Arsenal Sign Spain Midfielder Zubimendi

Arsenal on Sunday announced the signing of midfielder Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad in a deal reportedly worth around £55 million ($75 million).

Euro 2024 winner Zubimendi had previously been a target for Liverpool and was also linked with Real Madrid.

“This is a huge moment in my career,” said the defensive midfielder, who is understood to have put pen to paper on a five-year deal.

“It’s the move I was looking for and one I wanted to make. As soon as you set foot here, you realise how big this club and this team are.

“I set my sights on Arsenal because their style of play is a good fit for me. They have shown their potential recently and the best is yet to come. ”

READ ALSO: Man City Defender Walker Joins Burnley

The Athletic reported that Arsenal paid above Zubimendi’s 60 million euro ($71 million, £51 million) buyout clause in order to spread the cost of the fee over a number of installments.

Zubimendi, 26, made 236 appearances in all competitions for Sociedad after graduating from the club’s academy and has played 19 times for Spain.

He will reinforce manager Mikel Arteta’s midfield options after the departures of Thomas Partey and Jorginho.

Zubimendi’s arrival paves the way for Arsenal’s record signing Declan Rice to play a more attacking midfield role alongside captain Martin Odegaard.

“Martin is a player who will bring a huge amount of quality and football intelligence to our team,” said Arteta.

“He will fit in really well and he has all the attributes to be a key player for us. ”

Zubimendi is Arsenal’s second signing of the summer transfer window after goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga joined from Chelsea.

The Gunners are also expected to complete the signing of midfielder Christian Norgaard from Brentford.

Arsenal finished second in the Premier League last season for a third straight year and reached the semi-finals of the Champions League but ultimately ended up without a trophy for a fifth consecutive season.

Attention will now turn to the forward line as the Gunners try to see off champions Liverpool and Manchester City and claim a first league title since 2003/04.

Arteta’s men had to cope without a natural striker for much of last season due to long-term injuries to Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus.

Reports on Sunday suggest a deal for Sporting Lisbon striker Viktor Gyokeres is on the verge of being sealed to fill the need for a new number nine.

Arsenal have also been linked with a move for Chelsea’s Noni Madueke.

Cruz Hewitt wins on Wimbledon debut – 23 years after father Lleyton won title

Getty Images

Australia’s Cruz Hewitt was victorious on his first appearance at Wimbledon – 23 years after his father, Lleyton, claimed the men’s singles title.

Wearing the type of back-to-front cap that was his dad’s trademark, the 16-year-old beat Russian Savva Rybkin 6-1 6-2 in the first round of the boys’ competition.

Lleyton, who beat David Nalbandian in the 2002 Wimbledon final, was courtside for his son’s victory.

Former world number one Lleyton also won the 2001 US Open and reached the final of the 2005 Australian Open.

Cruz made his senior Grand Slam debut at the 2025 Australian Open after being given a wildcard into qualifying.

He lost in the first round and went on to reach the second round of the juniors competition.

Lleyton Hewitt celebrates his son Cruz's victoryGetty Images

Wimbledon 2025

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Cruz Hewitt wins on Wimbledon debut – 23 years after father Lleyton won title

Getty Images

Australia’s Cruz Hewitt was victorious on his first appearance at Wimbledon – 23 years after his father, Lleyton, claimed the men’s singles title.

Wearing the type of back-to-front cap that was his dad’s trademark, the 16-year-old beat Russian Savva Rybkin 6-1 6-2 in the first round of the boys’ competition.

Lleyton, who beat David Nalbandian in the 2002 Wimbledon final, was courtside for his son’s victory.

Former world number one Lleyton also won the 2001 US Open and reached the final of the 2005 Australian Open.

Cruz made his senior Grand Slam debut at the 2025 Australian Open after being given a wildcard into qualifying.

He lost in the first round and went on to reach the second round of the juniors competition.

Lleyton Hewitt celebrates his son Cruz's victoryGetty Images

Wimbledon 2025

Watch on iPlayer
Full coverage guide

Related topics

  • Tennis

Cruz Hewitt wins on Wimbledon debut – 23 years after father Lleyton won title

Getty Images

Australia’s Cruz Hewitt was victorious on his first appearance at Wimbledon – 23 years after his father, Lleyton, claimed the men’s singles title.

Wearing the type of back-to-front cap that was his dad’s trademark, the 16-year-old beat Russian Savva Rybkin 6-1 6-2 in the first round of the boys’ competition.

Lleyton, who beat David Nalbandian in the 2002 Wimbledon final, was courtside for his son’s victory.

Former world number one Lleyton also won the 2001 US Open and reached the final of the 2005 Australian Open.

Cruz made his senior Grand Slam debut at the 2025 Australian Open after being given a wildcard into qualifying.

He lost in the first round and went on to reach the second round of the juniors competition.

