift a trophy and earn a lucrative place in next season’s Champions League.