Lamine Yamal scored one goal and created another as Barcelona extended their lead at the top of La Liga with a 3-1 victory over Elche on Saturday.
Barcelona moved to 55 points from 22 matches, four ahead of Real Madrid, who have a game in hand. Elche remained in 12th place with 24 points from 22 games.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Yamal opened the scoring for the visitors before Alvaro Rodriguez equalised for Elche in an end-to-end first half.
Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford struck to complete the win, sparing the blushes of wasteful Barca, who had 30 efforts on goal in the match.
“We got three more points. We continue to grow as a team. We haven’t reached our peak yet,” Barcelona midfielder Frenkie de Jong said.
“We usually have people who finish well. There are times when they fail. The important thing is that we have them [chances].”
Yamal scores the opening goal against Elche [Jose Breton/AP Photo]
Yamal sets the tone
Barcelona took the lead within six minutes when Dani Olmo played Yamal through on goal, and the 18-year-old rounded goalkeeper Inaki Pena to score his 13th goal of the season in all competitions.
Olmo struck a shot against the crossbar midway through the first half, and within a minute, Elche were level.
German Valera slipped former Real Madrid forward Rodriguez in behind the Barcelona defence, and he raced clear to score.
The visitors should have retaken the lead when Torres struck the crossbar again from six yards out with a poor miss. The ball rebounded to him, and he then steered it against the post in a comical sequence of play.
Torres got his goal in 40 minutes when de Jong found space in the box and, rather than shoot himself, laid the ball back for the forward to fire into the roof of the net from 15 yards.
It should have been 3-1 minutes later when Fermin Lopez somehow skied the ball over the crossbar from six yards with the goal gaping.
Barcelona continued to create chances in the second half, with substitute Rashford guilty of a poor miss when he put his shot wide with just the goalkeeper to beat.
Rashford got his goal in 72 minutes, however, when Yamal’s low cross was not cleared by the Elche defence, allowing the England forward to blast the ball into the roof of the net from close range.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has pushed the plight of the Palestinian people to the forefront of global attention. For more than two years, the world has witnessed the mass killing, disease and starvation imposed upon the enclave by Israel.
Faced with a sense of helplessness, calls have grown for boycotts of Israeli goods, for companies profiting from Israel or its settlements in the occupied West Bank to divest, and for politicians to expand sanctions that some have already imposed on Israeli ministers.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
However, with other world events, such as the war in Ukraine and the United States’s face-off with Iran now dominating much of the world’s headlines, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement faces a challenge to keep attention on Gaza and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
Gains made
The war on Gaza has led to Israel facing unprecedented condemnation from around the world.
Israel has moved closer to pariah status for its attacks not just in Gaza – killing more than 70,000 Palestinians – but in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant now find themselves facing International Criminal Court arrest warrants for war crimes.
At home, at least two of Israel’s far-right government ministers, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have also been sanctioned by governments worldwide.
And on top of that hangs the judgement of the International Court of Justice in January 2024, that the state of Israel may plausibly be engaged in genocide, in an ongoing case brought by South Africa.
Pro-Palestinian students at the UCLA campus set up an encampment in support of Gaza in protest against Israel’s attacks on the enclave, in Los Angeles, California [Grace Yoon/Anadolu Agency]
Criticism of Israel has also entered the mainstream culturally in Western countries, particularly among young people horrified by the death rained upon Gaza.
And importantly, there have been economic consequences for Israel and some of those doing business in it – echoing the boycott movement against apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.
Companies such as the French supermarket chain Carrefour were forced to close a number of outlets in the Middle East amid public anger over its links to Israeli firms operating in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Other companies associated with Israel’s actions, including Airbnb – which allows Israelis in illegal settlements to rent their properties – and Microsoft, whose Azure cloud services have supported the Israeli military, have all faced internal dissent and reputational damage because of their ties to the Israeli government.
As a consequence of public pressure, pension funds from around the world, including Spain, Norway, Denmark, France and Ireland, have divested from Israeli assets linked to settlements, or withdrawn investments from companies tied to Israel.
“BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape,” Avi Balashnikov, chairman of the Israel Export Institute, conceded in September 2024.
“We fight every day, hour by hour, for Israeli industry abroad,” he added. “Economic boycotts and BDS organisations present major challenges, and in some countries, we are forced to operate under the radar.”
Moving spotlight
Despite a US-brokered “ceasefire“, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 500 people since the agreement was reached in October, including at least 31 on Saturday. The fact that Israel has continued to kill Palestinians, while much of the world looks away, highlights the difficulty now facing the BDS movement and whether it can maintain the energy it has gained.