Lleyton Hewitt celebrates his son Cruz's victoryGetty Images

Wimbledon 2025

Watch on iPlayer
Full coverage guide

Related topics

  • Tennis

Ukraine’s sovereignty was violated long before Trump

On June 16, the Ukrainian government started the process for opening bids for foreign companies to mine lithium deposits in the country. Among the interested investors is a consortium linked to Ronald S Lauder, who is believed to be close to United States President Donald Trump.

The bid is part of a minerals deal signed in April that is supposed to give the US access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth. The agreement was negotiated over months and was touted by Trump as “payback” for US military support for the Ukrainian military.

The final text, which the Ukrainian side has celebrated as “more favourable” compared with previous iterations, paves the way for US investment in the mining and energy sectors in Ukraine. Investment decisions will be made jointly by US and Ukrainian officials, profits will not be taxed and US companies will get preferential treatment in tenders and auctions.

Trump’s demand for access to Ukrainian mineral wealth was slammed by many as infringing on Ukrainian sovereignty and being exploitative at a time when the country is fighting a war and is highly dependent on US arms supplies. But that is hardly an aberration in the record of relations between Ukraine and the West. For more than a decade now, Kyiv has faced Western pressure to make decisions that are not necessarily in the interests of its people.

Interference in domestic affairs

Perhaps the most well-known accusations of Western influence peddling have to do with the son of former US President Joe Biden – Hunter Biden. He became a board member of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma in May 2014, three months after Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, fled to Russia during nationwide protests.

At that time, Joe Biden was not only vice president in President Barack Obama’s administration but also its pointman on US-Ukrainian relations. Over five years, Hunter Biden earned up to $50,000 a month as a board member. The apparent conflict of interest in this case bothered even Ukraine’s European allies.

But Joe Biden’s interference went much further than that. As vice president, he openly threatened then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with blocking $1bn in US aid if he did not dismiss the Ukrainian prosecutor general, whom Washington opposed.

When Biden became president, his administration – along with the European Union – put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to give foreign “experts” a key role in the election of judges for Ukraine’s courts. As a result, three of the six members on the Ethics Council of the High Council of Justice, which vets judges, are now members of international organisations.

There was fierce opposition to this reform, even from within Zelenskyy’s own political party. Nevertheless, he felt compelled to proceed.

The Ukrainian government also adopted other unpopular laws under Western pressure. In 2020, the parliament passed a bill introduced by Zelenskyy that removed a ban on the sale of private farmland. Although polls consistently showed the majority of Ukrainians to be against such a move, pressure from the West forced the Ukrainian president’s hand.

Widespread protests against the move were muffled by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Subsequently, Ukraine’s agricultural sector became even more dominated by large, export-oriented multinational companies with deleterious consequences for the country’s food security.

Attempts to challenge these unpopular laws were undermined by attacks on courts. For example, the Kyiv District Administrative Court ruled that the judicial reform law violated Ukraine’s sovereignty and constitution, but this decision was invalidated when Zelenskyy dissolved the court after the US imposed sanctions on its head judge, Pavlo Vovk, over accusations of corruption.

The Constitutional Court, where there were also attempts to challenge some of these laws, also faced pressure. In 2020, Zelenskyy tried to fire all the court’s judges and annul their rulings but failed. Then in 2021, Oleksandr Tupytskyi, the chairman of the court, was sanctioned by the US, again over corruption accusations. This facilitated his removal shortly thereafter.

With Western interference in Ukrainian internal affairs made so apparent, public confidence in the sovereignty of the state was undermined. A 2021  poll  showed that nearly 40 percent of Ukrainians did not believe their country was fully independent.

Economic sovereignty

In step with interference in Ukraine’s governance, its economy has also faced foreign pressures. In 2016, US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt urged the country to become an “agricultural superpower”. And it appears that the country indeed has gone down that path, continuing the process of deindustrialisation.

From 2010 to 2019, industry’s share of Ukraine’s gross domestic product fell by 3. 7 percentage points while that of agriculture rose by 3. 4 percentage points.

This didn’t benefit Ukrainians. UNICEF found that nearly 20 percent of Ukrainians suffered from “moderate to severe food insecurity” from 2018 to 2020, a figure that rose to 28 percent by 2022. This is more than twice as high as the same figure for the EU.

This is because the expansion of agriculture has favoured export-oriented monocrops like sunflowers, corn and soya beans. Although Ukraine became the world’s biggest exporter of sunflower oil in 2019, a 2021 study found that the domination of agriculture by intensively farmed monoculture has put 40 percent of the country’s soil at risk of depletion.

