This season, Toney finished second in the domestic scoring charts with 32 goals in 32 games – he evens boasts more assists and a better shot conversion rate than Bayern Munich forward Kane.

Just what those goals are worth outside Europe’s top five leagues is yet to be seen, but on numbers alone his record stands up to scrutiny against any English striker around.

Given he is also one of only three centre-forwards selected by Tuchel, with Ollie Watkins also in the squad, it does not feel like a position that is overmanned given that 26 squad places were up for grabs.

Previous Three Lions squads at major tournaments have at times included four or five personnel for the exact same position.

The argument against his inclusion would ask why England need another forward aside from Kane and Watkins, given modern-day formational switches and a dearth of top-quality options for that position?

Detractors would also argue Toney’s place should be used to accomodate another of those multi-talented number 10s who have been left behind.

However, former Chelsea and Paris St-Germain boss Tuchel could make a viable case for leaving behind Palmer and Foden, who have not hit previous heights in 2025-26.

Instead he has gone for a player brimming with confidence and one that is accustomed to dealing with the intense temperatures that England will encounter this summer at the tournament in the US, Mexico and Canada.

“We could see that he still collects the numbers. I think he has very special skills that could help us, the situations, scenarios when we are chasing a result,” added Tuchel.

“I think he can be a very valuable addition to Harry Kane, he can be present in the box when we are pushing for a goal.

“He can take attention off other strikers, he has a natural presence within the box, he is a natural finisher, he can help us with set-pieces – he is very strong in there. Very good in using his body and not to forget, he is a world class penalty taker. He ticks some boxes that we wanted to be ticked.”

The Three Lions, who reached the semi-finals in Russia in 2018 and the quarter-finals in Qatar four years ago, face Croatia in their opening Group L fixture on Wednesday, 17 June (21:00 BST).

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the announcement “good news” for both countries, adding in a post on X: “I thank all those involved in this matter—President Nawrocki, the ministers, congressmen, and friends of Poland in the USA—for their effectiveness and unity of action.”

A man from Brazil has been detained on suspicion of child rape after allegedly fathering his own grandchild and then going on to get the child pregnant in a horrific Amazon incest case.

Police are probing an alleged incest case in which a man is said to have not only fathered his own grandchild, but subsequently impregnated that child. The 50-year-old suspect, hailing from Brazil’s Apurinã ethnic group, was apprehended on Wednesday (20 May) on suspicion of child rape.

The incident occurred in the Bacuri Indigenous community near Tapauá, situated deep within Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.

According to authorities, the 12-year-old victim is simultaneously the man’s daughter and granddaughter.

Her mother, now 33, is understood to have endured repeated sexual assaults by her own father across numerous years, with the 12-year-old born as a consequence of that abuse.

Police were alerted to the case only after a local indigenous healthcare team demanded the girl – already six months pregnant – receive medical care.

The suspect had been concealing her from both health workers and other relatives, maintaining her in isolation and preventing her access to education.

Upon receiving the allegations, police mounted an operation to apprehend him. He initially absconded but was subsequently detained.

Lieutenant Colonel Castro Alves informed local media: “There were several days of intensive searches and operations to track down the individual.

“After a night of surveillance, carried out with careful planning, security and intelligence, the suspect was eventually arrested.” The 12 year old delivered her baby in Beruri. Both mum and infant are reported to be in good health and are currently being looked after by the girl’s mother – the accused’s daughter.

Inspector Jailton Santos commented: “This is a horrific case. For years, this man repeatedly raped his own daughter in that indigenous community. She is now 33 years old.

“As a result of the abuse, she had given birth to a girl. The child lived with her grandmother in the community until the grandmother died about two years ago.

“After her death, the man took the girl, isolated her from the rest of the family, and began living with her as his wife.”

The accused is scheduled to face a judge for a custody hearing.

He faces investigation for rape of a child or vulnerable person – concerning both his daughter and granddaughter – alongside false imprisonment and criminal neglect of a child’s education.

