And so we come to the final round of power rankings for the 2026 Ballon d’Or. Of course, the eligibility period for the competition long since ended with Spain crowned world champions. On Oct. 26, the consensus best player in the world for last season will be announced.
Who exactly that might be seems far more up in the air than in most years. Twelve months ago, for instance, the narrative had swung irresistibly behind Ousmane Dembele. It did not matter that Mohamed Salah and Raphinha had better pure output. Dembele had a better story, the long-admired talent finally putting it all together and at just the right moment to be the best player in the best club side in the world. All the major honors — frankly, that’s just the Champions League — were his.
If you are wondering why you are hearing so much from Lamine Yamal, Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane in recent weeks, well it’s because they all know there are likely swing voters to be won before the deadline of Sept. 28. Neither they nor anyone else have an unassailable candidacy after a season of many excellent individual campaigns but few, if any, legitimately great ones.
The very best performers of the club season did not take home that one extra trophy to buttress their campaign. Bayern Munich and Barcelona won their domestic leagues. Big whoop. The English champions almost exist as a counter to the individual qualities the Ballon d’Or glorifies. Arsenal won the league in spite of the absence of their star forwards, a triumph of depth and resilience that is unlikely to earn them many podium spots. Paris Saint-Germain repeated the league and Champions League double but half their strongest XI barely showed up in Ligue 1. Dembele can hardly repeat off around 2500 minutes for club and country last season.
As is always the case, the World Cup promises to warp voting. It clarifies little among the front runners. Kane and Mbappe had great individual tournaments but one of the Ballon d’Or’s three criteria is “team performances and achievements”. England and France fell short there. Yamal fulfills that but Spain’s triumph was one of the collective, the greatest prize in the sport won despite their forward struggling with injury.
Meanwhile, the best at the tournament do not sit easily in this ranking. Rodri might have held Spain together but his domestic season was hampered by injury. Lionel Messi’s historic standing was only buttressed by what he did as a 39-year-old, but your mileage may vary as to the significance of an MLS Cup-winning run beforehand.
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This year more than most, then, there is no right answer. This, at least, is the least wrong I can offer. And we’ll end this preamble with a customary reminder: this is not a prediction for who will win the Ballon d’Or. If you want that, consult your preferred sportsbook, I guess. This is who ought to win it. You will probably disagree.
1. Harry Kane, Bayern Munich and England
Perhaps it was the endings to his tilts at the Champions League and World Cup that make it so hard to lock in on Kane as the best player in the world last season. If the 33-year-old really were that good, would he not have found a way to bend the biggest games in his direction? That semifinal against Argentina in particular was one of those late-summer Kane games where he looks too leggy to impact the game either in the penalty area or the midfield roles he drops into, usually with such success.
That’s one game though. There are another 64 where he was frequently spectacular. A remarkable 73 goals for club and country is the sort of output that belonged back in Messi’s prime years. The absolute biggest game may not have gone his way but Kane was unforgettable against the Ivory Coast, thrilling in both legs against PSG and incisive in putting Real Madrid to the sword.
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Then there are the Bundesliga numbers. Gaudy output is the baseline for a Bayern striker against domestic opposition but still the only players to have bettered Kane’s 36 goals in 31 league games are Gerd Muller and Robert Lewandowski. The former won the Ballon d’Or, the latter probably would have if it had been awarded in 2020. There is no reason why Kane should not get it this time.
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2. Vitinha, Paris Saint-Germain and Portugal
PSG were ultimately the best side in Europe last season and yet judging which of their players deserves the Ballon d’Or is a challenge. Ligue 1 might not demand much of them but it does feel unreasonable to reward a player who spent half his weekends watching on from the sidelines because his head coach can afford to save him for the trickier tests that come with retaining the Champions League. At some point there has to be a minutes restriction. If you’re not seeing the pitch for half of your team’s league minutes, then it is really hard to make a case for you to be one of the 10 best performers in the world last season. Either you were injured, unfortunate but still a disqualifying factor, or your team are not frequently playing opponents of a sufficient standard.
All of which is to say that Dembele, Joao Neves, Nuno Mendes and even you Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, you’ve got to go. Yes, you looked like some of the best players in the world in the spring. It’s just that you had most of the autumn off.
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As for Vitinha, there’s a reason why he played nearly 4000 club minutes and only one other starter in the Champions League final cleared 3000. The Portuguese midfielder was the engine without which his side could not motor forward. Across Europe’s top five leagues, he ranked third for progressive carries per 90 minutes and second for progressive passes. Unlike most tempo setters in midfield, he also weighed in with crucial goals and assists, firmly establishing himself as the best midfielder on the planet.
3. Michael Olise, Bayern Munich and France
The sport’s assist king last season. If we consider domestic cups and leagues, European matches and the World Cup, then Michael Olise ended the year with 10 more goals laid on for his teammates than anyone else. The summer definitively proved that he could be the lead attacker in a frontline made up of some of the best forwards in the world, but then again, his form with Bayern Munich had shown as much.