The 2016 free trade agreement with the EU also encouraged low-cost exports. Due to the restrictive provisions of the agreement, Ukrainian business complained that domestic products were often unable to reach European markets while European producers flooded Ukraine. Ukraine had a 4-billion-euro ($4. 7bn) trade deficit with the EU in 2021, exporting raw materials and importing processed goods and machinery.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s industrial output collapsed under the blows of closed export markets, Western competition and neoliberal economic policies at home. According to the Ministry of Economy, by 2019, automobile production had shrunk to 31 percent of its 2012 level, train wagon production to 29. 7 percent, machine tool production to 68. 2 percent, metallurgical production to 70. 8 percent and agricultural machinery production to 68. 4 percent.

In 2020, the government under the newly elected Zelenskyy tried to intervene. It proposed new legislation to protect Ukrainian industry, Bill 3739, which aimed to limit the amount of foreign goods purchased by Ukrainian state contracts. Member of parliament Dmytro Kiselevsky pointed to the fact that while only 5 to 8 percent of state contracts in the US and EU are fulfilled with imports, the same figures stood at 40 to 50 percent in Ukraine.

But Bill 3739 was immediately criticised by the EU, the US and pro-Western NGOs in Ukraine. This was despite the fact that Western countries have a range of methods to protect their markets and state purchases from foreigners. Ultimately, Bill 3739 was passed with significant amendments that provided exceptions for companies from the US and the EU.

The recent renewal of EU tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural exports, which had been lifted in 2022, is yet another confirmation that the West protects its own markets but wants unrestricted access to Ukraine’s, to the detriment of the Ukrainian economy. Ukrainian officials worry that this move would cut economic growth this year from the projected 2. 7 percent to 0. 9 percent and cost the country $3. 5bn in lost revenues.

In light of all this, Trump’s mineral deal reflects continuity in Western policy on Ukraine rather than a rupture. What the US president did differently was show to the public how Western leaders bully the Ukrainian government to get what they want – something that usually happens behind closed doors.

Brooklyn Beckham posts adoring tribute to wife Nicola as family feud rages on

Brooklyn Beckham has posted a gushing tribute to his wife, Nicola Peltz, after a source told the Mirror he ‘felt he didn’t fit in’ with his famous footballing family

Brooklyn Beckham has posted another adoring tribute to his wife, Nicola Peltz(Image: Instagram/brooklynpeltzbeckham)

Brooklyn Beckham has posted another loving tribute to his wife, Nicola Peltz, as the bitter feud with his family rumbles on. The young couple, who married three years ago, reportedly left David Beckham ‘heartbroken’ when they swerved his 50th birthday in May – despite being in the UK at the time.

On Saturday, a source told the Mirror that the hot sauce enthusiast, 26, doesn’t feel like he ‘fits in’ with his famous family, ahead of his little sister Harper’s 14th birthday. And now, Brooklyn has declared he’s on Team Nicola again in his latest Instagram post in which he shares a snap of his wife larking about next to a pile of Louis Vuitton luggage with the caption: “My girl xx.”

READ MORE: Brooklyn Beckham feels he ‘doesn’t fit into family’ as Harper’s ‘heartbroken’ over rift

Brooklyn Beckham, Nicola Peltz
Brooklyn Beckham told Nicola Peltz she was ‘his girl’ in gushing post on Instagram(Image: Instagram/brooklynpeltzbeckham)

It comes after a source told us that Brooklyn probably wouldn’t be going to Harper’s 14th birthday next week because of the tension between his wife and his parents.

Claiming Victoria and David’s firstborn ‘didn’t want things to turn out this way’, they said: “He didn’t want it to turn out this way and he’s always been really close to all his siblings, but he is a married man now and his priorities have to lie somewhere else. “

Last month, Brooklyn publicly marked the five-year anniversary of his marriage proposal to Nicola, saying it was his “best decision ever”.

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Our source said: “It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the former photographer’s loyalties don’t lie with his parents and siblings”, but adds that it isn’t surprising given he is now married.

They continued: “He just doesn’t feel his family have treated Nicola well and now that he’s grown so close to her family in the States, he doesn’t really feel like he fits into the Beckham family right now.

“If Harper’s wish is to have her brother at home for her big day, sadly, she’s probably going to be disappointed. ”

The Beckhams
Our source claims Brooklyn ‘doesn’t feel like his family have treated Nicola well’(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

There’s been plenty of family affection flying around on the Beckhams’ social media channels, most recently when David paid tribute to Victoria on their wedding anniversary and tagged Brooklyn in the caption.

However, Brooklyn has, so far, stayed silent despite being very vocal on Instagram when it comes to Nicola’s billionaire family.

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In posts, which some have said are twisting the knife, Brooklyn has wished both his brother-in-law and father-in-law Happy Birthday recently despite snubbing his own dad’s milestone.

He also fuelled the feud rumours by posing for a new photoshoot for Italian brand, Moncler, which was shot in London in May just two miles from the Beckham’s family home in Notting Hill – and only one mile away from David, who was at the Chelsea Flower Show at the time.

READ MORE: Kickers’ ‘durable’ Back to School shoe range that ‘last all year’