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The race no-one wants to win – are Everton serious top-five contenders?

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The fight for Champions League football appears to be turning into the race that no-one wants to win.

For the second year in a row, it is all but certain that the top five teams in the Premier League will qualify for next season’s Champions League.

But shock defeats and inconsistency means the form of the so-called top sides is falling off a cliff.

Defeats for Liverpool and Chelsea have opened the door for a team to come out of left-field and clinch a coveted Champions League place.

Form goes out the window

Arsenal are on track to win the Premier League, with only Manchester City putting up a meagre attempt to stay in the race.

That leaves three Champions League spots up for grabs with Manchester United (55 points), Aston Villa (51) and Liverpool (49) currently occupying those places.

Only Arsenal and City are unbeaten in their past six Premier League games, with the teams below them all struggling to find consistency.

Manchester United top the Premier League’s form table for the past 10 games, winning 23 points.

They are enjoying a resurgence under Michael Carrick and remain in a strong position in terms of Champions League qualification, but victory in Friday’s 2-2 draw at Bournemouth would have closed the gap to Manchester City to four points before the international break.

Aston Villa have the longest winning run of all the top-flight teams this season, winning eight in a row between November and December.

Their results have fallen off a cliff in recent weeks, with Unai Emery’s side losing three successive matches as their grip on third place loosened.

Defending champions Liverpool have lost 10 Premier League games in a season for the first time since 2015-16 and defeat by Brighton meant Arne Slot’s side missed out on the chance to leapfrog Villa into fourth.

“There is always pressure at Liverpool, on me and the players,” Slot said after the game. “That is completely normal.

‘For Everton to be in the mix is unbelievable’

Everton have competed sporadically in Europe throughout the 21st century, most recently in 2017-18 when they featured in the Europa League.

They have not featured in the Champions League proper since 1970-71, when it was known as the European Cup.

But eighth in the Premier League, just three points off the top five with seven league games to go, the Toffees are in serious contention to not only compete in Europe but perhaps even reach the continent’s top competition.

Manager David Moyes was keen not to get carried away with the idea of Champions League football at Hill Dickinson Stadium, but did not shy away from what being in Europe would mean to the club.

“I’d love to say it was [a possibility] as I’m trying to be more positive than I would normally be, but for Everton to even be in the mix for Europe is unbelievable, whether it is Conference League or Champions League,” Moyes said.

“We were sitting here last year just beginning to edge ourselves away from relegation and still had lots of money to pay off, new ownership and 10 or 12 players out of contract – so for us to be in the position we are now is just great.

“I can imagine, if we could possibly do it, what it would do for the crowds here as Evertonians are desperate to get back amongst it.”

Champions League football might have seemed like a far-away dream for a club who have spent more time trying to avoid relegation in recent seasons, but under Moyes they have enjoyed a resurgence that has almost made that dream a reality.

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‘A mammoth effort to stay where we are’

Before Monday’s draw with Wolves, Brentford played a video on screens around Gtech Community Stadium showing pre-season predictions from pundits, including Micah Richards and Alan Shearer, who said the Bees would be involved in a relegation battle after losing Thomas Frank to Tottenham.

The video ended by playing lyrics from Stormzy’s song Shut Up, with those two words displayed in giant letters across the screen.

Under Keith Andrews Brentford have largely done their talking on the pitch. Rather than looking over their shoulders in the relegation battle, they have written their name into the conversation for European qualification – something never done in the club’s history.

The Bees could not capitalise on teams above them dropping points on Saturday, the goalless draw a missed opportunity to go level on points with Chelsea and edge closer to securing not only a spot in Europe, but a push for the Champions League places.

“It’s tight,” Andrews said after the game. “The league is pretty condensed in that part. Seven to go.

“We have done unbelievably well to get where we are in the league. We deserve to be where we are and it’ll take a mammoth effort to stay there.

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‘They want to colonise us’: Brazil’s Lula warns of foreign interference

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has criticised what he called the return of a colonial approach towards developing nations during a summit in Colombia.

But while Lula did not mention United States President Donald Trump in his remarks, he gestured at actions undertaken by the Trump administration, including the January 3 abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and the fuel blockade in Cuba.

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“It’s not possible for someone to think that they own other countries,” Lula said, in an apparent reference to US policy.

“What are they doing with Cuba now? What did they do with Venezuela? Is that democratic?”

Lula delivered his remarks at Saturday’s summit for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which featured a high-level forum with delegates from Africa.

