Manchester City completed a PFA Player of the Year double on Tuesday night as midfielder Phil Foden and striker Bunny Shaw were named men’s and women’s winners for 2023-24.

Foden, 24, scored 19 goals and provided eight assists to help City clinch an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League title under Pep Guardiola.

Erling Haaland — who won last season’s crown — was one of six nominees, including City midfielder Rodri, Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard, Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins and Cole Palmer.

Shaw finished the campaign as the top scorer in the Women’s Super League (WSL) with 21 goals in 18 games for the club, despite having her season prematurely ended by a foot injury in late April.

The Jamaica international becomes the first female City player to scoop the award since Lucy Bronze won the accolade in 2016-17.

Shaw’s Man City team-mates Yui Hasegawa and Lauren Hemp were also nominated, alongside Chelsea’s Niamh Charles, Erin Cuthbert and Lauren James.

Having missed out on the evening’s main award, City academy graduate Cole Palmer was crowned the men’s Young Player of the Year after an outstanding debut campaign at…

The policy that helps inform which match officials are chosen to appoint games in the Premier League, English Football League and Women’s Super League has been published for the first time.

Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) — the body in charge of refereeing in England — chief Howard Webb revealed that in an effort to be more transparent, his organisation wanted to make the appointments policy and its guidelines available to the public.

After earlier confusion due to Webb’s comments, PGMOL has since clarified the allegiances of individual officials within its organisation will not be made available to the public.

The move comes after public refereeing controversies in the Premier League particularly last season. Stuart Atwell, for example, was accused by Nottingham Forest of being a Luton Town fan following Forest’s controversial 2-0 defeat at Everton when the official was on video assistant refereeing duties.

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“Officials are asked to declare any specific interests in advance of the season and as the season goes on should any of those things change,” Webb explained. “That (the appointment policy) will be made public I believe and coming out as well so…

Let’s say you’re a team preparing for a major football tournament.

You’re training, maybe doing some shooting drills, or practising a set-piece routine. You hear a buzzing noise. What is it? A helicopter? No, too quiet. A swarm of bees? No, too loud. Oh, it’s a drone. Someone is flying a drone above you. Bit weird.

Who is controlling the drone, and why is it up there? What would your instinct be? Maybe it’s some mischievous local youths, who have nicked their dad’s Mavic Pro and are amusing themselves. Maybe it’s a filmmaker, collecting some stock footage of what they thought was just a field. Maybe it’s an oblivious amateur enthusiast who has no idea an elite sports team are busily preparing for some big games.

Would most people’s first thought honestly be, ‘That simply must be one of our upcoming opponents spying on us’? You would think the majority of the planet’s residents simply aren’t that paranoid, that their instinct is not that this is all part of some nefarious spying mission from another team to gain some notional advantage.

Broadly because the instinct is to ask the question: why?

This scenario has the Canadian women’s Olympic football team tumbling into chaos after it emerged that the drone caught flying over a training session for their…

Are not even the Olympic Games sacrosanct?

Yeah, you’re right. Probably not, given their long history of judging corruption, state boycotts and widespread doping.

But the news which broke on Tuesday, three days before the opening ceremony and hours before the first action in the 2024 Games’ football tournament, meant that the cherished Olympic values of fair play stood in tatters even before organisers emblazoned that message across the Parisien sky and the River Seine.

That it was Canada who performed such an egregious breach of the rules — by all stereotypes a country known for its people being polite, respectful, laidback and just terribly nice — only adds to the ironic drama.

There are five rings in the Olympic logo — take just two of them intertwined, and they resemble a pair of binoculars.

So this is what happened…

On Tuesday, at a training session ahead of their opening match of the group stage in Saint-Etienne on Thursday, staff members from the New Zealand women’s football team noticed a drone hovering above them.

They called the on-site police, who detained the device’s operator, who was later revealed to be a staff member from the Canadian…

The Premier League, EFL, FA, and Women’s Super League (WSL) have announced a new code of conduct for gambling-related agreements in football.

The code, which will be implemented at the start of the 2024-25 season, is designed to regulate gambling sponsorships across the professional game, emphasising four key principles: protection, social responsibility, reinvestment, and integrity.

A key aspect of the code is its emphasis on reinvestment. Revenue generated from gambling sponsorships must be redirected into football-related infrastructure and community programmes. This includes improvements to stadiums and training facilities, as well as investments in grassroots football and local community participation.

Under the new code, gambling sponsorships will also be required to target their marketing efforts more carefully to avoid reaching children and individuals at risk of gambling-related harm. Additionally, any gambling-related sponsorship must include educational initiatives and awareness campaigns designed to promote responsible gambling practices.

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The importance of maintaining the integrity of football competitions is also stressed in the code, adding that gambling sponsorships must…

As is customary after a summer of major tournaments, various international managerial jobs are now vacant.