“It is possible that doses of that could be available for clinical trial in two to three months, but there is a lot of uncertainty,” a spokesman added, saying it would depend on animal trials as to whether it could be considered “a promising candidate research vaccine” for Bundibugyo.

This bumper 64-page special edition is your perfect guide to this year’s tournament

48 teams, three host nations, 16 venues, millions of fans watching around the globe – and one winner. This summer’s World Cup is the sporting highlight of the year.

The best players on the planet will be in action across the USA, Mexico and Canada over five weeks, promising drama galore.

And our bumper 64-page special edition is the perfect guide to what is the biggest World Cup ever staged. You can order your copy here

England enter the tournament among the favourites as the Three Lions look to end 60 years of hurt, while Scotland will be looking to cause a fair few shocks after qualifying on an electric night at Hampden Park.

Our World Cup preview includes analysis from the Daily Mirror’s chief sports writer Andy Dunn and chief football writer John Cross on England’s chances, while the Daily Record’s Keith Jackson gives us the lowdown on Scotland.

We have exclusive interviews with John Barnes, Stuart Pearce and Gordan Strachan, along with a host of features to put you in the mood for the tournament.

We profile all 48 teams, and take a look at the 16 venues across the three host nations which will stage the action.

And no guide will be complete without a World Cup wallchart, allowing you to chart your viewing – and the path to glory. Order your copy here or pick up at participating retailers from May 27, 2026. Online postage and packaging costs apply.

In elite football, competitive advantage is pursued relentlessly. Big clubs invest heavily in performance data and tactical analysis in the pursuit of marginal gains.

Yet that desperate search for gains has now led to one club, Southampton FC, suffering an enormous loss. Southampton admitted to spying on their opponent’s training session and were charged by the English Football League. They have been expelled from a match that could have seen them win promotion to the Premier League.

That match, the Championship playoff final, is often described as the most lucrative in football. Promotion to the Premier League is worth around £200 million in increased revenue.

Hull and Middlesbrough (the club Southampton spied on) will now fight for that prize. Whether or not you agree with the punishment, the episode highlights the high financial stakes of English football. In an environment where a single result can materially alter a club’s economic trajectory, the pursuit of competitive advantage can take increasingly aggressive forms.

Beyond the specific case of Southampton and “spygate”, there is a bigger issue facing football and the incentives which drive it.

English football’s financial infrastructure does not simply reward success – it also amplifies the consequences of failure. Our research on the economics of English football has shown how the game’s financial structures can reduce competitive balance. The wealthiest sides dominate competitions and leagues. In this environment, clubs can often perceive promotion as transformational – and failure as existential.

This helps to explain why clubs sometimes behave the way they do. Decades of research into the finances of football show a strong relationship between spending and performance. Essentially, the more a team spends (particularly on players’ wages), the better it performs on the pitch.

Because of this, promotion to a higher league becomes more than a financial windfall. It creates a strategic imperative to invest quickly in the hope of staying in that league.

None of this can be used to excuse poor conduct. But it does help explain the environment in which these controversies emerge. Clubs are responding to the incentives the system creates.

And Southampton understands the reality of this system all too well.

Their 2022-23 season in the Premier League brought in revenue of £145.8 million. Immediate relegation back to the Championship reduced that figure to £85 million the following year, and promotion to the Premier League again in 2024-25 pushed it back up to £158.4 million.

Relegation means reduced revenues, strategic uncertainty and operational adjustment. Promotion offers relief and revenue, but not necessarily stability.

If anything, reaching the Premier League often introduces a different kind of pressure. There is an expectation to spend big, recruit aggressively and remain competitive. Any hint of under performance can be punished immediately.

The regulators

English football has repeatedly produced examples of clubs hunting competitive advantage, though normally through aggressive spending. This is a predictable consequence of a model that places extraordinary financial value on relatively narrow sporting outcomes.