He told delegates that their countries had already experienced being plundered for gold, silver, diamonds and minerals.

“After taking everything we had, now they want to own the critical minerals and rare earths that we have,” Lula said, without specifying who “they” might be. “They want to colonise us again.”

The left-wing Brazilian president also criticised the ongoing war launched by the US and Israel against Iran.

He drew a parallel between that conflict, which began on February 28, and the US-led Iraq war, which began in 2003 on the pretext of eliminating “weapons of mass destruction”.

“Iran has been invaded under the pretext that Iran was building a nuclear bomb,” Lula said, before pivoting to the US campaign in Iraq, which resulted in the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“Where are Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons?” Lula asked. “Where are they? Who found them?”

A history of intervention

Washington’s history of intervention in Latin America goes back more than 200 years to when then-President James Monroe claimed the hemisphere as part of the US sphere of influence.

While large-scale, overt US involvement in the region mostly petered out after the Cold War, Trump has rekindled the legacy.

Since assuming office last year, Trump has launched boat strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean, ordered a naval blockade on Venezuelan oil exports, and gotten involved in electoral politics in Honduras and Argentina.

Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods last year, citing the trial against the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, as a motive. The US has also shown keen interest in Brazil’s rare earth deposits.

Then, on January 3, US forces abducted and imprisoned Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, flying him to New York to face drug and weapons charges.

While such actions have thrilled right-wing leaders across the continent, they have raised fears among left-wing politicians, who have voiced grave concerns over what they see as US bullying.

“We cannot allow anyone to interfere and violate the territorial integrity of each country,” Lula said Saturday.

Frustration with the UN

Lula, who has said he will run for a fourth, nonconsecutive term in Brazil’s upcoming October elections, also criticised the United Nations for its inability to stop multiple conflicts around the world.

“What we are witnessing is the total and absolute failure of the United Nations,” he said, pointing to the situations in Gaza, Ukraine and Iran.

He called, once again, for reform of the UN Security Council, which is mandated with ensuring international peace and security. But it has failed to stop major conflicts because of the veto power of its five permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

There have been decades of efforts to reform the Security Council. But they have all been unsuccessful.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whom the US Drug Enforcement Administration has designated a “priority target”, echoed Lula’s condemnation of the UN.

The body “is acting in impotence, and that is not what it was created for. It was created after World War II precisely to prevent wars. And yet, what we have today is war,” Petro said at the summit.

But the world needs the UN to provide climate solutions and curb global warming, Petro said.

“The more serious humanity’s problems become, the fewer tools we have for collective action. And that path leads only to barbarism.”

Relatively few presidents and prime ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean attended the summit in Colombia, a sign of the continent’s deep divisions.

Silvestri broke five ribs in Milan-San Remo crash

Italian Debora Silvestri broke five ribs and sustained a micro fracture to her shoulder in a serious crash during the women’s Milan-San Remo one-day classic.

The incident, in which the Laboral Kutxa rider went headfirst over a roadside barrier and fell several metres onto a lower section of road in trying to take avoiding action, happened on the descent of the famous Cipressa climb and involved a number of competitors.

Silverstri, 27, was taken to hospital following the crash.

She later posted on Instagram: “I feel quite good, five ribs broken and a micro fracture on shoulder – could be worse.

“Time to recover but no worries, I will come back.”

Poland’s Kasia Niewiadoma and Kim le Court, from Mauritius, were also involved in the pile-up.

Her Laboral Kutxa team said Silverstri was “conscious” when being taken to hospital after the incident.

They later added: “She will remain hospitalised for the next few hours under medical supervision, and further tests will be conducted to assess the extent of the injuries.”

Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky held off Switzerland’s Noemi Ruegg in a sprint for the line to win the 156km women’s race, with the men’s race in the first Monument of the season under way.

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Iran strikes towns near Israel’s nuclear site in escalating tit-for-tat

An Iranian missile has struck the southern Israeli cities of Dimona, home to the country’s main nuclear facility, and nearby Arad, wounding dozens of people and causing significant damage, in one of the most dramatic escalations since the US-Israel war on Iran began.

Iranian state television quickly reframed Saturday’s strikes as a “response” to what it said was a strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment complex earlier in the day, marking a stark new phase of tit-for-tat targeting in the conflict, now in its fourth week.

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Nearly 100 people were wounded in the attacks, according to Israel’s emergency services, including a 10-year-old boy who paramedics said was in critical condition with multiple shrapnel wounds. Seven others are also in critical condition.

