As Bayern Munich were celebrating winning the Bundesliga title recently, former England defender Kyle Walker received a somewhat unexpected video call.
“It was Vincent Kompany,” he said on the The Kyle Walker podcast.
“Me and Vinny are obviously still really good friends and he does FaceTime me probably once a month. And he FaceTimed me after the win.”
The current Bayern Munich boss was, of course, a team-mate of Walker’s at Manchester City.
Among those celebrating too was Harry Kane, who has also played alongside Walker for both England and Tottenham.
“Harry was there with a pint of beer in his hand, which I was very, very impressed with,” Walker added, saying he was delighted to see the Three Lions captain finally win the first trophy of his professional career.
“It’s probably a weight off his shoulders,” Walker said.
“To go there last season and not win it, and get beaten by a Leverkusen team that was very, very good, was probably a kick in the teeth for him.
“He’s been to two European Championship finals and had to walk past the trophy. He’s played in cup finals, played one against me. We’ve played in a couple together at Tottenham and in semi-finals.
“For him to then finally get a trophy, I think it’s definitely more than deserved. At least no-one can start saying that anymore, that Harry Kane’s not got a trophy.
“He’s got a trophy now and that’s it. It’s put to bed.”
We know Chelsea have won a sixth successive title and will officially be crowned Women’s Super League champions when they lift the trophy on Saturday.
Elsewhere, Crystal Palace’s relegation has been confirmed and no other team can break into the league’s top three.
But there is still plenty up for grabs on Saturday as the Women’s Super League reaches its conclusion.
What are the fixtures?
Battle for second
Arsenal and Manchester United have already secured their places in the WSL’s top three alongside Chelsea, but who finishes where is still to be decided.
Renee Slegers’ side host United at Emirates Stadium on Saturday in a match you can watch live on BBC Two from 12:15 BST.
The Gunners head into the game on the back of two successive defeats in which they conceded nine goals, but face a United side who must win to leapfrog them in the table.
The final standings will determine which round of qualifying the teams enter for next season’s revamped Champions League.
As champions, Chelsea automatically qualify for the new league phase, which will start in October and feature 18 teams, replacing the old group stages.
Whoever finishes second in the WSL will enter in September’s final qualifying round, while the third-placed team must go into the second round of qualifying in August.
Golden Boot
Arsenal’s Alessia Russo is in the driving seat to win the Golden Boot award.
England international Russo is level on goals scored with last season’s winner Khadija Shaw, but has one more assist than the injured Manchester City forward.
Shaw has not featured since the League Cup final on 15 March, when Chelsea beat City 2-1, and interim boss Nick Cushing confirmed on Friday that the Jamaica international “is still in that initial stage of rehab” and won’t feature on the final day.
Russo has thrived under Renee Slegers, scoring 12 goals in 20 league appearances.
Golden Glove
It’s a straight shootout between Manchester United goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce and Chelsea’s Hannah Hampton for the WSL Golden Glove award.
The trophy is given to the keeper who has kept the most clean sheets and with one game to play, Tullis-Joyce is one clear of Hampton.
While Chelsea’s goal difference is far superior to United’s, it is Marc Skinner’s side who have the league’s best defence having conceded only 12 goals, while champions Chelsea have conceded 13.
Kirstie Allsopp and her co-host Phil Spencer are celebrating 25 years of the Channel 4 show this month – and they have put to bed any rumours of a feud once and for all
Phil Spencer and Kirstie Allsopp revealed that they don’t spend much time together outside of work(Image: Getty )
Kirstie Allsopp has admitted that she never socialises with her Location Location Location co-presenter Phil Spencer after he was notably missing from her wedding earlier this year.
The pair are celebrating the show’s 25th anniversary this year and have addressed the rumours of a feud between them. In a joint interview with The Telegraph they confirmed that they were “great friends”. Kirstie said: “We don’t socialise, because we work so much together.” Phil, however, affirmed: “But we’re very, very fond of each other. There’s no one else who’s been through this experience. I put Kirstie among the most important people in my life.”
Agreeing with Phil, Kirstie added: “Ditto. In the most significant parts of our lives, we’ve been there for each other. I think Phil was one of the first people I ever told I was pregnant.”
Earlier this year, Kirstie tied the knot with husband Ben Andersen in an impromptu ceremony. She told the Mail on Sunday in January: “On Thursday, Ben and I were married at The Grosvenor Chapel, where my parents and grandparents were married, and where we celebrated my father’s life in June.”
Phil didn’t attend Kirstie’s wedding earlier this year(Image: Channel 4 Press)
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READ MORE: Location, Location, Location taking over Channel 4 with night of specials for 25th anniversary
She explained that only a small group of close friends and family were in attendance as the event was kept closely under wraps. Wedding details like the flowers, catering, lighting, and the order of service were all done by people she had worked with over the years, and who kept it all secret. As the wedding was organised at the last minute “some beloved friends and family couldn’t be there”, she said, and this included Phil.
