Whitecaps’ nine-man wonder, Eze rubs salt into Spurs wounds, Ronaldo’s acrobatic screamer – The Athletic

The Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic’s daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox.

Hello! Reasons to look beyond football’s biggest leagues: an MLS all-time classic, and a Saudi Arabian special from Cristiano Ronaldo.

Coming up:

🤯 Vancouver bring the chaos

📈 Messi’s wild play-off stats

🇮🇹 Pulisic settles Milan derby

🤕 Bizarre Barca injury politics

Shine with nine: Vancouver lose two men but beat LAFC in epic play-off

Next year, Major League Soccer intends to water down the paywall between TV coverage of its matches and the viewing public. It won’t vanish completely — Apple retains the rights — but to a degree, MLS action will be a little easier to access. Or cheaper, at any rate.

The league, like any other in the world, wants to maximise its income, but it also wants to grow a devoted audience. In achieving the second aim, the more eyes on a contest like Saturday night’s Western Conference playoff semi-final, the better. Anybody watching Vancouver Whitecaps versus LAFC would be coming back for more.

That tie was what knockout football should be: epic, exhausting and faintly ridiculous. Vancouver, with Thomas Muller given star billing, were robbed in normal time and then blessed with more lives than a cat in extra time. LAFC, who I fancied to win the MLS Cup, could only squeeze so much out of their investment in Son Heung-min — and in the end, not enough.

Vancouver led 2-0 but Son pegged them back, equalising in the 95th minute with a wicked free kick (below). The Whitecaps lost Tristan Blackmon to a red card and Belal Halbouni to injury after all their substitutes had been used, leaving them with nine players. At 2-2 in the dying seconds of extra time, LAFC hit the crossbar, a post and the bar again in the same attack (above).

The ensuing penalty shootout went Vancouver’s way and as it did, I reminded myself that LAFC are working on a playing budget almost twice the size of the Whitecaps’. This was already Vancouver’s finest season. The drama they participated in on Saturday, you’d absolutely pay to watch.

Messi: Stat’s amazing!

How far Vancouver go — or any of the other contenders, for that matter — really depends on Inter Miami. The boys in pink aren’t taking prisoners. They put four unanswered goals past Cincinnati last night. Lionel Messi (contain your shock) was directly involved in all of them, racking up three assists and a goal.

An even more ridiculous stat, served up by Tom Bogert, is that Messi has had a hand in every single one of Miami’s 12 strikes in the playoffs so far. It amounts to a fairly simple equation: if the forward shines throughout, Inter will pick up the MLS Cup. You can’t overstate the extent to which a) they are reliant on Messi and b) opponents are reliant on him under-performing.

New York City FC await Miami in the Eastern Conference final after a combination of resilience in the face of injuries and big saves from USMNT goalkeeper Matt Freese saw them past Philadelphia Union. Philly finish with the Supporters’ Shield and no end of credit, but after placing sporting director Ernst Tanner on administrative leave pending an MLS investigation into his conduct, here ends a trying week.

• As against-the-odds as a Vancouver triumph might be, San Diego bagging the MLS Cup in their expansion season would be nearly unprecedented (not quite — Chicago Fire did it in 1998, but nobody else since). Felipe Cardenas spoke to San Diego’s owner, Sir Mohamed Mansour, to find out how they hit the ground running. It’s their turn in the Western Conference semi-finals tonight, and they’ve come a long old way since the day when they had seven names on their roster.

News round-up

• Christian Pulisic came up trumps in last night’s derby, poaching the only goal as Milan beat Inter to move second in Serie A. That’s seven for the season for him. Despite the hoo-ha, his summer break clearly did him a favour.
• Gotham FC took their second NWSL Championship in three years, edging out Washington Spirit 1-0 in San Jose on Saturday. Not for the first time, Rose Lavelle made it her game. All eyes are now on what happens with Trinity Rodman, whose deal with the Spirit is up. Has NWSL seen the last of her?
• As The Athletic predicted, Real Madrid have formally announced plans to change their ownership structure, allowing for external investment. That huge break in tradition might require a referendum among club members, or socios.
• Madrid, meanwhile, apologised after using a photograph of the wrong Andre Silva in a video tribute to Silva and his brother, Diogo Jota.
• Paul Pogba made his first appearance in two years. The 32-year-old is starting a comeback at Monaco after his doping ban and came on as a substitute five minutes from the end of normal time during a 4-1 defeat at Rennes.
• This dropped after TAFC sent on Friday, but it’s worth knowing about: Premier League clubs voted against an ‘anchoring’ system to control player expenditure, but voted in favour of a new squad cost ratio (SCR). All the details and complexities are explained here.