An Israeli military spokesman said Israel’s air defence systems activated during the attacks, but failed to intercept some of the missiles, even though they were not “special or unfamiliar”.

The country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the attacks which wounded nearly 100 people, called it a “difficult” evening for Israel, and again vowed to continue attacking Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had received no indication of damage to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona itself, and that no abnormal radiation levels had been detected in the area.

The nuclear watchdog said it was closely monitoring the situation, with Director General Rafael Grossi urging that “maximum military restraint should be observed, in particular in the vicinity of nuclear facilities”.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said that three separate impact sites had been identified across Dimona, with one three-storey building having completely collapsed and several fires breaking out.

Witness footage verified by Al Jazeera, which is banned from operating inside Israel, showed a missile striking the city, followed by a large explosion.

Arad, another town near the nuclear facility, was also directly attacked, Israel’s firefighting service said in a statement, with extensive damage reported in the city centre.

“In both Dimona and Arad, interceptors were launched that failed to hit the threats, resulting in two direct hits by ballistic missiles with warheads weighing hundreds of kilograms”, firefighters said.

School in the surrounding Ramat Negev Regional Council was cancelled for the following day.

Earlier on Saturday, the Israeli military announced it had struck a research and development facility at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, which it said had been used to develop components for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The military said it “will not allow the Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons”.

Iran said that the US and Israel had targeted its Natanz enrichment complex that morning, though it reported no radioactive leakage.

An unnamed Israeli official, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, denied that Israel was responsible for the Natanz strike, but the Israeli army has not released a full statement on the matter.

Dimona has been at the heart of Israel’s nuclear programme since its research centre, built in secret with French assistance, opened there in 1958.

Eye-for-an-eye approach

Israel is believed to have developed nuclear weapons by the late 1960s. Its policy of deliberate ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying their existence, was part of a deal quietly struck with Washington, which judged that an open declaration would risk triggering a regional arms race.

Abas Aslani, a senior fellow at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran has been pursuing an eye-for-an-eye approach designed to re-establish deterrence.

“Tehran wants to reduce the gap between words and actions,” he said, adding that Iran’s goal was to make its threats credible enough to underpin a new long-term security arrangement, not to simply force a ceasefire, but establish deterrence.

The attacks came as the broader war grinds through its fourth week.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in Iran since the US and Israeli strikes began on February 28, including more than 200 children.

WHO says attack on Sudan hospital killed 64, including 13 children

An attack on a ⁠hospital in Sudan’s Darfur region has killed at least ‌64 people, including 13 children, according to the head of ⁠the World ⁠Health Organization (WHO).

In a social media post, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday that multiple patients, two female nurses and one male doctor were also among those killed in the attack on Al Deain Teaching Hospital in Al Deain, the capital of East Darfur state, on Friday night.

Another 89 people, including eight health staff, were wounded, he added.

The attack damaged the hospital’s paediatric, maternity, and emergency departments, rendering the facility non-functional and cutting off ‌essential medical services in the ‌city.

“As a result of this tragedy, the total number of fatalities linked to attacks on health facilities during Sudan’s war has now surpassed 2,000,” said Tedros, adding that over the nearly three-year conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the WHO had confirmed the killing of 2,036 people in 213 attacks on healthcare.

There was no immediate information about who was behind the attack.

The war between the army and the RSF erupted in mid-April 2023, unleashing a wave of violence that has led to one of the world’s fastest-growing man-made humanitarian crises, with tens of thousands of people killed and more than 12 million forced from their homes.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the RSF has been implicated in atrocities in Darfur that United Nations experts say bear the hallmarks of genocide.

Outrun and in decline – are Rosenior’s Chelsea near crisis point?

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Nizaar Kinsella

Football reporter at Hill Dickinson Stadium
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Chelsea are in freefall after their latest defeat – 3-0 at Everton – and now have a two‑week international break during which to stew on 10 damaging days.

After suffering an 8-2 aggregate loss to Paris St‑Germain in the Champions League last 16, Chelsea’s defeat at the hands of Beto and Ilman Ndiaye on Saturday means back‑to‑back Premier League losses and no wins in four in all competitions.

This has led to increasing scrutiny of head coach Liam Rosenior and the club as a whole, not least from vice‑captain Enzo Fernandez, who said Chelsea had lost “identity, structure and direction” since former boss Enzo Maresca left the club in January, adding the players did not understand why he left.

