Your Guardian sport weekend: FA Cup third round, NFL playoffs begin and the WSL returns
There’s no better way to ease into the football weekend than our essential rolling blog,Sarah Rendell and David Tindall buckle up to bring you breaking news and insights from around the grounds as the Premier League elite join the fray for the FA Cup’s third round,Saturday’s potential giantkillings see Macclesfield meet Crystal Palace, Manchester City host Exeter, Wolves face Shrewsbury, Charlton confront London rivals Chelsea and Burnley face off against Millwall, not forgetting the all-Premier League clash of Tottenham v Aston Villa,Why not join the conversation by emailing matchday,live@theguardian.
com.The holders versus the lowest-ranked club still in the competition: FA Cup third rounds throw up some David v Goliath crackers and the lunchtime game offers a dash of footballing asymmetry.The Silkmen sit 14th in National League North, play on a plastic pitch and are managed by Wayne Rooney’s brother, John.However, Saturday’s game comes 25 days after the death of one of their players, Ethan McLeod, in a car accident while travelling home from a game, and Macclesfield are still in mourning.John Ashdown hosts our live blog, with Dominic Booth reporting from the Leasing.
com Stadium.The WSL returns after its winter hiatus and United travel to the Emirates having bolstered Marc Skinner’s squad with a pair of impressive signings.Hanna Lundkvist and Lea Schuller are expected to make the journey south to face Arsenal, with the clubs separated by one point in the table.Their previous meeting ended in a goalless draw at 0-0 draw at the Progress With Unity Stadium, but Renée Slegers’s side are on a six-game winning streak and have likewise bolstered their roster by signing Smilla Holmberg from Hammarby IF on Monday.Sarah Rendell helms our MBM coverage and Tom Garry reports.
Tom Bassam keeps the updates flowing from the 3pm kickoffs as well as sweeping up the lunchtime results.There are four all-Premier League ties this season, with three being played at 3pm: Newcastle v Bournemouth, Everton v Sunderland and Spurs v Aston Villa.Fulham play Middlesbrough, Burnley confront Millwall and Manchester City meet Exeter in the other notable mid-afternoon ties involving the elite.For Newcastle, Eddie Howe faces his former club having lost six of his last nine home matches in the FA Cup (W2 D1), with four of those defeats coming with Bournemouth (W1 D1 L4) and two with the Magpies (W1).The Newcastle manager will be without Fabian Schär, who was taken to hospital after sustaining an ankle injury in the thrilling 4-3 win against Leeds on Wednesday night.
Afcon quarter-final clashes don’t come much bigger than this collision of African football’s giants, with the unbeaten nations facing off at the Grand Stade de Marrakech,Vladimir Petkovic’s Algeria – with Zinedine Zidane’s son Luca in goal – have conceded only one goal so far in the tournament, while the Super Eagles have crashed in 12 goals and thumped Zimbabwe 4-0 in the last16,That said, the Desert Foxes have won all four of their past meetings with Nigeria in what is likely to be a compelling clash of the best defence against the most potent attack,Xaymaca Awoyungbo hosts our live blog,Egypt v Côte d’Ivoire is the evening tie, with Jonathan Wilson reporting.
The hosts, who suffered a stoppage-time 3-2 defeat at Bournemouth in midweek, are struggling under Thomas Frank and appear unlikely to improve on their recent form in the third round.Spurs have reached the fourth round in 18 of their last 19 FA Cup campaigns, doing so in each of the last 11 seasons since losing 2-0 at Arsenal in 2013-14 but, under Frank, have won just two of their last 12 Premier League games in a run stretching back to November.That is in sharp contrast to Villa, who are on a roll.Unai Emery’s side sit third in the table, level with Manchester City after 13 wins from their last 16 league games.John Ashdown keeps the updates flowing, with David Hynter reporting.
A London derby to round off a frantic day of Cup action, with Rob Smyth at the controls of our live blog.There’s been so much noise around Chelsea of late and Saturday night sees new manager Liam Rosenior in the Blues dugout for his first game after Calum McFarlane’s interim stint ended with defeat at Fulham in midweek.Chelsea travel to the Valley to confront Nathan Jones’s side, who sit 19th in the Championship.The Addicks are without a win in their last four games, losing to Norwich and Portsmouth before holding the league leaders Coventry and Blackburn at Ewood Park.Jacob Steinberg reports.
