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Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur are about to face each other in a £100m sliding-doors Europa League final in Bilbao.

They are currently 16th and 17th in the Premier League, directly above the relegation places. Between them, they have lost an incredible 39 times in the league this season.

But Bilbao brings a shot at redemption.

For Spurs, it would mean a first trophy since the 2008 League Cup. United, meanwhile, are aiming for their first European trophy since their Europa League triumph in 2017. For the fans it is huge.

But for the people running the respective clubs it is bigger. The prize for victory is a place in next season’s Champions League. At a conservative estimate, it would generate a £100m increase in revenue.

The pressure at the San Mames stadium will be immense.

There has been a divergence in approach. For a start, when they played their last match before the final within 45 minutes of each other on Friday, the respective managers opted for very different strategies.

Postecoglou played a completely different team at Aston Villa compared with the one that beat Bodo/Glimt in the second leg of their semi-final. He left key centre-backs Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero out of the squad entirely.

“I don’t understand why they are gripped by fear, both managers will want to go into the cup final with momentum,” said ex-Celtic striker Chris Sutton.

“It’s just that selection fear where Postecoglou won’t play Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven – but will they be undercooked?”

Amorim went strong. Even following the return to training of Diogo Dalot, Joshua Zirkzee and Leny Yoro on Tuesday, other than Mason Mount and speculation around striker Rasmus Hojlund, it felt very much like the team who will start the final.

“I don’t know the context of Tottenham. What I know is the last game against Bilbao, we had that game and then we rested some players because we were afraid of some injuries,” said Amorim.

“Then we had a full week to prepare for the game and I felt, with five days to the final, the best thing to prepare for the final was to give time to the players – the best way to prepare something is to compete.”

Tottenham held a team barbecue at their Hotspur Way training ground at the weekend, which Postecoglou says was player-driven, before arriving in Bilbao on Monday afternoon, taking up residence in a hotel right in the heart of the city.

“It was very important, being together, talking about life,” said captain Son Heung-min. “It feels like we are getting even closer.”

“This bonding experience is very important,” added right-back Pedro Porro. “The team is like our family. It’s very good to talk about life with our team-mates, too.”

United arrived a day later and opted to stay slightly further away from the stadium – only three miles, so not exactly a long journey.

United also decided against taking up the option of a final training session in the match stadium. Most clubs these days don’t train in the matchday venue before European games.

The benefits of this are twofold. Firstly, it is far easier to keep their own training grounds secure and stop the opposition spying on them. Secondly, there is familiarity and ease of access to equipment, such as drones, that are now a vital part of team preparation.

In all likelihood, Tottenham won’t do anything of note in their final session at the San Mames stadium. But it will allow them to get the feel of the iconic ground.

United will do a walk round instead. In fairness, it is only three weeks since they beat Athletic Club 3-0 there in the first leg of their semi-final, so the need to get accustomed to their surroundings is not the same.

Team meetings and rest, interspersed with a lunchtime stroll, are the recognised ways of passing the time until it comes to leaving for the stadium on match night, arriving about 90 minutes before kick-off.

It is that point at which key figures in the dressing room step up.

Gary Pallister, a member of the United team which beat Crystal Palace in the 1990 FA Cup final to secure the first – and most pivotal – trophy of Sir Alex Ferguson’s Old Trafford career – remembers the influence captain Bryan Robson had in those moments.

“When Robbo was there, we were a different team,” said Pallister. “He was injured so often that season. But when he played, you could almost feel it in the dressing room ‘Robbo’s here, everything will be OK. He will sort it out’.

“We were a team that relied on that. Over time, we had to learn to play without him but at that point, when he was out of the team, I felt we were a bit rudderless.

“He had played in two finals by then, whereas for me, I was going out to play in the biggest match [of the year], the game we grew up with as kids, the most special day of the year.

“I was thinking about my parents in the crowd, your friends and family, the ‘Oh my God, I am playing live in front of the whole nation’. That brings its own nervousness.

“But that day at Wembley, Robbo was such a calming influence. He spoke to us and settled us down, on and off the pitch.”

Lilian Thuram was a key member of France’s 1998 World Cup-winning side, helping the hosts beat Brazil 3-0 in the final in Paris – a game that was preceded by rumours that the visitors’ star man Ronaldo would miss out.

“We were all convinced it was a ploy by the Brazilians to make us believe that Ronaldo wouldn’t be able to play,” said Thuram. “We thought ‘no way, Ronaldo is playing the match, they are just making this up to try and fool us’.

“During the match you are so completely focused on the task in hand, you are not really aware whether a player is at their top level or not. You can’t worry about whether Ronaldo is off today.”

Despite suffering from a convulsion hours before the final. Ronaldo did play, but France overcame their pre-tournament doubters to prevail as world champions for the first time.

“There were an awful lot of top-level players who had played a lot of finals, we knew if you wanted to win you needed to block out the noise and drama around it and prepare for the match that was coming,” added Thuram.

