Category World News

Who: Manchester City vs Tottenham Hotspur
What: English Premier League
Where: Etihad Stadium in Manchester, United Kingdom
When: Saturday, August 23 at 12:30pm (11:30 GMT)

How to follow: We’ll have all the updates on Al Jazeera Sport from 9:30am (8:30 GMT) in advance of our live match commentary stream at 12:30pm (11:30 GMT).

After the battle of Old Trafford between Manchester United and Arsenal on the opening weekend, the Premier League has served up another mouth-watering early-season meeting between two sides with lofty ambitions this term.

Manchester City and Tottenham both proved to be well below par last season but come into the new campaign full of vigour – and with plenty of new signings.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at another stellar Premier League match-up in only the second round of fixtures.

How did Man City and Tottenham fare last season?

Manchester City’s slide was the most surprising of all last year, as Pep Guardiola’s defending champions struggled through the early months of the campaign before scrambling over the line to claim a Champions League qualifying position at the last.

Tottenham, meanwhile, finished one place above the relegation zone – a position that led to Thomas Franck replacing Ange Postecoglou as manager.

Spurs did, however, lift the Europa League, beating Manchester United in the final, meaning the north London club are competing in the Champions League alongside City this season.

What happened on the opening weekend for Man City and Tottenham?

City stormed to a 4-0 win at Wolverhampton Wanderers with Erling Haaland netting twice. Tijjani Reijnders, making his Premier League debut, was one of the key performers and topped his day with a goal, while Rayan Cherki came off the bench to score the fourth.

Tottenham also eased their way into the new campaign with a 3-0 home win against Burnley.

Richarlison scored the first two for Spurs, the opener in the 10th minute, before Brennan Johnson added the third.

Who did Man City and Tottenham sign in the summer?

Former Man City academy player James Trafford was a late summer signing in goal for City and is set to continue between the sticks with Ederson still being linked with a move away from the Etihad.

The 23-year-old, who left City for Burnley in 2023, is the latest of six summer recruits for Guardiola to go with the arrivals of Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov, Nico Gonzalez and Vitor Reis in the January window.

The signings of Reijnders, defender Rayan Ait-Nouri, midfielder Sverre Nypan and winger Cherki, alongside Trafford and veteran keeper Marcus Bettinelli, means City’s spending for 2025 has surpassed the 300 million pound ($402m) mark.

Tottenham have not been shy themselves, when it comes to splashing the cash with eight recruits signed in this window.

The capture of Ghana forward, Mohammed Kudus, from rivals West Ham for 55 million pounds ($73.8m) is the headline news.

Fellow attacker Mathys Tel was hardly cheap, though, with the 20-year-old Frenchman secured for 40.2 million pounds ($53.9m) from Bayern Munich. Both will be looked upon to fill the hole left by Son Heung-min’s transfer to Los Angeles.

Kevin Danso’s 21 million pounds ($28.2m) arrival in defence from Lens will also be seen as a major move following the difficulties suffered at the back by Spurs under Postecoglou.

What happened the last time Man City played Tottenham?

The last meeting between the teams was in North London in February with City winning 1-0.

Erling Haaland scored the only goal of the game in the 12th minute.

What happened in the corresponding fixture last season?

Tottenham stormed to a 4-0 win in the Premier League encounter at Etihad Stadium last season.

City were in the middle of a wretched run, which ended their title defence before it got off the ground, and the hammering on November 23 only compounded matters.

James Maddison scored in the 12th and 20th minutes to give Spurs a storming start before Pedro Porro and Brennan Johnson rounded off matters in the second half.

Spurs had already claimed a 2-1 League Cup win against City by that stage of the season.

Head-to-head

This is the 165th meeting between the clubs with Manchester City winning 69 times and Tottenham emerging victorious on 68 occasions.

The first meeting came in January 1909 with Spurs winning 4-3 in an FA Cup encounter in Manchester.

The North London club have won two of the last three matches, ending a run of only one win in five against City.

Man City team news

Midfielders Mateo Kovacic, Kalvin Phillips and forward Savinho will all miss the match due to Achilles issues for the former two and an unspecified injury for the latter.

Rodri, Ederson, Phil Foden and Josko Gvardiol were all absent from the season-opening win against Wolverhampton Wanderers but returned to training this week.

Tottenham team news

Maddison leads a long list of absentees for Spurs and his loss is doubly felt following his brace in the win at the Etihad last season.