“It is not uncommon for the observance of a boycott to rise and fall according to the prominence of an issue and success of specific campaigns to raise awareness or promote adherence to the boycott,” Nick Cull, a historian and authority on cultural boycotts at the University of Southern California, told Al Jazeera.
A protester holds a placard reading, ‘This Company Supports Israeli Genocide, Join The Boycott’, for lunchtime shoppers to see during a demonstration outside Coca-Cola-owned Costa Coffee [Martin Pope/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]
“I think that the power of a boycott is cumulative,” Cull continued. “Just as advertising associates a brand with good feelings and positive experiences – think how over many decades Coca-Cola link their drink to ideas of friendship – as part of the ‘buy-me’ message, so a boycott’s ‘don’t buy’ message becomes a negative branding associating a product and its place of origin with negative feelings: training a revulsion impulse rather than a logical inner debate over the merits of a particular case.”
“Since the ceasefire, a less-visible form of genocide has been unfolding,” Saleh Hijazi, Policy Coordinator with the BDS movement, told Al Jazeera, pointing to the mounting death toll in Gaza from Israeli attacks and the restrictions that Israel was imposing on access to food and medicine.
“Israel and the US, a full partner in this genocide, have used the so-called ceasefire as an attempt to rescue apartheid Israel from a downward spiral, to launder its global image and muffle international outrage. It’s meant to push Palestinians out of the headlines, weaken calls for boycotts and sanctions, and make our struggle seem less urgent,” Hijazi said.
Protesters hold a banner and Palestinian flags during the ‘Stop Israel’ demonstration against Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest due to its ongoing offensive in Gaza, in Malmo, Sweden [Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency via Reuters]
Lasting damage
However, while the media spotlight may have broadened from its formerly sharp focus on Gaza, the reputational damage inflicted on companies trading with Israel as a result of its genocide, as well as new initiatives to culturally isolate it, are gaining ground.
“I still feel odd about brands demonised during [South Africa’s] apartheid and artists who violated the boycott,” Cull added, emphasising the lasting reputational damage of boycotts. “This training of people into a negative reflex is what makes boycotts so powerful.”
More initiatives are now taking hold, attempting to build on the sense of cultural isolation many in Israel feel.
One, Game Over Israel, led by political strategist Ashish Prashar, aims to remove Israel from European football.
“We launched our campaign to kick Israel out of football with a huge billboard in Times Square on September 16, the same day the UN’s [Commission of Inquiry] report on genocide came out,” Prashar said.
“The idea is to appeal to what they call the ‘integrity of the game,’” he said, explaining that the campaign would continue despite the “ceasefire”. “We’re running a campaign the same way we would an election strategy. Our next target is to go after [European football’s governing body] UEFA in Switzerland.”
A billboard in Times Square displays the message ‘Soccer Federations: Boycott Israel’ as part of the campaign by Game Over Israel calling for a boycott of Israel by national football federations over the war in Gaza, in New York City, United States [Jeenah Moon/Reuters]
“Ninety percent of Israel’s games are played through UEFA,” Prashar said. “Suspending them would probably help lots of the clubs, their towns and the fans. Just the cost of policing an Israeli game … costs a fortune. Most councils can’t afford that. Other stadiums are closed off, which means that fans can’t go and clubs lose the ticket money, or they’re moved, which means no one makes any money.”
“It’s not about football,” he said. “It’s about not accepting the normalisation of Israel. It’s the institutional resistance to this that’s frightening. This shouldn’t be on people or small groups of activists. This should be on governments.”
In front of a deafening Sydney crowd, Ultimate Fighting Championship featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski survived a fifth-round rally attempt from Diego Lopes to win yet another unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 50-45) in their rematch at UFC 325.
Just like their first meeting last April at UFC 314, Lopes (27-8 MMA, or mixed martial arts, 6-3 UFC) would not let Volkanovski (28-4 MMA, 15-3 UFC) coast easily, as the first three rounds on Sunday saw Lopes take Volkanovski’s best shots and deliver some of his own. But Volkanovski retaliated with adjustments throughout, utilising the clinch to cut Lopes’s cage room off.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
Volkanovski’s win was his first title defence during his second reign, ushering in a reinvigorated era at featherweight moving forward.
But for Volkanovski, winning his first fight in his home country in nearly three years with the full backing of the Australian crowd felt different.