As is customary, the rumour mill has gone into overdrive.

As is customary, there doesn’t appear to be any common theme across the names linked to major jobs.

Take the England job. According to the bookmakers’ odds, the four most likely names are Eddie Howe, Graham Potter, Lee Carsley and Mauricio Pochettino. Two are homegrown managers who have performed solidly at club level. One is the current England Under-21 manager, who has limited club-coaching experience. The other is a foreign manager — albeit one with considerable experience in English football — who has coached major clubs.

The apparent contenders for the United States men’s national team job are equally varied. There is a raft of MLS candidates — Jim Curtin, Steve Cherundolo, Wilfried Nancy. Then there is David Wagner, a former U.S. international who hasn’t coached in the country. There is Herve Renard, an international specialist currently coaching the France women’s side at the Olympics. There’s also Thierry Henry, who is doing the equivalent with the France men’s side, and…

It is the kind of story you would expect on a Netflix crime documentary: a blackmail plot, a leaked sex video, a family deception and an international footballer who has gone from being the victim to the accused.

That player is on the books of Nottingham Forest and currently in Spain with the rest of head coach Nuno Espirito Santo’s squad, where the Premier League club are preparing for a series of pre-season fixtures.

Hwang Ui-jo, a South Korea international with 62 caps, was charged by prosecutors in his homeland’s capital Seoul last week for allegedly filming sexual encounters with two women without permission on four occasions from June to September 2022. He has been ruled out of contention for selection by the South Korean national team since last November and, if convicted, the offences carry up to a maximum seven years in prison.

“The victim hopes the truth will prevail and that Hwang learns his lesson and realises how much damage his actions have caused,” Lee Eun-eui, the lawyer representing one of the women, has told The Athletic. “To be honest, the victim is in such a state of disbelief and pain she can’t even articulate what she wants to see happen next.”

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Court proceedings…

New Jersey governor Phil Murphy says he “would die” to bring Premier League matches to the United States, explaining that he believes it is in the competition’s “enlightened self-interest” to do so.

Murphy, 66, has been involved in football for several decades, including serving on the board of U.S. Soccer and co-owning the NWSL team NJ/NY Gotham FC.

MetLife Stadium, the 82,500-capacity arena situated in New Jersey, will be the venue for the 2026 World Cup final and hosted a friendly between Manchester United and Arsenal last year, as well as three games — two group fixtures and a semi-final — at the Copa America this summer. Real Madrid and Barcelona will play a Clasico pre-season friendly there on August 3.

Asked whether he envisaged these matches becoming competitive fixtures, Murphy replied: “I would die for that. And by the way, the exhibitions — we will have Real and Barcelona on August 3, we’ll have to shrink our capacity a little bit for FIFA — every ticket was sold and the game didn’t count. I would love to — I would die — to see what happens in a game that counts. It would sell every ticket and then some.”

Leading executives at NBC Sports, the American broadcaster that spent $2.7billion (£2.2bn) on a six-year Premier League deal, have been…

Erik ten Hag believes that Manchester United’s appointments of sporting director Dan Ashworth and technical director Jason Wilcox will help “raise the bar” at Old Trafford.

Ashworth started work at United earlier this month after United finally reached a compensation agreement with Newcastle United after months of negotiations.

The 53-year-old now leads United’s football operations, across men’s, women’s and academy teams, and will report to incoming chief executive Omar Berrada.

Wilcox was appointed from Southampton in April and will work in partnership with Ten Hag and his coaches to implement a game model across the men’s and academy teams as well as recruitment.

“We are so pleased that around the football, around the first-team, we have a strong structure that will help us,” Ten Hag told MUTV.

“They are really supportive and that will help us in many ways, like in scouting and recruitment, like in the departments of medical and performance. They will be so supportive and that will raise the bar.”

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The United manager added: “Now, with the new ownership coming in, they can help us. They are very supportive. We’ve made a process, which we’ve constructed across the…

Within hours of the finals of the European Championship and Copa America on July 14, attention will turn to pre-season for many of the most famous clubs in Europe.

Manchester United have a friendly match against Norwegian side Rosenborg on July 15, while Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa have games two days later. Yet the main event of pre-season is the now customary money-spinning tour where European clubs travel thousands of miles across the world with the objective of growing their fanbase, consolidating ties with existing supporters and unlocking fresh revenue potential.

This summer, the United States is the location of choice for many of Europe’s largest clubs. Premier League clubs Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Wolves, Crystal Palace, West Ham and Bournemouth will all be in the United States, along with League One side Wrexham, who have become a streaming sensation under the ownership of actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. La Liga giants Real Madrid and Barcelona will also be in the States, along with AC Milan from Italy. Arsenal and Chelsea’s women’s sides are also crossing over the Atlantic this summer to face NWSL side Gotham.

The motivations are hardly surprising. The U.S. is the centre of the football universe…