Sports & Casinos UK

New season will kick off on 9 SeptemberLeague arranges record nine international gamesThe 2026 NFL season will kick off with a Super Bowl rematch. Mike Macdonald, Sam Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks will face off against Mike Vrabel, Drake Maye and the New England Patriots after raising their championship banner on 9 September in the first of the season’s 272 games.The Seahawks dominated the Patriots in a 29-13 victory in February that secured the franchise’s second NFL title.You can see the full schedule for 2026 here. Continue reading...

American world No 1 among those shooting 3-under 67sRory McIlroy finishes on four-over after four straight bogeysIt was gridlock on the opening day of the US PGA, where the leaderboard was backed up like Philly traffic. By the time it was all over, seven men were tied in the lead on three-under par, and another 42 were within three shots of them. Altogether a third of the field was within easy reach of the lead. It was record for a major championship, and they have been playing them since 1860. There are 16 major winners spread among them, including, ominously for everyone else, that man Scottie Scheffler. All the talk before the tournament was that it would be a turkey shoot, but it turned out to be one long tailback. The only thing missing was the traffic police.Actually they had one of them, too, or something near enough. A rules official on the first tee gave the 27-year-old South African Garrick Higgo a two-shot penalty for arriving 30 seconds late from the practice green. He still shot a 69. The really odd thing was that in a field where even a man who dropped two shots because he missed his tee time managed to end the day in contention, a couple of the biggest names in the game wound up all but out of it. Continue reading...

Guardiola can claim 17th City trophy, Arteta weighs up another Arsenal reshuffle and Brentford’s European dreams could edge closerA measure of Pep Guardiola’s greatness is to be found in Saturday’s FA Cup final being a 24th visit to Wembley leading Manchester City. As this born winner could depart in the close season, the meeting with Chelsea may be a third-last outing in charge, in which he seeks the opposite result to the 2021 Champions League final. Yet Chelsea are now in a state of flux – Calum McFarlane is in a second caretaker spell of the season, following Liam Rosenior’s sacking last month, having also filled in when Enzo Maresca walked out on 1 January. This points to a City triumph and the 17th major trophy of Guardiola’s reign. But this is football, so who knows? Jamie JacksonFA Cup final: Chelsea v Manchester City, Saturday 3pm (all times BST)Aston Villa v Liverpool, Friday 8pmManchester United v Nottingham Forest, Sunday 12.30pmBrentford v Crystal Palace, Sunday 3pmEverton v Sunderland, Sunday 3pmWolves v Fulham, Sunday 3pm Continue reading...

Head coach points to talks held as well as his contractSlot describes the criticism he is facing as ‘normal’Arne Slot has said he has “every reason to believe” he will remain Liverpool’s head coach next season and get the opportunity to rectify the champions’ decline.Slot’s position has been the subject of intense debate for much of a disappointing season, and Anfield’s frustrations rose to the surface last weekend when boos accompanied the 1-1 draw with Chelsea. Internally, Liverpool’s position has not changed. There remains support for the coach who delivered the Premier League title in his debut season and recognition of the numerous problems he has encountered since. Continue reading...

Australia striker to leave after six and a half yearsKatie McCabe to leave Arsenal at end of campaignSam Kerr will leave Chelsea this summer when her contract expires, the club have announced, ending her six-and-a-half-year spell in west London.The Australia striker is Chelsea’s leading goalscorer in the Women’s Super League with 64 goals and has scored 115 times for the Londoners in all competitions, during an era of remarkable success for both her and the club. Continue reading...

In this exclusive book extract, Rob Draper and Jonathan Northcroft reveal the remarkable process which led to Thomas Tuchel’s appointment as England managerIn 2024, when the Football Association was tasked with finding Gareth Southgate’s successor, Mark Bullingham hired two external data companies who built a profile of what successful international managers looked like then tailored it to mesh with England’s player base.The top 50 coaches in the world were matched against the criteria and a shortlist emerged. “I joked with the team afterwards, because it came up with a list you and I could have come up with in the pub in 10 minutes,” Bullingham, the FA’s chief executive, says. Continue reading...

