Category World News

Who: Paris Saint-Germain vs Tottenham Hotspur
What: UEFA Super Cup
Where: Bluenergy Stadium in Udine, Italy
When: Wednesday, August 13 at 9pm (19:00 GMT)

How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 5pm (15:00 GMT) in advance of our live text commentary stream.

The first major trophy of the season is up for grabs and UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain will be targeting a fourth title in the calendar year when they face Europa League champions Tottenham Hotspur.

Luis Enrique’s Parisians swept all before them on home soil and in Europe last year, although success wasn’t to follow on the global stage in the summer.

Tottenham manager Thomas Frank inherits a side that secured their first European trophy in more than four decades. The north Londoners, however, finished only one place above the relegation zone in the English Premier League.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a closer look at the match being played at the home of Italian side Udinese.

What is the UEFA Super Cup?

The competition pits the winners of the previous season’s UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League competitions.

How did PSG and Tottenham qualify for the Super Cup final?

PSG hammered Inter Milan 5-0 in the final of last season’s UEFA Champions League.

French teenage sensation, Desire Doue, scored twice and provided an assist as the Italians were swept aside in Munich.

Tottenham overcame Manchester United 1-0 in the final of the UEFA Europa League.

Brennan Johnson scored the only goal of the game in the first half. It wasn’t enough to save Ange Postecoglu’s job as manager, as the Australian was sacked two weeks later following the 17th-place finish in the Premier League.

What trophies did PSG win in their treble last season?

PSG sealed the 2024-25 Ligue 1 season by an incredible 19 points – despite easing off for the final three-winless matches.

The Parisians also sealed the French Cup, beating Reims 3-0, a week before the Champions League final.

What happened to PSG at the UEFA Club World Cup?

Following their treble, PSG had the chance to follow in the footsteps of Manchester City, who lifted five trophies in a calendar year in 2023.

Pep Guardiola’s side followed up the domestic and European treble with wins in the Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup (CWC) that year.

PSG’s chance to replicate that unique achievement was ended by a shock 3-0 defeat by unfancied Chelsea in the final of this year’s expanded CWC.

Every winner since 2000…

Who’s next? 🤷‍♂️#SuperCup pic.twitter.com/j0Ykxaj94m

Who are the UEFA Super Cup holders?

Spanish giants Real Madrid beat Italian side Atalanta 2-0 in the final in Monaco last year.

Real were the Champions League holders, having overcome Germany’s Borussia Dortmund 2-0 in the final the previous season.

Atalanta also topped a German side in the Europa League final the year before, as they beat Bayer Leverkusen 3-0.

Are Real Madrid the record UEFA Super Cup winners?

Yes. The Spanish giants’ victory against Atalanta in 2024 was a record-extending sixth Super Cup victory. It was also the fifth time in 11 years that Los Blancos lifted the trophy.

What happens if you win the UEFA Super Cup?

Both finalists have already qualified for this season’s UEFA Champions League based on their European victories last season.

UEFA retains the official trophy, but a replica, alongside 40 gold medals, are presented to the winners to keep.

How much money does the UEFA Super Cup winner get?

The winners will receive a cheque for 5 million euros ($5.8m) in prize money.

The runners-up don’t fare too badly, receiving 4 million euros ($4.64m).

PSG team news

Midfielder Joao Neves is suspended following his red card in the FIFA World Cup final defeat by Chelsea.

Conversely, Willian Pacho and Lucas Hernandez were both suspended for that final but are free to return for this match.

Goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma has been left out of the squad amid increasing reports he will leave the club.

PSG named its squad on Tuesday. Goalkeeper Lucas Chevalier, who recently joined from Lille for just more than 40 million euros ($46.4m), was included along with backup goalie Matvei Safonov.

Tottenham team news

James Maddison tore his ACL in the preseason friendly with Newcastle United and is now set to miss most of the forthcoming campaign.

Dejan Kulusevski, Radu Dragusin and Dominic Solanke all remain sidelined, while Destiny Udogie is also a doubt.

Spurs last week waved goodbye to their captain, Son Heung-min, who joined Major League Soccer side Los Angeles.

Paris Saint-Germain predicted starting XI:

Chevalier; Hakimi, Marquinhos, Pacho, Nuno Mendes; Zaire-Emery, Vitinha, Fabian Ruiz; Doue, Dembele, Kvaratskhelia

Tottenham Hotspur predicted starting XI:

Vicario; Pedro Porro, Romero, Van de Ven, Spence; Bentancur, Palhinha, Sarr; Johnson, Richarlison, Kudus

Maha Ali was determined to one day become a journalist and report on events in Gaza. Now she and other students have just one ambition: finding food as hunger ravages the Palestinian enclave.

As war rages, she is living among the ruins of the Islamic University, a once-bustling educational institution that, like most others in Gaza, has become a shelter for displaced people.

“We have been saying for a long time that we want to live, we want to get educated, we want to travel. Now we are saying we want to eat,” the 26-year-old honours student said.