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In general, when we’re reflecting back on the season, we shouldn’t lean too heavily on expected goals and assists. What we’re really looking at is actual returns and if that meant a player was out over the skis, well, more power to them. Having said that, I mean, talk about separating yourself from the field.
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4. Lamine Yamal, Barcelona and Spain
In pure output terms, Yamal, still just 19 years of age, was perhaps a little off the peak of Europe’s attackers, 37 goals and assists when Kane, Olise and Mbappe were all in the 40s or higher. Still, it was enough that a starring role in the World Cup might just have swung Yamal into top spot. Unfortunately, a biceps femoris injury put paid to the prospect of him showing more than flashes of his best self in the summer.
Unfortunately for Yamal, that was the story of his 25-26, where 96 days were lost to injuries that included a nagging groin issue in the autumn. That is among the most common problems faced by young footballers who are still growing into the bodies of seasoned athletes. On the evidence of when he was on the pitch, Yamal will be a Ballon d’Or winner when he has reached full physical maturity.
5. Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid and France
Here’s maybe the trickiest candidacy to get a read on. In terms of goal contributions, only Kane beats him, and when the lights shone brightest at the World Cup, Mbappe was phenomenal. By the time he retires, likely with at least two more tournaments under his belt, his high watermark for World Cup scoring might look a bit like Michael Phelps’ Olympic gold record or Wilt Chamberlain’s scoring titles.
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For an individual award, individual output really matters. If the Ballon d’Or were about team performance, then you would have the ludicrous scenario where Real Madrid campaigned for Dani Carvajal to win the prize in 2024 if Rodri was going to get it anyway. After all, he was there for the Euro 2024 win and the Champions League too. That’d be mad. Aaah.
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However, team success is one of the criteria and it’s one that needs to be at least partially weighed when you play for Real Madrid and France. You can’t make the Russell Westbrook 2017 case for Mbappe. His goals and assists need to lead to something. In the summer they very nearly did.
6. Gabriel Magalhaes, Arsenal and Brazil
A reminder once again that this is not a prediction. GabrielMagalhaes probably is not going to make the top 10. The best odds you can find of him winning the Ballon d’Or are +6600, an implied probability of 1.5%. That’s defenders and this prize, folks. Only three of them have won it in history. Franz Beckenbauer is the only one to have managed it without winning the major international tournament of that year.
There is a reason for that. The most valuable and difficult skill in this sport is scoring goals. In the era of three points for a win, attack tends to deliver the biggest prizes. That’s what made Arsenal’s Premier League win so remarkable. It and the near miss in the Champions League final were built on one of the most exceptional defenses in the history of this sport, anchored by the brilliant Gabriel, whose blend of skill and tenacity made him the best Arsenal player last season.
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With shot-disrupting qualities that are Victor Wembanyama-esque — 13.2% of shots Arsenal faced when Gabriel was on the field were blocked by their No. 6 — the man the Emirates Stadium calls the king of Brazil made it far harder for the other team to do that most valuable and difficult thing on the pitch. It takes something special for a defense to carry an injury-riddled team to a league title. That Gabriel anchored that something special merits a very high place in the final voting.
7. Luis Diaz, Bayern Munich and Colombia
Now, here’s a weird one. As what might broadly be viewed as the third attacker on Bayern Munich, it’s really hard to make a case for Luis Diaz winning the Ballon d’Or. Even he has been arguing that his teammate Kane should get it. “For me, he’s number one to win it,” Diaz said earlier this month. “Hopefully he gets it. We’re trying to make his case to win it.”
What we are really arguing here is that Diaz was so excellent in his particular role that it makes him one of the 10 best footballers in the world last season. With 39 goals and assists combined, it is not that hard a case to make. Diaz was also an exceptional passer, an outstanding creator for others and vital at moving Bayern into dangerous areas. There are players below him in this list who have more of a case to have been the best player in the world but really no one ranked sixth, seventh or eighth is actually going to win the Ballon d’Or. Consider this a reflection on how impactful Diaz was.
8. Bruno Fernandes, Manchester United and Portugal
The inverse of a player such as Diaz might be Bruno Fernandes, who took a far inferior team on his back and propelled them to levels that they would not have gotten close to otherwise. When Fernandes started moving through the gears in the back half of the season, Manchester United flew from midtable to the Champions League.
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Along with Gabriel, Fernandes is the player who tells the story of the great tactical trend of 2025-26 as well as anyone. Nine of his record-breaking 21 Premier League assists came from set pieces and for a time there might have been no attacking scenario more difficult to defend than Fernandes standing over a corner, lobbing it into a mass of bodies from which Casemiro would often rise the highest.
It wasn’t just set pieces for Fernandes, whose 99 open-play chances created were 22 more than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues last season. For a sense of just how impactful he was, one need only observe how United are struggling now that he has come back down to earth.