Billy Munday and Daniel Harris rise early to focus on the fallout from Saturday’s ties, as well as looking forward to another stacked Sunday with all the breaking news and the latest from around the grounds for the four big FA Cup ties – Derby v Leeds, Portsmouth v Arsenal, West Ham v QPR and Manchester United v Brighton.There’s a full programme of WSL fixtures and the evening’s Spanish Super Cup final to look forward to as Barcelona and Real Madrid rev up their Clásico rivalry.Sid Lowe will cover that game.Billy Munday helms our live blog as Leeds travel to Derby of the Championship.The games are coming thick and fast for Daniel Farke’s Premier League side, with four in 10 days, Farke may be a “big believer in cup competitions” but he acknowledges the “big priority this season is to stay in the Premier League, so we won’t risk any players” in the wake of their first league defeat in seven games, narrowly losing 4-3 at Newcastle with the last kick of the ball in midweek.
So Leeds’s B team take on John Eustace’s side, who have endured their own travails of late after two wins in their past nine matches.Last season a 6-5 shootout defeat away at League One side Leyton Orient ignominiously ended Derby’s Cup run at this stage.Peter Lansley reports.Emillia Hawkins hosts our coverage of Sunday’s fixtures as the WSL reconvenes after its winter break.In a London derby, West Ham, under new manager Rita Guarino, travel to the champions, Chelsea.
The 54-year-old former Juventus head coach takes charge with her new side 11th in the table and high on her to-do list will be fixing West Ham’s abject defence.It has leaked 46 goals in the past calendar year, the most of any team in the division, and they have lost their last six WSL away games.The Blues were beaten 1-0 by Everton in their most recent league game at home, ending their record unbeaten run of 34 WSL matches.In the reverse fixture in September, Chelsea strolled to a 4-0 win, so Guarino has her work cut out.Emillia will also bring goal updates from the other games.
Sophie Downey reports from Kingsmeadow.The Gunners head to the south coast six points clear at the top of the Premier League to face a Pompey side 21st in the Championship after being thumped 5-0 by Bristol City on New Year’s Day.They do so under a cloud following Thursday night’s goalless draw with Liverpool.Gabriel Martinelli’s intemperate shove on the injured Liverpool defender Conor Bradley has left a bitter taste, particularly since the Arsenal player will face no sanction.Martinelli later apologised for the stoppage-time flashpoint that saw him throw the ball at Bradley and then manhandle him as he lay on the pitch.
Daniel Harris hosts our live blog while Ed Aarons reports from Fratton Park,The neverending circus that is Ineos United remains in full flow after the sacking of Ruben Amorim, with Darren Fletcher, the club’s under-18s coach, at the controls for Sunday’s third-round tie after overseeing a 2-2 draw against Burnley,Fabian Hurzeler’s Seagulls, 11th in the Premier League, are back in Manchester after holding City to a 1-1 draw in midweek,Hurzeler will be rotating his squad for the Old Trafford match, despite saying on Friday: “We know it’s a big opportunity, we know it’s a big opponent,We go there to get to the next round, and therefore we have to go all in.
” Rob Smyth helms our live coverage, with Jamie Jackson reporting.As the NFL season reaches the sharp end, Graham Searles’ unmissable rolling blog is the place to follow all the action.He’ll be focusing on the Jacksonville Jaguars, who won their final eight regular-season games to claim their second AFC South title over the past four seasons, as they host the Buffalo Bills.Buffalo’s five-year streak of AFC East titles was broken by New England this season.The Bills could set up an encounter with the Patriots next week should both teams win this weekend, but in order to get that chance, they’ll have to win a road playoff game for the first time in 33 years.
Then attention shifts to Philadelphia Eagles as quarterback Jalen Hurts puts his 5-0 home record in the playoffs on the line against the visiting San Francisco 49ers.Both wildcard teams lost in week 18 and took significant drops in the NFC playoff seeding.The 49ers (12-5) fell to sixth place after losing a battle with Seattle for top slot, while the third-seeded Eagles (11-6) opted to rest their starters and squandered a chance to leapfrog Chicago for the No 2 berth.Before last weekend’s setbacks, the defending Super Bowl champions had won three in a row while Brock Purdy and the 49ers had claimed six victories on the spin.