Ali is part of a generation of Palestinians in Gaza – from primary school through university students – who say they have been robbed of an education by nearly two years of Israeli air strikes that have destroyed the enclave’s institutions.

More than 61,000 people have been killed by Israel’s war on Gaza, according to Gaza health authorities. Much of the enclave, which suffered from poverty and high unemployment even before the war, has been demolished.

Palestinian Minister of Education Amjad Barham accused Israel of carrying out systematic destruction of schools and universities, saying 293 of 307 schools have been destroyed completely or partially.

“With this, the occupation wants to kill hope inside our sons and daughters,” he said.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, according to the latest satellite-based damage assessment in July, 97 percent of educational facilities in Gaza have sustained some level of damage with 91 percent requiring major rehabilitation or complete reconstruction to become functional again.

“Restrictions by Israeli authorities continue to limit the entry of educational supplies into Gaza, undermining the scale and quality of interventions,” it said.

Those grim statistics paint a bleak future for Yasmine al-Za’aneen, 19, sitting in a tent for the displaced and sorting through books that have survived Israeli strikes and displacement.

She recalled how immersed she was in her studies, printing papers, finding an office and fitting it with lights.

“Because of the war, everything was stopped. I mean everything I had built, everything I had done. Just in seconds, it was gone,” she said.

There is no immediate hope for relief or a return to the classroom.

Israel plans a new Gaza offensive, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he expected to complete “fairly quickly”, as the UN Security Council heard new demands for an end to the suffering in the Palestinian enclave.

Saja Adwan, 19, an honours student at the al-Azhar Institute who is living in a school turned shelter with her family of nine, recalled how the building where she once learned was bombed.

Her books and study materials are gone. To keep her mind occupied, she takes notes on the meagre educational papers she has left.

“All my memories were there – my ambitions, my goals. I was achieving a dream there. It was a life for me. When I used to go to the institute, I felt psychologically at ease,” she said.

Protests and memorials have erupted worldwide, and calls for accountability are growing after five Al Jazeera staff were assassinated in an Israeli strike on Gaza.

Late on Sunday, an Israeli attack hit a media tent outside the main gate of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, killing Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, 28, along with colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, Ibrahim Zaher, 25, Mohammed Noufal, 29, and Moamen Aliwa, 23.

Two other Palestinians were also killed, bringing the total death toll from the strike to seven.

Gaza’s Government Media Office says at least 238 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began in late 2023.

The latest killings have prompted outrage around the world. In Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians filled the streets, waving flags and carrying photographs of the slain reporters.

Hundreds rallied in Tunisia, demanding accountability for the attacks. Protests took place in Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast and Republic of Ireland’s capital, Dublin, while vigils were held in Berlin, Germany and the Netherlands. Earlier demonstrations took place in Washington, DC, as well as London, Oslo and Stockholm.

In the US capital, Washington, DC, protesters gathered outside a building housing NBC, Fox News, ITN and The Guardian.

Demonstrators were “banging pots and pans, making as much noise as possible” to disrupt live broadcasts happening inside, said Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi, reporting from the scene.

“The demonstrators say their coverage of the genocide in Gaza has given Israel room to kill so many Palestinians and, notably, so many journalists,” he said.

“Their message is: You are no longer the gatekeepers. We know what’s happening in Gaza. We know about the genocide despite your best efforts,” he added.

Rattansi said candles were lit for each journalist killed in Gaza, with particular attention given to al-Sharif.

Hazami Barmada, one of the organisers of the Washington, DC protest, told Al Jazeera the media organisations had helped to create “public consent for the murder of these journalists … by making excuses for the Israeli government to target and kill them”.

She added: “After their death, [the media organisations] continue to justify the illegal death, shooting, bombing and murdering journalists, which is a crime against humanity and a war crime.”

Press freedom group PEN America said the killing of the five journalists in Gaza “raises grave concerns” and “could amount to a war crime”.

“This attack not only wiped out an entire team of journalists – at a time when there are fewer and fewer voices able to report from Gaza – but also took six more Palestinian lives in an onslaught that has already claimed thousands of lives,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, managing director of its PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center.

“The fact that [Anas] al-Sharif’s family, friends, and colleagues must now defend him from unsupported accusations rather than being able to mourn him and honour his legacy as a journalist adds to the disgraceful nature of this crime,” Gerntholtz added.

PEN America noted that al-Sharif was previously part of a Reuters team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024.

Elsewhere, an Australian journalists’ union released a statement condemning the “targeted killing of the five Palestinian media workers and the killing of nearly 200 others”.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), the largest organisation representing journalists in Australia, said al-Sharif’s “reports brought to the world the reality of the horrors being inflicted by the Israeli Government on the civilians in Gaza”.

“The targeting of journalists is a blatant attack on press freedom, and it is also a war crime. It must stop,” MEAA said, also calling for Israel’s ban preventing international journalists from reporting from Gaza to be lifted.

Separately, the United Nations condemned the killings, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for an “independent and impartial investigation”, his spokesperson said.

The killings come as Israel’s Security Cabinet has approved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to expand military operations and occupy Gaza City.