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9. Lionel Messi, Inter Miami and Argentina
For these last two, the question really is how much importance you place on the World Cup. Obviously, it is the peak of the sport but what happens when you’ve spent the rest of your time playing at a level that ClubELO and Opta would consider to be a fair way below England’s second tier, at or around the level of the Norwegian, Ecuadorian and Swiss domestic leagues? If you’re as historically excellent as Messi, you’re probably going to look sprightlier and more incisive than those who have spent the preceding nine months slogging their way through the Champions League and European domestic seasons.
If that sounds like a means of diminishing Messi’s brilliance at the World Cup, it shouldn’t be. Being the best player on the runners-up at 39 is an exceptional achievement, one that only serves to reinforce his status as the greatest of all time. It also should have resulted in him being named player of the tournament. The Ballon d’Or, however, is awarded for the period from Aug. 3, 2025 to July 19, 2026. For too much of that, Messi was playing at a level that was simply beneath his talents.
10. Rodri, Manchester City and Spain
Somewhat as above, really. At the World Cup, Rodri was Rodri, the player who was so eminently worthy of winning the 2024 Ballon d’Or. When Spain had the ball, Rodri, now at Barcelona, was the man who moved them through the lines, who carried the ball almost as effectively as he passed it. When Spain didn’t have the ball, Rodri got it back for them.
Flashes of that Rodri had emerged as he stepped up his recovery from an ACL injury in his final months as a Manchester City player. He was brilliant for a half against Chelsea in January, the best player on the pitch when City beat Arsenal in the EFL Cup final. Even Pep Guardiola, however, knew that the “real Rodri” would not emerge until later on in the season. That puts a hard cap on where he can rank.
MEDINAH, Ill. — Times were different in 2012, the last time elite match play golf was contested at Medinah Country Club. Spectators pulled out their flip phones on the 1st tee in the early morning at that Ryder Cup and tapped the buttons to turn on their flashlights.
“It was terrifying to me as a player,” Brandt Snedeker said Tuesday from the Presidents Cup, again at Medinah. “That was my first experience.”
Phone technology has changed a good bit in 14 years, and so has Snedeker’s role. He’s the American captain, a title that carries plenty of responsibility, down to gathering phone numbers together in one big group chat.
“I was in charge of the name,” Snedeker said. “It’s called Medinah ’26. Really inventive, yeah.
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“I think it’s a great way to get these young guys involved in the team. I’ve been super impressed with how funny Jacob Bridgeman and Chris Gotterup and Jackson are in these things. It’s been hilarious to me to see them interact with the guys on the team. It’s gotten to the point where Scottie’s even had to chime in, which Scottie is not a big texter. For him to chime in, you know it’s gotten pretty good.”
So what goes on in the chat? It’s one of the four main things we learned Tuesday from the Presidents Cup, which you can read below.
1. Team USA broke its rookies in with … karaoke.
All 24 players will tell you about the closeness they feel from various team bonding activities, which they rarely experience in this individual sport. But a few of them were not too keen on Snedeker’s rookie hazing.
“Last night, the rookies, we had to sing a song for everybody,” first-timer Bridgeman said. “It was quite a few — there was maybe 40, 50 people in the room, no phones, no videoing nothing. That was nerve-racking but hilarious.”
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Bridgeman belted out “God Bless the USA”. Twenty-one-year-old Jackson Koivun went with “Heartless” by Kanye West, and Chris Gotterup chose a Creed classic, “One Last Breath”.
“I went with Creed last night and destroyed it in a bad way,” Gotterup said. “Not good. Yeah, it was bad.”
Gotterup is also having a bit of a tough time in the group chat.
“My teams have created me being a punching bag,” Gotterup told me. “Rutgers has not helped my cause in the group chat. And there was a funny picture from a vacation I went on that was supposed to be secretive, and Jacob [Bridgeman] sent it in the group chat. So I have to get him back at some point.”
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As for the context of that photo:
“ No, no,” he said. “That’s limited information.”
2. Team Kim is back and bigger than ever
Among the unforgettable memories from the last Presidents Cup, in Montreal, was the coming-out party for Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim, a Korean duo who have gone 2-1 together, and each beaten Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns in matches played apart.
Most recently, they decided to indoctrinate a third Kim into the family.
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“I became Brother Kim,” Canadian Nick Taylor told us Tuesday.
Si Woo and Tom have been calling Taylor “Nick Kim” ever since joining up in a 6-ball a couple of weeks ago during a team scouting trip to Medinah. In the process, Taylor helped the Kims mop up their money game, to the point that Tom said, “We made it rain.”
For Tom, it’s continued through the first two days of this week.
“I’m not [just in the] positive. I’m very positive,” he said.
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3. Sam Burns and Scottie Scheffler together again?
The first player I had a chance to pepper with questions was Sam Burns, who very quickly teased his playing partner this week.
“Do you already know who you’re going to play with?” I asked.
“I do, yeah,” he replied.
“Is his name Scottie Scheffler?”
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“His name starts with an S,” Burns said, wearing a smile.
This info may not surprise anyone. Scheffler and Burns are best buds. And they’ve been paired together a bunch over the years. But those matches, on paper, haven’t delivered desirable results.
