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Not many League One defenders can say they have gone up against one of the best strikers in world football, but James Carragher can – and he has the shirt to prove it.

Wigan Athletic’s Carragher, son of former Liverpool and England centre-back Jamie, qualifies to play for Malta through his great-grandfather and made his international debut for them earlier this year.

He won his second cap away against Poland, when Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski featured as a second-half substitute with the hosts winning 2-0.

“I was disappointed that he wasn’t playing [from the start] and I wanted him to play, I was a bit gutted,” Carragher told BBC Radio Manchester in March.

“Then when I saw he was coming on at least I can say I’ve played against him and I got his shirt after the game.

“I’ve got my own shirt from the first game, then his from the second one and hopefully it’s something I will have for a long time.”

Carragher, who will be 23 on Tuesday, may have a second chance to take on Lewandowski – who has scored 87 international goals in 161 caps and is a former Champions League winner with Bayern Munich – again on Monday when Malta host Poland in a World Cup qualifier.

Jamie Carragher was a one-club man and made 737 appearances for Liverpool, winning the Champions League, Uefa Cup, two FA Cups and three League Cup titles in a glittering career which also included 38 England caps.

James initially followed in his father’s footsteps and was on Liverpool’s books from the age of eight before moving to Wigan’s academy six years later, with his professional debut for the Latics coming at 18.

After loan spells at Oldham Athletic and in Scotland with Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Carragher junior’s breakthrough season at Wigan came in 2024-25 – with a chance of international recognition then coming out of the blue.

“It’s something I didn’t expect a few months ago,” said Carragher after his international debut. “They [the Malta Football Association] got in touch with my dad and my agent to see if I was properly eligible and once that got cleared up it was a no-brainer for me to go and play.

“It’s through my great-grandad, my dad’s grandad, and he is from there, was born there, lived there and then moved over to Liverpool.

“My nan and dad had been there before but it was the first time I had been there, so the first time I went I ended up playing for them, so it was a bit of a mad experience.”

Carragher, just like his father, is a tall and strong centre-half who can also operate at full-back, and also featured in Malta’s goalless qualifier against Lithuania in June.

However, his last international experience was a tough one as Malta were swept aside 8-0 by a rampant Netherlands outfit, with Premier League players Virgil van Dijk, Xavi Simons, Donyell Malen and Micky van de Ven among the Dutch scorers.

A thigh injury in August kept Carragher out of action for more than two months, but he has played in each of Wigan’s past three games to earn an international recall for Malta’s qualifiers against Finland and Poland.

In an interview with the Wigan Post, Carragher spoke of the “100% pride” he felt representing Malta and added: “I was buzzing with the games I’ve played. Some have gone well and some haven’t, but it’s just an unbelievable experience.

While James embarks on his own football journey, proud father Jamie is there cheering him on at every step, along with other family members.

Jamie Carragher, who now works as a football pundit for Sky Sports and US broadcaster CBS Sports, spoke of the pride and tension he and his family felt when watching James mark his international debut.

“We had a proper trip, it was the Carraghers on tour,” said Jamie on The Overlap podcast. “I was not nervous, but I could see my dad [James’ grandfather] was a bit nervous as it was a big game.

“Lewandowski came on and [James] was up against him for the last 20 minutes.”

Speaking on CBS Sports in April, Jamie Carragher added: “When your son is playing, you are concentrating, there’s no laughing or joking, you’re laser focused and keeping an eye on everything.

“I would give him seven out of 10 for the first game against Finland, he did really well, and eight out of 10 for his performance against Poland, considering the opponents in a big stadium – it was a brilliant trip.”

Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing.

At the centre of Conor Benn’s heavily tattooed torso is a large cross and at the bottom of his stomach he has the words ‘Fear God’ inked on his skin.

Since childhood, Benn has been a devoted Christian but his commitment to the faith has endured some serious tests.

Benn moved to Mallorca, Spain with his parents and siblings as a young child, spending 12 years there.

From the outside his life had all the trappings of luxury but the reality was much different.

“I lived in a beautiful home – a beautiful mansion – and went to private school,” Benn told BBC Sport.

“It was very heavily Christian, very religious. School was very extreme and church was very extreme.”

“Christmas was blasphemy so we couldn’t celebrate it,” he added. “Everything was just a lot.”

Benn, 29, attended a fundamentalist Christian school, and was told the “world was coming to an end”.

His parents had fully signed up to the evangelical life and the experience left Benn with scars that cut far deeper than those he has sustained inside the boxing ring.

Around the age of 12, the school believed Benn was “demon-possessed”.

“It was very traumatic,” Benn said.

“You were waking up in the morning and not knowing whether the anti-Christ was here.

“As a kid you’re easily influenced by people in these positions or power.

“Looking back – because I don’t often reflect on it – you think it’s pretty evil.”

Benn’s father, Nigel, is a former two-weight world champion and moved his family away from England for a fresh start.