Why Russia’s economy is unlikely to collapse even if oil prices fall
Pacing inside the Kremlin last weekend, as news feeds churned out minute-by-minute reports of Donald’s Trump’s Venezuelan coup, Vladimir Putin may have been wondering what it would mean for the price of oil.Crude oil has lubricated the Russian economy for decades – far more than gas exports to Europe – and so the threat of falling oil prices, prompted by US plans for control of Venezuela’s rigs, will have been a source of concern.Opinion is divided on how quickly the South American country’s creaking oil industry can be revived. But some analysts believe that Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven reserves, could be pumping millions of additional barrels as early as this year, hitting the global price and squeezing Russia’s income.US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil last year and a rise in the rouble, depressing income from oil sales in dollars, have already reduced receipts for Moscow
Wessex Water bosses handed £50,000 in extra pay despite Labour government’s bonus ban
The bosses of Wessex Water received £50,000 in previously undisclosed extra pay from a parent company, in the same year that the utility was banned from paying bonuses, the Guardian can reveal.Chief executive Ruth Jefferson and chief financial officer Andy Pymer were paid £24,000 and £27,000 respectively in the year to June 2025, according to a spokesperson for Wessex Water’s owner, the Malaysian YTL group.The payments came from Wessex Water Ltd, which is the parent company of Wessex Water Services Ltd, the regulated water supplier for 2.9 million customers in south-west England. YTL said the payments were not bonuses
Elon Musk says UK wants to suppress free speech as X faces possible ban
Elon Musk has accused the UK government of wanting to suppress free speech after ministers threatened fines and a possible ban for his social media site X after its AI tool, Grok, was used to make sexual images of women and children without their consent.The billionaire claimed Grok was the most downloaded app on the UK App Store on Friday night after ministers threatened to take action unless the function to create sexually harassing images was removed.Responding to threats of a ban from the government, Musk wrote: “They just want to suppress free speech”.Thousands of women have faced abuse from users of the AI tool which was first used to digitally strip fully clothed photographs into images showing them wearing micro bikinis, and then used for extreme image manipulation.Pictures of teenage girls and children were altered to show them wearing swimwear, leading experts to say some of the content could be categorised as child sexual abuse material
Behind the Somali daycare panic is a mother-and-son duo angling to be top Maga influencers
YouTube influencer Nick Shirley, whose viral video alleging fraud by daycare centers servicing Minneapolis’s Somali American community came days ahead of the Trump administration’s declaration of a national funding freeze, has for years published conspiracy-minded takes on hot-button rightwing issues.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.He also has close ties to the White House, Republicans, and to representatives of an earlier generation of rightwing partisan “ambush journalists” such as James O’Keefe
‘It doesn’t really hit your socials’: Is this Australia’s best kept sporting secret? | Sarah Guiney
If there is one thing Australians pride themselves on, it’s playing sport in the elements. From long days of cricket at the height of summer, the sun beating down harsh and unforgiving, to mud-soaked footy in the dead of winter. It’s a test of character, and Australians wear it like a badge of honour.So perhaps it is a surprise that Australia has yet to embrace ice hockey; tucked away in rinks so cold you need a puffer jacket just to sit and watch, even during summer. Combine that with its speed and brutal physicality, and it seems to tick every box
Coco Gauff beats Iga Swiatek but Poland best US to reach United Cup final
A statement victory for Coco Gauff over her great rival Iga Swiatek proved to be insufficient to the American’s hopes of leading her team into the final of the United Cup. Poland showed their depth in an excellent team performance to close out a 2-1 win over the United States at the Ken Rosewall Arena in Sydney.Poland, who finished runners-up to the US last year, exacted their revenge courtesy of the doubles specialists Jan Zielinski and Katarzyna Kawa, who maintained their unbeaten run in the competition by defeating Christian Harrison and Gauff 7-6 (5), 7-6 (3) in the decisive third rubber. Poland face Switzerland in the final on Sunday after the Swiss defeated Belgium 2-1.The tie opened with another victory for Hubert Hurkacz, who continued his impressive comeback from injury by defeating the world No 9, Taylor Fritz, 7-6 (1), 7-6 (2)
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