Previously, Kirstie had described herself as “happily unmarried”, saying in a column back in 2020 that she had “no problem being a middle-aged girlfriend with an even older middle-aged boyfriend”. She shares two children and two stepchildren with Ben, and the pair have been together since 2004.
To mark the 25th anniversary of Location Location Location, Channel 4 will dedicate a night of celebratory programming on Wednesday, May 14th. Over the years, Kirstie and Phil have helped nearly 750 people find their home, and viewed more than 1,800 properties.
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“However many times I hear it I still can’t believe it has been 25 years, it is an enormous privilege to have the opportunity to travel around the whole country working with so many lovely house hunters and such brilliant crew,” Kirstie said.
Phil, meanwhile, said it was a “surreal” experience, and a “privilege” to be able to visit so much of the UK and support “hundreds of people in their home searches”. He added: “Although quite surreal, it’s also been fun looking back and seeing not only how we have changed through the 25 years, but also watching how our friendship developed and then strengthened across the years.
Manchester City striker Erling Haaland is ready to make his return from injury this weekend, manager Pep Guardiola says.
Haaland had been sidelined since March after sustaining an ankle injury in his side’s FA Cup tie against Bournemouth, but returns in time to contest the final of that competition later this month.
The Norway international, 24, was an unused substitute as City boosted their Champions League hopes by beating Wolves 1-0 in the Premier League last week.
Speaking before his side’s trip to Southampton on Saturday (15:00 BST), Guardiola said on Haaland’s availability: “He is ready, he is fit. [If he will] start, we will see tomorrow.”
City are third in the table, three points above sixth-placed Nottingham Forest, as clubs battle to earn one of the top-five positions which this season offer Champions League football.
In an interview with ESPN this week, Haaland said City’s disappointing season after a run of four consecutive league titles was due to a loss of “hunger” in the squad.
“You can find excuses, injuries, many injuries at bad times, but in the end we haven’t been performing well enough,” Haaland said.
“We haven’t had fully the hunger inside us. I haven’t been good enough. I haven’t helped the team enough. In the end, we haven’t been good enough.”
Asked about those quotes, Guardiola said: “If it’s a feeling for Erling, the players should talk to each other and ask themselves why.”
Haaland has 21 goals in 28 Premier League appearances this season – the only City player to reach double figures in the competition this term.
He has 30 goals in 40 games in all competitions in 2024-25, also contributing four assists.
Russia and Ukraine have accused one another of violating a three-day ceasefire as Moscow marked Victory Day by welcoming allies to a grand military parade.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin marked the 80th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany on Friday alongside China’s Xi Jinping, in an event clearly intended to bolster support for his three-year offensive against Ukraine, which he had unilaterally paused for 72 hours to mark the occasion.
“Russia has been and will remain an indestructible barrier against Nazism, Russophobia and anti-Semitism,” said Putin, seeking to draw parallels between World War II – or the Great Patriotic War as it is named in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union – and the Ukraine war.
Russia maintains that its February 2022 invasion of its neighbour is a battle against a “Nazi” regime in Kyiv. Ukraine has dismissed that claim as “incomprehensible”.
More than 20 foreign dignitaries, including Xi and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, watched the 11,000-strong parade on Red Square.
The show of force was billed by Moscow as proof that the country has not been isolated by the war.
Russian servicemen take part in the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, Russia, on May 9, 2025 [Maxim Bogovid/RIA Novosti via AP Photo]
Throughout his quarter-century in power, Putin has tapped into the nation’s trauma over Soviet losses during the Great Patriotic War, which Russia dates as running from 1941-45.
With the two-year period of 1939-41, during which the Soviets maintained a non-aggression pact, with the Nazis sidelined, Victory Day has been elevated to become the country’s most important public holiday and a prime lever used to whip up patriotism.
Putin appeared to seek to transfer that mood to his war in Ukraine.
“The whole country, society and people support the participants of the special military operation,” he said in his address to the parade, which reportedly included 1,500 soldiers who had fought in Ukraine.
Kyiv argued the parade has “nothing to do with the victory over Nazism” and that those marching on Red Square in a “parade of cynicism” were “quite likely” implicit in crimes against Ukrainians.
Political theatrics
Amid the pomp and circumstance, security in Moscow has been tight, with authorities jamming mobile internet connections, citing the threat of Ukrainian attacks.
However, Putin’s unilaterally declared May 8-10 ceasefire teetered on the brink of collapse even as the parade opened on Friday morning, with both Kyiv and Moscow accusing one another of attacks.
Ukraine had dismissed Putin’s three-day pause as political theatrics, designed to avert the impatience of the United States – which has been trying to broker a ceasefire – and refused to commit to it, and had spent Tuesday and Wednesday using drones to target Moscow, shutting down its airports for significant periods.
Authorities in Russia’s western Belgorod border region said a Ukrainian drone attack hit the city council building on Friday, adding that no one was injured.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian troops had made attempts to breach the border in the Kursk and Belgorod regions, and claimed Ukraine had violated the ceasefire 5,026 times.