Nigel was dealing with personal issues after leaving boxing. These included sex addiction and a suicide attempt, and he thought the church would guide him in the right direction.

“At that time, my dad was vulnerable with everything going on in his life,” Benn said.

“My dad had gone through things in life that I couldn’t understand. I was too young. He had moved out [of the family home] and lived with the pastors for a year.”

With the school’s influence over his parents, Benn felt isolated and like he had no one to turn to.

“My parents, I can’t say necessarily believed the school, but you’ve got to remember you’ve got pastors in a position of power that make you feel like maybe there is something wrong,” Benn added.

“They had me fooled because I thought there was something wrong with me.”

Benn was unable to break free from dark thoughts even when he was back at the family home.

“I was having nightmares, this recurring nightmare, and would wake up petrified,” Benn said.

That unorthodox upbringing saw Benn progress into adulthood feeling “troubled and angry”.

Aged 18, Benn and his family moved to Australia and it was only then he began to realise the full impact.

“You are trying to find your identity and who you are as well as being told you are maybe possessed,” Benn said.

He held resentment towards his dad but they came together and started to rebuild their relationship after Benn got arrested.

“At 18 I got in trouble in Australia,” Benn said.

“I thought ‘oh, I need to go home and tell my dad what happened’.

“He gave me a hug and said ‘we’ll get through this together’ and I realised he loved me.”

Benn was 21 when he married his wife Victoria and it was about a year later realisation came that he needed help to process his trauma.

He now has two children of his own and remains a Christian.

“I’m heavy in my faith and pray every single day so I’m not letting them take away from what I believe,” Benn said.

“I want to find a church that actually worships God and has the base and fundamentals of a Christian.”

On Saturday, Benn will be accompanied by his father, who faced Chris Eubank Sr in two iconic and ill-tempered fights in the 1990s, when he takes on Eubank Jr.

“How did we mend our relationship? Just being honest with each other, sitting down together, a lot of tears together – we’ve cried hand-in-hand and cuddled,” Benn said.

“We’ve broken down and been vulnerable with each other. If I could only tell you how many times we’ve cried on each other’s shoulders.

“It took some time and a lot of therapy for me to forgive.

When Benn lost on points against Eubank in April, it was a fight that had been two-and-a-half years in the making.

The pair were scheduled to meet in October 2022 but the bout was cancelled after Benn failed a voluntary drugs test, which led to a two-year battle with anti-doping authorities, before his suspension was lifted in November.

Benn has always denied intentionally doping and was supported by his father throughout.

“I couldn’t have done it without my dad. We were both sinking together really – we were struggling together,” Benn said.

“The amount of times I came home sobbing, and I mean like a little child, like my four-year-old son would to me.

“I would tell my dad that I didn’t know if I could make it through and he was there for me.”

Benn was villainised by sections of the British public for what they believed to be doping and was jeered when walking to the ring when he faced Eubank.

After losing that bout, Benn received a round of applause as he entered the media room for the post-fight news conference.

It also appears that he is beginning to get the public back on side following that gutsy performance as he hopes to leave that dark chapter behind.

“I fight for [the public] and I want to entertain them – that’s a heavy priority for me,” Benn said.

“Every time I get in the ring, I give everything I have, every ounce of blood and pour my heart out.

“It took me years and years to understand that I’ll never be enough for [the public]. Why? I’m doing my best.

“I’m a kid doing his hardest to be my dad because he’s my idol and hero.”

“It’s a 24/7 thing. It’s not something you can just forget about overnight.”

When England international Henry Slade takes to the pitch on a match day, his mind is not just on the rugby.

He is thinking about his blood sugar levels.

“Every five minutes probably, you’re thinking – how is this going to affect me?”

Slade is one of a number of high-profile athletes who have type 1 diabetes – an autoimmune condition where the body cannot make a hormone called insulin, which controls blood sugar levels. As a result, insulin needs to be taken daily, either through an injection, or a pump system.

Charity Diabetes UK estimates more than 5.8 million people in the UK are living with diabetes, which is an all-time high. Of those diagnosed, nearly 400,000 have type 1.

England centre Slade discovered he had diabetes by accident when he was 18.

A month before starting his professional career with the Exeter Chiefs, he and his school friends were messing around testing their sugar levels on a friend’s blood testing kit.

His result was “pretty high” and the next day it was “even higher” so his parents took him to the doctors, who told him ‘you’re about to develop diabetes’.”

His first thought was, “Can I still play?” The doctor’s answer was “yes”.

“As soon as I heard that, I said I’m never going to let it stop me doing what I want to do,” he said.

“And that’s the message I’ve tried to spread to people. It doesn’t affect how much weight you can lift, how fast you can run, how fit you are, as long as your blood sugars are in the right zone.”

Getting them there, though, is no easy task.

The 32-year-old wears a glucose monitoring device on his arm which is connected to his phone and watch, sending him constant updates and alerting him to signs of a sugar high or low.