Team Scheffler-Burns have played four matches, losing three times and tying once. All four came at the 2022 Presidents Cup and 2023 Ryder Cup, and we haven’t seen them paired since. But there’s nuance to this match play stuff, and Burns hasn’t forgotten that.
“I feel like we played really well together [in 2022],” Burns said. “I remember getting off the course and the stats guys were like, ‘well, if you guys would have played any other match this day, you would have won,’ but unfortunately we didn’t.”
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4. The Medinah of Old at the Medinah of New
This place is different. Course No. 3 at Medinah Country Club has been made totally anew thanks to the recent renovation. It should play and feel quite differently than the last few times it has hosted top pros, but there’s history here that everyone seems very aware of.
The 2012 ‘Miracle at Medinah’ that saw the Europeans mount a historic comeback on Sunday still rings around vividly in Captain Snedeker’s head.
“As I’ve spoken at length about, I think you learn way more from your losses than your wins,” Snedeker said Tuesday, “and what happened Sunday at Medinah that year taught me a lot. It taught me how much these guys care, seeing my idols of the game and who I was a teammate with crying in the locker room on Sunday night when things didn’t go our way.
“I think you learn from those experiences. You try to build up a team around those experiences. I’ve built my career around that.”
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Sneds is the first to point out all the changes at Medinah; it will absolutely inform the proceedings and perhaps what is shared and invoked in locker-room speeches this week …
… perhaps for both sides.
Golf junkie — and Open Champion — Ryan Fox has never played in a team event of this stature, but has gone so far as to attend Presidents Cups earlier in his career. He has gladly woken up early in his native New Zealand to watch Ryder Cups played in the United States, and figured out some way to consume middle-of-the-night matches when they’re hosted in Europe. It’s safe to say he (and a few of his teammates) are interested in creating a similar negative memory at Medinah for this batch of American opponents.
“I mean, [2012] was such drama,” Fox said. “It’s hard to pick one moment out of that whole Sunday, but I remember watching that vividly. I’ve seen the documentary on it and everything that happened.
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“It gives us a lot of motivation this week that you can do something incredible on a Sunday like that, especially at the same venue.”
Arch Manning has come a long way since his inauspicious debut as the full-time starter last August.
He grew into the immense pressure he faced because of his last name and the hype surrounding him being the top-ranked recruit in the 2023 class, with 1,368 passing yards, 11 touchdowns and one interception in his final five games of the 2025 campaign.
And he’s carried that over to the first three games of the 2026 season. A Texas squad that started last season at No. 1 before missing the College Football Playoff is now back up to No. 1 after its thrilling 24-23 win over then-No. 1 Ohio State which saw Manning lead three fourth-quarter touchdown drives.
Through three games of his fourth season at Texas, Manning has 664 passing yards, seven touchdowns and two interceptions.
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But he still isn’t quite living up to all of the hype he had no choice but to deal with due to his multiple generations of NFL ties.
Manning still needs to prove it
Look at his performance in Saturday’s 30-6 win over UTSA. He completed just 17 of 33 passes (51.5%) for 164 yards.
Mind you, he’s surrounded by some of the best talent in college football. With a pair of sensational receivers in Ryan Wingo and Cam Coleman, a pair of coveted running back transfers in Hollywood Smothers and Raleek Brown and a much improved offensive line from a season ago, he’s guiding one of the highest-paid rosters in the nation.
Manning admitted postgame that he knows that performances like he delivered against the Roadrunners won’t help the Longhorns reach their goals this season.
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“(My performance was) not good enough,” Manning said after the game. “I didn’t play well. Offense, we were a little sloppy. We’ve got to be better if we want to beat Tennessee.”
It’s true of more than just this week’s Southeastern Conference opener in Knoxville against the 14th-ranked Volunteers. That game begins a stretch of six of the next seven games set to be played against currently ranked teams.
The only game against an unranked team in that stretch? Texas’ rivalry game against an Oklahoma team that started the season ranked 10th before falling out of the poll this week after consecutive subpar performances.
That brutal schedule ahead — paving the path for what should be a CFP appearance — leaves Manning plenty of chances to prove he’s worthy of consideration of being the No. 1 pick in next April’s NFL Draft.
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Because while that has been discussed as a near-certainty since he was a budding prospect, he hasn’t yet shown much in terms of production which makes that likely to happen.
Mirabai Chanu finally ended her long wait for an Asian Games medal, winning silver in the women’s 49kg weightlifting event at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games on Wednesday. The Olympic silver medallist lifted a combined 198kg to finish second behind North Korea’s Ri Song Gum, who claimed the gold medal.
Chanu’s silver marks her first podium finish at the Asian Games after she missed out in her previous two appearances. She finished ninth at the 2014 Incheon Games and was forced to miss the 2018 edition because of injury, before narrowly missing a medal with a fourth-place finish at Hangzhou in 2023.
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A medal that had eluded Chanu
Chanu made her Asian Games debut at Incheon in 2014, finishing ninth in the women’s 48kg category. She missed the 2018 Jakarta Games because of a back injury, before returning at Hangzhou in 2023, where she finished fourth in the 49kg event.
