News Thread

It is an extraordinary deal for Major League Soccer standards. Earlier this week, New York City FC announced that the club had signed Serbian talent Jovan Mijatović from Belgrade-giants Crvena zvezda. The 18-year-old forward has signed a contract until 2028 with a club option for 2029 and will be part of the MLS U22 Initiative. Transfermarkt understands that Crvena zvezda will receive an initial €8 million plus €2m in add-ons. 

Manchester United’s quest for Champions League qualification has suffered a significant blow after Luke Shaw was ruled out for several months. The England international suffered a recurrence of a muscle injury against Luton Town and was withdrawn before half-time at Kenilworth Road.

The Premier League is unquestionably the world’s most popular football league and much of that is down to the fact that the English top-flight spends money unlike any other division in Europe. This season alone has seen the league’s 20 clubs spend no less than €2.93 billion on transfer fees, which is more or less the combined spending of Ligue 1, Serie A and the Bundesliga in the same period of time. In no uncertain terms, the Premier League is in a league of its own when it comes to spending money.

Pedro Neto has firmly established himself as one of the most exciting wingers in the English Premier League this season. Wolves are surpassing expectations amid financial constraints under the increasingly impressive Gary O’Neil and Neto has been instrumental to their success. 

Erling Haaland is quite simply a goalscoring phenomenon. He has scored at a ridiculous rate at Molde, RB Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City and with Norway. At just 23, Haaland has scored a remarkable 241 goals in just 278 appearances across all competitions since making his senior debut. 

For many aspiring managers, from every corner of the world, achievement in the Premier League is the pinnacle of success. At this moment in time, the league's total market value of €10.86 billion dwarves every other worldwide division. La Liga, with a total market value of €4.97b, gets closest to the Premier League. England is where the money is, it's where some of the very best players are, and it's where many of the greatest coaches ply their trade. Since the Premier League's re-brand in 1992, just 11 managers have lifted the trophy. Remarkably, not one of them has been English.

All eyes will be on Manchester on Sunday as the city’s two biggest clubs meet in the English Premier League. The Manchester derby has grown in significance across the last two decades with Manchester City developing into England’s dominant side after investment from the Middle East. 

Fears concerning the inevitability of Manchester City’s brilliance were undoubtedly realised on Sunday afternoon, when Pep Guardiola’s reigning champions claimed all three points in the derby against Manchester United, despite first conceding a goal in the opening 45 minutes. For the sixth time in this season’s Premier League campaign, Man City came from behind to claim all three points. And no player exemplified that never-say-die attitude more than young midfielder Phil Foden. 

Bayer Leverkusen’s stunning season under Xabi Alonso continued last weekend. A 2-0 win at Cologne took the German club 10 points ahead of second placed Bayern Munich. With just 10 games to go, Leverkusen are now only an implosion away from ending Bayern’s dominance in Germany and winning their first ever Bundesliga title. A huge part of Alonso’s team’s success this season has come from the potent threat of their wing-backs. In the aforementioned 2-0 win, both right-wing-back Jeremie Frimpong and left-wing-back Alejandro Grimaldo found the back of the net. Yet again. 

Manchester City made history on Wednesday night as they became the first English team to win ten consecutive games in the Champions League. Pep Guardiola’s men brushed aside Copenhagen with a dominant 3-1 win in an ominous sign to European football’s elite clubs.