Ukraine claimed that just hours after the truce entered into effect, Russia had already broken it, with Moscow’s forces launching guided bombs against the northern Sumy region.
Kyiv reported further attacks on Friday in the southern city of Kherson and the central Dnipropetrovsk region, with two people wounded.
‘Concerted approach’
In a symbolic show of support for Kyiv to coincide with Friday’s parade, Ukraine’s Western allies backed a special tribunal to prosecute Putin and other senior Russian officials for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
Foreign ministers from almost 20 European nations met in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv to sign the “Lviv statement”, a document paving the way for the establishment of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which could start operating next year.
“We stand for a just and lasting peace, for a secure Europe, and for accountability and justice,” said United Kingdom Foreign Minister David Lammy in a statement.
The same day, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said a group of 10 northern European nations and the UK had agreed to support a US proposal for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
That tallies with Ukraine’s response to Putin’s Victory Day ceasefire, which was to question why it would only run for three days and to call for a full 30-day truce.
The Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) coalition – which comprises Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK – met in Oslo on Friday.
Store said the group had contact the night before with US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the proposal and that a “concerted approach” was now being taken.
Diplomatic reset
Trump, who has presented himself as the main mediator in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, had initially appeared to tilt towards Moscow after entering office in January, offering support to Russia’s demands.
However, as Moscow has dragged its feet on agreeing to a ceasefire, the US president has demonstrated growing impatience with Putin, telling him last month to “stop shooting” and sign a peace deal.
On Thursday, Trump reiterated his call for a “30-day unconditional ceasefire,” saying on his Truth Social network that if the truce was not respected, “the US and its partners will impose further sanctions.”
A minerals deal between Kyiv and Washington, ratified by Ukraine’s parliament unanimously on Wednesday, appears to have helped improve relations.
Trump has approved military shipments to the country once more, while the rhetoric from US officials towards Moscow has shown signs of growing frustration.
Still, in the background, Washington has continued to work on a diplomatic reset with Moscow.
Liverpool manager Arne Slot has dropped the clearest hint yet that outgoing defender Trent Alexander-Arnold will join Real Madrid at the end of the season.
The England international announced on Monday that he will not be signing a new contract with the newly crowned Premier League champions when his current deal expires in June.
Rumours have swirled for some time that the 26-year-old has been lining up a move to the Spanish giants, who will compete at this summer’s inaugural FIFA Club World Cup.
Real, who won last season’s UEFA Champions League, claimed the inaugural FIFA Intercontinental Cup in Qatar in December, and despite failing to defend their continental crown this season, will head to the upcoming global club tournament as favourites.
“He hasn’t said anything about it himself,” Slot told a news conference on Friday when asked if Alexander-Arnold could be released early from his contract to play for a new club should they be competing at the Club World Cup.
“For me, it’s impossible to comment on where he’s going and if that is a club that is going to play in the Club World Cup,” Slot added.
“You see by my smile – we both know where he’s going to but it hasn’t been said yet. That’s impossible for me to comment on.”
Slot has warned, meanwhile, that excessive transfer fees could prevent him from signing a tailor-made replacement for Alexander-Arnold.
The defender’s exit leaves Liverpool short of cover in his position, with 21-year-old Conor Bradley, who has made 54 senior appearances, now their only recognised right-back.
“I think it would be a surprise if I were to tell you now, ‘Yes, we are looking at this and looking at that,” Slot said.
“We don’t talk about contracts here so we don’t talk about the positions or if we want to improve the team in certain areas.”
The Dutchman added: “That’s the most difficult thing for a club like Liverpool if you just won the league is that it is not easy to find better players than we already have.
“And if they are there, then they still need to be affordable and need to want to come.
“That last thing is mostly not a problem, by the way, but transfer fees sometimes are.”
Slot confirmed Bradley will start Sunday’s match at home to Arsenal but insisted that was not a reaction to Alexander-Arnold’s announcement as the Republic of Ireland international would have been in the team for Chelsea last weekend had he been fully fit.
And while Alexander-Arnold’s decision to end his 20-year association with Liverpool has provoked contrasting reactions among supporters and pundits, Slot said it was not his job to tell fans how they should feel about the situation.
Slot, in his first season at Anfield after replacing charismatic manager Jurgen Klopp, has yet to speak directly to Alexander-Arnold since the announcement, only communicating via WhatsApp. But he intends to hold face-to-face talks on Friday in order to gauge how the player is feeling about the fallout from his decision.
“That people have an opinion about us, if it is Trent or me or someone else, is not new for anyone,” said Slot.
“Probably it’s a bit more now for him than he is used to, and probably a bit more negative, but I don’t follow all of this. I am not here to tell the fans how they should react.
“We are all disappointed but Trent is the first one also who said he would prefer us as a team and a club not to be too much distracted by this announcement.”
He added: “I am hoping all the energy on Sunday goes to the players and less as possible to Trent – unless it is positive then they can do whatever they want.
“I worked at clubs like AZ Alkmaar and Feyenoord where every season a very good player or multiple very good players left the club so I am a bit more used to it.