The Hangzhou campaign ended in disappointment after Chanu competed despite a thigh injury. The result left her without an Asian Games medal despite having already established herself as one of India’s most successful weightlifters on the global stage.
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Her record includes an Olympic silver medal, a World Championships gold and three Commonwealth Games gold medals. The Asian Games, however, had remained unfinished business.
Silver adds another chapter to decorated career
The Aichi-Nagoya medal comes after another successful season for Chanu. She won her third consecutive Commonwealth Games gold earlier this year, lifting 190kg in Glasgow with an 85kg snatch and a 105kg clean and jerk.
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The Asian Games presented a different challenge, with Chanu competing against some of Asia’s leading lifters in the 49kg category. North Korea’s Ri Song Gum won gold, while Chanu secured silver with her 198kg total.
For Chanu, the result completes a significant part of her international medal collection. She now has an Olympic medal, a World Championships title, Commonwealth Games gold and an Asian Games medal to her name.
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More importantly, the silver closes a chapter that had stretched across three Asian Games cycles.
After finishing ninth at Incheon, missing Jakarta and narrowly missing the podium at Hangzhou, Chanu finally stood on the Asian Games podium in Aichi-Nagoya.
In the latest chapter of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s descent in popularity at Manchester United, the club’s official Muslim supporters’ club released a statement insisting they had no confidence in either the Ineos founder, or the Glazer family. The lengthy release outlined the group’s unhappiness about the ‘years of decline’ overseen by the United owners, citing ticket prices, Old Trafford’s deterioration and wasteful spending, as reasons for their thinking.
However, a paragraph in the middle of the statement has led to the group’s message being misconstrued. Over the weekend, Ratcliffe was interviewed by the BBC. During it, he claimed that no politician was ‘tough enough’ to deal with two problems in the UK – immigration and benefits. This came off the back of Ratcliffe apologising in February for declaring that the UK had been ‘colonised by immigrants’.
“We hoped a lesson had been learned. Clearly, it has not,” the Manchester United Muslim Supporters’ Club (MUMSC) wrote. “This week, Sir Jim has again placed immigration and people receiving benefits at the centre of his explanation for Britain’s problems, arguing that nobody is ‘tough enough’ to deal with either. We find these latest comments deeply disappointing and completely unacceptable.”
Since then, MUMSC’s chairman Asif Mahmud tells MEN Sport the purpose of their statement has been lost, insisting it is far wider than Ratcliffe’s political views.
“This has been bubbling for quite some time. It’s not something that’s a knee jerk reaction,” he said. “We’ve had frustrations at the ownership model for a long, long time.
“We were very much, genuinely, excited about Jim coming in because he was a Manchester lad, seemed to actually support and care about the club. But since they’ve [Ineos] arrived, it’s just a vicious cycle of hiring and firing, managers not getting backed fully, staff at the club being unhappy, it’s just the overall atmosphere and the feeling around the club, it’s just not good. And that’s been reflected on the pitch.”
Mahmud said that things came to a head in two parts. The first was at the end of the summer transfer window when himself and MUMSC felt Michael Carrick had been left short in terms of new recruits. Then, after the derby day defeat to Manchester City, Mahmud felt the time was right to say something.
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“It was actually that evening that I reached out to some of our committee members and said: ‘Look, I feel we should put out a statement about not being happy with the way the club’s being run and how things are going,’” he said.
“I reached out to a friend who runs another supporters’ club, an official one, and said to them: ‘Look, I think something needs to be done’, and I threw some suggestions, and one of them was that collectively, all supporters’ clubs put out a statement of no confidence.
“Now, I know it’s just words, and words don’t seem to bother the ownership, but I just felt doing something together would be quite powerful. I also reached out to another fan group and I waited all weekend. There was no interest or anything coming back.
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“On that Monday [September 14], a statement was drafted, and it was sent to the two groups that I mentioned. I said: ‘Look, I explicitly stated that it was an idea, it doesn’t have to be our idea. You don’t have to give us any credit. We just feel that something needs to be done. If this is a good idea, then speak to the others and see if they’re interested in doing it’. It wasn’t about speak to the others and see if they want to get in with us and they’ll do it on the back of us. It was, if the other supporters’ club groups think it’s a good idea, let’s just do it.
“Unfortunately, nothing came back and then on Saturday [September 19], Sir Jim comments about immigration and just the overall ill feeling, again, [that] he brought up comments he’d made previously. We just felt, enough is enough. We need to do something.”
Mahmud explained the response to the statement has been mixed. This has included hate mail stating members of MUMSC should ‘leave the country’. However, the issue for Mahmud and his group is that the main thrust of the message has now altered.
“I just feel like a lot of what we’ve said has been lost,” he said. “All the focus has all been about his comments on immigration, but we can put that to one side.
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“You don’t have to like us, you don’t have to like our religion, you don’t have to like anything about us, but one thing we all have in common is that we hate and we dislike what we’re seeing at Manchester United. Surely we can get behind each other and we can rally and have one voice about what’s going on.