The prize for Spurs and United, as outlined, is a big one – the difference between success and failure is huge.

“I can’t think of one in recent seasons where the extremes are so polar opposite,” said Sutton, a Premier League winner with Blackburn.

“That really adds to the occasion and the pressure. I can’t remember a game which was so highly pressurised for both teams.”

On Saturday, Crystal Palace beat Manchester City to win the FA Cup – it had taken 35 years to get their hands on the trophy after missing out in 1990. For United, it was the start of something big.

Even though their only significant addition in that summer was Denis Irwin, with a teenage Lee Sharpe also starting to emerge, United were a different team from then on.

They finished sixth in the league in 1991 and won the European Cup Winners’ Cup, beating a Barcelona side who would go on to win the European Cup the following year.

And after blowing the race for the league title 1992, they finally won it in 1993.

Something unquantifiable happened in 1990 that went far beyond winning a single match.

“Even before the final in 1990, the gaffer used to say ‘winning a trophy will give you a kick-start’,” said Pallister. “I am guessing that was from his Aberdeen days as they progressed and broke the Old Firm [Celtic and Rangers].

“The FA Cup was massive back then. Winning it gives the dressing room such a boost. It gives you belief you can win. Once you had that, it gave you the momentum to go into the following season.

“From that, we beat Barcelona. It gave us the certainty we could get better and we could push on. That is what we did.”

France’s World Cup victory in 1998, meanwhile, not only set the platform for European Championship success two years later, but the diverse, multi-cultural Les Bleus squad united a country that was conflicted over issues of immigration and discrimination.

“Those memories will be with me forever,” said Thuram. “All of the different people of France who came out to celebrate that team, it is something that keeps me going – that there was a big group of people within the country that believed in that team and what it represented.

“That victory in 1998 helped to give people greater courage and that desire to speak out about equality and injustice, and to demand greater equality.”

French Open 2025

Dates: 25 May-8 June Venue: Roland Garros

Seeing a Briton in a big clay-court final – and their name not being Andy Murray – is still not something we are used to.

Jack Draper’s recent run to the Madrid Open final, where he lost in three close sets to Casper Ruud, was the backbone of an impressive clay-court swing for the British number one.

But the French Open has historically not been synonymous with British singles success.

Andy Murray reached the 2016 final, but Sue Barker was Britain’s last singles champion in the French capital back in 1976.

Last year all six Britons who competed in the singles went out in the first round – the third time that has happened this century.

At the time, Dan Evans said he and his compatriots were “in the best spot” on clay for “a long time”- and he may actually have had a point.

Clay is a slower surface than grass, which means more rallies, more sliding and more running.

Take Iga Swiatek, for example. The four-time French Open champion is an outstanding mover. Her speed allows her to cover the court as efficiently as possible and recover quickly enough to help tee up her aggressive forehand.

Fitness is one of the reasons Draper has had success on the clay – a surface he did not have much experience or joy on before this year.

Draper retired injured on his French Open senior debut two years ago and later lamented being “the guy who’s injured a lot” after retiring from three successive Grand Slam matches.

But bringing in team members focused on fitness – Draper has hired physio Shane Annun and fitness trainer Matt Little, both former members of Murray’s team – has paid off.

Draper went through three successive five-set matches at the Australian Open and has been a constant presence on the tour since then.

After reaching the Madrid final, Draper went straight to Rome for the Italian Open.

When you think of 14-time champion Rafael Nadal holding court at the French Open, it is his forehand that comes to mind; leaping into mid-air, left arm crossed across his chest, straight after lassoing a forehand winner across the clay.

Nadal’s lefty forehand was a weapon on all courts, but clay was where it really shone. The grip and follow-through, that whip across the body, allowed him to hit with heavy top spin – a key skill on clay.

Adding more spin to the ball makes it bounce higher and pushes an opponent further back behind the baseline. The player will likely have to take the ball on the rise, meaning it is harder to control, particularly if they are shorter.

“Nadal knows how to manipulate the angles to get people out of position,” Michael Chang, champion at Roland Garros in 1989, previously told BBC Sport.

“He is very aggressive, although patient when he needs to be, but for the most part if the shot is there he is taking it and going for it.

It has been a decent clay-court swing for the British singles players.

Sliding is key on clay, in order to stop a player falling behind in a rally. By being able to slide in to a shot, players can return the ball from a defensive position, as well as adjust their position more quickly to play a more aggressive shot.

Before the season began, Draper and compatriot Jacob Fearnley hit together at the National Tennis Centre.

One of the main things they practised was sliding – a video posted by the LTA saw them running back and forth, sliding across the clay and mimicking a shot, to finesse their balance and control.

Before this season, Fearnley had not won a clay-court match on the ATP Tour. He goes into the French Open with a 9-3 record on the surface, including a win over world number 19 Tomas Machac.

“It’s important to slide into your shots rather than starting to slide after it,” Britain’s Heather Watson previously said.

The LTA said in 2024 there were about 1,300 clay-courts in Great Britain. That is around 5% of the 23,000 total number of courts.

