Sport | The Guardian

September 9th 2026, 7:11 pm

Rybakina sinks Zheng to grab No 1 spot and set up US Open semi-final with Gauff

Sport | The Guardian

Rybakina into semis after 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 victory
Coco Gauff battles back to beat Mirra Andreeva

Elena Rybakina will become the No 1 woman in the world for the first time after orchestrating a supreme recovery to reach the semi-finals of the US Open with a 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 win over the Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen.

By becoming just the 30th player in the history of the WTA to reach the No 1 ranking, Rybakina ends Aryna Sabalenka’s extended spell at the top. The Belarusian has held the position for 99 successive weeks, the sixth-longest consecutive reign in history, and 107 weeks in total.

September 9th 2026, 7:11 pm

Cole Palmer powers Chelsea to comeback win over Leeds in nine-goal epic

Sport | The Guardian

Where’s the fun in doing it the easy way? Chelsea remain chaotic at the back but can drag their opponents into horrible places. It helps, mind you, to have some assistance from the referee. Jarred Gillett and Cole Palmer? They made for a killer combination as Chelsea swerved embarrassment and treated Stamford Bridge to one of life’s rarities: a classic in the third round of the Carabao Cup.

Gillett, a referee who always seems to be guessing when he makes key calls, was the villain as far as Leeds were concerned. They had just gone 2-0 up when Gillett altered the flow of the tie by pointing to the spot after Pep Chavarría made the most of slight contact from Daniel James. The subsequent conversion from Palmer was inevitable and from there so was the comeback from Chelsea, who rattled through four goals in 12 minutes before eventually reaching the last 16 by winning 6-3.

September 9th 2026, 7:11 pm

Ødegaard ‘edge’ delights Arteta as Arsenal secure narrow win at Napoli

Sport | The Guardian

Plus: clubs with multiple £100m players on their books and more trophy-laden footballers

Mail us with your all of your questions and answers

“The Saturday before last, Clyde were winning 3-0 at The Spartans after an hour when Logan Dunachie was sent off. Twenty-eight minutes later, the score was 3-3. What is the biggest turnaround in a game following a red card/most quantitative blame that can be thrown at a player for getting sent off?” asks Jamie Wills.

At Knowledge Towers, we usually receive questions about the greatest comebacks with 10 men. We covered that in 2021, so it’s a nice change to look at teams who went to seed after having a player sent off.

September 9th 2026, 3:54 am

Dani Olmo: ‘Winning the World Cup changes you, it changes your life’

Sport | The Guardian

One of Barcelona’s eight World Cup winners reflects on how Spain’s triumph is inspiring them in the Champions League

Dani Olmo nods towards his right arm. “Look: goosebumps,” he says. The Spain midfielder is sitting in a back room at Barcelona’s Joan Gamper training ground trying to pinpoint the moment he knew he was a world champion. “There’s an image in my mind with Ferran [Torres]’s mum: hugging her, the two of us in tears,” he says. “‘What your son just did … what we all did … this is historic.’ And that’s when you start to feel it. In those final minutes of the game it’s impossible, impossible, but when the referee blows, the thought enters your head: ‘Have we done it?’ ‘Are we …?’ There, you feel it a little bit. When you lift the cup, a little bit more. And then when you see the families, when I see the reaction from my brother, my partner, my dad. I’m not one to cry, but …”

But then Olmo knew, felt it: Spain were world champions. It was 19 July in New Jersey and it was real: Spain had beaten Argentina and nothing would be the same again.

September 9th 2026, 3:54 am

Real Madrid somehow cling on to beat Inter on José Mourinho’s big night

Sport | The Guardian

Sometimes football is silly, sometimes it doesn’t make much sense, and sometimes it’s fun for it. On a night when there were 37 shots and the goalkeepers shared 13 occasionally absurd saves between them, José Mourinho’s current side beat his former team Inter on his Champions League return to Real Madrid. Just don’t ask exactly how. Except perhaps to cite Thibaut Courtois, whose astonishing 89th-minute stop from Henrikh Mkhitaryan explained much and allowed them, just, to hold on to the first-half lead they had been given by goals from Kylian Mbappé and Fede Valverde.

By Mbappé, Valverde, and Inter themselves, that is. You might be tempted to say the Italians had shot themselves in the foot, only if they tried Courtois would probably save that too. “If he wasn’t voted man of the match tonight, he never will be,” Mourinho said. It took 77 minutes for him to be beaten, Carlos Augusto’s goal giving this match a frantic last 15 minutes and Inter hope of justice, but it didn’t happen again. So a game that could have had any scoreline – “5-1 to us, 6-6, I don’t want to say they could have won,” Mourinho suggested – actually ended 2-1. Madrid’s manager called it “mad, and not a madness I like.”