Although Fernandez went closest to scoring and embraced Rosenior after the match, his comments paint a worrying picture.

Once again on Saturday, Chelsea were outrun, error‑prone and tactically open, as Everton played through them for a comfortable win at the Hill Dickinson Stadium.

The result leaves Chelsea sixth in the Premier League, still just one point behind fifth‑placed Liverpool in the race for Champions League qualification.

However, Everton are now seventh and only two points behind Chelsea, part of a group of sides capable of leapfrogging the struggling giants with seven matches left to play this season.

“I don’t focus on the noise,” Rosenior told BBC Match of the Day. “I know the reality of where I’m at and where we are at as a club and what we can achieve, which is still some amazing things.

Does Rosenior know his best squad?

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Former Chelsea winger Pat Nevin told BBC Radio 5 Live that Chelsea are “not getting the best” out of their players at present.

“You need to find out why that’s happened,” he said. “That can’t be allowed to happen in the Premier League.”

Rosenior has faced criticism for his level of rotation, with no club having made more changes than Chelsea’s 99 in the Premier League from match to match.

That rotation has increased under the 41-year-old, who says he does not have a recognised number one goalkeeper, with Robert Sanchez and Filip Jorgensen in rotation.

Sanchez’s form has dipped as a result, with further mistakes against Everton. He was caught in possession early on by Beto but was rescued by defender Jorrel Hato, before allowing a shot from the striker to slip through his fingers in the second half.

There was further criticism for others, including defender Wesley Fofana, while even star attackers Cole Palmer and Joao Pedro struggled to create as Chelsea went goalless for a third consecutive match.

“What I need to do better is make better decisions in terms of team selections, how we freshen up the team and rotate the team to make sure we are competitive in these games,” Rosenior told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Who is to blame?

Before large numbers of the travelling Chelsea supporters left Everton’s stadium before the full-time whistle, they were singing anti-ownership songs. Rosenior approached the remaining fans to apologise and thank them for their support but some see his appointment as symptomatic of wider problems in the hierarchy.

After home matches against Port Vale in the FA Cup quarter-final and a home match against Manchester City, fans of Chelsea and Strasbourg, who are also owned by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, will march on Stamford Bridge before the home game with Manchester United (Saturday, 18 April).

“In every area of the game, Everton fought and battled in such a way that has shown Chelsea up,” Nevin added.

Unfair criticism?

Defeat by Everton means Chelsea have lost three of their past four Premier League matches – as many defeats as in their previous 18 games in the competition.

They have also failed to score in three consecutive matches in all competitions for the first time since September 2023 despite attempting 52 shots (16 on target) across those fixtures.

That profligacy in front of goal has been matched by defensive issues, with Chelsea conceding the opening goal in four consecutive Premier League games for the first time since November 2023.

There is also the well‑publicised statistic that Chelsea have been outrun by every Premier League opponent in every match this season.

“We have played 10 Premier League games in my time here and have 17 points,” Rosenior told Match of the Day.

“We are not in as bad a place as the noise suggests – but we need to come out of it very quickly.”

Indeed, since Rosenior replaced Maresca, Chelsea are fourth in the Premier League form table, winning five of their 10 games.

Only Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City have picked up more points in this period.

Wayne Rooney, who had Rosenior as his assistant at Derby County in 2021 and 2022, believes the Chelsea boss is getting unfairly scrutinized.

“I do [think he is harsh criticism]. He has been from the moment he went in,” Rooney told Match of the Day.

“Liam knows he will get judged on results. He started really well, they have hit a bad run of form over the last couple of weeks but he needs to figure out a way to get out of it.

How crucial is Champions League return?

There are many reasons Champions League football is so important for Chelsea. The most obvious is prestige.

Without it, Chelsea risk being unable to attract key transfer targets. Striker Liam Delap is believed to have chosen a move to Stamford Bridge over Manchester United for the chance to play in the Champions League.

Meanwhile, there is also the issue of revenue. Qualification for the competition is the single biggest way for a major club to boost its bottom line. TV income, prize money and matchday revenue are far greater than those generated in the Europa League or Conference League.

It is especially important for Chelsea, who still lack a long‑term front‑of‑shirt sponsor and whose stadium, Stamford Bridge, lags behind the bigger and more modern grounds used by many of their league rivals.

It’s for all these reasons that before the season, the primary club target for former boss Maresca was to qualify for next season’s Champions League.

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