Royal Lyceum, EdinburghDawn Steele stars in Ron Ferguson’s warm-hearted tale of a town whose fortunes are tied to those of its coal mine and local teamBlack diamonds are what they used to dig up from the Fife coalfields. The Blue Brazil is the unlikely nickname of Cowdenbeath football club. Together, in the 1993 book by Ron Ferguson, they represent the bittersweet hopes of a downtrodden town: the coal that brought work, fatal accidents and unemployment; the team that brought moments of joy and a litany of loss. You would call it a triumph of the underdog, except this team never triumphs.“Some things are more important than winning,” is the catchphrase of the ex-miner and diehard Cowdenbeath fan (Barrie Hunter) who haunts this warm-hearted adaptation by Gary McNair, first aired as an audio drama in 2021. More important, the playwright would argue, is a sense of community, of shared experience, of learning not to be defeated by pit closures, job losses, relegation and death. It is about “how to lose and keep going with hope”. Continue reading...

Gary Lineker called it possibly the worst VAR decision he has seen. Celtic’s win against Motherwell is another reason to ditch the systemThis moment was inevitable. One when observers from Gorgie to Guadalajara ponder how Scottish football got itself into such a tangle with the video assistant referee system. Sadly for Hearts, the incident in question may prove fatal in their push to make history. Sadly for Celtic, it will be a key reference point in the event of a successful title defence.Gary Lineker played for Tottenham in a 1-1 draw at Tynecastle in 1990, which has never appeared to fuel a lasting affection for Hearts. Lineker is untainted by the Old Firm’s suffocating tribalism. He passed the neutrality test with flying colours. Lineker used social media to amplify the cries of disgust as Celtic were awarded a late, late penalty to win at Motherwell. “This might be the worst VAR decision I’ve seen (and there’s a lot of competition),” Lineker said. “Extraordinary given the significance.” Continue reading...

Having viewed the incident that led to Celtic being awarded a spot-kick against Motherwell more often than we’ve put on socks, Football Daily still can’t understand how referee John Beaton arrived at his decision. Of course we’ve seen all the freeze-frame stills on Social Media Disgrace that suggest the ball probably did hit Sam Nicholson’s forehead-adjacent paw, but even then it doesn’t automatically follow that it was a foul. The power and trajectory with which the ball was sent back out over the touchline was clearly generated by the Motherwell defender’s big slab-head and not some overarm serve borrowed from the volleyball court. More crucially, what has also become abundantly clear in the ensuing frenzy of hysterical debate over whether or not Nicholson handled the ball, is that in initially declining to award Celtic a penalty the referee definitively did not make a clear-and-obvious error. It was not until he was sent to his screen by the curtain-twitchers in McStockley Park that Beaton messed up, by electing to re-referee an incident he’d already adjudicated in a perfectly satisfactory manner. Continue reading...

Two-cap veteran picked on bench against FranceForward had contract but returned to dentistry careerDentist and lecturer Liz Crake has been named on the bench for England’s grand slam decider against France on Sunday as Kelsey Clifford has been ruled out with injury. Crake, who has two caps, was called into the squad after Hannah Botterman was ruled out of the entire Six Nations with an ankle issue. Second-choice loosehead prop Clifford picked up a leg injury against Italy last weekend and so Mackenzie Carson will start and the head coach, John Mitchell, who said he has had been forced into 20 player changes across the tournament because of pregnancy and injury, is having to test his side’s depth.Crake, 31, did have a contract with England in the 2024-25 season but has had to turn back to dentistry for this campaign. She is not the only part-time professional player to compete for the Red Roses during this Six Nations. Christiana Balogun, who works as a recruitment consultant, came off of the bench against Italy because of an injury to Maddie Feaunati. The Rugby Football Union has 32 full-time contracts in place for Red Roses players. Those who are not contracted get paid for the days they are in camp and a matchday fee. The captain Meg Jones said: “The players [Crake and Balogun] are full of resilience, the way they are able to come in and switch on and switch off based on their other circumstances as well. It’s definitely probably one of those things that you take for granted when you’ve been in it [professionalism] for so long. Continue reading...