Eze does it: Forward’s hat-trick wins derby for Arsenal as Spurs rue missed deal

I’m not saying it went south for Tottenham Hotspur in yesterday’s north London derby but at the end of it, head coach Thomas Frank and goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario felt obliged to offer their apologies.

Spurs, for want of a better phrase, got rag-dolled by Arsenal, bullied and bloodied by a player who could have been theirs. August seems so long ago now, but a 4-1 defeat at the Emirates gave Tottenham cause to reflect on the fortnight in which they thought they were going to land Eberechi Eze — only to watch him step across town and join Arsenal from Crystal Palace.

Eze wasn’t Mikel Arteta’s most high-profile recruit, but there’s an argument to say he was Arsenal’s most clever. He has been quietly excellent all season, and he didn’t half pick his moment to move front and centre with a hat-trick. “As a collective, we didn’t fight,” admitted Vicario, which isn’t generally how derbies are won.

Frank is struggling to win hearts and minds at Spurs but he can console himself by remembering he isn’t Arne Slot. We’ve spent weeks talking about Slot salvaging Liverpool’s title defence. Now we’re wondering if he’s in the business of saving his job. Alexander Isak, their £125million ($143m) catch, has lost every Premier League game he has played in for Liverpool, and the transfer window they enjoyed so much at Anfield isn’t looking quite so clever.

The burning question: was the recruitment all wrong, or is it Slot?

No home comforts? Barca mark return to Camp Nou with win but medical issues exposed

Fermin Lopez celebrates scoring in Barcelona’s 4-0 win against Athletic Bilbao (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Barcelona are back at Camp Nou, as if they never went away. The stadium isn’t finished — please don’t ask us when it will be — so it wasn’t full to the rafters, but a 909-day exile ended in style on Saturday, with a 4-0 drubbing of Athletic Club.

All’s well in their world, you might assume, or at least as orderly as it ever gets in Catalonia. But Barca being Barca, political clouds are growing on the injury front, where opinions and relationships could not be described as aligned. Some expert digging by our writers in Spain exposed an odd and ongoing wrangle.

When Barca appointed Hansi Flick as head coach in 2024, they hired a large new team of physios and trainers, with the expectation that fitness levels would improve. Instead, injuries are into double figures this season — up from 2024-25 — and awkward questions are being asked about the squad’s physical management.

Raphinha, for example, appears to have been pushed too hard too soon before last month’s El Clasico (he missed it as a result). Alejandro Balde, incredibly, believes he picked up a hamstring injury after he was wrongly advised on how to use a piece of gym equipment. And even more remarkably, Lamine Yamal was so unhappy with the fitness team that he asked not to be treated by them, a request Barca granted. Something tells me we haven’t heard the last of this.

Around TAFC

Catch a match

(Selected games, times ET/UK)

Premier League: Manchester United vs Everton, 3pm/8pm — USA Network, Fubo/Sky Sports.

MLS Western Conference playoff semi-final: San Diego vs Minnesota United, 10pm/3am — MLS Season Pass/Apple TV.

La Liga: Espanyol vs Sevilla, 3pm/8pm — ESPN+, Fubo/Premier Sports.

Serie A: Torino vs Como, 12.30pm/5.30pm — CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, Fubo, DAZN/DAZN.

And finally…

Was it the trip to the White House? Was it Scott McTominay throwing down the acrobatic gauntlet by scoring a beast of an overhead kick? Was it merely time for another addition to the highlights reel?

Whatever the motivation, and fresh from rubbing shoulders with Donald Trump, Cristiano Ronaldo returned to his version of normality last night, lighting up the Saudi Pro League with a stupidly good bicycle kick in Al Nassr’s 4-1 victory over Al Khaleej (above). He really does know how to attract the cameras. As the saying goes: disliked, adored but never ignored.