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First Test: Argentina vs. England

When he starts at fly-half for England in the first Test against Argentina on Saturday, George Ford will become the seventh player to make 100 Test starts.

In the 2014 Six Nations, Ford, 32, made his England debut against Wales, and he was a key member of the team that reached the Rugby World Cup final in 2019.

In another game, Guy Pepper, an uncapped Bath back rower, and center Seb Atkinson and wing Will Muir both won their first England caps.

Sam Underhill’s return to the Tests after missing the Six Nations with an ankle injury is joined by Northampton’s Alex Coles in the second row and hooker Jamie George in Ford’s captaincy.

Steward, Roebuck, Coles, Coles, S. Atkinson, Muir, Ford, Spencer, Baxter, George, Heyes, Coles, Coles, B. Curry, Underhill, Willis, and Steward.

First Test: Argentina vs. England

When he starts at fly-half for England in the first Test against Argentina on Saturday, George Ford will become the seventh player to make 100 Test starts.

In the 2014 Six Nations, Ford, 32, made his England debut against Wales, and he was a key member of the team that reached the Rugby World Cup final in 2019.

In another game, Guy Pepper, an uncapped Bath back rower, and center Seb Atkinson and wing Will Muir both won their first England caps.

Sam Underhill’s return to the Tests after missing the Six Nations with an ankle injury is joined by Northampton’s Alex Coles in the second row and hooker Jamie George in Ford’s captaincy.

Steward, Roebuck, Coles, Coles, S. Atkinson, Muir, Ford, Spencer, Baxter, George, Heyes, Coles, Coles, B. Curry, Underhill, Willis, and Steward.

“It’s not about where we come from, but where we’re going to”.

The sentence can be found at the entrance of the Gondomar SC academy followed by a picture of its illustrious son Diogo Jota wearing the colours of the club he played for between the ages of nine and 17.

Right next to it, there’s another one of him with the Portugal national team shirt too.

That’s how far Jota went.

Since 2022, it has been renamed as the Diogo Jota academy.

Those words, said by the forward himself after scoring twice in a 3-0 win against Sweden in the Nations League in 2020, illustrate exactly who he was.

The 28-year-old, who died along with his brother Andre Silva on Thursday following a car accident in Spain, spent almost all his formative years in his hometown with a third-tier team, paying around 20 euros each month to play for them while being overlooked by the big sides because of his size.

He kept believing and went from Gondomar to Pacos de Ferreira, then to Porto, Wolverhampton and finally Liverpool.

Jota became a symbol of hope and inspiration back home. He proved to an entire country that it’s possible to reach the top even if the path isn’t a straight line.

The talent had always been there.

So much so that in his early days, when he was starting to draw some attention with Pacos, one of his former coaches, Jorge Simao, made a big claim by saying Jota would be Cristiano Ronaldo’s successor.

The player was obviously surprised to hear that, but immediately thought to himself, ‘ If he believes in that, why can’t I do that? ‘

Jota was a rare case of an elite Portuguese footballer who never spent time at any of the big three academies – Benfica, Sporting and Porto.

“What set him apart from everyone else was really the mental aspect, the way he overcame any situation – and he realised that very quickly,” former Pacos’ youth football coordinator Gilberto Andrade told BBC Sport.

“I think there are moments when, whether you’re a coach, a coordinator, or a director, there are words, things said, that have a great impact on players. At the time, perhaps they don’t fully understand it, but later it reflects in their behaviour, in how they train, in how they live day to day.

” And Jota, I think, to some extent with us, understood what it meant to be a professional player, what it meant to be a good athlete, a good person. He was an example in that regard. An example, because often success leads many players to have a somewhat winding path due to the money they make.

Jota took the long road, but always had it clear where he was going.

That became obvious to Andrade the day he came to him with an unusual request. “I want to learn a foreign language. Someday, I might play abroad and I’ve got to be ready”, said Jota.

The Gondomar boy was still young but had spent long enough outside the radar of the Portuguese powerhouses to realise his future could be far away from his home country.

“He knew very well where he was going”, recalled Andrade, who has also worked in Italy, Belgium and Saudi Arabia.

“Back then, I had those audio language courses, so I handed some of them to him. Soon, however, he realised they weren’t enough – he actually needed a teacher. For him, it was evident that he was going to need it later in his career. He was this different”.

For a brief moment, Jota feared his career would be at risk following a heart problem diagnosed during medical tests ahead of the 2014-15 season.

He was not allowed to train for almost a month.

“Do not put the cart before the horse”, he used to reply to anyone who came to him worried about the situation at the time.

That was how he lived his life – taking it day by day.

Jota quickly established himself as one of the rising talents of the Portuguese league after that, but didn’t change a bit.

The number of teams interested in his services kept rising and yet he chose to remain living in the club’s dormitory with other academy graduates and trialists that came and went until his very last day at Pacos. He was the only first-team player living there.

“He wouldn’t leave his room. He was solely focused on his work, there was no time for distractions when it came to him”, added Andrade.