This is precisely why regulation is becoming such a central issue in the game. Profit and Sustainability rules (PSR), ongoing debates around spending controls, and the emergence of an independent football regulator all point to a recognition that football’s economic model requires stronger governance.

But regulation alone cannot solve the deeper issue if the underlying incentives remain distorted. If the difference between success and failure continues to be measured in hundreds of millions of pounds, clubs will continue to seek every possible edge.

Seen through that lens, Southampton’s spygate story is more than football controversy. It is a case study in how financial incentives shape organisational behaviour. When there is money to be made, people will continue to break the rules. Perhaps that explains why the penalty of expulsion – which will affect fans, commercial partners and sponsors – was so severe.

Unfortunately, the football world often treats these episodes as isolated ethical failings, when they are actually symptoms of a wider structural problem. The Premier League’s commercial success has made English football richer than ever, but also more financially unforgiving.

The sport has become subject to economic conditions that make marginal advantage extremely valuable. The Southampton case is not just about sporting or non-sporting behaviour. It is about the business model that dominates and shapes modern football.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Matthew Perry paid Kenneth Iwamasa $150,000 a year to be his live-in personal assistant. His role for the “Friends” star would expand to drug messenger, addiction enabler and de facto doctor, according to court filings.

Iwamasa injected Perry with the doses of ketamine that would prove fatal on Oct. 28, 2023, and then left the actor to run errands. He returned to find Perry dead in the Jacuzzi.

The ex-assistant became the first to reach a plea deal of five people indicted in connection with Perry’s death. On Wednesday, he’ll become the last to be sentenced. Prosecutors are asking for a prison term of three years and five months. That’s more than the 2 1/2-year sentence of the doctor who sold Iwamasa ketamine and taught him to inject it into Perry, but far less than the 15-year sentence of the admitted drug dealer who sold Iwamasa the final doses.

Iwamasa, 60, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death and became the case’s most important witness in the indictments of his four co-defendants. That is virtually certain to lead to a lighter sentence.

Family members blame the assistant above all others

“I have no sympathy for Kenny Iwamasa,” Perry’s younger sister Caitlin Morrison wrote in a letter to the judge. “I wasn’t there the night my brother died. I cannot read Kenny’s thoughts. I will never know if the lethal dose of ketamine was only lethal by accident. But I know that when Kenny left the house, he was doing one of two things. He was either escaping from something he knew he had done or he was willfully abandoning a vulnerable person in a dangerous situation.”

Perry’s mother Suzanne Morrison wrote that her son and the family had known Iwamasa for decades, and that relatives were relieved when Perry, who’d had recurring struggles with addiction throughout his life, hired the assistant in 2022.

“Mathew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny. Kenny’s most important job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction,” she wrote. “We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”

Iwamasa’s lawyers argued that he was an employee doing the bidding of his boss.

In a presentencing filing, they said Iwamasa had “a particular vulnerability to the relationship dynamic which he fell into with the victim. In short, he could not ‘simply say no.’ That inability had tragic consequences.”

Suzanne Morrison said Iwamasa knew he could call any family member should Perry start making drug demands, and his job would be safe.

Family disgusted by Iwamasa’s behavior following Perry’s death

Perry’s mother wrote, “When he had killed my son, he kept a sharp eye on me. He sent me songs, he drew a little map to help me find my way around the cemetery. If he saw a rainbow — one of Matthew’s favorite things — he would call me. He insisted on speaking at Matthew’s funeral. He clung to me and the family as if he was somehow the good guy who tried to save Matthew.”

She said Iwamasa expected a financial payout, and when it was clear he wouldn’t get one, he threatened legal action.

Iwamasa did speak at the funeral, which would later leave the family disgusted.

“The person responsible for my brother’s death stood up and addressed the people who loved him most,” another sister, Madeline Morrison, wrote. “That is like a cruel joke I still struggle with. He didn’t just take my brother’s life — he tainted our final memories of saying goodbye.”