“We were prepared to put out the statement even before Sir Jim said what he said, risking our official status as a supporters’ club. People have said: ‘Why is there a Muslim supporters’ club?’ And: ‘Why do you need to do this? Do you need to do that?’ Well, to be honest, we were willing to forego even being an official supporters’ club for Man United because we knew that putting out a statement came with risk.”
Mahmud explained that United have reached out to him after the statement was released to see if everything was okay. MEN Sport understands there are no plans to strip MUMSC of their official status, following their no-confidence statement.
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Moving forward, Mahmud insists that United fans need to unite to make their feelings on the ownership heard. “I’ve got a season ticket. I have been going to Old Trafford for over 12 years, supporting the club through everything, up and down, since Sir Alex [Ferguson] left,” he concluded, “and I see it and I hear it.
“I hear people at the ground complaining about the ownership. I was at the game against Fulham. People in the crowd, I could hear them complaining about the ownership.
“Now, if they can’t say it out loud because they don’t have the platform, then the supporters’ clubs need to speak on behalf of the fans, because it’s not just us. Yes, we’re talking about our statement right now because we published it, but we know that others feel the same way and they need to make their voice heard.”
Manchester United youngster JJ Gabriel has made it clear he wants to leave the club
Manchester United have two weeks to find a resolution with JJ Gabriel if they want to keep the highly-rated 15-year-old at the club. The youngster shocked the club earlier this month by asking to have his registration terminated by the United hierarchy.
The 15-year-old had been in line to make his Manchester United debut and feature against Brighton in the Carabao Cup, but was left out of the squad following the bombshell.
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He hasn’t featured for any of the United youth sides since then, and has reportedly jetted off to Spain to hold talks with Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Gabriel turns 16 in two weeks time, on October 6 and he’ll then be eligible to be legally represented by an agent.
He’ll also be able to join a foreign club using his Irish passport and the Daily Mail claims super-agents Ali Barat and Jorge Mendes are keen on snapping up the youngster.
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United are still hopeful that they’ll be able to convince the youngster they’re the right place for his development, though the club’s recent decline is said to be the main driving force behind the youngster looking for a move elsewhere.
The Old Trafford hierarchy are unwilling to bow to demands and rip up the youngster’s current contract, which expires at the end of the season.
If United were to terminate the youngster’s contract, they could earn as little as £300,000 in compensation when he could be worth millions of pounds in the years to come.
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There’s also the caveat that Gabriel could launch an appeal with the Premier League or FIFA, to allow him to be released from United.
Especially if a lucrative offer from Barcelona or Real Madrid is on the table, and because of his age, it would be very difficult for Man United to stand in the family’s way of relocating.
There are also FIFA rules with specific criteria over a young player’s education, though home-schooling would offer interested club’s a way round such regulation.
Gabriel has not been at United for the last two weeks and it’s very likely that the player will leave the club, though the club have made it clear the youngster’s welfare is paramount.
Sep 20, 2026; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. (7) and second baseman Michael Massey (19) stand for the playing of God Bless America during the seventh inning stretch against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
The Chicago White Sox (80-76) open a three-game series at Kauffman Stadium against the Kansas City Royals (67-89), and the ChiSox enter play a game back of the Cleveland Guardians for first place in the American League Central Division.
Chicago has an impressive 31-18 record inside the division, including a 7-3 mark against Kansas City. These two teams haven’t met in Kansas City since April 9-12, when the teams split a four-game set.
The White Sox turn to LHP Anthony Kay (9-9, 4.41 ERA, 1.36 WHIP) for his 30th start and 32nd appearance of the season. The bottom has fallen out for the southpaw lately, though, as he is 0-4 with a 6.00 ERA and 1.39 WHIP across 33 IP in the past seven starts.
On the flip side, the Royals, who have been eliminated for quite some time, will counter with LHP Daniel Lynch IV (6-5, 3.29 ERA, 1.07 WHIP). He is making his ninth start, and 55th appearance, as he transitions to a starting role.
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Chicago has managed a 21-26 mark this season against left-handed starting pitchers, while Kansas City is a dismal 12-31 against southpaws in 2026. The Royals’ mark against lefties is easily the worst mark in the majors.
The White Sox won three of four games against the Detroit Tigers over the weekend, snapping back on track after a 5-12 record in a 17-game span from Aug. 30 to Sept. 18.
The Royals were swept in a three-game interleague series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, getting outscored 18-13, with a pair of one-run losses. Kansas City is also a dismal 1-7 in the past eight games, and 5-14 in the past 19 outings since Aug. 30.
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Neither of these teams is playing very well, so we’re going to side with the team with the most on the line. The WHITE SOX (-120) are the play as slight favorites on the road, and they’re worth a look.
While I certainly don’t love Chicago, at no point has Kansas City shown any signs of life against lefties this season. And, if both pitchers are knocked out early, the White Sox have one of the better bullpens in the majors at 3.68, while the bullpen for the Royals ranks 30th in the majors with a 5.04 ERA.
