Simone Inzaghi’s thrilling tactics have seen Nerazzurri pull clear of their city rivals – and the rest of the Italian top flight How else could it end but like this: tempers boiling over and the red card being shown to one player after another as Inter sealed their 20th league title with a win over neighbours Milan? Denzel Dumfries and Théo Hernández were first to be sent off after squaring up in midfield at the start of injury time. Milan’s Davide Calabria followed moments later for throwing a forearm into the face of Davide Frattesi at a corner. And then the final whistle went, transforming ..read more

For the teams at the bottom of the food chain, England’s top flight has come to resemble an abusive relationship And you may ask yourself: how do I work this? And you may ask yourself: what happened to that three-man midfield ..read more

If all the best horses miss the Classic trials the beginning of the season is heading the same way as the declining Craven The first cuckoo, daffodils in full bloom and the Craven meeting at Newmarket. For racing fans, it was always hard to say which of the three was the most compelling sign that spring had finally arrived. But times change, the daffs have usually been and gone before Cheltenham these days, and Guineas trials now seem to have been consigned to history too. Four of the 11 runners in Saturday’s Greenham Stakes, including Esquire, the winner, were geldings, and therefore unable t ..read more

Liverpool’s £34m young talent demonstrated his calm approach but could be a better fit after German’s departure Travelling across London for this game the trains seemed full of exhausted‑looking people carrying a medal and a slight limp. Liverpool’s own marathon approaches what they hope will be a similarly rewarded conclusion with only the tiredness guaranteed. They took another weary step towards a potentially positive outcome here, hauling themselves back to parity on points with Arsenal at the top of the table. It was the result they needed, with the team they had to play, and that was eno ..read more

Being the AFL’s No 1 draft pick can be a poisoned chalice. But the 19-year-old West Coast prodigy has sauntered into the game and made it look a breeze. The 58th Western Derby was supposed to be a cakewalk. The Dockers had won the previous five encounters. They won the last one by 101 points. If not for a couple of late lapses in South Australia, they could have gone into the clash undefeated. But they were woeful. At one point, they were goalless and seven goals down and commentator Matthew Pavlich sighed “this is concerning for Fremantle.” Pav is no colour man but every time he opens his mou ..read more

The Belgian forward’s knack of scoring important goals came in handy to dig his team out of a hole against Wolves Leandro Trossard is a Lego enthusiast – a few years ago he built a replica of the Taj Mahal, painstakingly assembling all 5,923 pieces – and here he produced another masterpiece with a single swipe of the right boot, even if he didn’t really mean it. With half-time looming, Arsenal were itching to find a goal and Trossard provided one, in unorthodox style. Gabriel Jesus brought Kai Havertz’s cross under his spell and then somehow kept hold of the ball after falling under pressure f ..read more

It’s absurd that nobody has a clue how many points might be needed to stay up as the two clubs docked points collide It’s about the points deductions. It couldn’t not be about the points deductions. In another world, in another season, Everton v Nottingham Forest would just be 16th v 17th (at the start of the weekend). Except that in another world, the points deductions wouldn’t have happened and so it would be 14th v 17th but with 17th starting the weekend five points clear of the Premier League relegation zone and so a lot less anxious than Forest actually are. This is the points deduction d ..read more

The underdogs created the chaos to unsettle Guardiola’s side at Wembley but their finishing was wayward or timid Manchester City were dragged into a strange, unfamiliar, uncomfortable place at the start of this FA Cup semi-final. It felt chaotic, uncontrolled, almost as if it had been designed for Conor Gallagher, who was stationed on Chelsea’s left as a hard-running, counter-pressing irritant-machine whose main job was to fry Kyle Walker’s mind. Credit goes to Mauricio Pochettino for a positional flex that flummoxed City for long spells. Pep Guardiola, all flapping gestures and nervous energy ..read more

Micah Richards laughing uproariously behind a lighted TV plinth? That’s the kind of noise football is being distilled into Before anybody knew anything at all, around the same time a series of speculative bronze-age books were being encoded as the foundation of much organised human society, there was a theory that everything in the world was made from one substance. There were different combinations of The Substance. But it was all essentially One Substance – probably, you know, God’s fingernails or the like ..read more

An Irish-trained horse has not won of the most coveted prizes in UK jumps racing since Queen Victoria was on the throne In the spring of 1869, Queen Victoria was approaching the halfway mark of what would eventually be a 64-year reign, Sir Henry Morton Stanley was preparing to head for Africa to seek out Dr Livingstone, and a horse called Huntsman won the third running of the Scottish Grand National at Bogside, a now-defunct racecourse on the banks of the River Irvine in Ayrshire. More than a century-and-a-half later, Huntsman is still the last horse trained in Ireland to win Scotland’s bigges ..read more