“I didn’t want to stand [with Lopes] for 25 minutes, but we got the job done,” Volkanovski said.
Volkanovski said he was excited to get back in the Octagon soon, saying he would “see what’s next” with his team.
Lopes was humble in defeat, although he had a visible reaction to the one judge who ruled all five rounds in Volkanovski’s favour.
“I think Volkanovski is one of the best in the division and has been for this long,” the Brazilian competitor said.
Lopes called this part of the journey “step-by-step” as he prepares for an uncertain next fight after his second failed championship match against the future Hall of Fame member.
Volkanovski strikes Diego Lopes, right, during their UFC 325 featherweight title fight [Steven Markham/AFP]
Saint-Denis overpowers Hooker
Meanwhile, lightweight Benoit Saint-Denis of France effortlessly defeated New Zealand’s Dan Hooker by second-round technical knockout (TKO) in the night’s co-main event with punches from the mount position.
Saint-Denis (17-3 MMA, 9-3 UFC) has put himself in a firm position to remain in title contention this year with four straight wins, while Hooker (24-14 MMA, 14-10 UFC) has dropped back-to-back fights and will continue to go back to the drawing board.
A devastating right hand from lightweight Mauricio Ruffy of Brazil marked the beginning of the end of a high-stakes featured bout opposite Rafael Fiziev of Azerbaijan. Ruffy (13-2 MMA, 4-1 UFC) secured a TKO victory with 30 seconds left in the second round, bouncing back from a loss to Saint-Denis for his eighth win in the last nine fights.
As for Fiziev (13-5 MMA, 7-5 UFC), he has lost four of his last five outings since his six-match win streak was snapped in March 2023.
Rafaela Pimenta has never scored a goal or managed a team. But the 53-year-old is the only football entry in Forbes’ ’50 over 50′ list for 2026.
Every January, the global media company publishes the 50 women who have reached a position of status and influence that makes them beacons for others to follow.
Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz is there, so too Dame Sarah Mullally – the first female Archbishop of Canterbury.
As football’s first female super agent, Brazilian Pimenta is hugely influential.
Her impressive stable of clients includes Manchester City striker Erling Haaland, Liverpool manager Arne Slot and 17-year-old Mexican wonderkid Gilberto Mora.
She radiates warmness as she arrives on time to speak exclusively to BBC Sport. Once the cameras are rolling, Pimenta is deadly serious as she covers a range of topics, including the treatment of women in football.
But, on the eve of deadline day, let’s start with her concerns about the present transfer system.
“There needs to be a change,” she explains. “There’s too much power for clubs.
“Players are sometimes hostages of situations. I’m not fighting for chaos. We need the transfer system for the whole thing to work. But we need more balance.
“We are in a transfer window, and I can bet you, because I see it at the end of every window, somebody will cry. There’s always a player crying because he could have gone, needed to go and a club said they want £1m more.”
In October 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) found rules implemented by world governing body Fifa, which govern the way some football transfers work, break European Union laws.
Fifa subsequently introduced an interim framework based on the calculation of compensation payable and burden of proof if there is a breach of contract.
“Football used to be more human,” Pimenta adds. “A football director or an owner would have a special relationship with the player. If a player went to them and said ‘please, I need to go’, they would find a solution.
“Today, football is becoming so much of a business there is a risk that players become an asset on the balance sheet. An asset has no voice, no feelings, no human needs.
‘If we screw it up, it’s dead’
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Pimenta’s career has developed over a period of massive change.
Haaland is a superstar. With that, comes demand and expectation. Pimenta argues that agents who still feel they can do everything are either ‘delusional’ or making promises they can’t keep.
“I remember one transfer when we got to the club and closed the doors until the deal was done. I stayed for 18 hours,” she explains.
“Today that would be impossible. You need the documents a week before, maybe a month or six months before, because there’s so much to address; labour, tax, local law.
“Players became mini companies because the opportunities off the pitch are much bigger.”
Haaland has his own YouTube channel, with 1.28m subscribers.
“In the past, if a player did media, it might be a monthly magazine, once,” says Pimenta.
“Today you have media opportunities, digital opportunities, sponsors, investors, startups, everything you can imagine.”
Despite the impressive array of talent she looks after, which also includes Manchester United duo Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui, she is not prepared to rest on her laurels.
“You must prove yourself every day,” she says.
Delusional agents and being mistaken for ‘a hooker’
There is a misconception about Pimenta that she has stepped into the role left by Mino Raiola’s untimely death in April 2020.