Let’s look to the UNDER 8 (-105) in this AL Central series opener, but go rather lightly. The Under has cashed in the past two starts by Lynch, and the Under is 12-2 in the past 14 games for Kansas City. The Over is 5-0 in the past five starts by Kay, which is why taking the Under gives us some pause. The side is the much better play here.
Scottie Scheffler hasn’t looked like Scottie Scheffler in this arena. The world No. 1 has lorded over the golf universe for the last four years. Roll the balls out in a 72-hole stroke-play event, and chances were good that by Sunday night Scheffler would’ve found himself either holding the trophy or coming a whisker shy. Ask anyone in pro golf, from Rory McIlroy to Jordan Spieth, and the answer is the same: It’s Scottie Scheffler . . . and everyone else.
But that hasn’t been the case in weeks like this one at the Presidents Cup, where Scheffler’s normally inevitable greatness has not arrived in the match-play format. In two previous Presidents Cups, Scheffler is 3-5-1 overall with a 1-3-1 record in foursomes and a 0-2-1 record in singles. His numbers are just as confounding at the Ryder Cup, where he is 3-6-3 with a 0-4-0 record in foursomes and a 1-2-2 mark in fourball.
With numbers like that, it would be understandable if hyper-competitive Scheffler arrived at Medinah Country Club a little peeved.
And, well, he is a bit.
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Scheffler said there’s an aspect of team competitions that has left him and many of his teammates frustrated. But it’s got nothing to do with his stats or record, or, for that matter, the Presidents Cup. It all stems from that other team event.
“I think that’s something that’s probably been frustrating for us as American players is some of the narratives that have gone on over the course of my team match-play career — stuff like Patrick Cantlay not wearing his hat or stupid rumors that simply aren’t true,” Scheffler said on Tuesday. “Like meeting in a different team room and the Americans aren’t a close team. It’s something for us that can be very frustrating at times because it’s very much untrue.”
Of course, those narratives arrived only after or during U.S. Ryder Cup failures. The Patrick Cantlay hat report came out during the 2023 Ryder Cup at Marco Simone. That was followed by the suggestion that the U.S. team room was fractured. The Americans showed up at Bethpage Black two years later and did little to quiet the murmurings as the Europeans dominated them for two days before hanging on to win in singles.
None of that angst has been an issue at the Presidents Cup. The U.S. has dominated the event, winning 10 in a row and losing only once in the event’s history. But it’s understandable that the Ryder Cup and its tentacles are at the Presidents Cup. Despite one being run by the PGA of America and the other being run by the PGA Tour, it has long been argued that the Presidents Cup could be used as a way to help the Americans find greater success in the Ryder Cup by building continuity between captains and in the team room, giving young players early exposure to team events and creating a blueprint for American team golf to follow year in, year out, whether it’s a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup year. Regardless of the year, every conversation about American team golf eventually turns to the Ryder Cup and Team USA’s recent failings.
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So Scheffler is frustrated by the narratives and reports that have emerged about him and his teammates after the losses in Italy and Long Island. But he undoubtedly also knows that the same questions he faces this week at Medinah — questions about a poor match-play record, how to fix it and whether his partners are pressing too hard because of who he is — will likely be asked next year in Ireland at Adare Manor.
On Tuesday at Medinah, Scheffler answered his team competition conundrum in simple terms.
“I think you can always play better,” he said. “I always feel like — every time I go out, I feel like I can always play better. In the team format, when you look at best ball and alternate shot, there is a little bit of flukiness there for sure. Sometimes you’re up against guys that have played really good. It’s very easy, I think, after tournaments to play armchair quarterback and feel like you can do things differently.”
Scheffler is the dominant force in golf. And as was true of the game’s previous gravitational center, Tiger Woods, Scheffler has not been as inevitable in the team format as he is in stroke play. Woods went 13-21-3 in the Ryder Cup, including 5-10-0 in fourball and 4-9-1 in foursomes. Woods, however, was dominant at the Presidents Cup, going 27-15-1 overall and 12-4-1 in foursomes. Scheffler might also be facing a similar issue that Woods ran into during his team career: finding the right partner who can handle playing with the World No. 1 and not let the nerves of letting him down drown his game.
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“I think there’s an inherent kind of – not fear for the guy they’re playing with, but a feeling of I’m letting him down,” U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker said on Tuesday about the task of finding Scheffler a consistent partner. “He’s the best player in the world. He’s so good at everything; no matter what I do isn’t going to be good enough.”
Snedeker admitted it’s a “challenge” to find the right fit for someone with Scheffler’s talent and aura. Since 2023, Scheffler has had seven different partners across the team events. He and Sam Burns got blitzed by several red-hot international pairings in 2022. At the 2023 Ryder Cup, Scheffler and Brooks Koepka got buzzsawed 9&7 in foursomes. It looked like Scheffler found a partner in Russell Henley at the 2024 Presidents Cup, where they went 2-1. But the Scheffler-Henley pairing went winless last September at Bethpage.