Jota always knew where he was heading and, throughout his life, he proved time and again the journey mattered more than the starting point.

Diogo Jota was on his way to take a ferry and return to Liverpool for pre-season training when he died in a car accident, BBC Sport has been told.

The Portugal forward, who was 28, had undergone minor surgery so doctors had advised him against flying.

As a result, he was planning to return to Liverpool for the start of pre-season, due to begin on Monday, by boat.

This is understood to mean he was travelling by car from Porto to take a ferry from Santander in northern Spain.

There are ferry routes from Santander to Plymouth and Portsmouth in the south of England.

Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, crashed in the Spanish province of Zamora and died.

The Guardia Civil has told BBC Sport that both men died at about 00: 30 local time on Thursday following a tyre blowout that occurred while overtaking another vehicle.

Zamora, close to the Portuguese border, is about 190 miles from Porto, and a similar distance from the port.

It is understood Jota had also travelled by road and sea to get to Porto for his wedding 11 days ago to his long-term partner, Rute.

Jota scored 65 goals in 182 appearances for Liverpool, helping them win the FA Cup and League Cup in 2022 and the Premier League title last season.

He had previously played for Pacos de Ferreira, Atletico Madrid, Porto and Wolves – for whom he netted 44 goals in 131 games.

Jota’s final match was for Portugal in their Uefa Nations League final win against Spain. He scored 14 goals in 49 internationals.

Tadej Pogacar continues to look unstoppable.

When the reigning Tour de France champion begins his title defence in Lille on Saturday, he will do so as the strong favourite to win cycling’s greatest road race for a fourth time at the age of 26.

The Slovenian became the first rider to win six stages in a single edition since Mark Cavendish in 2009 as he dominated last year’s edition of the three-week race, finishing more than six minutes clear of closest challenger Jonas Vingegaard.

His grip on the peloton appears only to have tightened in 2025.

Pogacar earned the most recent of his 11 wins this year in ominous fashion at the eight-stage Criterium du Dauphine in June – a race that gives a good indication of a rider’s form heading into the Tour. Pogacar won three stages as he took the title by 59 seconds over Vingegaard.

That took him to 99 career victories in stages, races and general classifications – a record among active riders – following his success at one-day races Strade Bianche, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, La Fleche Wallone and the Tour of Flanders, and the week-long UAE Tour earlier this year.

The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider, who is also the reigning road world champion, will be aided by a strong team featuring his super domestique Joao Almeida.

Of those hoping to deny Pogacar, two-time champion Vingegaard holds the most realistic hope.

The Dane, 28, knows how to beat Pogacar, having recorded dominant victories in both 2022 and 2023 as the pair’s exciting rivalry has played out over recent years.

The intensity of that competition can be best summarised by the statistic that, across the past four Tours combined, Pogacar holds an overall lead of just one minute and 25 seconds over Vingegaard – about one second per stage.

Also in Vingegaard’s favour is that Visma-Lease a Bike arguably boast the strongest team, with Britain’s Giro d’Italia winner Simon Yates, and experienced Grand Tour riders Sepp Kuss, Wout van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson all in support.

Completing last year’s podium was Remco Evenepoel, who achieved an impressive third place on his race debut.

Belgium’s double Olympic champion, who won road race and time trial golds at Paris 2024, carries Soudal-QuickStep’s hopes following a fourth-place finish at the Dauphine, but he has yet to hit his very best form since suffering multiple injuries in an accident while on a training ride in December.

And, while he demonstrated his time trial abilities in winning stage four, the former Vuelta a Espana winner finished more than four minutes behind Pogacar overall.

The 25-year-old was pipped to the podium there by Florian Lipowitz of Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, who are expected to prioritise Primoz Roglic in their hunt for a general classification podium place.

The team’s head of performance Dan Lorang admitted to cycling website Velo this month that the rider’s fellow Slovenian Pogacar “is one level above”, adding: “We have to accept that’s how it is, and we cannot negotiate it.”

Nevertheless, Roglic, left devastated when compatriot Pogacar snatched Tour de France glory from him on the penultimate stage in 2020, has excellent Grand Tour pedigree as a five-time winner of cycling’s multi-week races (four Vuelta a Espana titles and one Giro d’Italia victory).

But after winning the Volta a Catalunya in March, Roglic crashed out of this year’s Giro and it remains to be seen whether the 35-year-old can recover in time to compete with the best at the Tour.

While the spotlight is on the battle for the overall Tour de France victory, there is much more going on.

In addition to stage wins, riders and their teams will be contesting four jerseys across the 21 stages:

Those more suited to sprinting will go head-to-head for stage victories when the terrain allows, with the likes of Jasper Philipsen, Biniam Girmay, Tim Merlier and Jonathan Milan among the main contenders after record-breaker Mark Cavendish retired last year.

Expect to see aggressive riders like Julian Alaphilippe seeking breakaway opportunities in pursuit of stage wins for their teams.