Pimenta did work closely with one of football’s most controversial characters but right from the start, she was her own woman; it was one of the main reasons Raiola wanted to work with her, and tracked her down in her native Brazil after an earlier encounter when, as a qualified lawyer, she was asked to act as an interpreter on a deal.
“He said I was the only one who said no to him and because all the others just wanted his money, they would say yes to the craziest projects,” she recalls.
“I thought it would last five minutes. It lasted 35 years.”
Sadly, not all her experiences in that time were positive, especially when it comes to gender inequality.
“When I was doing this years ago, there were very few women in deciding positions,” said Pimenta.
“There was Marina [Granovskaia] at Chelsea but overall, you could count them on your fingers.
“What I would see were many women working in clubs doing lots of things that were decision-making but not being recognized.
“It was a sort of a corridor, and it would always be the same. Scouting, technical, secretary, decision-maker. You would walk past everybody and get to the last door. Behind the last door would be a man.”
Pimenta says she was helped in her own career by women who responded to the fact she gained entry to the final ‘door’.
However, the response of the men whose domain she was entering was often negative.
“We have come a long way from a first meeting I had with a sports director who said to me, ‘you really exist, I thought you were a hooker from Brazil’, to where we are today but many men still use gender to unbalance you.
“They might talk behind my back to make me feel I’m fragile or have less power.”
Pimenta recounts a story from two years ago, she haggled over a contract with a club in the presence of a lawyer she hired purely for his expertise in writing the language she was negotiating in.
Once the deal was struck, the club official said to the lawyer ‘you taught her well’.
Standing up for women in a male dominated industry
Unsurprisingly, Pimenta has a view on disgraced former Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales, who was eventually convicted of sexual assault after kissing captain Jenni Hermoso without her consent after Spain won the 2023 World Cup.
“Would he have kissed (Lionel) Messi on the mouth, or the cheek, when he gave him a trophy?” she questions. “If he did, would he have been fired on the spot?
“It is not only the act itself that is so shocking, but the fact it took so long to make the decision.”
Pimenta ends with a message for all women in the football industry.
“With some people, it’s so embedded in them that women are inferior to men or that women don’t know football,” she said.
“They want to be cute to you – and even when they are cute, they’re prejudicial.
“I don’t accept it. I’m not standing up for me anymore – people respect me enough. But there’s other girls coming. I don’t want them to have to go through what I’ve been through. If I can make it a bit easier for them, I will.
-21J Rose (Eng), -15 J Dahmen (US), -13 S-Woo Kim (Kor), R Hisatsune (Jpn), -12 M McGreevy (US), -11 M McNealy (US), S Power (Ire), S Jaeger (Ger). Selected others: -2 B Koepka (US)
England’s Justin Rose is in a strong position to secure a 13th PGA Tour win after extending his lead to six shots at the Farmers Insurance Open on Saturday.
The 45-year-old, who led by four shots after the second round, recorded seven birdies in an impressive four-under-par 68 on Torrey Pines’ formidable South Course to lie 21-under for the tournament.
American Joel Dahmen, who had five birdies and a bogey in a round of 68, is two shots clear in second.
Rose has led from the first round and has the largest 54-hole lead at the tournament since Tiger Woods led by eight in 2008.
The best winning score in the tournament’s history is 22 under – by Woods in 1999 and George Burns in 1987.
“My only hope is if he doesn’t set his alarm or he somehow starts hitting in the rough on the back nine maybe,” Dahmen told PGA Golf.
“The way he’s playing and what he’s doing, I would be pleased with second place.”
Rose, who was runner-up in the 2025 Masters, claimed his last PGA Tour win in August, winning the FedEx St Jude Championship.
Having shot rounds of 62 and 65, Rose was in total control until bogeys on the 11th, 12th and 16th trimmed what had been an eight-shot lead.
“It’s another great round in good weather on an awesome golf course,” Rose told PGA Golf.
“There’s never going to be any complacency.
“I think there’s always enough respect for the game of golf in the back of your mind that you’ve got to do everything right tomorrow. You’re going to come out, have to be focused, have to play well.”
Five-time major winner Brooks Koepka, in his first tournament back on the PGA Tour since leaving LIV Golf, shot a one-over-par 73 to head into the final round in a tie for 61st.
US President Donald Trump says Iran is ‘seriously talking’ with the US and hopes that talks with Tehran will lead to a nuclear deal. Trump also reiterated that he’s sending ‘powerful ships’ to the Gulf.
