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Deal would run until 2030 and have extra year’s optionFoden has spent his whole career with CityPhil Foden has agreed in principle a new four-year contract with Manchester City that will tie the 25-year-old to the club until 2030.Although the formalities are yet to be completed, there are not expected to be any issues. Foden’s deal is due to expire in summer 2027. Continue reading...

The Essex and South Africa spinner has taken more Championship wickets than anyone else since arriving in 2017 – but says 18 teams can reward mediocrityFor 10 seasons, few have earned the right to comment on English cricket more than Simon Harmer. Because for 10 seasons, no one has taken more County Championship wickets than the South African off-spinner who arrived at Essex in 2017 on a six-month contract, his international career stalled and his options narrowing fast.He has since become one of the great imports of the English game: 522 first-class wickets and counting for Essex, two County Championship titles, a Bob Willis Trophy, a return to South Africa’s Test side and, perhaps most importantly, contentment. “My journey has been bumpy,” Harmer says from a sun-drenched beer garden near the Oval. “I can say now that I’m at peace with it.” Continue reading...

A first Champions League final in 20 years is within touching distance, but a difficult tie is not over yetMikel Arteta can be forgiven for never missing the chance to remind everyone that these are unprecedented times for Arsenal. As his side prepares to face Atlético Madrid in the decisive act of their second successive Champions League semi-final, it is easy to forget that they have only reached this stage on four occasions in their entire history.But 20 years after Arsène Wenger’s team edged past Villarreal in the last European match to be played at Highbury, Arsenal have their best opportunity since then to reach a second final after a campaign where they have swept all before them. The 1-1 draw in last week’s first leg in Madrid made it 13 matches unbeaten in this year’s Champions League – the only club to have achieved that feat – and also matched Wenger’s longest run without a defeat in Europe’s premier competition. Continue reading...

While the doping-friendly event does not seem keen on journalistic interrogation, here’s what needs to be askedThe plan to fly to Las Vegas to cover what the Enhanced Games claims is the “next frontier of human performance” ended with a short email sent at 7.02pm on Friday. “After careful consideration, we are unable to approve your media credential request for this year’s event,” it said. “Due to the high volume of applications and limited media capacity, we could not accommodate all requests … thank you again for your interest and understanding.”Admittedly, the rejection didn’t come entirely out of the blue. Unlike most sports organisations, the Enhanced Games had a pre-screening process which led to a nice PR man calling me a few days beforehand. His opening gambit? To point out the Guardian’s negativity towards the event (“Grotesque” – Barney Ronay; “Showcasing so much of the wrongness of the age” – Marina Hyde; “Competitors run the risk of their libido being ‘killed off’, leading experts have warned” – Sean Ingle). Continue reading...

Having overseen a historic return to the Premier League, businessman is now aiming his sights even higherDoug King is discussing the night Coventry clinched promotion to the Premier League after 25 years away. He had a tear in his eye when the moment arrived at Blackburn and, after eventually exiting the Ewood Park boardroom, the champagne flowing, the straight-talking owner worth hundreds of millions hunkered down at a Travelodge adjacent to a service station on the M65. “It was ... noisy,” he says, taking a second to land on the best adjective, “because all I could hear pretty much all night was: ‘We are Premier League.’”It has led King to feel like a party planner of late. The biggest one yet was Monday’s open-top bus parade which started on Jimmy Hill Way, named after the manager who in 1967 led the club into the top flight for the first time. After Coventry were crowned champions last month, King guzzled from the trophy. “I didn’t think the lid would come off, so we had to make the most of that,” he says with a smile. Continue reading...

With Saudi investment drying up, one of LIV’s highest-profile recruits may be having second thoughts as Australian officials call for the global golf ecosystem to come togetherHe was Australian golf’s shining light, a likeable everyman whose career has found the rough. Now, Cameron Smith “may be rethinking” his decision to stick with LIV Golf, according to the head of the PGA of Australia, after Saudi Arabian investors withdrew funding from the upstart tour.The entire Australian golf sector is wrestling with what a future without LIV – or with a fiscally restrained LIV-lite – might look like, as the South Australia government pushes on with spending $45m for an upgrade to a course still scheduled to host a LIV tournament from 2028. Continue reading...

A hot start to the VFL season has attracted big crowds on the Emerald Isle to leave fans eagerly anticipating the step up in 2028When the original rules of the game were being written in Melbourne, Tasmanians were playing footy, too. It’s taken 160 years for the state to get its first genuine chance at the elite level, but early signs indicate the Tasmania Football Club is thriving.For now, the Devils are playing in the second-tier VFL competition, but that is only as a two-year pathway to a guaranteed place in the AFL and AFLW. Continue reading...

Sluggish Manchester City failed to get the win they needed and have left themselves with a lot to do to regain titleBedlam here, utter bedlam – particularly the finish when Jérémy Doku’s 97th-minute right-foot curler grabbed Manchester City a 3-3 draw with Everton.Yet, the bottom line is this: the result places one Arsenal hand on the Premier League trophy, and City no longer control whether the other hand will join it. Continue reading...

Wu claims title 18-17 with decisive break of 85The 22-year-old is the second-youngest champion everAs the ticker tape rained down on Wu Yize and the Chinese flag was draped over the shoulders of snooker’s newest superstar as he clutched the game’s most famous prize, it was hard not to imagine that this sport was changing in front of our eyes for ever.If Zhao Xintong broke through the glass ceiling for 12 months ago, then the exploits of China’s newest Crucible king may have just shattered it into a thousand pieces. The boy who came to England with his father as a 16-year-old to pursue his dreams, living in a windowless flat in Sheffield, is now the champion of the world. Continue reading...

A three-horse race has witnessed a faller. This most magical of Hearts seasons has edged closer to delivering the ultimate prize, an outcome that would shake Scottish football to its very foundations.This was a game Rangers and their manager, Danny Röhl, dare not lose. They did, courtesy of a stirring second-half comeback from Hearts. Rangers now trail the Edinburgh club by seven points. The Hearts lead over Celtic has been restored to three with the same number of fixtures to play. Continue reading...