September 8th 2026, 11:24 pm

England seek calm end to chaotic Test summer against penitent Pakistan

Sport | The Guardian

Late-night drinking incidents and a post-Bazball reboot have given the hosts plenty to think about, while the tourists have their own problems to sort out

There are some chilly white-ball games still to come this month and with it the sight of Kevin Pietersen back in England training kit for the first time in 12 years. KP is down with the kids these days, 6/7 memes and the like, and starts a new life as the “specialist mentor” to Harry Brook’s young thrusters.

But the final Test of the summer that starts at Edgbaston on Wednesday does feel like an end of sorts, or at least one last push before a breather for the side that has undergone the more significant recalibration. And that is before we get on to Pakistan and a tour that has descended into a bonfire of players and a phone-snatching investigation into “discipline and conduct”.

September 8th 2026, 11:24 pm

Haaland double gives Manchester City ideal Champions League start in Porto

Sport | The Guardian

Enzo Maresca admitted a liking for the “boom-boom” of house music in the buildup to this match, then enjoyed the sweet notes of victory having overseen a gritty performance from his Manchester City side in incessant rain.

City had lost six of their past nine away games in the competition, and been beaten in the 2021 Champions League final at this venue, so to beat Porto and claim three points is a fillip for the manager’s nascent project.

September 8th 2026, 11:24 pm

First-half treble powers Aston Villa to Champions League win at Club Brugge

Sport | The Guardian

⚽ Champions League news from the 5.45pm BST kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Follow us on Instagram | Read Football Daily

“Rob, I’m fuming,” says Charles Antaki, casually chinning a passing septuagenarian to reinforce the point. “Absolutely fuming. Nothing to do with Club Brugge or dear old Aston Villa – good luck to them both by the way and may the better team win – no, what’s got my goat is that I seem to have been left off the memo about Gianni Infantino. Only 100,000 signatories? Pshaw. Whoever was in charge of the mail-out has dropped an utter clanger there.”

It’s still very early but Mikel Arteta’s side are playing with an authority and freshness that eluded them at times last season

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Promoted side’s thrilling win may be overturned after they used four substitutions windows while Georgia Stanway show the way for Gunners

Kirsty Howat’s 60-second cameo deep into injury time could ruin what was a memorable day for Crystal Palace on their return to the top flight. An impressive 1-0 victory over Everton was celebrated emphatically by Jo Potter and her players but that joy would have been replaced by concern and frustration not long after. On Sunday evening WSL Football revealed that there had been a breach of the rules – the Eagles used four different substitute windows rather than the regulated three – which had not been picked up by either the coaching staff or the match officials. An investigation has now been launched with punishment to be decided (there is a potential for the result to be overturned). The needless error has put a dampener on what should have been a positive afternoon thanks to England Under-23s forward Lexi Lloyd-Smith’s winner on her WSL debut. Sophie Downey

September 7th 2026, 8:22 am

Will hordes of influencers, weed smokers and mid-point talkers bring down the US Open?

Sport | The Guardian

This year, the noise at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center has officially become A Problem. But changing it would mean changing society

The first thing you notice while sitting in the upper tiers of Arthur Ashe Stadium is the noise. A persistent exterior hum filters up from ground level, fed by the massive ventilation and cooling units that sit outside the stadium, the clack of the Long Island Rail Road to the north, and the forklifts receiving goods from the refrigerator trucks that keep the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center flush with its essential supplies of Evian, champagne, and premium IPA. Overhead, planes descending toward LaGuardia airport ensure the auditory assault takes place by land and air simultaneously. In the lower rakes of the stadium, the babble of the spectators is incessant; it’s not unusual to overhear full-volume conversations on various non-tennis topics – work, family, romance, last night’s dinner – that continue without interruption for the duration of an entire match.

New York is famously noisy, and the US Open, as the most glamorous annual sporting event in town, has always been loud in sympathy with its environment. Indeed, the brashness of the American grand slam has historically been its major selling point, the signature that distinguishes it from the Australian Open (the “happy slam”), Wimbledon (strawberries and cream, all-white attire, the home of tennis), and the French Open (French). People have been complaining about the volume of the New York crowd for decades. But this year the noise at the US Open feels different. This year noise at the noisy slam has become A Problem.

September 7th 2026, 7:08 am

For baseball’s Black and Latino players, it’s always 1926 somewhere

Sport | The Guardian

From home-run celebrations to tilted caps, players embracing joy continue to collide with an old guard devoted to Dust Bowl grimness

Mercedes principal likens 20-year-old to F1 greats
‘No stopping him when a driver and car are one’

Toto Wolff has compared Kimi Antonelli to the greats of Formula One after the Mercedes driver’s remarkable victory at the Italian Grand Prix where he came back to take the flag from 19th place on the grid.

The Mercedes team principal cited the win as similar to some of the best made by seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and said that Antonelli would likely remember the race as one of the greatest of his career.