Radu Dragusin, Dejan Kulusevski, Bryan Gil, Manor Solomon and Kota Takai are all also missing for the trip due to injuries.

Yves Bissouma and Destiny Udogie, however, are both set to be assessed ahead of the match after missing the win against Burnley due to knocks.

Manchester City predicted starting lineup

Trafford; Nunes, Stones, Dias, Ait-Nouri; Bernardo, Gonzalez; Bobb, Reijnders, Marmoush; Haaland

Tottenham Hotspur predicted starting lineup

Famine is occurring in the northern Gaza Strip and is projected to spread to central and southern areas by the end of September, a global hunger monitor has warned.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative said on Friday that famine was occurring in the Gaza governorate, a region where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in northern Gaza, and that it was likely to reach the central region of Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza by the end of next month.

After 22 months of conflict, more than half a million people are facing famine (IPC Phase 5), a catastrophic situation characterised by starvation, acute malnutrition, and mortality, it said. Another 1.07 million people – 54 percent of the population – are facing emergency (IPC Phase 4), and 396,000 people (20 percent) are in crisis (IPC Phase 3).

Conditions are expected to further worsen between mid-August and the end of September 2025, with famine projected to expand to the central Deir el-Balah and southern Khan Younis areas.

By the end of this period, almost a third of the population of Gaza  – nearly 641,000 people  – is expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while the number of people in emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely increase to 1.14 million, or some 58 percent of the population.

This marks the most severe deterioration since the IPC partnership – which comprises 21 organisations including UN agencies, NGOs, technical agencies and regional bodies – began analysing acute food insecurity and acute malnutrition in the Gaza Strip.

It also marks the first time a famine has been officially confirmed in Gaza.

The IPC global initiative described the situation as “a race against time”, adding that “famine must be stopped at all costs”.

It warned that acute malnutrition was projected to continue worsening “rapidly”.

At least 132,000 children under the age of five will be at risk of death from acute malnutrition by June 2026, it said. This number has doubled compared with the IPC estimates reported in May 2025.

This includes at least 41,000 severe cases at heightened risk of death.

Nearly 55,500 malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women will require an urgent nutrition response, the IPC initiative added.

‘Man-made disaster’

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Gaza’s famine was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself.”

“Famine is not only about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival,” Guterres said. “People are starving. Children are dying. And those with the duty to act are failing.”

The UN chief said Israel, as the occupying power, has “unequivocal obligations” under international law, including the duty to unsure that food and medical supplies are made available to the population of Gaza.

“We cannot allow this situation to continue with impunity,” he said. “No more excuses. The time for action is not tomorrow – it is now.”

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said Gaza’s famine was taking place “within a few hundred metres of food,” as aid trucks remain stuck at land crossings amid Israeli restrictions on commercial and humanitarian deliveries.

“It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war,” Fletcher told a press conference.

In a plea to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Fletcher demanded that Israel “end the retribution” and open Gaza’s crossings for unrestricted access.

“Let us get food and other supplies in and at the massive scale required,” he said. “For humanity’s sake, let us in.”

Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “this man-made, widespread malnutrition means that even common and usually mild diseases like diarrhoea are becoming fatal, especially for children.”

“Gaza must be urgently supplied with food and medicines,” he said on X, and called for an end to “aid blockages.”

‘No famine’ in Gaza

Israel does not accept that there is widespread malnutrition among Palestinians in Gaza and disputes the hunger fatality figures, arguing that the deaths are due to other medical causes.

Responding to the IPC report, Israel’s foreign ministry said there was “no famine in Gaza”.

“Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ahead of the report’s release, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, preemptively attacked its findings. “You know who IS starving? The hostages kidnapped and tortured by uncivilised Hamas savages,” he wrote on X.

“Maybe the over fed terrorists could share some of their warehouse full they stole with hungry people especially the hostages”.

Israel has been insisting that Hamas is starving the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza, some of whom appeared emaciated in recent footage released by the Palestinian group.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in March and has severely restricted aid entering the territory since May, routing supplies via the controversial Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) scheme.

According to the UN, more than 1,300 people seeking food supplies have been killed since late May, including 859 at GHF aid distribution sites, which are under the control of the Israeli military and private US contractors.

Starvation used as a ‘weapon of war’

Several NGOs reacted to the IPC report echoing the UN’s warnings of deliberate starvation.

The UK-based Oxfam said the famine in Gaza was “entirely driven by Israel’s near-total blockade on food and vital aid, the horrifying consequence of Israel’s violence, and its use of starvation as a weapon of war.”