In contrast, about 60% of courts in Spain – one of the leading nations on the surface – are clay.

The National Tennis Centre has four clay courts and the governing body is “forming new partnerships” with clay-court facilities in Barcelona and Girona, where young players can go for camps and training sessions.

British Davis Cup captain Leon Smith has previously told BBC Radio 5 Live that maintaining a clay court can be expensive for clubs – and is not helped by the British weather.

British number five Francesca Jones said there has historically been a “slight reluctance” for young British players to travel abroad to clay academies.

That is a route Murray took, playing in junior clay tournaments around Europe from the age of 12 and moving to Spain’s Sanchez-Casal Academy aged 15.

Draper may not class clay as his favourite surface but he too has had experience on it from a young age, telling BBC Sport: “Professionally with the ATP I haven’t played loads on it.

But when I was younger, whether it was in the UK or abroad, playing European events, I always did well on the clay.

Mariona Caldentey was kissing the Women’s Champions League trophy a year ago, clutching the badge on her chest while donning the blue and red stripes of Barcelona, having won her 15th major trophy with the club.

Now she is preparing to face her former team for the first time since leaving them last summer to join Arsenal.

The Gunners will attempt to win a first European title since 2007 in Lisbon on Saturday (17:00 BST) and it helps to have a star in their team who lived and breathed opponents Barcelona for a decade.

Caldentey did not come through Barcelona’s youth ranks, but spent 10 seasons at the home of the defending European champions, scoring 114 goals in 302 games.

There will be no holding back in Saturday’s Champions League final though as Caldentey hopes to spearhead Arsenal – the place she now calls home – to success.

“I feel really confident, I can play my football, I can enjoy it. I am in the right place. I am where I want to be,” the Spain international, 29, said.

Caldentey arrived in north London at a rocky time for Arsenal in July 2024 and some in Spain doubted if she had made the right decision.

Gunners legend Vivianne Miedema had been allowed to leave for rivals Manchester City weeks before and fan unrest was building towards former boss Jonas Eidevall.

Pressure was on Caldentey – a World Cup winner with Spain – to help guide Arsenal safely through a potentially treacherous Champions League qualification path.

But she did not take long to settle as 10 months later, Caldentey was awarded the Women’s Super League Player of the Season having scored nine goals and assisted five in 21 games.

It should not have come as a surprise.

“She was a crucial player for Barca’s style,” Spanish journalist Maria Tikas, who writes for national newspaper Sport, told BBC Sport.

“The fans and media didn’t value her enough for how important she was. We always said that she was like magic.

“It was sad she left, but I knew she was going to be good in England. She really showed quickly the kind of player she was and now at an important moment of the season she has showed it again.”

Caldentey’s first goal came in a 4-0 win over BK Hacken, sealing Arsenal’s progression to the Champions League group stages in September.

The club believed Caldentey could take them to the next level when they signed her but she could not have predicted how impressive her first season would be.

“Not at all. I didn’t have any expectation. I just made my decision and went for it,” said Caldentey.

“She’s a total footballer. She’s got everything,” Arsenal manager Renee Slegers said of Caldentey earlier this season.

Her impact was instant and transformative.

Arsenal went from a struggling side at the start of the season to a team marching up the table, sealing second spot in the WSL and competing with Europe’s elite.

Caldentey’s role was to be the creator, linking up with WSL Golden Boot winner Alessia Russo and providing stardust from midfield.

“She’s given us so much,” Slegers added. “There are so many things to say about Mariona, because she does so many things so well. She has given us that next level.

“Technically and tactically – her intelligence is really high level. Her work ethic is unbelievable. You can see it in games, but you can see it on the training pitch as well.

“Last but not least, she’s a winner.”

After Arsenal beat Tottenham 5-0 at Emirates Stadium, a journalist described Caldentey as the conductor of an orchestra, with eight legs like an octopus.

The analogy surprised Slegers but she admitted it was a good description.

Arsenal captain Kim Little, who has played alongside Caldentey this season, said she has been “incredible” for the team.

There will no doubt be mixed emotions for Caldentey when she faces Barcelona in Lisbon.

She was “underrated” but “now finally appreciated” by those in Spain, said Tikas, but will she come back to haunt them?

“When we talked to Barca players after the semi-finals, they were really happy to face Mariona and said it will be really special for them,” Tikas added.

“She knows how Barcelona play and how Arsenal can damage Barcelona.”

Caldentey has spoken to some of the Barcelona players – they remain “close friends” after all – but they have avoided speaking about the final.

“We did exchange some messages but it is a bit weird so we didn’t speak too much about [the game],” she added.

“I didn’t tell them [we would win] but they know that is what I want!”

From Arsenal’s perspective, they hope Caldentey’s close links with Barca will give them an advantage.

“I did an interview with Aitana Bonmati the other day and mentioned Mariona,” journalist Alex Ibaceta told BBC Radio 5 Live. “She said we know the player she is, we know what she is capable of.