“I have to plan how much I need to inject or what I’m going to be doing when I get to training,” he said. “I’m figuring out how much carbohydrate I’m going to have for breakfast and how much I need to inject because it’s sort of a ratio you work out.”

Then throughout the whole day he thinks about questions like ‘what time of day is it?’, ‘how cold is it?’ and ‘how are your stress levels?’ because these factors can all affect his levels.

He found that on match days, adrenaline was sending his levels “through the roof” by half-time so he now injects insulin just before the match and at half-time.

“It’s helped a lot because the adrenaline spikes your blood sugar levels,” he said. “It affects the way you think, how you feel, your fatigue levels. So being able to control blood sugars is really important on game day.”

Slade is passionate about raising awareness to help with early detection and addressing what he terms the condition’s “scary” stigmas and confusion with type 2 diabetes, which is largely seen as linked to lifestyle.

“The majority of people I speak to just assume that it’s because I ate too many sweets when I was a kid or had a bad diet growing up,” he said.

Professional cyclist Sam Brand was diagnosed at the age of 10 but his dream of being an elite athlete never waivered and he thinks his diabetes has in fact helped him.

“Diabetes gave me a routine, something that has been extremely beneficial in my journey as a cyclist,” said the 34-year-old, who rides for Team Novo Nordisk, the first all-diabetes professional cycling team.

A comprehensive fuelling strategy is essential for any cyclist but for diabetics like Brand, an emergency bag of sweets is also important.

“I always carry Skittles on the bike because they’re really quick acting. I was brought up on Jelly Babies but 24 years of those is too much so I’m trying other things now,” he said.

There have, though, been some “scary experiences”.

“There are so many times when you take a little bit too much correction [of insulin] than you should or you eat a bit too much and all of a sudden, you’re in a situation where ambulances need to be called,” he said.

“I get a tingling feeling in my hands and face, the blood drains from my face, I’ll stop making sense because my brain goes in to energy-saving mode. I become irritable and agitated, lose vision, lose focus.

Former Great Britain basketball player Georgia Anderson remembers feeling “a little bit scared” when at the age of seven she was told she should not pursue a career in sport because of her diabetes.

But her father and coach Jeff Jones helped her manage the condition, often spotting the signs before she did if her blood sugar was going too low or high.

“He would ask, ‘Am I good? Am I OK?’, which for normal athletes is just a normal thing,” she said.

“But for me, it meant ‘Do you need to come off? Do you need to check your sugars? Do you need to have something to eat?”

When she was pregnant with her daughter she faced her biggest challenge of the condition and had to stop playing.

“It was really difficult to control my sugars and then throwing pregnancy hormones into that, it just became near impossible for me to exercise.”

Anderson, 35, now plays for Manchester Basketball in the Super League and wants to be a role model for others.

Coventry City head coach Frank Lampard has been named Championship manager of the month for October after his side stormed to the top of the table.

The in-form Sky Blues secured 15 points from a possible 18 last month after winning five of their six matches, scoring 18 goals in the process.

Since then, City have gone on to stretch their lead at the top to five points following back-to-back wins at the start of November.

Lampard said: “I would like to thank all the staff and all the playing squad because you can’t win the individual awards without the hard work of everybody.

Chair of the judging panel Danny Wilson said Coventry were a “fantastic team to watch” adding they play “with a freedom their manager applauds and encourages”.

In a double celebration for the club, in-form striker Brandon Thomas-Asante picked up the player of the month award.

The 26-year-old is the joint top-scorer in Championship with 10 goals and bagged six of those in those half-a-dozen games last month.

The Ghana forward said he was “super happy” to win the award and added it was “amazing” to work with Lampard and the rest of the Sky Blues coaching staff.

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani has been named one of baseball’s Most Valuable Players for the third year in a row, and the fourth time overall.

The 31-year-old played a key role in the Dodgers winning the World Series for a second straight year as they overcame the Toronto Blue Jays earlier this month.

Ohtani is a rare “two-way” player, operating both as a pitcher and a hitter at the elite level, and was named the best player in the National League.

He is second on the all-time list, after Barry Bonds who won seven between 1990 and 2004. He has won all four of his MVPs in unanimous fashion with all 30 first-place votes.

“If I’m playing well as an individual that means I’m helping the team win, so in that sense, hopefully I can end up with a couple more MVPs,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “But it’s all about winning games.”

Ohtani is the first player to win the honour in both of Major League Baseball’s two leagues after becoming the American League (AL) MVP in 2021 and 2023 while playing for the Los Angeles Angels.

In the AL, outfielder Aaron Judge became the New York Yankees’ fourth three-time winner.

Judge, who won the AL award in 2022 and 2024, joined Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle as three-time MVPs with the Yankees.

“It’s tough for me to wrap my head around,” Judge said. “It’s mind blowing from my side of things, because I play this game to win, I play this game for my team-mates, my family, all the fans in New York.