“This is what our staff and partners have been witnessing for months – people in the Gaza Strip being deliberately starved, relentlessly bombarded and forcefully displaced,” Oxfam’s Helen Stawski said in a statement.

Save the Children said Gaza was being “systematically starved by design, and children are paying the highest price.”

“This engineered famine is the ultimate and inevitable result of the Government of Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war,” the organisation said. “The sustained siege on food, medicine and fuel was bound to lead to this preventable catastrophe. There is no world leader who did not know this was coming, who hasn’t been warned again and again.”

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said it was “appalled” by the  IPC report, which “confirms the unthinkable.”

“Famine is now a deadly reality in Gaza City,” it said in a statement. “This devastating milestone confirms what humanitarians have warned for months: famine is no longer a looming threat—it is a deadly reality with catastrophic hunger tightening its grip across the population.”

After a pitched fight involving knives, sticks, and stun grenades in a Buenos Aires stadium that left three seriously injured people, including three football players, between Argentina and Chile, the two sides exchanged blame.

The worst sports violence South America has seen in a long time was the subject of more than 100 arrests.

President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, called for justice and described the events on Wednesday as “unacceptable lynching” of his neighbors.

In a Copa Sudamericana round-sea 16 match between Argentina’s Independiente and Universidad de Chile, violence broke out at halftime.

According to an AFP journalist, Chilean fans started kicking at home supporters with sticks, bottles, and a stun grenade.

Independiente fans invaded the visitors’ area, stripping, beating, and blooding those who couldn’t or would not make it out of.

Eventually, the game was given up.

Andrea Concha Herrera, the country’s consul general in Buenos Aires, reported to reporters that 88 people were still in custody on Thursday night.

One hospitalized with stab wounds, according to the Chilean government, is home to 19 of its citizens.

Boric sent his interior minister to Buenos Aires to accompany the injured and follow the case.

A Universidad fan jumped from the top of the stands to escape his attackers, but miraculously survived, according to Argentinian media reports that three people suffered serious head injuries.

The Chilean fans allegedly tore the toilets out of the bathrooms and threw them into the stands, according to Nestor Grindetti, president of Independiente.

Fans of Independiente, including 29-year-old Facundo Manent, reported to AFP that the Chilean fans were “waving everything you can imagine: rocks, seats, urine, and poop.”

He and a number of fans and players on either side accused the Buenos Aires police of being slow to intervene.

Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, called for “exemple-setting sanctions” and called for “barbaric” behavior.

South America’s top football governing body CONMEBOL promised to take action against those accountable with “the utmost firmness.”

The clubs are subject to a range of punishments, including disqualification and fines.

The news was awaiting the friends and relatives of the arrested fans outside a police station close to the stadium.

Victor Cepeda, who traveled to the game from Santiago, Chile, with two of his friends who had been detained, accused Independiente of failing to provide security.

“They are unable to organize a match this big.” He claimed that everyone is aware of how things get tossed around.

When the game was suspended in the 48th minute, it was called off before being called off.

As the violence broke out, players and match officials sat with their heads raised on the field.

Michael Clark, president of the University of Chile, described it as a “miracle no one is dead.”

Players on both sides made demands for action.

Felipe Loyola, a player for Independiente in Chile, wrote on social media that “this level of violence cannot be tolerated.”

Independiente was criticized by the Chilean National Professional Football Association (ANFP) for its “passivity” in the midst of the violence.

Independiente refuted the accusations, claiming that it had “fully complied with current regulations.”

When it became clear that CONMEBOL had taken an extremely hostile stand, CONMEBOL’s provincial security minister, Javier Alonso, accused the team of taking an excessively long suspension.

Fans’ violence has been a common occurrence in South American football for the past 20 years, killing hundreds of people on the continent.

In January, just before Donald Trump resumed command of the United States on a bevy of sociopathic promises, incoming US border czar Tom Homan announced that the new administration would be “shutting down the Darien Gap” in the interests of “national security”.

The Darien Gap, of course, is the notorious 106km (66-mile) stretch of roadless territory and treacherous jungle that straddles Panama and Colombia at the crossroads of the Americas. For the past several years, it has served as one of the only available pathways to potential refuge for hundreds of thousands of global have-nots who are essentially criminalised by virtue of their poverty and denied the opportunity to engage in “legal” migration to the US.