Scheffler admitted Tuesday that he could be weighing his partners down a bit, because you never want to let your partners down, regardless of who they are. But more importantly, Scheffler says he might want it too much. That the key to bringing his stroke-play dominance to the team format is not about finding the right partner but in the World No. 1 letting off the gas a bit.
“As a hypercompetitive person, I think sometimes I can probably try too hard,” Scheffler said. “I think when you look at this format, and like you said, maybe my record hasn’t matched up to what I think that it should be, could it be trying too hard? I think that’s definitely a factor for sure. For me, it’s different in the sense that you also have a partner with you and you’re playing for somebody outside yourself, and that’s a lot different as well.
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“Kind of striking the balance between how much do you care, I think that’s something I’m always trying to figure out. Definitely for me, I think just trying less would be really important. It’s just one of those things that’s a lot easier said than done.”
Then, because everything comes back to the Ryder Cup, Scheffler was asked a question that everyone associated with American team golf has been looking to answer: Why have the Americans been able to dominate the Presidents Cup and not had the same kind of success in the Ryder Cup?
“That’s a good question,” Scheffler said. “There’s a lot of stuff you can look at. A lot of times you can play armchair quarterback after the thing, and you can come up with a hundred reasons why things could go differently in this thing. What I try to focus on most going into these tournaments is just controlling the controllables and things I can control. That’s going out there and having a good attitude and trying to execute shots. Outside of that, I’m not going to think a ton about anything else really.”
That will be for the rest of us to do after the dust settles at Medinah and we see if the Americans’ Scottie Scheffler conundrum has been solved as they head toward Adare Manor.
India’s hopes of securing a historic esports medal at the 2026 Asian Games came to an unusual end after Mongolia’s late arrival for their eFootball Group F match resulted in a forfeit — a decision that ultimately left India out of the qualification spots.
Danial Patel and Chinmay Sahoo were awarded a 0-0 win after the Mongolian team failed to meet the stipulated check-in time at the Aichi Sky Expo Centre. However, because the match was recorded as a goalless forfeit, India gained no advantage in goal difference and were unable to progress from the group stage.
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India had started their campaign with a 0-0 draw against Uzbekistan in the three-team group. Uzbekistan then defeated Mongolia in both the mobile and console games, recording 6-3 and 12-0 victories, respectively, to finish with a goal difference of +15.
That left India needing a strong result against Mongolia to keep their hopes of advancing alive. Instead, the decisive match was never played.
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Why was India awarded a 0-0 win?
Patel, who represented India in the mobile category, explained that Mongolia’s team leader arrived three minutes after the designated check-in time.
The competition regulations meant the late arrival was treated as a forfeit, with the organisers awarding India a 0-0 victory rather than allowing the teams to play.
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How did the result eliminate India?
The unusual nature of the result meant India received the points associated with a victory but none of the goals that could have improved their goal difference.
Sahoo, India’s console player, said the Indian team had, therefore, been left with a goal difference of zero, while Uzbekistan’s earlier victories over Mongolia gave them a substantial advantage.
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The 0-0 forfeit also meant India could not qualify as one of the highest-ranked second-placed teams.
Thailand eventually took one of those spots after finishing Group B with a +3 goal difference, while Saudi Arabia secured another after recording a +2 goal difference in Group A.
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India, Thailand and Saudi Arabia had each finished their respective group stages with one victory, but India’s goal difference proved decisive in the qualification calculations.
India protested the decision
The Indian contingent did raise an objection after the forfeit was awarded.
Sahoo said the players wanted to play the match rather than accept an automatic victory because playing could have given India the opportunity to improve their goal difference.
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However, officials told the Indian team that the regulations required a forfeit because Mongolia had arrived late.
India were also informed that they could seek a review from a panel of judges by paying $500.
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The Indian players decided against pursuing that option because, according to Sahoo, the regulations already clearly classified a late arrival as a forfeit, and the review would not necessarily have solved India’s qualification problem.
Why did India need a bigger winning margin?
Sahoo explained that the 0-0 forfeit was not sufficient for India to overtake the teams competing for the best second-place positions.
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For India to remain in contention, he indicated that the walkover would have needed to be recorded with a much bigger scoreline, effectively giving them a significant boost to their goal difference.
Without that advantage, India remained on a goal difference of zero and could not progress despite being awarded the victory.
A major setback for Patel and Sahoo
The early exit is particularly disappointing for Patel, who arrived at the Asian Games as the reigning Asian eFootball champion.
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Patel had won the mobile title at the FIFAe Continental Championship earlier this year, making him one of India’s strongest medal prospects in the discipline.
A deep run in Aichi-Nagoya could also have given Patel and Sahoo an opportunity to become India’s first esports medallists at the Asian Games.
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India had failed to win an esports medal at the 2022 Asian Games, when esports featured as an official medal sport for the first time. At the 2018 edition, when esports was only a demonstration event, Tirth Mehta had won a bronze medal in Hearthstone
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