Truth about the ketamine was slow to come out

The LA County Medical Examiner found that ketamine, a surgical anesthetic that has become widely used for other purposes both legal and illegal, was the primary cause of Perry’s death. Drowning was a secondary cause.

On the day of Perry’s death, Iwamasa gave police a list of all the medications Perry was taking, but he left off ketamine and said nothing about the injections, prosecutors said.

After investigators served a search warrant on the house in January 2024, that began to change, and he would slowly admit his role in Perry’s death. Iwamasa said he had been giving Perry six to eight injections of ketamine per day in the last days of his life, and that Perry had told him, “Shoot me up with a big one” on the day he died.

Iwamasa said he had worked with middleman Erik Fleming, who was sentenced to two years in prison May 13, to get drugs from dealer Jasveen Sangha.

In his first text to Fleming, Iwamasa said, “Alfred here batmans butler. He said I can text you directly.”

Madeline Morrison wrote that when the truth emerged, “It felt like my brother died all over again. Everything I believed about the day he died—everything Kenny told us—was a lie. I had to relive Matthew’s death from an entirely new and devastating perspective.”

Iwamasa pleaded guilty in August 2024 before the case became public. Wednesday will be his first court appearance since.

Perry, who died at 54, became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” NBC’s culture-changing sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.

“He was my Matso, my Manew,” his mother wrote. “He was, in spite of all we went through, my heart and my soul.”

GENEVA (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization said Friday that the Ebola outbreak in Congo is “spreading rapidly” and now poses a “very high” risk at the national level.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the U.N. health agency was revising upward to “very high” its assessment of the risk within Congo, which had previously been deemed as high. The risk remains high for regional spread and low at global levels, he told reporters.

The WHO chief noted that 82 cases have been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with seven confirmed deaths, “but we know the epidemic in DRC is much larger.”

He said there are now almost 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths. The situation in neighboring Uganda is “stable” with two cases confirmed in people who had traveled from Congo, with one death.

Earlier on Friday, the United Nations said it released $60 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to accelerate the response in Congo and in the region. The U.S. has pledged $23 million in funding to bolster the response in Congo and Uganda, and said it would also fund the establishment of up to 50 Ebola treatment clinics in the affected regions of Congo and Uganda.

Ugandan authorities said they were not aware of any treatment centers being set up by the U.S.

Shoppers will be able to choose from a range of breakfast and lunch options for £5.50 as part of a trial at 39 stores across the UK.

Hot food selections include sausage rolls, croissants, and paninis.

As with the existing meal deal, customers can add a drink and a side such as fruit or crisps.

Some of the options include a beechwood smoked bacon brioche-style roll, a sausage, bacon and scrambled egg wrap, and a mozzarella, tomato and pesto panini.

The supermarket chain will also introduce new chilled “breakfast-to-go” items in larger stores.

New hot meal deal offerings from Tesco:

• Tesco Beechwood Smoked Bacon Brioche Style Roll
• Tesco Cumberland Pork Sausage Brioche Style Roll
• Tesco Sausage, Bacon and Scrambled Eggs Wrap
• Tesco Smoked Ham and Mature Cheddar Croissant
• Tesco Smoked Ham and Mature Cheddar Panini
• Tesco Mozzarella, Tomato and Pesto Panini
• Tesco Tuna, Cheese and Onion Melt Panini

Tesco staff to receive bonus

Tesco recently revealed that 22,000 of its staff, mainly in stores and distribution, are eligible for significant payouts.

Colleagues who cash out are expected to make average profits of between about £5,000 and £8,000 each, it said.

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The company, which employs more than 300,000 people across the UK, runs one of the country’s largest save-as-you-earn schemes, with different schemes maturing each year.

This year has seen a particularly strong windfall for employee investors, on the back of gains in Tesco’s share price in recent years.

Shares in the retail giant have risen by almost 25% over the past year.

Which is your favourite supermarket? Let us know in the comments