In 2023 alone, about 520,000 people crossed the Darien Gap, which left them with thousands of kilometres still to go to the border of the US – the very country responsible for wreaking much of the international political and economic havoc that forces folks to flee their homes in the first place.

In a testament to the inherent deadliness of borders – not to mention of existence in general for the impoverished of the world – countless refuge seekers have ended up unburied corpses in the jungle, denied dignity in death as in life. Lethal obstacles abound, ranging from fierce river currents to steep ravines to attacks by armed assailants to the sheer physical exhaustion that attends days or weeks of trekking through hostile terrain without adequate food or water.

And while literally “shutting down” the Darien Gap is about as feasible as shutting down the Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara Desert, the jungle has become drastically less trafficked in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s machinations to shut down the US border itself, essentially scrapping the whole right to asylum in violation of both international and domestic law.

In March, two months into Trump’s term, Panama’s immigration service registered a mere 194 arrivals from Colombia via the Darien Gap – compared with 36,841 arrivals in March of the previous year. This is no doubt music to the xenophobic ears of the US establishment, whose members delight in eternally bleating about the “immigration crisis”.

However, it does not remotely constitute any sort of solution to the real crisis – which is that, thanks in large part to decades of pernicious US foreign policy, life is simply unliveable in a whole lot of places. And “shutting down” the Darien Gap won’t deter desperate people with nothing to lose from pursuing other perilous paths in the direction of perceived physical and economic safety.

Nor can the enduring psychological impact of the Darien trajectory on the survivors of its horrors be understated. While conducting research for my book The Darien Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas, published this month by Rutgers University Press, I found it next to impossible to speak with anyone who had made the journey without receiving a rundown of all of the bodies they had encountered en route.

In Panama in February 2023, for example, I spoke with a young Venezuelan woman named Guailis, who had spent 10 days crossing the jungle in the rain with her husband and two-year-old son. Among the numerous corpses they stumbled upon was an elderly man curled up under a tree “like he was cold”. Guailis said she had also made the acquaintance of a bereaved Haitian woman whose six-month-old baby had just drowned right before her eyes.

Guailis’s husband, Jesus, meanwhile, had experienced a more intimate interaction with a lifeless body when, tumbling down a formidable hill, he had grabbed onto what he thought was a tree root but turned out to be a human hand protruding from the mud. Recounting the incident to me, Jesus reasoned: “That hand saved my life.”

I heard about bloated corpses floating in the river, about a dead woman sprawled in a tent with her two dead newborn twins and about another dead woman with two dead children and a man who had hanged himself nearby – presumably the children’s father.

A Venezuelan woman named Yurbis, part of an extended family of 10 that I spent a good deal of time with in Mexico in late 2023, offered the following calculation regarding the prevalence of bodies in the jungle: “I can say that we have all stepped on dead people.”

For pretty much every step of the way, then, refuge seekers transiting the Darien Gap were reminded of the disconcerting proximity of death – and the negligible value assigned to their own lives in a US-led world order.

Add to that the surge in rapes and other forms of sexual violence with The New York Times reporting in April 2024 that the “sexual assault of migrants” on the Panamanian side of the jungle had risen to a “level rarely seen outside war” – and it becomes painfully clear that the individual and collective trauma signified by the Darien Gap is not something that will be summarily resolved by its ostensible “shutting-down”.

That said, the Darien Gap has also served as a venue for the display of incredible solidarity in the face of structural dehumanisation. I met a young Colombian man who had personally saved an infant from being swept away in a river. I was also told of a Venezuelan man who had carried an ailing one-year-old Ecuadorean girl through the jungle when her mother, too weak to move at a rapid pace, feared she wouldn’t make it out in time to seek medical help.

When I myself staged an incursion into the Darien Gap in January 2024, two refuge seekers from Yemen complimented me on my Palestine football shirt and did their best to assuage my apparently visible terror at entering the jungle: “If you need anything, we are here.” This from folks who had for more than two decades been on the receiving end of quite literal terror, courtesy of my own country, as successive US administrations went about waging covert war on Yemen.

The Darien Gap, too, has functioned as a de facto warzone in its own right where punitive US policy plays out on vulnerable human bodies in the interests of maintaining systemic inequality. Widely referred to in Spanish as “el infierno verde”, or The Green Hell, the gap has certainly lived up to its nickname.

And while the heyday of the Darien Gap may be at least temporarily over, the territory remains an enduring symbol of one of the defining crises of the modern era in which the global poor must risk their lives to live and are criminalised for doing so. In that sense, then, the Darien Gap is the world.