The fate of the rescheduled Euro 2020 soccer tournament will not be decided until March but organizers UEFA are hoping that vaccination efforts will allow them to stick to their original plan for June's pan-European tournament.
The 24-nation, month-long showpiece, a major revenue generator for the continent's soccer governing body UEFA and the national federations across Europe, was postponed by 12 months after last year's COVID-19 outbreak.
Premier League Leeds United suffered the biggest upset of the FA Cup Third Round when they fell to a 3-0 defeat by fourth-tier Crawley Town on Sunday as Manchester City and Chelsea eased through.
A brilliant solo strike from Nick Tsaroulla in the 50th minute put League Two Crawley in front after a first half in which Leeds had caused them few problems.
Sunday’s FA Cup Third Round meeting between Tottenham Hotspur, fourth-place in the Premier League, and Marine AFC, sixth-place in the Northern Premier League Division One North West, represented a record gap of 161 places in the English football pyramid.
The prospect of the greatest giant killing of all time — and the spectacle of José Mourinho’s side visiting Rossett Park in Merseyside — allowed Marine to compensate for the potential loss in revenue of playing the match behind closed doors by selling 20,000 virtual tickets.
Chorley FC, a non-league club, continued its dream run through the FA Cup with a 2-0 win over EFL Championship (second tier) Derby County on Saturday. The team celebrated with a singalong of Adele’s “Someone Like You” in the locker room.
Derby County, which has been hit hard by Covid-19, didn’t field its strongest lineup on Saturday and paid the price with Chorley scoring through Connor Hall and Mike Calveley.
Three of English soccer's minor leagues said on Friday they wanted their season halted and declared null and void due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Southern, Northern Premier and Isthmian Leagues — whose clubs form the seventh and eight tiers of the soccer system — issued a joint statement reviewing the implications of the latest government lockdown.
England Women's team manager Phil Neville is in talks with Inter Miami, the Major League Soccer club owned by his former Manchester United teammate and friend David Beckham, who sacked manager Diego Alonso on Thursday.
Sue Campbell, the English FA's director of women's football, told the BBC Neville would lead the Team GB soccer side at this year's Tokyo Olympics unless he took the Miami job. Neville's England deal ends in July.
Fenerbahçe will sign German midfielder Mesut Özil from Arsenal for three and a half years for an undisclosed fee, Turkey's private Demirören news agency and other Turkish media reported on Wednesday.
While there was no immediate comment on the reports from Fenerbahçe, broadcaster A Spor said Özil and the club had agreed on the transfer in principle and that the 32-year-old would join the former Turkish champions later in January.
Tottenham Hotspur reached the League Cup final after goals from Moussa Sissoko and Son Heung-min sank Championship (second-tier) Brentford 2-0 on Tuesday to set up a clash with Manchester United or Manchester City in April's showpiece.
Fellow London side Brentford, playing in their first semifinal in a major cup competition, started brightly but fell behind in the 12th minute when unmarked French midfielder Sissoko headed in a fine Sergio Reguilon cross from the left.
Watford's promotion push gained some more vigor at the advent of the new year, as the club announced the signing of winger Philip Zinckernagel on a free transfer.
The Premier League is reassuring fans that the season will continue after its latest round of COVID-19 testing produced 40 positive cases among players and staff in the past week. This is the highest amount of Premier League COVID cases reported since the start of the pandemic, breaking the previous week’s record of 18 positive cases.
Despite 58 positive cases since Dec. 21, the EPL said in a statement that the season will go ahead as scheduled.